I can afford to fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I drive. Usually I know when it’s time. One day I’ll look up and the trees are bare, exposing telephone lines I want to follow.
It’s that time of year now-time to run out and buy three kinds of trail mix at the supermarket and a lot of sugarless bubble gum because a trucker once told me that chewing was better than drinking coffee to stay awake. I don’t worry about packing lightly because there aren’t any passengers but me.
It’s a 15-hour drive to Chicago from Fayetteville, Ark. I can do the route alone in a day. My car is dependable. It doesn’t have a tape deck, but the radio’s fine. I never really liked my car until it started carting me back and forth. Somewhere between Springfield and Joliet, it developed character.
My sister doesn’t understand why I want to drive home. She’s a flier. She likes being there more than getting there.
“Doesn’t it get boring?” she asks. “Isn’t it monotonous?”
“That’s not the point,” I tell her. “It’s the idea of driving home that I love. It’s knowing you can start out anytime and be home in just a day.”
Every few years my grandfather will give me a new tip to ward off road fatigue: “Roll down the window and stick your out head every half hour.” “Eat pie.”
My grandfather, who will be 90 in January, never graduated from college. Finals week his senior year, he skipped out, drove south and caught a banana boat to Cuba. He says highways are in our blood. When he was 12 years old, he drove for 12 hours in a cart pulled by a horse just to visit his cousin.
When we moved North from Mississippi in 1969, my father drove. My mother said the drive would make the transition easier. We set out in July and ate picnic lunches in parks by the side of the road. In the back seat, my sister and I followed the line on the map that led from where we were born to where we would be. My father took back roads and visited his friends-one in Memphis, another in St. Louis. He said he wasn’t in any hurry to become a Yankee, but as soon as we started seeing signs for Chicago, he speeded up. My father got stopped twice on that trip-once for speeding out of Jackson, Miss., another for speeding into Chicago.
It’s a straight shot from Illinois to Mississippi. Summers, my father used to pack up the car and for two days we’d travel back down the interstate highway just to see our former home. But after a while people there were the ones with the accents, and we quit going.
My father loves to drive. When I’m home on weekends, we’ll go out for a carton of milk or a load of dry-cleaning and he’ll say, “Let’s keep going.” He’ll mention Wyoming or California, places he and his father always spoke of driving-not flying-out to see.
I know the way home to Chicago now, but still, I keep my map and my Trip-Tik out in the front seat next to me. The woman at the AAA office used a green highlighter on the highways to make the connections. I like flipping the torn, coffee-stained pages after I’ve gone the distance. And I even leave the map unfolded. There aren’t many times when you get the chance to see where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re headed all at once.
Southern Illinois spreads out before me, flat and plowed, and I follow the telephone lines that run alongside last summer’s corn fields. It’s a nice feeling to be acquainted with a strip of land that connects three states. I don’t think I’ll ever feel hemmed in because going home, or anywhere else for that matter, is always a possibility as long as I have the money for gas.
In Lincoln, Ill., there’s a place called Dixie where I stop. It’s packed with families trying to eat light, saving room for the big feasts that await them. I sit up at the counter and get a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. On the way out, I stop off at the gift shop for more gum, but I buy a map of Wyoming instead, and call home to say I’m only a couple of hours away.
