Take a look at these photos from the car trip Len Joy and his family took across the country and back in July 1960, and they’re likely to trigger your own memories of family auto journeys. And read the poem that Len, now 54, wrote about his father as driver then and today.
There’s a mythic quality to the stories families tell about their long car trips together — about breakdowns and June bugs, about wrong turns and queasy stomachs, about rubber-armed dads keeping order in the back seat (while still driving) and suitcases flying off the luggage rack onto the highway. These are experiences that carve deep lines in the memory.
Len was one of nearly 200 readers who wrote in with their accounts of car trips past, after Tempo writers shared theirs on Aug. 10. below are excerpts from some others:
Myles L. Tobin, Chicago — Long gone: “August 1960, a two-week driving trip from Chicago to visit my dad’s relatives in Miami. I was 5, and my sister was 9. We had our first new car, a 1959 sky-blue Ford. It was hot as blazes. Mom and Dad were smoking like chimneys. The windows were wide open all the way. Somewhere in Indiana, my favorite teddy bear Ricky was sucked out of the back window. Dad refused to stop. Forty-five years later, I can still picture Ricky lying mourn-fully in the middle of the highway as we traveled on.”
J.P. Boustany, Chicago — Car game: “On our way to upstate New York from Long Island — I was about 10 years old — to our favorite fishing hole, I became bored. I was sitting directly behind my dad. I had taken it upon myself to play a game and forgot to tell my father. I stood up behind him, covered his eyes while he was driving on the high-way and blurted out `Guess who?’ Well, I’m sure you know what happened next! The car swerved, I got my you-know-what kicked.”
Celine Vatterott Woznica, Oak Park — Holy protection: “Every August, we would pack up the station wagon with suitcases, snacks and reading material and take off to see yet another part of the country. About midmorning, Mom would reach into the glove compartment and pull out an array of rosaries, some broken and some lamely repaired with mismatched beads and over-sized crucifixes. `Pass the rosaries. It’s time to pray that we don’t get into an accident,’ she would order.”
Carolyn Black Ferber, Northbrook — Flower children: “Oh, the summer of 1970 — the one my dad decided to take the long trip from our three-bedroom ranch in Elk Grove Village `back East’ to his native Rhode Island. Somewhere en route, a van of hippies pulled up next to us. My sister Sheila and I, unbeknownst to our parents, started giving them the love, peace and soul symbols with our hands. We were really hamming it up. The hippies pulled up next to my dad — he of the short hair and LBJ glasses who was, I believe, wearing a suit — and yelled over, `Your children are so beautiful. Can we take them with us?’ After nearly careening off the road, my dad rolled up all the windows, gunned the motor and spent the rest of the trip giving us `the look’ in the rear-view mirror.”
Patty Sobeski, Champaign — The middle seat: “There were six people in the car, making the seating arrangements three in front and three in back. However, the person in the front middle was sitting next to Dad, who was quite a large man, so it was a little tight. But whoever got the middle seat also got to read the AAA Triptik and flip the page as travel progressed — a thrill beyond belief. And if you were tired, you could lay your head down on Dad’s lap and he would stroke your hair as he drove.”
Fred Goldman, Mundelein — Bugged: “Thirty years ago — I am now 39 — my family drove from Chicago to Miami Beach, Fla., in the summer. While in Georgia, we stopped for lunch, and Dad parked under a tree for the shade because it was about 200 degrees and very humid. About an hour after lunch, my sister noticed a June bug in the car, and, soon thereafter, June bugs were crawling all over us and literally falling from the ceiling into our hair. We stopped at every dirt town, and Dad would empty out all the luggage and fumigate the inside, but still the bugs dropped on us. The bugs were under the hood somewhere and kept crawling in through the a/c vents. To this day, I hate Georgia, and those bugs still haunt my sister’s dreams.”
Shirley Gould, Skokie — Like gypsies: “Summer 1924. Uncle Joe Mesigal had a motorcar, Cadillac, seven-passenger, canvas top and open sides. The Miller cousins of Wheeling, W.Va., were to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary with a party in Canton, Ohio, where other cousins lived. Grandma wanted to be there.
“So we set out from the South Side of Chicago — Uncle Joe, 41, and his wife. Aunt Jennie, 36, in the front seat with their daughter, Lucille, age 2. Grandma, 69, and Momma, 43, were in the back seat. On the jump seats, which unfolded from the floor, were my cousins Dorothy, 10, and Marian, 9. They sat on a blanket so that I, then age 6, could sit between them.
“In late afternoon it started to rain. Uncle Joe had to stop the car, get out the Isinglass curtains and put them up all around. Windshield wipers hadn’t yet been invented. As it got darker, he conceded that he couldn’t drive any farther, and we spent the night at the Lafayette Hotel in South Bend, Ind. Sometime the next day, the car stopped while Aunt Jennie went to ask a farmer if we could use his outhouse. He agreed.
“Eventually. we made it to Canton in time for the big celebration, and we children were ushered into a bedroom where we were instructed to sleep crosswise on the bed — `like gypsies,’ Aunt Jennie said.
“I’m the only one still alive.”
Eileen Haas-Linde, Oak Park — Driving through: “My father received four weeks of vacation every year, and we spent them all at my grandparents’ house in Florida. Now, you would think that, with a month of vacation, you could make a leisurely drive from Michigan to Florida and stop to see the sights on the way. That was so not my father. See Rock City? It flew by in a blur. Restaurants? Lunch was sandwiches in wax paper and lemonade from a thermos, at a picnic table alongside the road. He drove so fast that you could barely read the Burma Shave signs. I was grateful that he always drove a gas-guzzler — otherwise, I think that he would have figured out how to make the trip without ever stopping.
“On one trip, my mother, my sister and I staggered into a service station restroom and encountered a woman with twin baby girls, each covered in vomit from head to toe. She looked at us and said, `I told him to stop.'”
Patrice Flentge, Lisle — Sleeping accommodations: “My dad made a makeshift bed out of a flat board that fit onto the back seat so that all three of us girls could stretch out and lie side by side and sleep when we wanted. On occasion, one of us would make our own cot up against the back window. This was obviously before seat belts were required.”
Mary Curzon, Sycamore — A night in jail: “Every year, we would take our trip in our ’62 Chevy. It looked very much like an ambulance. We have 11 children, so, eventually, there were 13 of us in the `White Bomber.’ One year, on the New Jersey Turnpike, our bags with everything we owned in them fell off the car. Daddy proceeded to run across the highway as we all screamed, `Don’t get hit, Daddy.’ In the meantime, a police car pulled up and said we had to move on or be arrested. I was eight months pregnant and would have loved a night in jail. I carefully got out of the car, and the policeman said, `I’m so sorry.’ He helped my husband recover the bags.”
THE DRIVER
By Len Joy, Evanston
I think about my Father.
It is 1960. I am 9 and we are on the vacation
we have talked about my whole life.
We have a mint-green Chevy Wagon pulling a canvas tent trailer.
No radio, no seat belts, no AC. We add an air-cooler in Albuquerque.
They say we’ll need it for the run across the desert.
Six of us in that wagon.
Mom and my three sisters and Me and Dad
. . . The Driver.
I always sit up front because I am the Boy.
From Canadaigua to Chicago, then south.
Missouri . . . Kansas . . . Oklahoma. . . .
We miss the twisters at Roman Nose, but catch the rain in the Panhandle.
On to Gallup where Mom and Dad fight.
Up to Angel Lake in the Rockies. The car overheats.
The road is narrow and winding. I am scared.
We drive through Vegas at midnight. So many lights.
We don’t stop. I sleep through the Desert.
I wake up at the Flamingo Motel in Pasadena.
Disneyland is cool.
Knott’s Berry Farm is boring.
I like playing shuffleboard at the motel pool.
My Uncle takes us to the Beach.
The ocean’s too cold. It knocks me down.
I can’t get out. I like the motel pool.
Then we turn around.
Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, Mount Rushmore (where I get lost).
Back through Chicago and all the way home.
Four weeks to California and back.
Seven thousand five hundred and forty-nine miles.
Dad drives Mom keeps track.
We come home and I grow up.
Dad goes to every lousy basketball game (home and away)
Even when we lose 18 in a row.
Last summer my Father turned 85.
I ask him to give up driving his car.
My sisters choose me because I was the Boy.
He says he can drive better than most of those
Yahoos on the road today.
I agree. But . . .
I can’t say what I need to say.
That he’s in the final chapter of a great life.
Why risk it all?
What if you fall asleep or pass out
or just lose control?
What if you kill someone?
But I can’t say that.
He’s the Driver.
———-
ctc-tempo@tribune.com
