My last few posts were all photos, and this one is story time. If you feel like a story, then grab a coffee, or a lemonade and join me - or just wait till next time to see more pretty photos. I won't be offended. I know there are readers and then there are lookers. I am just glad if you stop on by once in a while...
It is pretty much right smack in the middle of the summer and I am feeling very nostalgic lately. I was driving in my neighborhood the other evening and I saw my neighbor and his cute little boy playing in the sprinkler.
I haven't seen that in some time. His little boy is six, and was wearing goggles and a snorkel and their dog was also joining in the fun. I idled my car and rolled down the window and felt the blast of heat hit my face as I leaned out and called out to them, "Now that looks like a good time!" And Mackenzi (the little boy) smiles big behind his mask and motions me to come over and play with him, and yells, "Why don't you come on in?"
Yes...why don't I? I tell Mackenzi I will jump in next time I stop by.
Then only a day or two later, I am on the sofa, typing away on my laptop and I hear that familiar "thump" that only a kid's head hitting a sidewalk can make, and I pop up and look out the window, and it is Jacob, the little three year old across the street, and his overturned tricycle on the sidewalk. He has his head down, crying, and his arms up in the air, as he walks slowly down the sidewalk towards his father. He can't see where he is going at all. Head down low, his arms high in the air waiting to get picked up as he makes his way down the hot sidewalk. His father, smiling, slowly reaches down to pick him up as the "thump" was not life-threatening. And as I stood there watching for a moment, I smiled too. Oh, how I miss those days when my world fell apart and all I had to do was lift my arms and not even know where I was going, but felt very secure in knowing that I would be picked up and all would be well again. I can still do that with my heavenly Father, but many times, I just don't.
And sure enough, before I left the window, Jacob was scrambling to get down out of his father's arms so he could master his tricycle once again.
Summertime, in the heat of the heat, really makes me think of my youth. Having grown up in Texas, I didn't grow up with air conditioning - nope. Nada. Not once did we have a summer as a kid, where I could sit in a cool house. But as a kid growing up in the 1960's and 70's, I really didn't know much differently. But we did have fans. You know, those minty green, oscillating fans that would clank ever so slightly if the blade was off. They weighed a friggin ton.
I was recently talking to a friend of mine, and she and I were talking about how much even the simplest of things have changed in our short lifetime. I know my readers all know this, but it isn't until we stop a moment and really think about it, it is sort of amazing, how something as simple as a car trip can change the family's dynamics.
Our family vacations never, ever, included plane tickets or fancy hotels or fancy restaurants. There were five kids, but since one was much older, usually "only" four of us kids went on vacation, while Mark, the oldest, was in Vietnam. Our vacations usually entailed a 15-hour car ride from Texas to Nebraska to visit relatives or when older, a 9-hour car ride to Padre Island for a beach vacation. Either way, it was a very hot and long drive.
Mom would pack up the station wagon the night before (many things packed on the roof rack) and then wake us kids up at 3AM to get "an early start." We all would be excited in the car for about 5 minutes and soon would be zonked out and asleep in the back, stretched out on blankets and pillows for the next four hours.
No seat belts - just stretched out in the back of the wagon, still in our pajamas. We would change into our shorts and tops at the first rest stop, or sometimes, right there in the car. Yes, while moving.
We didn't have water bottles back then either. We had a big, red, round thermos with a large handle. It also had a screw-off spout cap that was held on with a metal chain. I was about five, my brother Bill, four, my sister Louisa was seven and my brother Andrew was nine. We would pass this large thermos around that mom filled with ice and I remember hearing it slosh around. My brother Andrew had to help hold it as we sipped from it and we had to time it that we would sip it on a road without potholes so our teeth wouldn't get knocked.
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| This is very close, not quite like the one we had, but pretty darn close. Found on Ebay! |
My friend pointed out that back in those days, sharing thermoses and cups helped build our immune system and there was no such thing as sanitizing gels. Just a wet napkin that mom first licked and then used to wipe our faces. That's about as clean as it got until we got to a rest stop on the side of the highway where we could really get "sanitized."
Yes, we actually not only stopped at rest stops, but used them to wash up back then. We would all pile out, use the bathroom, which actually had paper towels, not hand dryers, and mom would take the paper towels and "dab" herself under her neck and put on lipstick and tie her headscarf on neatly. The kids would run around and then go read the giant map that was framed behind glass. We would go inside the information building, because back then, most rest stops actually had real buildings you could go in and get real maps and get real information from a real person. Some still exist, I know, but they are the exception, not the norm.
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| Postcard found on Ebay |
Mom and dad always had fun noticing how many different license plates were at the rest stop and wanting to see which one was the furtherest state away. "Wow...all the way from Georgia! Wouldn't want to pay their fuel bill..." my dad would say, referring to gas prices. Back then, there were quite a few different state plates parked and people actually would sit on the benches and picnic tables and eat homemade food from their own coolers, not fast food. Mom usually made cold fried chicken and had saltine crackers and some cookies for us. And we would see other families eating their lunches as well.
The last leg of the drive was the hardest because it was the hottest and everyone is getting tired. The inevitable, "Are we there yet" begins, and that is how I became an excellent navigator. Now, I can't find my way out of a box, but give me a map, and I can get you from here to Tibet and never make a wrong turn. At a very young age, mom would hand back the map over the bench seat and let us figure out how far we were to getting to our destination every time she heard, "Are we there yet?"
We also didn't have any videos or personal DVD's to occupy or time on our drive. No, we had good old fashion talking or games. Crayons, Etch-A-Sketch, barbies.... and I always got out the hairbrush and braided my sister's hair. And at some point, I would stand on the seat (yes, stand) and lean on the seat in front of me, and start "styling" my mother's hair. Mom would put a towel down on the seat for us to sit on because the vinyl would become hot and sticky on our bare legs; like I said, no A/C in the car either. Just roll down the windows for nature's air conditioning (no button to push, we had to roll).
My friend reminded me that on road trips, as a kid, she remembered having to drink her bottle of Yoo-Hoo really quickly because she would have to put the bottle back in the rack - I had forgotten about that! But in my case, it was orange crush. We would also play eye-spy and car tag games. Mom would carry a fly swatter to reach behind her and start swatting like crazy when we four would all start acting up and going nuts in the back seat. She was really fast with that thing. I learned to duck pretty quick.
We all learned that we had to "simmer down now" when dad was in traffic in "a big city" and he "must concentrate." But these things taught us to respect driving, our dad, and to pay attention to things we would surely have missed had we been texting, or plugged into our own DVD movie, or blasting a song with our own earbuds. Sharing the thermos and having our big brother "hold it still" while we sipped it, meant we had to hold onto his arm to brace it, while trusting someone else to look over the bench seat, at the road up front, and yell "NOW!" because it appeared pothole-free and safe to take a drink. Mom would laugh and dad just sat there, putting up with a kid who had no idea that he/she was yelling in his ear.
It was an era of blissful stupidity too. No seat belts meant freedom to roam and climb and play, but also sudden death. It was a time where mom was always smoking and would smash her butt and toss it out the window, along with gum wrapper, with no thought at all, along with the rest of the population. We wouldn't want to dirty up the car, now would we? It was a time when we didn't lock our car doors when we went into the grocery store before we went to our relative's house - or ever really - mom just tucked her purse under the seat....that will trick'em.
It was a time where a billboard advertising "The Reptile House only 3 Exits Away..." would illicit excitement from the back seat and then grant a tired dad many hugs around his sweaty neck when he agreed we would all stop to see snakes and lizards and apparently the largest alligator this side of the Colorado River. It was a time when billboards might have advertised smoking, but I don't ever remember once seeing "Gentlemen's Clubs" or "XXX" billboards strewn across the interstate highways like I now do between Rolla, Missouri and OK City.
It was a time when we kids would whine, "I'm hungry," and parents would actually say, "No. You will spoil your supper, and stop whining," instead of just reaching into the purse and handing out candy to shut them up, or pulling over to the next fast food joint at the first sign of revolt. And the kids actually would stop whining and just waited as told. It was a time when gas stations were service stations. We would pull up and an employee actually came out in uniform and would check the air in the tire, the oil, and pump the gas all while dad always felt like he had to get out of the car and stand there and watch for some reason. It was a time when kids would pump their fists at the truck driver - a common signal - and he oblige with a loud toot of his horn and we would all cheer and laugh. And then the driver would give a little two finger salute to mom and dad as he drove off. It was a time when you weren't afraid to look at the driver next to you; and when you did, you actually waved or smiled, and they actually waved back at you.
Why?
Tinted windows were not introduced yet.
If we ended up spending a night in one of the roadside motels due to bad weather or traffic, oh what a treat! There would be a tiny, tiny swimming pool, but to us, it was the Ritz. The flashing neon light was Las Vegas to us, and air conditioning! Many of those motels did not have TVs back then, and certainly in those days, the Internet was not yet born. But we somehow managed. No TV, no cell phone, no Internet, no movies....sigh.
And yet, we were happy when mom came back to our tiny room with a bucket of ice and our little paper cups were filled and we shared a bottle of soda. A real treat after a swim in the pool. Dad wasn't much of a swimmer, so he headed out and brought back a bucket of chicken from the old reliable colonel. I didn't care so much about eating, I wanted to be in my fancy pool. No slide, no music, no special waterfall, just a cement hole filled with water in a parking lot. I was in pure bliss.
But that was 1968.
A very different time.
It was a regular station wagon (not a huge van or SUV) with six people in it and lots of luggage and don't forget the pillows. But somehow it seemed roomy to me. No A/C, no electronics of any kind. I think we all thought we were "advanced" because dad had cruise control. We had a thermos, a cooler with snacks, a map (no GPS), and if lost, we just found our way. If we got a flat tire in the middle of no where, we (rather Dad) changed the tire. No cell phone or auto service GPS to find us. If serious car trouble? Then dad had to walk to get help while we all stayed behind and just had to wait.
Just had to wait.
That is something the current generation, I think, got cheated out of.
There is something about learning to wait that develops your character.
All those road trips and there was a lot of waiting....
waiting to take our turn for a sip...
waiting to take our turn to look at the map....
waiting for supper instead of getting a snack...
waiting for the next rest stop to use the bathroom....
waiting for dad to come back with a can of oil...
waiting in line at the toll booth...
waiting for my turn to sit by the window and not be stuck in the middle...
waiting for my turn to play with the one Etch-A-Sketch...
It's good to wait when you are young. After all, that is when you have the time.
While it is easy to forget all the rotten things about that time period and just reflect on the good, maybe that is the fun part about growing older. But I can't help when on the rare occasion I see a young neighbor and his father simply running through the sprinkler, and just like that, memories of my simple childhood pop up.
It amazes me how something as simple as a road trip can change so drastically in as little as 40 years. Something as small as tinted windows, water bottles, GPS systems, and earbuds have drastically changed how we relate to our environment, to our family and to our society. We no longer even think to acknowledge the other driver, because we can't see them, nor want to. We no longer would even think of sharing a thermos with six people, we have our own bottles. That does nothing for sharing, conserving, or thinking of others. We have a mechanical voice telling us where to go and no longer even share our adventure with our family, as the mechanical voice tells us where to turn. But that doesn't really matter because the ear buds block out her voice in the first place. And because we are so rushed, and on a tight schedule, we rarely make our own food, and with the growth of fast food, we simply pull up to a window, order food and eat out of a paper bag while keeping our ear buds in place while letting the mechanical lady tell us where to turn next.
Driving down the road this time of year - summertime - I see so many huge SUV's with windows up, A/C blasting, young heads down, and a bright, florescent light reflecting on their little faces, from their electronics no doubt, and earbuds in their ears. When it was probably only just a handful of years ago those young heads were down, but their arms were up, crying for their parent's to carry them.
And now? Little heads are still down and they are being carried....but do they really have any idea what they are missing on this ride?
And when I say they, I am not referring to the kids...
May you know that all rides are carried by The Father who loves us even when we don't have the best rides or memories. But we can start making the kinds of memories we wish we had for those around us who are too young to know what they might be missing.
from my house to your house,
,
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