MAMAS, DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO READ ‘SYBIL.’
A 1966 Toyota Corona four door is no kind of car for a road trip. But that’s all we had when daddy decided to downsize after that glorious white Chrysler Newport (I think it was a ‘63). When you’re a kid you don’t get why things happen like that, but later on I learned he’d lost his well paying civil engineering job with a private company, and after that he went to work for the city for a lot less money. The car had to go. We had two of those 66 Coronas, one for my dad and one for my mom. My dad assumed she’d pass the driving test, but she didn’t, so he’d switch between the two depending on mood or if he’d been driving one for longer than necessary. I think it ended up a race to see which one would hit 100k first.
We had the blue car and the brown car (later repainted silver, but we still called it the brown car. The brown car, reupholstered in black naugahyde down in Tijuana, eventually became my sister’s car till some punk on the football team totaled it with his Chevelle. Annie was okay but shaken). I preferred the blue car.
My dad was deaf, but he wore a hearing aid and insisted on listening to the news on the hour and the half. The rest of the time, I could listen to rock n roll. If Annie was in the car, she got to pick the station because she was older. Not fair, but neither is life.
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea taking brats on a long summer road trip. Six weeks in a 66 Corona. All the way up to Canada, with no reservations. Back then, we’d drive to a motel, and daddy would check it out before deciding it wasn’t suitable.
There was a peach festival happening in Penticton. No vacancy anywhere, not even the jail, so we slept in the car, which was too small for four people, but we did it.
Mummy made me eat a sandwich I insisted was spoiled. I got sick and thought maybe it was the strawberries, so I avoided those for years till one day I thought, no, it probably was the sandwich. I think that was the same trip I tried and didn’t like coffee.
Lake Ross sticks in my mind, not just because of how deep it was, but also because of how my mom warned me not to clean my glasses so close to the water like I was doing. She turned out to be right, and that’s how I ended up spending the rest of vacation without them. My glasses. It wasn’t like now, where you can just go to any optometrist and get new ones. In those days, we belonged to Kaiser, and there were no Kaisers anywhere. I told my mom, “I don’t care,” because I was a brat.
Annie left her retainers in a gas station restroom, and we had to drive back a hundred miles to go get ‘em. She cared more than I did.
One time in Canada, the people in the car in front of us stopped to feed the bears, which you’re not supposed to do. Nothing bad happened to them, unfortunately.
Between being cramped in that 66 Toyota, the spoiled sandwich, and reading Sybil (a book about a girl with a horrible stepmother and sixteen different personalities, none of whom was friends with each other. The book was assumed to be true at the time, but turned out not to be. Talk about a disappointment. All those years wasted fearing I was next!), I’m pretty sure that’s when I realized just how badly life can suck. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to read Sybil. Especially when they’re young and impressionable.
We visited Tillamook, which is where they make cheese. I hate cheese, a lot. Lactose intolerant. Or phobic. I’ll eat it on pizza, but that’s it. We also visited Pendleton and didn’t buy any wool shirts, even though I wanted one. To this day, whenever we visit Pendleton, I don’t buy a wool shirt, and it’s because of that first trip and how expensive they are.
One time, we came back early, and then my parents hit the road again. They visited Zion and Bryce, two places I still haven’t seen. That’s what happens when you’re a brat. We were okay at home alone, because our Bobbe and Zeide lived with us. That means grandma and grandpa. Penny and I passed Zion or Bryce on our way from Vegas to Beaver, but we didn’t stop. We ate ice cream in Beaver, instead. And rode on the back of an ATV with a Mormon elder. Who says 90-year-olds can’t drive?
My dad should have never gotten rid of the Chrysler. You could lie down on the floor, and not only did we drive up to the snow, we also cruised out to Desert Hot Springs, where it smells real good, and those pools! The two hours to Desert Hot Springs also meant dinner at Griswold’s, which was a smorgasbord. Nobody has those any more.
As horrible as those road trips were, there’s a part of me that wants to try one without reservations. Just get in the car and go, and wish for the best. Even if all the motels are booked, we’ve got one thing the Coronas never had: reclining seats.
