Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I continued on east, through Oskaloosa, Fremont, Hedrick, Martinsburg. The names were
familiar, but the towns themselves awoke few memories. By this stage on most trips I was
on the floor in a boredom-induced stupor, calling out at fifteen-second intervals, “How
much longer? When are we going to be there? I'm bored. I feel sick. How much longer?
When are we going to be there?” I vaguely recognized a bend in the road near Coppock,
where we once spent four hours caught in a blizzard waiting for a snowplow to come
through, and several spots where we had paused to let my sister throw up, including a gas
station at Martinsburg where she tumbled out of the car and was lavishly sick in the direc-
tionofapumpattendant'sankles (boy,didthat guydance!), andanother atWayland where
my father nearly left me at the side of the road after discovering that I had passed the time
byworkingloosealltherivetsononeofthebackdoorpanels,exposinganinterestingview
of the interior mechanisms, but unfortunately rendering both the window and door forever
inoperable. However, it wasn't until I reached the turnoff for Winfield, just past Olds, a
place where my father would announce with a sort ofdelirious joy that we were practically
there, that I felt a pang of recognition. I had not been down this road for at is least a dozen
years, but its gentle slopes and isolated farms were as familiar to me as my own left leg.
My heart soared. This was like going back in time. I was about to be a boy again.
Arriving in Winfield was always thrilling. Dad would turn off Highway 78 and bounce
us down a rough gravel road at far too high a speed, throwing up clouds of white dust,
and then to my mother's unfailing alarm would drive with evident insanity towards some
railroad tracks on a blind bend in the road, remarking gravely, “I hope there's not a train
coming.” My mother didn't discover until years later that there were only two trains a day
along those tracks, both in the dead of night. Beyond the tracks, standing alone in a neg-
lected field, was a Victorian mansion like the one in the Charles Addams cartoons in The
New Yorker. No one had lived in it for decades, but it was still full of furniture, under dank
sheets. My sister and my brother and I used to climb in through a broken window and look
through trunks of musty clothes and old Collier's magazines and photographs of strangely
worried-looking people. Upstairs was a bedroom in which, according to my brother, lay
the shriveled body of the last occupant, a woman who had died of heartbreak after being
abandoned at the altar. We never went in there, though once, when I was about four, my
brotherpeeredthroughthekeyhole,letoutahowl,cried“She'scoming!”andranheadlong
down the stairs. Whimpering, I followed, squirting urine at every step. Beyond the man-
sionwasawidefield,fullofblack-and-white cows,andbeyondthatwasmygrandparents'
house, pretty and white beneath a canopy of trees, with a big red barn and acres of lawn.
My grandparents were always waiting at the gate. I don't know whether they could see us
coming and raced to their positions or whether they just waited there hour after hour. Quite
possibly the latter because, let's face it, they didn't have a whole lot else to do. And then
it would be four or five days of fun. My grandfather had a Model T Ford, which he let
