Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Overthenextsixtymilesmyfather'spositiononthematterwouldproceedthroughaseries
of well-worn phases, beginning with a flat refusal on the grounds that it was bound to be
expen sive and anyway our behavior since breakfast had been so disgraceful that it didn't
warrant any special treats, to studiously ignoring our pleas (this phase would last for up
to eleven minutes), to asking my mother privately in a low voice what she thought about
the idea and receiving an equivocal answer, to ignoring us again in the evident hope that
we would forget about it and stop nagging (one minute, twelve seconds), to saying that we
might go if we started to behave and kept on behaving more or less forever, to saying that
we definitely would not go because, just look at us, we were already squabbling again and
we hadn't even gotten there, to finally announcing-sometimes in an exasperated bellow,
sometimes in a deathbed whisper-that all right we would go. You could always tell when
Dad was on the brink of acceptance because his neck would turn red. It was always the
same. He always said yes in the end. I never understood why he didn't just accede to our
demands at the outset and save himself thirty minutes of anguish. Then he would always
quickly add, “But we're only going for half an hour-and you're not going to buy anything.
Is that clear?” This seemed to restore to him a sense that he was in charge of things.
By the last two or three miles, the signs for Spook Caverns would be every couple of hun-
dred yards, bringing us to a fever pitch of excitement. Finally there would be a billboard
the size of a battleship with a huge arrow telling us to turn right here and drive eighteen
miles. “Eighteen miles!” Dad would cry shrilly, his forehead veins stirring to life in pre-
paration for the inevitable discovery that after eighteen miles of bouncing down a dirt road
with knee-deep ruts there would be no sign of Spook Caverns, that indeed after nineteen
miles the road would end in a desolate junction without any clue of which way to turn, and
that Dad would turn the wrong way. When eventually found, Spook Caverns would prove
to be rather less than advertised-in fact, would give every appearance of being in the last
stagesofsolvency.Thecaverns,dampandilllitandsmellinglikealong-deadhorse,would
be about the size of a garage and the stalactites and stalagmites wouldn't look the least bit
like witches' houses and Casper the Ghost. They would look like-well, like stalactites and
stalagmites. It would all be a huge letdown. The only possible way of assuaging our disap-
pointment, we would discover, would be if Dad bought us each a rubber Bowie knife and
bag of toy dinosaurs in the adjoining gift shop. My sister and I would drop to the ground
and emit mournful noises to remind him what a fearful thing unassuaged grief can be in a
child.
So, as the sun sank over the brown flatness of Oklahoma and Dad, hours behind schedule,
embarked on the difficult business of not being able to find a room for the night (ably as-
sisted by my mother, who would misread the maps and mistakenly identify almost every
passing building as a possible motel), we children would pass the time in back by having
