Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
less sweep of corn for as far as the eye can see. It is a thousand miles from the sea in any
direction, four hundred miles from the nearest mountain, three hundred miles from sky-
scrapers and muggers and things of interest, two hundred miles from people who do not
habitually stick a finger in their ear and swivel it around as a preliminary to answering any
question addressed to them by a stranger. To reach anywhere of even passing interest from
Des Moines by car requires a journey that in other countries would be considered epic. It
means days and days of unrelenting tedium, in a baking steel capsule on a ribbon of high-
way.
In my memory, our vacations were always taken in a big blue Rambler station wagon. It
was a cruddy car-my dad always bought cruddy cars, until he got to the male menopause
and started buying zippy red convertibles-but it had the great virtue of space. My brother,
my sister and I in the back were miles away from my parents up front, in effect in another
room. We quickly discovered during illicit forays into the picnic hamper that if you stuck
a bunch of Ohio Blue Tip matches into an apple or hardboiled egg, so that it resembled a
porcupine,andcasuallydroppeditoutthetailgatewindow,itwaslikeabomb.Itwouldex-
plode with a small bang and a surprisingly big flash of blue flame, causing cars following
behind to veer in an amusing fashion.
My dad, miles away up front, never knew what was going on or could understand why all
day long cars would zoom up alongside him with the driver gesticulating furiously, before
tear ing off into the distance. “What was that all about?” he would say to my mother in a
wounded tone.
“I don't know, dear,” my mother would answer mildly. My mother only ever said two
things. She said, “I don't know, dear.” And she said, “Can I get you a sandwich, honey?”
Occasionallyonourtripsshewouldvolunteerotherpiecesofintelligencelike“Shouldthat
dashboard light be glowing like that, dear?” or “I think you hit that dog/man/blind person
back there, honey,” but mostly she wisely kept quiet. This was because on vacations my
father was a man obsessed. His principal obsession was with trying to economize. He al-
ways took us to the crummiest hotels and motor lodges and to the kind of roadside eating
houseswheretheyonlywashedthedishesweekly.Youalwaysknew,withasenseofdoom,
that at some point before finishing you were going to discover someone else's congealed
egg yolk lurking somewhere on your plate or plugged between the tines of your fork. This,
of course, meant cooties and a long, painful death.
But even that was a relative treat. Usually we were forced to picnic by the side of the road.
My father had an instinct for picking bad picnic sites-on the apron of a busy truck stop or
in a little park that turned out to be in the heart of some seriously deprived ghetto, so that
