Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
groups of children would come and stand silently by our table and watch us eating Hostess
cupcakes and crinkle-cut potato chips-and it always became incredibly windy the moment
we stopped, so that my mother spent the whole of lunchtime chasing paper plates over an
area of about an acre.
In 1957 my father invested $19.98 in a portable gas stove that took an hour to assemble
before each use and was so wildly temperamental that we children were always ordered to
stand well back when it was being lit. This always proved unnecessary, however, because
the stove would flicker to life only for a few seconds before puttering out, and my father
would spend many hours turning it this way and that to keep it out of the wind, simultan-
eouslyaddressingitinalow,agitatedtonenormallyassociatedwiththechronicallyinsane.
All the while my brother, my sister and I would implore him to take us someplace with
air-conditioning, linen tablecloths and ice cubes clinking in glasses of clear water. “Dad,”
we would beg, “you're a successful man. You make a good living. Take us to a Howard
Johnson's.” But he wouldn't have it. He was a child of the Depression and where capital
outlays were involved he always wore the haunted look of a fugitive who has just heard
bloodhounds in the distance.
Eventually, with the sun low in the sky, he would hand us hamburgers that were cold and
rawandsmelledofbutane.Wewouldtakeonebiteandrefusetoeatanymore.Somyfather
would lose his temper and throw everything into the car and drive us at high speed to some
roadside diner where a sweaty man with a floppy hat would sling hash while grease fires
danced on his grill. And afterwards, in a silent car filled with bitterness and unquenched
basic needs, we would mistakenly turn off the main highway and get lost and end up in
some no-hope hamlet with a name like Draino, Indiana, or Tapwater, Missouri, and get a
room in the only hotel in town, the sort of run-down place where if you wanted to watch
TVitmeantyouhadtositinthelobbyandshareacrackedleatherettesofawithanoldman
with big sweat circles under his arms. The old man would almost certainly have only one
leg and probably one other truly arresting deficiency, like no nose or a caved-in forehead,
which meant that although you were sincerely intent on watching “Laramie” or “Our Miss
Brooks,”youfoundyourgazebeingdrawn,ineluctablyandsneakily,totheamazingeaten-
awaybodysittingbesideyou.Youcouldn'thelpyourself.Occasionallythemanwouldturn
out to have no tongue, in which case he would try to engage you in lively conversation. It
was all most unsatisfying.
After a week or so of this kind of searing torment, we would fetch up at some blue and
glinting sweep of lake or sea in a bowl of pine-clad mountains, a place full of swings and
amusements and the gay shrieks of children splashing in water, and it would all almost be
worth it. Dad would become funny and warm and even once or twice might take us out to
