Wednesday Night ::: Planning the Family Road Trip

When was the last time you went on a road trip with family? Any favorite places that you can recall? Who would you take now? What places would you have liked to have gone? Disneyland? Wally World? TMI? Hot vinyl seats, no safety belts, AM radio buzzing and crackling out when out of range. Hot ashes from dad's cigarettes and the occasional flaming butt flying into my lap. Good times. *Cough* At least I had time to learn all the words to "It's a Heartache" by Bonnie Tyler and Eddie Rabbitt's "I Love a Rainy Night". I may be misremembering, but there seems to have been a lot of Bread and Jim Croce on AM radio back then.

And everybody say, "Is he all right?" And everybody say, "What's he like?"
And everybody say, "He sure looks funny." That's Reddy Kilowatt, honey!

Couldn't tell you where my parents took us the summer of 1979, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't PA. But who knows, the crisis was over by then, other than the potential radiation. One year we drove to IA, for what I don't know. Another time my dad drove us in his caucasian-flesh-colored '74 Chevy Nova to TN... but why? What did we do? Did we go to Graceland? Grand Ole Opry? Where? I thought we would be driving through the Smoky Mountains forever. 

The top image was drawn by a Disney artist in the 60s as a joke.
That's all I know.

Wisconsin Dells at least made sense as a destination. All I remember from it is sitting in a boat and looking at what time does to rock. Neat, I guess. Another WI trip to Door County I heard as "Dull County" and when corrected, I remember wondering if that were better.

Mischief threw a rotten deal, Reddy's laying low

Maybe '79 was the Niagara Falls trip. That's at least comprehensible as a destination, even though my only reference at the time of the trip was The Three Stooges bit and the film Niagara, in which an unfaithful wife (Marilyn Monroe) is strangled by her jealous husband (Joseph Cotten), and he murders her lover by throwing him over the falls. It was on the TV one evening and was my first exposure to Marilyn. Very educational. First Cotten too probably.

I got a rubbery King Kong toy from the trip, but I can't remember if it was from a gift shop at the Falls or a gas station on the way back. It smelled like gasoline, like all the best toys in the 70s, so I'd like to think it was a souvenir to remind me of the gas station in which it waited for me. Nostalgia smells like petrol. It is just as easy to ignite and as impossible to extinguish.

Who can afford the gas for a long trip these days? Who would dare drive an EV further than a hundred miles from home? Everyone's got their own entertainment systems with them now; like traveling in their living room. All I had then was a book, one of those crappy Coleco football games, and my stupid sister. It was okay to be bored back then, but not anymore. Kids have it so easy these days, I tell ya! 

(big slash s there at the end, fyi)