BOB HOLT REPORTING
Road Trips
November 1960
Last week, our family left home on a short Thanksgiving trip, and, true to form, had to circle the block and come back for some forgotten article before really, truly leaving. Now I am a believer in family customs, but this is one I’d just as soon dispense with.
It is a ritual which we share with the migratory birds who, I am informed, always circle once before heading out into the flyway. I nurture the hope that we will one day just drive straight away the first time we leave, having forgotten nothing. But it seems a forlorn hope.
Once, in the interest of greater efficiency, I decided to take the warm-up lap solo while my wife and daughters were still engaged in frenzied, last-minute preparations. So I drove around the block, feeling a little like I was piloting the pace car at the Indianapolis speedway.
It didn’t work, of course. That time, if I remember, my wife forgot the shoes that go with her best dress. She said she absolutely couldn’t go out to dinner in rubber-soled sneakers, and she was deaf to my argument that she might be grateful for them if the restaurant happened to become flooded while we were dining.
I don’t want to give the impression that my wife is the only member of the family who leaves things behind. Commonly, the item I most often forget is my sunglasses for driving. I used to forget a rather jaunty driving cap I had, but no more. I left that in a restaurant in Missoula, Montana, three summers ago. If you happen to be in a restaurant in Missoula, and you see a cloth cap with spokes on the visor, please explain to the manager and bring it along, will you? But if you happen to be nearsighted, be sure it’s the manager you’re speaking to. There are a lot of bears in and around Missoula.
The blocks in our neighborhood are long ones, which I think is a good thing most of the time. But not when I am circling back from a journey newly undertaken. Then I could wish our block was as short as the one seemed to be the time I took the $1,000 ride.
Once, and once only, in our family we bought a brand new car – a station wagon. That was a few years ago. I should have felt happy when I slipped behind the wheel for the first time. But all I could think of was the axiom that when you have bought a new car and have driven it around the block once, its value has dropped $1,000. At each corner, I could be heard to mutter “$250, drat it.”
We have been a station wagon family for a long time now – long enough for me to remember the car trunk with nostalgia. The station wagon – at least our station wagon – offers no very satisfactory place for stowing luggage. For short trips, we pile the bags on a seat. But for summer vacations, I bought a luggage rack of the type which attaches to the top of the car with suction cups and straps. This rack has been the source of more vacation vexation than mosquitos, road detours and map folding all put together.
In Utah, I discovered the luggage rack balanced precariously just above the tailgate, having worked its way back by imperceptible stages. The diagnosis was that the straps had held but the suction was weak. Another time, I found the bags poised over the right wind wing. Diagnosis: suctions okay, but the left side straps slipped.
Then there was the canvas that was supposed to protect the load in thunderstorms, but somehow never got lashed down right. Finally in Nevada, it flip-flapped its last and blew away. It had been in tatters for at least 100 miles.
I spent much time trying to judge, from the wiggly shadow which the moving auto cast on the roadside sagebrush, just where the rack was now, how fast was its glacial progress toward the rear, and how many miles I could expect to travel without having it topple off the back of the car. This takes a practiced eye, and if I do say myself, I became pretty expert at it. Never lost the bags once, although there were one or two close calls.
