The Trip

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

THE TRIP

In a recent email conversation, my friend Ed Durall described a lengthy move that his father’s family had made in the 1920s. Ed wrote, “In family lore, that was always known as ‘The Trip.’”

First, I love the term family lore. And I imagine most families have experienced their own version of The Trip.

Immediately, my mind traveled back to 1966 when my family headed to Richmond, Ind., to take delivery of my dad’s new school bus.

I was 7 and my brother was 9, and this was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to us, with perhaps the exception of when Major Astro announced my brother’s name live on TV.

So one summer day the family loaded up in our blue 1965 Dodge Coronet 440, complete with metal blinds affixed to the inside of the rear windshield. Leon and I were so excited for the trip that I don’t think he and I fought in the backseat for at least 10 miles.

Along the way, we stayed in cheap motels, and in those days before chain restaurants covered the landscape, we ate at rest-stop picnic tables. It was the simple life: a loaf of white bread, lunchmeat, and water from the family jug.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was still under construction, but we got to see it. Up river, we spent a few hours in Hannibal. There, my brother bought a copy of “Life on the Mississippi,” and we visited the cave that Mark Twain wrote about in “Tom Sawyer.”

In Illinois, we stopped at the state capitol. And then we traveled on to New Salem, a village set up like the one Abraham Lincoln lived in during his early adult years. We walked down a street with wooden cabin-like buildings: stores, a school and a blacksmith’s shop, things you’d expect to find in an 1830s community.

We walked around in New Salem until the rest of us noticed that my brother was missing. Panic stopped my heart and the search began.

Leon recalled, “I thought I saw a shortcut between the row of cabins/shops, so I took it. I walked and then felt lost and started running. I thought I was lucky to come out somewhere near the rest of you.”

So, good news: we didn’t have to leave Illinois without Leon.

In Indiana, we stopped at the Indianapolis 500 Raceway and were able to peek through a chain-link fence and see a fragment of the track and the stands. We didn’t have a very wide view, but enough to claim we had seen it.

When we made it to Richmond, Ind., the bus wasn’t ready yet, so we wandered into Ohio for a day or so. Leon remembers touring the National Air Force Museum near Dayton.

Finally, we picked up the school bus. Leon and I quickly made ourselves at home in the brand new bus, inhaling the scent of new vinyl and admiring the perfectly clean rubber runway down the aisle. We hopped from seat to seat, ratcheting the windows up and down.

Traveling home on an interstate highway, somewhere far from home on a rainy day, Dad and Leon and I realized that we had lost Mom. She wasn’t ahead of the bus, she wasn’t following us. My heart left my body. Even though my mom was an accomplished navigator, my 7-year-old self didn’t think of that. Instead, I worried that she’d never find her way home, that we’d never see her again.

We pulled over at a rest area and eventually Mom’s car pulled in beside us. I ran down the steps of the bus into the rain to hug her. And I rode with her for awhile to make sure she didn’t get lost again.

For one moment in time, my family rolled down the highway, crossed state lines, and bought Stuckey’s Pecan Log Rolls and souvenir trinkets. Even though I don’t remember everything about it, it was a trip to remember. In family lore, it was indeed The Trip.

Copyright 2014 ~ Cheryl Unruh