Road Trip
Once in a while a man must run
outside to find and gas his car –
to wend his way through streets
and get the hell way out of town –
a road of lanes, just two, will do
for feeling out the clime, and time
will let him know if west or east
is best of free that day. Out there
is sun and time to warm ere hot
will trickle him with sweat and let
his recollected fields of youth
just sit. And all that time for young
was not a waste, but play for now.
Today he does not have to say
that tires on asphalt hum his tune
as hills and dry wash hiding time
remind him that his heart is his.
For just this while, and safe inside
as worlds go not so swiftly by,
he sits his leather throne, and home
is here and also way back there.
It’s temporary, but he’s moving.
– Charles Brady
About ten days ago (as I am writing this), we were tooling along (as they say) on Interstate 40 on the section of the road once dreaded for its emptiness and it’s posted warning: “No services (Gasoline) for 100 miles.”
That had been an exaggeration, but not by much. Once, travelers on Route 66 who were headed west from Needles, California, checked their autos carefully, filled their canvas water bags to hang from the front bumper, checked their extra gallon or so of gasoline…and nervously set off up that steep hill toward the promised land. They still faced the uncertainties of overheating, flat tires, and the thousand things that could go wrong in and around an internal combustion engine.
But here we were. a dial on the dash showed outside temperature was 116 degrees, and it stayed at or around 107 degrees for fifty miles or so. Inside, the air conditioning I had set for 62 degrees, kept us comfortable, the cruise control kept our reasonable speed constant, and an elegant English reader on a CD was relating a story being told by William Shakespeare’s younger brother. All seemed well, but because i am late into my older generation status, I was not entirely at ease. I knew that nature was just outside and that history had shown mankind who was boss.
As most of you know, East-West travel along I-40, was once travel along the winding old US 66, and it was a bit more difficult back then. Although the legendary days of the “Mother Road” were slightly before my time, I had travelled the old two lane highway in a NON air-conditioned auto in mid summer which had TUBES inside tires, and those tubes and tires had a habit of getting punctured or pinched. And when that happened, the DRIVER had to have at least a basic skill at handling things.
Nope, despite the quiet luxuries of my 2017 Subaru, I was never completely comfortable!
Lee and I just got back from another road trip. For those who don’t know the subject, a road trip is where you pack up for an extended trip, then get in your car, which you have tended carefully of late, and drive past the airport for a journey of perhaps a couple thousand miles or so.
This trip, as most of ours, had a purpose. This was a journey back to Central Oklahoma for our bi-annual Family Reunion. That is, for the Burnett-Vance Reunion, because when this thing started long ago, and before it got completely out of hand, Lee and I were the only Bradys attending. It’s a long story, but in brief, these two families got together because Burnett cousins seemed to marry Vance Sisters and they seemed to have lots of children.
For many years, even when the reunions were held in nearby Noel, Missouri, and later in Branson, Lee and I would drive to Tulsa a couple days early to spend time with her two brothers and their families. Sometimes, we would drive to Kansas and travel on to the reunion with Lee’s younger brother, who welcomed the company. Now, however, all three Brothers have passed on.
But, from habit, we still drive to Tulsa, arriving on Thursday this year, so that we can arrive at the Reunion location early on Friday for the two-day reunion – this time and two years ago at the Sequoyah Lodge, on a State-owned Park, one hour east of Tulsa, located on one of the huge man-made lakes, secured from the dry Southwest by Oklahoma’s two senior Senators back in the 50s and 60s. They pushed through legislation to get dams built on several small rivers, and valleys became beautiful lakes.
Since several of our California contingents had, for many years, counted on our having driven, and therefore having a CAR there, and believe we should get them to and from the airport and Reunion site, we will probably continue to drive TO Tulsa!
Of course, our trip nearly parallels the trip we, and Lee’s ancestors, first made from Oklahoma to California long ago.
Lee’s older brothers, a little older than I, had regaled me with many tales of their several tips out west on the “Mother Road.” They had made the trip with cousins and aunts and uncles back in the 1930s in ancient cars – a favorite was the Model A Ford Coupe – overloaded and moving along on baling wire and prayers.
If you are not familiar with the history of Highway 66 during the OKIE MIGRATION, you should know that it was precarious travel. The Burnetts would pack as much food as they could, fill up the tank and a couple of one-gallon cans with gas, because they did not know where the next station was and whether it would be open at night. If they had a flat tire, they would unload, remove and repair the inner tube and re-install it in the tire, hand-pump sufficient pressure, tighten the lug nuts and continue.
They would trade off and continue, stopping only when they had no choice. When they were all too tired to continue, they would spread quilts on the ground and doze.
And that method of travel out to the Promised Land continued for years. When I was ordered by the Army to travel to the Presidio of Monterey for language study prior to assignment in Vietnam, Lee and I and our three loaded up our not-quite-big-enough 1962 Buick Special in Baltimore, went through Tulsa for farewells and started off ON HIGHWAY 66 for California. There were NO interstate highways, in fact no four-lane roads until we hit US 101 at Paso Robles. It was two narrow lanes, up and down, with nothing between cities and towns except road signs filled with promises.
We five travelled to and THROUGH all those cities in the song and more, through the long – long east-west main streets of Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Tucumcari, Albuquerque , and the dreaded Gallup, New Mexico. We stopped early every other day at simple motor courts with pools, and we could shower and the kids loved the breaks.
Remember: One had to have cash for gas and motels and food and for everything else, and It was late summer and we had NO air conditioning.
We tried to entertain our three by stopping at the more gaudy but famous tourist sites, and they reacted favorably to the Meteor Crater and to Twin Arrows and other “Indian” tourist traps with their “Tee Pees” and fake furs.
We stayed on 66, up and down and all around, on that narrow road with no shoulders until we reached Barstow. There, as we still do we took State Route 58 to Bakersfield ( On that earliest trip, the two lanes were literally carpeted with the flattened bodies of jackrabbits, and thousands of live ones were jumping all over. Today, one NEVER sees ONE jackrabbit on that road), then Route 46 to Paso Robles, where we connected with a DIVIDED ROAD! 101 was a wonderful way to approach Salinas, where we turned west for the short trip to Fort Ord and immediate temporary housing. It was heavenly.
An aside: In 2016, for the Family Reunion, our Son Mike took the same route, in reverse and took along his daughter Michela and Grandson Connor. He had them everything all the still-existing sites he remembered and had enjoyed from that 1964 trip, and took a hundred photos to allow them to re-experience that, and his earlier, memorable trips.
Having endured the road trip East, Michela and Connor flew home from Tula, and Mike drove back by himself, but he had done what he had set out to do. Connor loved every minute of the trip, especially the Meteor Crater, the rideable donkeys and the special road treats his Mother and Granddad provided ! Connor is ready to go back on the trail!
I DO enjoy these trips, now that I have a good car with automatic shift and cruise control and that miracle (to a Georgia Sharecropper of the 1930s) – Air Conditioning!
I recommend long road trips, after careful planning, and I will continue. The Interstate roads are mostly good and safe for driving, there ARE clean and reasonable places to rest, and the gas gets cheaper as one goes east.
I always hit the restrooms, whether or not, and I always get a bottled sweet tea for the next leg when summer driving.
Right now, we are thinking of Eastern Canada.
