When I was growing up we use to take these family trips exclusively to Florida. We would pack up our 1980 something Plymouth Voyager or maybe it was a Dodge Caravan. Either way, it had fakewood paneling pealing off from the edges and this kind of like roasted maroon interior with the tactile sensation of worn down velvet. No doubt towards the end of its life the ceiling had collapsed. An Attaway trademark. But not for these journeys. These trips happened its prime. We would stuff the back of the car full of each individual family member's bags with various umbrellas, folded towels and loose sunscreen bottles stuffed in between the cracks so as to achieve the highest atomic packing possible. For easy access of walkmans/tapes or books or Gameboys, depending on which kiddo, our L.L. Bean® (forest green, in my case) backpacks were kept under the seats. And, of course, a cooler up front containing various sandwiches, cheese blocks, whole fruits, breakfast meats (country ham, bacon and ground sausage, all cooked together in an iron skillet, giving all three this kind of magical flavor, one not that does not normally exist on breakfast plates, but left textures as the only real way to distinguish one from the other) and ice cold Fresca.
We would leave at ongodly hours. 4 a.m. At least we would plan on it. The rush of the final round before departures would be stressful and never made it easy, better said damn near impossible, for me to sleep once the tires left their pea gravel parking spot. It always seemed my siblings conked out as I squirmed or watched the trees in the dark as we crossed from Georgia into Alabama without even leaving the Mountain. Or maybe we took a right at what looked like a hand-painted billboard from the 50's for The Mountain Star*. Personally, that road never seemed safe. Probably had something to do with the hard right turns, one after the other, with like a 40 degree slope that only mellowed out to the flat valley at the end. Once you are already in Wildwood. (What a name). I would lay down on the ground thinking it might help for me to spread out, relax, but the rough fibers of the floor would irritate my delicate† face. That and the proximity to the tires was disconcerting.
Sometime just before sunrise up I'd come clean: I had been awake the whole time. I would move to the passenger seat at a quick stop and start interacting with the driver, always at this stage my father. He was listening to country music, not because he was a fan of the style, but because it always told a story. And so I'd listen and sure enough some man would be upset about his woman's lying cheating ways so he'd a'been a drinking and fighting and driving around in a truck yelling at people to be more kindly around the holidays and to not X the Christ out of Christmas‡. But country music, we all knew, was not what we would listen to for the majority of the trip. A couple hours in, we would stop at a Cracker Barrel (Restaurant and Old Country Store), only out populated on our journey by Waffle Houses, to buy diabetic-friendly multicolored candy buttons and, the dreaded - maybe not dreaded but unavoidable, inescapable - book on tape. Always b-rate, semi-professionally recorded scandal/mystery types written by the actual John Grisham or some John Grisham knock-off. The stories were not so bad if you could force yourself to pay it mind, but let me tell you something about narrators for books on tape: they are male. Always. And their interpretations of the female characters, especially during anything that related to sexuality. I am not sure if it was offensive or just disturbing.
Eventually the other cubs would wake up somewhere near the Florida line and we would pile out to look at miniature flipflop keychains that somehow included a bottle opener, inappropriate tea shirts (I'm too sexy for my diaper) and a combination of shark and gator teeth as we savored our miniature paper cup samples of fresh squeezed orange juice.
But now the gang was awake. Six living, breathing creatures growing anxious from the mixture of sugar and aspertine in the blood and trying to gain control in a space a little larger than the size of (one of) Donald Trump's beds. The volume would rapidly increase and then decrease. A distraction. Culprit: father. Reason: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder§.
Tensions rose a degree more. Others tried to come in for the radio. One of the boys suggested some Snoop. It worked at first but I think the parental unit, while they enjoyed "getting funky on the mic like an old batch of collard greens" was not outwardly pleased by "with my nuts on your tonsils."
A power struggle ensued. Insults about ones respective musical taste began to surface. "If David Bowie is gay then why is he married to such a hot model, huh? Explain me that one."
Just when it seemed all hope was lost, that the radio was bound to get turned off as an act of defiance against demon spawn, someone, the younger older brother (because that makes sense) passed a plastic, white object with black type he rescued from the marsupial pouch on the back on the passenger seat.
Tensions dropped 3 degrees with tape insertion, an almost Pavlovian response. The tape rewinds and there is static silence before:
/////f o o t n o t e s//////
* A small cafe on the back of the Lookout Mountain. Definitely the Georgia side. Just had to keep on Lula Lake Road. The kind of place that you always plan on going to though you never get the chance because it has funny hours that do not coincide with your passing. It is probably the kind of place that is only open for lunch. I bet they have great pie.
† Seriously. My sister and I both use to suffer in the summertime. We would hang country-club poolside all day and you could literally watch the white blotches emerge on our foreheads, and in one extreme case strips of bacon-like flesh under the eyes.
‡ Accompanied by other classic country songs like "Looking out the window through the pain" and "I got tears in my ears from lying on my back and crying about you girl."
§ More commonly known as ADHD, identified twice as much in men than women, though probably better to say boys than girls because it is the kind of thing they start medicating you for when you are like 7. In my father's case, his diagnosis came from an elementary school teacher: "Your son suffers from having ants in his pants."
§ More commonly known as ADHD, identified twice as much in men than women, though probably better to say boys than girls because it is the kind of thing they start medicating you for when you are like 7. In my father's case, his diagnosis came from an elementary school teacher: "Your son suffers from having ants in his pants."
