Recently it’s come to my attention that married couples who go on road trips together are testing the outer limits of their marriage vows. My spouse and I take four or five road trips a year, and we pretty much run out of tantalizing conversation somewhere around, oh … Milpitas.
It didn’t always used to be this way. I took most road trips in the company of my daughters when they were little girls. This was a good thing because I (usually) got to be the road trip boss. In the spirit of fun, I let my girls pack their own suitcases, although this practice suffered an abrupt abandonment when Daughter Number Two brought to snowy Lake Tahoe a suitcase filled with a bathing suit, flip-flops, tap shoes and Barbie dolls. And just the clothes she was wearing on her back, which, unfortunately, were her pajamas.
Henceforth, I supervised the road-trip clothes packing, reminding my rebellious daughters every few micro-seconds of the “Honor-thy-Mother” proviso. With clothing challenges met, we turned our attention to the entertainment portion of our trip by rounding up our entire collection of CDs and in the really old days – the cassette tapes – before heading off to see the grandparents. I was the mobile D.J. and took requests from the back seat. Our rather touching rendition of “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” saw a lot of mileage, and when we shifted into the rousing “You Can’t Touch This!” we picked up some real locomotion. I think we actually gained a little extra mileage due to the estrogen-fueled girl energy that sprang forth when all our mojos ran in high gear.
Eventually my daughters grew up and left the nest, leaving my spouse and I to travel together because he was by now retired and, to be honest, didn’t think I should be out there running around on my own like that. So I gave up my pilot’s seat and moved over to the co-pilot’s chair.
But here’s the thing: Thanks to President Eisenhower, whose administration envisioned its construction, our interstate highway system enables us to drive to other states in pretty much a straight line. A really long and boring-enough-to-make-your-eyeballs-plummet-out-of-your-head straight line, which is fine if you’re a general planning a D-Day invasion. And, even worse than the mind-numbing lack of road curvature, you drive through entire states that you would never actually visit by choice.
This calls for some major driving entertainment along the way, although floorshows and full-length movies are probably out of the question. So for a little amusement, not to mention a major effort to stay awake, we’d fiddle with the car radio trying to bring in a station in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada. This is what you’re apt to find on the one obtainable, static-filled AM station, and I wish I was making this up:
“Heeeey there, Miss Earline! We heard over here at K-PLOP that y’all are fixin’ to have a garage sale this weekend.”
“Yep, that’s right, Earl. We got some goooood stuff, too. You know my uncle Fred had to give up drinkin’ since he came down with the diabetes, so my aunt Fern is sellin’ her highball glasses. An’ my brother Roy is fixin’ to sell off his woodchippin’ machine, so ever’body should come on over Saturday for some real fine deals.”
“Good idea, Miss Earline! Well, now – Lookahere! I see Miz Betty headin’ over this way with some a’ her donuts from the Loaf ‘N Jug down at the corner. In the meantime, here’s a little more of Brother Jed and the Buckin’ Banjos for all a’yer listenin’ enjoyment.”
After a few days of this, you’re starting to lose IQ points so fast that when you finally reach wherever it is you’re going, your relatives could use you as garden statuary. Finally, in the interest of sanity, my husband and I signed up for satellite radio.
On our first road trip with the satellite radio, we started out with a family comedy station but pretty soon we’d heard most everything it offered, so we ventured into the uncensored comedy. And let me go on record here by saying this stuff has definitely not been sanitized for your listening protection. And while some material was way over the top – some stuff is, well, pretty darn funny.
There are a couple of problems with this type of humor, though. First of all, I feel compelled to turn the volume way, way down whenever we pass, say, a vehicle containing a police officer. Call me paranoid, but I’m thinking this kind of stuff has to be against the law or something. Anyway, I wasn’t taking any chances. Also, cars containing kids, senior citizens or anybody looking remotely like a person of the cloth found me flipping down the sound. Not just to avoid offending somebody but geeze – I really don’t want anyone to think I’m the kind of girl that knows what some of those words mean.
But here’s the real problem, which has to do with what is referred to as “de-sensitization.” You know – where violence in movies is thought to cause violence in real life for example. Because when we pulled into the parking lot at a coffee shop in some little bitty town in the middle of nowhere for a break from the drive and all that potty talk, I experienced an irresistible impulse to yell out to anybody within earshot: “Hey! Bring me some of that #@$#% pie and bring it right now!”Â
If you’ve ever been to a coffee shop in a little bitty town in the middle of nowhere, you know that lots of elderly, blue-haired ladies enjoy their early-bird specials there. Such an outburst would have gone over like the proverbial poop in a punchbowl, providing entire decades’ worth of really juicy fodder for, well … Miss Earline and that solitary, static-filled AM radio station out in the middle of nowhere.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at
Ga*********@ao*.com
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