Station Wagon Vacations Coast to Coast

Our family had two Chevy Impala Station Wagons. We had a dark olive green 1967 model, and then a bright aqua blue 1978 model. From my earliest memory, we drove from Chicago to Florida to spend a week at my aunt and uncle’s condo in Pompano Beach for Spring Break. My dad hand-crafted a second seat cot conversion for our 1967 Station Wagon that allowed for two of us four kids to lay out and sleep during the long drive while housing the blue and white cooler beneath it for our homemade meatloaf sandwiches – each weighing about 3 pounds, along with 2 full gallons of milk to sustain us during the 24-hour journey to our oceanside Florida coast destination.

Vacation was our time to shovel in our fill of the otherwise forbidden varieties of sugary cereals too. My mom bought those assortments of mini cereal boxes that included Lucky Charms, Honey Smacks and Apple Jacks. Back then, these boxes were perforated down the middle so you could open them, pour your milk and eat right out of the box. Perfect for the traveling family to snack on during a quick rest area stop in Macon, Georgia. The typical breakfast at my home was like a buffet – eggs or omelets any way you wanted them, homemade sausage, homemade bread, and always included Cheerios, oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. Once each year during our vacation, I got to be a “normal” kid and have Frosted Flakes. I could hardly sleep the night before our 6AM departure thinking about how to out maneuver my siblings to get that box of Fruit Loops! I never failed.

My pre-family vacation ritual was to spend a few quarters from my personal savings to load up on travel goodies from the neighborhood convenience store. My parents allowed us a few store-bought indulgences on vacation. Our candy stashes kept us kids content for a time along with thumbing through Archie’s Comic books. Good & Plenty was a favorite of mine. I loved licorice. I was also fond of tormenting my younger sisters. Sticking these pink and white gems in their nostrils and ears while they slept was a road trip delight for me. I recall at a young age complaining that my parents had two too many children. After my birth, they had their boy and their girl. That should have sufficed. Now I had two sisters to share my room with while my brother had his own bedroom and stereo system with headphones to tune us three girls out whenever he wanted.

My dad loved cars. He was a pretty good mechanic actually. He could fix or diagnose a lot of engine issues, and change the oil, brake pads, and tires on our own cars and for nearby friends and neighbors. By around the age of twelve, however, I realized he was the worst driver ever on the road. I learned to break and swerve from the back seat as an unsecured passenger, and felt sure I saved our lives on multiple occasions. My dad had his own economic philosophy about driving. He would jot down his odometer mileage reading every time he filled up the gas tank. He loved calculating his miles per gallon and drove that way – always wanting to up his numbers. He’d say while driving, “Karen, see this? I’m coasting. My foot’s off the gas. Look how far we’re going?” He’d coast on highway off-ramps, which meant we took those tight turns barely decelerating from 70 mph! Terrifying. Or, he’d plan his “coasting” for traffic lights – thrilled that he used every bit of gas in the fuel line without stopping. He maintained a “coast” until the light turned green. It didn’t matter that we came within a centimeter to the bumper in front of us. As a result, I am the best backseat driver and worst passenger ever thanks to my dad’s unique fuel-management driving skills.

Our 1978 Chevy Impala Station Wagon came with cruise control. It’s a miracle we’re all alive! It was in this version that my mom and sister realized their propensity for carsickness. By this time, our all-together family vacations were coming to an end. We took one more Spring Break trip from Chicago to the California Coast - Los Angeles in 1978. My brother was 18 and would be off to college later that year. We’d no longer all share the same School District 63 Spring Break time off. I was 16, my sisters were 14 and 12.

Every Spring Break family vacation up to this point was fun and predictable. We loved the ocean and pool at the Pompano Beach condo. That’s all we needed to keep happily busy. The 24-hour drive was endurable because we knew we were driving to our Florida paradise for a week of fun in the sun.

My dad decided we needed to take a big trip to see more of America this final time. What? Drive more than twice as far for days in the station wagon with basically four teenagers? I was trying to imagine this adventure as the drive from Chicago to Florida was about all we could stand let alone endure the long haul my dad was planning for all 6 of us across the country? Inconceivable! He even purchased a fancy camera to document this epic vacation - a Nikon that had all of the lenses and focus dials. He was so excited as he played around with his camera in preparation for our trip. My dad had his Rand McNally Road Atlas out for weeks planning all of the stops to the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns, my Great Aunt Ida’s assisted care living center in Palm Springs, my Uncle Pat and Aunt Mary’s house in Whittier, and stops to visit various cousins who lived out in the Los Angeles area. What? No beach time? I was a bit bent out of shape with this plan. Our final Spring Break sounded more like a rocky family visitation.

Nonetheless, this vacation was notorious. My dad was beyond excited to really experience his cruise control option while driving on the expanses of highway from Chicago to Los Angeles and we’d have “really nice” family photos taken at some of the worlds wonders from that Nikon he bought. Other than various stretches of open roads, my dad more often than not jolted us across the country with his cruise control mastery. When he switched it “on,” he was committed to cruising at that set speed, at all costs, to gain every bit of mileage he could from whatever price per gallon of gas he paid. He was sure his numbers would be the best ever with the new speed-controlled device and this station wagon’s updated fuel-injected engine. My dad would tap the break to come off of cruise control very reluctantly, which meant we all jerked forward and back into our seats – a lot. My dad’s monologues streamed continuously about the way the car was handling the road, the responsiveness of the steering wheel, the a/c options, and of course, the miles-per-gallon he was achieving that exceeded the dealer’s sticker estimation. He kept that sticker in the glove box. Mind-numbing!

With my dad coast-driving, my mom and sister became sick from the bobbing and jolting. In the back, Lynnie was groaning on the floor wishing we still had our second seat conversion car cot, and my mom would be head-down over an empty coffee can at the front. Knowing my mom and sister were unwell, my dad always offered to stop, but my mom refused. If we stopped, we’d only prolong the drive and we all just wanted it to end. By this time, I was beside myself and broke into one of our suitcases to find some clothes to use as a pillow to lean my exasperated head on. I decided it would be more fun to wear a pair of my brother’s underwear over my head and wave at every car and truck passing by. If that wasn’t enough, I took it one step further from the third back-facing seat of our station wagon to shoot a partial moon at every discreet moment I could. My brother was asleep with his headset blasting music into his ears from his cassette player, my dad was preoccupied with his road-ranging, and I was cracking up at the reactions of passers-by, especially when my dad would exclaim, “Hey, I’m driving the speed limit!” at their confused and amused looks.

We finally arrived at the Grand Canyon to stop at various lookout points. My dad lined us all up for photos with the majestic Canyon view in the background. My mom and sister did their best to smile despite their nausea. My dad was so proud to wear that Nikon around his neck. He’d get us all lined up for the perfect picture, but then it felt like forever for him to get his camera focused. We’d all start complaining, “C’mon dad. Take the picture already!” He didn’t care that we grew impatient. It made him happy to photograph his family at one of the world’s marvels. We spent more time looking at his lens than we did at the Canyons! We had this same line up and wait photo routine at Carlsbad Caverns, and again during all the family visits. We never knew when he actually took the pictures each time. We came to learn that he didn’t know either!

We drove for 4 days to spend 3 days at our final destination in Los Angeles. I remember our stops in Texas, Arizona, Great Aunt Ida’s in Palm Springs, where we all shouted every answer to her questions. At 94, her hearing aids were whistling at us the whole time. My dad took candid photos when we visited our family - looking like a pro with all of the telescopic features he kept adjusting before clicking.

Then, with dread, we had to begin the ominous 3-day drive back to Chicago. We stopped to load up for a few things before hitting the road for the long ride home. My dad said, “Okay. What do we need here?” I asked if we could buy a bottle of NyQuil. I was hoping to wake up three days later. My mom said, “I’ll need ginger ale.” My sister Lynnie kept whimpering, “I just want to die…” as she stared at the car floor holding her own coffee can. My youngest sister Beth said, “Can I have Good & Plenty?” Ha! As if she even thought she’d get one last chance to get back at me! My brother removed his earphones for a moment and said, “I’ll have a few Slim Jims.” Then returned to tapping his pencil keeping the beat that pumped into his ears. I still wonder if he’s human. My brother, Jim never complained. He never did anything wrong. His easygoing presence and compliance to the rules was a tough act for me to follow! I’ll blame my more lively demeanor on having to share a bedroom with two sisters…

Days and thousands of miles later, we finally pulled into our driveway. The drive back was torturously long and we all became mute for a while afterward. Some level of PVT – Post Vacation Trauma needed to be silently resolved within each of us. We actually didn’t speak about this vacation for a very long time. Soon after our return, my dad dropped off a dozen or so rolls of film to be developed. A few days later, he came home with a dozen or so envelopes of nearly black negatives. The film developer said he must have left the lens cap on for most of these shots. I can only imagine my dad’s “That’s impossible!” argument with the poor guy at the drive-up Kodak hut. There were a handful of black and white color photos that came through. We looked like overexposed zombies. Out of respect for my dad, we maintained a code of silence about our final family vacation together for nearly 30 years.

Our photographic memories of this, and all of our family vacations are our keepsakes. We were together in our Chevy Impala Station Wagons packed with homemade meatloaf sandwiches, forbidden cereals, our dad-made conversion car cot, a fancy camera, and emergency coffee cans intent on having an adventure together. We learned life lessons traveling coast to coast in our station wagons that taught us we must plan for, expect, and endure a measure of suffering toward reaching our goals. We were shown that with a little ingenuity, standards could be converted to meet our needs. We discovered that good intentions, despite negative outcomes, remain good and even valiant ones. We learned that memories of a shared event or experience can become an even more precious gift over time.

The cereal box wrestling, Good & Plenty snorting, cruise controlling, monologuing, heaving, car sickening, hearing aid whistling, mooning and non-picture posing experiences in our station wagons, have bonded us together more than just about any other family event. Thanks, in retrospect, to our shared suffering. Our captivity for miles together has given us a keen sense of our family’s solidarity. We share a head-shaking, eyebrow-raising, sinister-smiling yet heart-warming allegiance for having the road-tripping vacations we now feel privileged to have had together.

Recently, our coast-driving father had to take a road test to renew his license. My mom called me and while laughing, said “I know you’ll be relieved to hear this. Dad failed his driving test.” She shared a few details as I could hear my dad in the background saying, “…ridiculous! I needed to hedge the curb because the dummy in the other lane was crowding mine…” He was insistent on a second chance but was told he had to return 24 hours later to try again. My mom and I tried to persuade him to leave well enough alone. He passed on his second try. At 90, he has driving privileges for 1 year and will have to pass the test again to renew next year.

A walker is now a part of my dad’s daily mobility. Still driven by energy economics and cruise controlling, my dad tells me often how he strategically places the walker two paces ahead so he can also stretch his arms and strengthen his upper body to “coast” into his next step…