In the Beginning!

I come from a family of travellers. In another age we would have been nomads, Bedouins, shepherds or itinerant grave robbers. Instead we played the role of explorers and sojourners. Our permanent home was in Arlington, Virginia. From there we would begin our family jaunts to the Manassas  Battlefield for a picnic lunch or a week long vacation to Ocean City, Maryland. A longer trip would be to Boston or New Bedford, Massachusetts to visit my grandparents. This was in the fifties, long before the era of highrise condos and super-motels. Interstate highways were just being constructed under Eisenhower's administration. My parents rode up front with my youngest brother, while the rest of us, three boys and one girl, crammed ourselves into the back seat.

With reckless abandon we would set out before dawn. Actually, it was a well thought out plan since the children would sleep while my father drove without the constant whining of kids asking, "Are we there yet?" Or, "How much further?" Dad would drive while Mom played the role of flight attendant offering drinks and snacks and referee should any of us get into an argument in the back seat. Mom's decisions were, for the most part, final. Any disagreement or appeal on her ruling was handled by my Dad who would simply ask, "Do I have to stop this car?" The question, of and by itself, was simple. The manner in which it was said, was not.

Driving to Ocean city was a big thing. The night before departure Mom would make sure all of us had our clothes packed. I'm not sure why this was such a big thing; for the next seven days we would all wear swimsuits during the day and pajamas at bedtime. Of course we would have an assortment of toys and comic books or coloring books to keep us occupied during the drive. But the promise of the ocean and the boardwalk made us behave like it was Christmas Eve. Just beyond the horizon and below the sunrise was the promise of sand pails, shovels, sand castles, kites, fried clams, salt water taffy and swimming in the surf. It was sensory overload.

Mom would offer a reward to the first one who saw the ocean, but we could already smell it as we backed out of the driveway. Our nasal passages were filled with the scent of salt spray, suntan lotion, creosote from the boardwalk and pilings, french fries and the overwhelming odor of Noxema for the inevitable sunburns we were all going to receive.

Dad nonchalantly drove the family car over the Bay Bridge negotiating city traffic, intersections and route changes. I never saw him look at a road map. In fact, I never saw him study a map the night before we left. I suspect he may have had a Rand McNally Atlas implanted in his brain as a top secret experiment when he worked for the Navy. What I did see was his ability to load his pipe with tobacco from a foil pouch of Sir Walter Raleigh. He did this one handed because his other hand was holding a cup of coffee that Mom had just poured from a thermos bottle. With his pipe clamped between his teeth he could take a pack of matches with his free hand, open the pack, bend one match out and strike it on the flint strip until it lit. After several puffs he would have his pipe lit and with a flick of the wrist, put out the burning match.

For those of us awake to witness this feat he would add as a finale his ability to blow smoke rings in between sips of coffee and then launch into a dissertation on the history of the Chesapeake Bay. Using the tops of his thighs he could handle the steering wheel while gesturing, sipping and smoking. There were no seat belts, no shoulder restraints, no airbags, no cup holders, no crumple zones, no anti-lock brakes, just seven people travelling east in a steel projectile at 50 mph. With the windows down, we could smell the ocean.