AND SO THE STORY GOES…

A series of essays….

THE SIMPLISTIC JOY OF MOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS IN THE 1950’S

     Courtesy of Pinterest

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Who doesn’t like a good road trip? These past two years have taken the art of travel back into the middle of the past century for me as the act of being a small family unit provided interactive road trips that offered uniquely memorable, yet slightly frustrating and uncomfortable family vacations.

We were just on the outskirts of the beginning of the Interstate Highway System in my early lifetime. From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System has been a part of our culture as construction projects, as transportation in our daily lives, and as an integral part of the American way of life.

Before 1956, our trips were planned out to the extent of distance in mind, never lasting more than five days (probably less), and the typical long and winding, two-lane roads were negotiated by means of the family vehicle. My Dad was ‘the man’ at the helm, seated in the driver’s seat, mesmerized by the allure of the open road, he navigated from behind the steering wheel of his pride and joy, our American made car.  

My Mom, firmly holding on to the purse strings, found enticing Mom & Pop restaurants, would point out an abundance of farm animals grazing in a pasture, or read out loud the multiple Burma Shave road signs that whizzed by our windows. These signs amused all of us and we’d look long and hard for the next series to be seen along the shifting fence posts.

Between tussling in the backseat for prime window positions (mandatory seat belts a thing of the future), entertaining our sixty pound German Shepherd named Queenie, and contending with the wind stream of the opened front windows as Dad chain smoked, his left arm tanning in the sun, we’d play games. Yelling out (after all, we were competing with the wind) the letters of the alphabet from A to Z from words we’d see on billboards, road signs, and barn advertisements was, definitely, the most popular. 

The map of any given state we’d be passing through was good for ‘find the small village’ as one of us would choose a town’s name and the other would have to find it on the map. Then there was the color game. Our eyes were peeled to everything passing by us in order to find the colors suggested by someone in the car. No wires, earbuds, or devices to be found (including the safety of seatbelts!). But we did find these games provided amusing ways to pass the time as we traveled through the cornfields and small towns of the U.S.A.!

Secretly, our parents hoped that by occupying our minds we would quit kicking the back of their car seats and annoying them throughout the trip.

Ah, yes… Occasionally my older brother and I would appease the road trip gods (as well as our parents) and chill for periods of time. These quiet moments were very special and allowed us to listen to the swish of the tires on the pavement, the gentle banter between Mom and Dad, and the beating of our own hearts. I wouldn’t trade this time, this memory, for anything else in this world.

Some of our destinations included the Ozark Mountains State Park of Missouri and Arkansas, driving out to Pike’s Peak, the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America (not climbing it, rather observing it from down below), traveling up to the Mighty Mackinac Bridge soon after its opening (not crossing it, just looking at it), and visiting Aunt Hattie on the farm in Central Illinois. The month of August, several weeks before the beginning of the school year, was my parent’s preferred vacation time. It was something we looked forward to each summer.

Sadly, not one National Park was included in any of our itineraries.

Reservations! I don’t believe I even knew what that word meant until much later in life. Mom had three criteria for our night’s stay on the road: the place must look clean and neat, there should be a family restaurant nearby, and a swimming pool for us kids was always the added bonus. And we’d swim by the light of dusk in square, kidney shaped, and rectangular pools, the water so cold our lips turned blue after only a few minutes. Small motels in America were the heart of our trips, especially when most of them accepted pets no matter what and provided a cot (for an extra charge) if required.

I recall trying to untangle the knots in my long, blond hair whenever we’d stop for a meal, sightsee, or purchase gas when one of us would exercise and feed our dog. How we managed to survive the swirling of dog hair, keep items from flying out of the windows, and try to hear one another talk, remains a mystery to me. AC in cars was a godsend and comfortably abridged the negative atmosphere of subsequent family road trips.

COVID-19 has resurrected the simple act of car and travel trailer vacations these past few years. Replacing planes and trains with their passengers in such close proximity to one another, the spike in sales of recreational trailers has greatly appeased an industry that is dependent upon the whim of their popularity in order to survive. COVID did its best to reinvent and promote this nomadic lifestyle.

The wave of travel modes is changing once again. Even though the past few years have increased the nostalgia of traveling the open roads and taking family trips by car, these trips will never totally replace the speed and versatility of flying. Airplanes bridge the gap between continents and allow us to see places we could, previously, only dream about. Or, have seen before and desire to revisit.

Nostalgia can be a beautiful thing. It keeps us humble as we travel back into our youth and remember the simplicity we cherished and never knew we could miss as the years rolled along. Swigging pop from ice-encrusted, long-necked bottles purchased at a gas station/grocery store in rural Arkansas to eating pork & bean sandwiches on the front porch of the farm in Illinois, I know I will savor these memories, forever—no matter how many airplane adventures I collect in my lifetime.

Note: Happy Birthday, Ronnie!

Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

FIREWORKS AND COTTON CANDY DREAMS

A series of essays.....

THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1955 STYLE ~ MISHAWAKA, INDIANA

.....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E. Hughes

Believe it or not, kids, there was a time when the world felt much larger than it does today. 

It was a time when we were merely passengers in the buckle-less back seat of Dad's powder blue, 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air, 2-door sedan. Family vacations meant spending hours together with our siblings, with no escape route (back doors), while watching the America of our youth pass by beyond the sleek, curved back windows. The car was everything to us. It defined freedom and mobility and took us to Church on Sunday, Pikes Peak in early August and back home again, and Grandma's house for Thanksgiving. Flying on a commercial plane was a luxury meant for the rich, the businessman, and, by 1958, jet-setters blazing new trails into the future.

THE 1954 CHEVROLET BEL AIR
~A TRUE CLASSIC~

Our compartmentalized youth showed us how to separate school and homework from social hour and playtime with friends. It helped us to appreciate the baked frozen fish sticks, canned green peas, and homemade mashed potatoes Mom placed in front of us for supper on Friday nights; back when we sat around the red and white, enamel and chrome dinette set as a family and talked. It always seemed we took advantage of playing harder on Saturday nights before having to scrub behind our ears and dress-up for Mass on Sunday morning! 

The illusion of freedom filled our heads and muddled our thinking because.....well, because we were kids and time had no limitations on our young, untamed imaginations. 

The story I'm going to tell you is about a special time during my youth that lingers in the positive compartment of my memory bank and is guaranteed to pop-up at this time each year. I recall feeling immensely blessed that on this one day out of the entire year we could witness one of the most spectacular shows created by man. And, all the while I'd be wishing I was a bird that could soar high above it all and witness its dramatic effects from that lofty position!

And, so it goes....

The small, white rental house crackled with excitement. Our anticipation was as palatable as a tall glass of icy-cold strawberry Kool-Aid on a hot summer's day. 

I especially like how happy this day makes my Mother because, even while issuing executive orders to my brother and me, she does it with a smile glowing across her sun-freckled face.

It is Monday, July 4, 1955, Independence Day, with all of the extra special treats of the day soon to be enjoyed in large gulps with memories savored and appreciated for the rest of the summer. 

~MY OLDER BROTHER, RON, AND ME.
TAKEN IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
BEFORE MOVING BACK TO INDIANA.~

I remember that our president is a man called Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dad said he is a smart man even though he is a Republican. Ronnie, my older brother, and I dance to a song on the kitchen radio called (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock by someone called Bill Haley and His Comets. Our parents are sure that this kind of "back beat" new music will never become popular but they let us listen to it anyway. We don't care. As long as our stocking feet can slide across the black and white, linoleum kitchen floor, we enjoy the freedom that the rhythm and beat give to us.

Dad will be home soon. He didn't have to work today. Filling the car, his baby, with gas and checking the oil level at the neighborhood gas station is the most likely reason for his absence. I like "his baby," too! Dad taught us to respect a car because it is almost as important as having a roof over our heads. Food is never consumed while in it and our "antsy little selves should never put our shoe-clad feet on the cloth seats, If we know what's good for us!" We understood that quickly enough.

You see, Mom doesn't know how to drive a car. I don't know why. So, I don't think she cares as much about them as long as Dad can take her places. Even if she wanted to learn, I don't think Dad would ever be her best teacher. 

Mom is in the kitchen creating a mobile feast for our picnic dinner to be consumed later while at the park. Oh, the park I'm talking about is called Potawatomi Park over in South Bend. We live on a street called Milburn Boulevard in Mishawaka, in the state of Indiana. All I know about it for sure is that the word Potawatomi is fun to say. Mom says that it is the name of the American Indian tribe that lived around here years ago and the people decided to remember them by naming the park after them. 

Ronnie and I are trying to wile away the daylight hours by bringing out the used Popsicle sticks we've painted and numbered as our favorite cars and drivers at the Indy 500 race. Dad just listened to the race on the radio while washing his car a few weeks ago. We've created a big oval and a start line and pretend we are the drivers of each car. Car Number 4 driven by someone named Bill Vukovich is set in a special place. Ronnie told me this driver never made it home.

I think I heard Dad pull into our driveway and Mom has everything neatly packed inside the  wicker basket. I hope there's some deviled eggs in there. They're my favorite picnic food!

Dad grabs the blankets, basket, and blue Coleman jug that holds pink lemonade inside with few ice cubes. Mom says that too many ice cubes can dilute the yummy lemonade and weaken the flavor. Even though it's warm outside, we're bringing long sleeved jackets and long pants for later when the mosquitoes decide it's time to feast on us at the park. Mom says I might be allergic to the nasty, little vampires because my skin swells up to twice the size around the area where they bite me. I try not to itch them but, I always do.

As we're pulling into Potawatomi Park, I think about the zoo, the oldest in the state of Indiana, and the public swimming pool that my brother and I can ride our bikes to in order to cool off in the summer. I think it costs us fifty cents apiece to get into the pool area. Mom says she'd rather be able to drive us there but has to learn to trust us, sometime. That makes me feel proud. Ronnie is a good brother and watches out for me, most of the time.

"LOOKING DAPPER"
TAKEN WHILE LIVING ON
MILBURN BOULEVARD

But tonight it's about the fireworks and Dad hoists me up onto his shoulders so that I can see the ones lower to the ground. I kind of remember them from last year like when they lit-up an American flag out of gigantic sparklers placed in a fence and it was really fun to see. Dad explains how some rockets fizzle and stay lower to the ground than others. I don't know if that's a mistake or not.

The crowd is large and full of happy, excited people as we watch the stars illuminate the sky above. Dad asks me not to get any pink, sticky sugar in his hair as I pull large tufts of cotton candy from the enormous blob of spun sugar sticking to the white paper cone. Heaven on a stick is what I call it! Mom and Dad munch from a small paper bag filled with caramel popcorn studded with peanuts. Ronnie has decided to dissolve blue cotton candy on his tongue turning it the deep blue color of the night sky. And, it's time for the show!

For almost.....forever, the sparkling colors shoot straight up into the sky only to gently fall back down in diminishing cascades of colored, floating chicken feathers that shift in the breeze until they're practically right above our heads. I found out last year that these feathers can be very hot and burn you when one landed on my arm. Dad calls them the dying embers that often linger as the fire-spewing rocket burns itself out.

When the fireworks begin to take on a life of their own and swiftly go off one right after another, the excitement that I feel gets stronger and stronger until the entire sky lights up like a magical sunrise. The trees in the park appear to come alive as their different forms and heights resemble a smoking dragon making its way across the horizon. It's called the grand finale and my stomach still feels the deep vibrations from the constant boom, boom, boom of the launching rockets.  

And, just like that, they are over. 

It's hard to see the people's faces through the lingering smoke. The breeze will take it away soon. Dad asks me if I want to walk back to the car and he pops me back off his shoulders and we become the crowd itself.

Ronnie somehow knows how tired I feel right now. He says it's a combination of looking forward to something so much, and then it's over. It leaves me breathless, sad, and tired, for sure. He looks over my way and gives me a smile as he grabs my hand and, side-by-side, we walk back to the car. Somehow the kindness he is showing me right now makes up for some of the 'behind the back' arm tucks and other dirty tricks he often gets away with.

It's time to go home to sleep and dream of cotton candy, fireworks, and what the rest of the summer will bring.....!

THE GRAND FINALE

Wishing everyone fond memories and a very happy Fourth of July Celebration!!!!

Copyright © 2017 by Jacqueline E. Hughes

All rights reserved