Trains, planes and automobiles! I love them all! Whether I’m taking in the whole wide world or just a new corner of our own country, be it from an automobile, a train or a plane (I’m not too keen on boats, as I have pretty bad motion sickness), I truly am in my element. Taking in new terrain on a backcountry road, buzzing down an interstate with a destination in mind, or relaxing in my seat on any of the aforementioned, I love it all.

You see, as a young girl, our family hit the road a couple of times a year to visit my moms parents in Florida and then my dad’s set of parents when we moved a few states away. We often traveled at night and I have the clearest, most distinct memories of sitting on the edge of the back seat behind my parents, this was before seat belts, my head just forward enough to see both of them. The glowing orange lines almost transfixed my gaze on them, as they flew by, the dark of night making them glow even brighter as the headlights caught their color. The car would often be full of my sleeping siblings and I can still feel the peacefulness of it to this day. I watched for the hotel lodging signs as we would get closer to our stopping point for the night with my dad at the wheel, me as his copilot in the back seat. We mostly sat in silence, the sound of the engine and the open roads hypnotizing us or the soft hum of the music coming from the eight track tapes emitting from the radio on the dashboard… Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, Fleetwood Mac, Roberta Flack. Music has and always will remain a huge part of my life, based on the fact that from an early age, it was played, sung or strummed in our house almost constantly.  Both my dad and I often fondly recollect and recount the story of when I told him that I would never leave him, even when I got married. At the ripe old age of 7 or 8 I think, I heard his retort that I would have to move elsewhere with whomever I would marry. To which I replied, “then I will bake you muffins and bring them to you every morning”… ahh to go back… and where the heck had the bake the muffins comment come from as I had maybe baked only a muffin or two at that age. 

My anticipation as we neared our stopping point at a Howard Johnson’s, Ramada Inn or Holiday Inn (I know… total luxury) was palpable, as I knew what was waiting inside for me. The silence would turn to chatter: What did my dad think the room would look like? What about the bedspread, the walls? Was there a TV? A restaurant where we could catch breakfast before we took off again in the morning?

I couldn’t wait to get inside, even as my sleepy siblings were slow to dismount from the station wagon. I knew there would be drawers for me to unpack my clothes into, and those of my doll, even if just for the night, stationery that I always took home with me, and the little toiletries that sat on the counter next to the bathroom sink.

I had a strange attraction to hotels from a young age, to four-wheeled vehicles, and to seeing every sight that could be seen along the trip.

Memories of all the places we visited on the way to our destination still linger quite vividly, from Luray Caverns to the Grand Ole Opry, from Monticello to Mount Vernon. Williamsburg to Hollywood, Florida; Dallas, Texas to Boston, Massachusetts… we road-tripped.

On our southern trips, my sister and I would keep our eyes peeled for the road signs as they raced by, looking for the ones with the black backgrounds and bright orange, yellow, pink and green lettering. They were the signs for South of the Border, a kitschy tourist attraction that had hit its heyday in the ’60s and ’70s. Does anyone else have those same memories?

We occasionally interspersed our road trips with train travel, which at that time allowed 10-year-olds to traverse the train cars all on their own in the middle of the night. When we traveled afar after moving to Chicago to visit my grandparents in Florida, we traveled on trains with dining cars… oh, how much fun were they? They were moving restaurants with linen napkins, little white salt and pepper shakers, silverware and white china plates.

We never got a sleeper car, but spent the night in our seats, with the glow of the aisle lights guiding our way back to them after my sister and I had roamed the cars. Some trains even had glass cars on the second story from which you could take in the countryside… Amtrak in its heyday!

The first time I ever flew was to California and then on to Hawaii as a teenager, and it was only because my dad had a business trip out there and it was too far to drive… and he wanted to take his family of seven on that big trip, two of them being two-year-old twins. Oh yes… and there was the ocean. Couldn’t drive across that, but my dad would be damned if he didn’t try!

I was smitten on that first flight, which then spun me into a period of yearning to be a stewardess. I had given up my doll suitcase by that time, but not my love of travel… whatever it looked like.

My positive memories of train travel were so strong that I even persuaded my college roommates to take a train to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for our spring break. In my defense, ladies, the fares were a lot less than an airplane ticket on a college student’s budget, and those memories lured me into the coercion.

Even more shocking was that I was also able to convince them to stay at the grand Howard Johnson hotel on the beach a few towns away in Hollywood, Florida, complete with a rooftop pool. Again, memories pulled me back to a place that held those heart-filling moments from when I was a young girl, traveling down to Hollywood to see my maternal grandparents who lived there.

Those trips were often made with my dearly loved Aunt Cathy and Uncle John and their three daughters, my cousins who felt like sisters. Our parents, who clearly enjoyed each other’s company, would load me and my two siblings (my youngest siblings hadn’t arrived yet) along with their three daughters into their wood-paneled station wagon. Ten of us all together for the 21-hour drive south to our grandparents. When overflow accommodations were needed, some of us would stay at the Howard Johnson’s on Hollywood Beach.

Quickly into the trip back down there by train, a decade and a half later, I discovered that the golden memories I had held so dearly didn’t quite pan out as I had remembered them. Let’s suffice it to say that half the group gave up their round-trip train fare and bought airplane tickets home. The other half, badly sunburned and blistered from a week in the southern sun, some who shall not be mentioned worse than others, slept in the luggage racks above the seats.

Yes… they allowed us to do so back in 1985!

When I think back to the travel of my childhood, my memories, which contained so many magical moments, were magic themselves. They were fueled by the age of innocence. By the unknown. By simplicity and borne of love.

For how much magic is contained in a 24-hour road trip for the parents of five children anxiously asking, “Are we there yet?” for the 39th time? It’s not the same kind of magic, but magic nevertheless. One that has never left me. Has it left you?

Things have changed, the memories remain. 

xoxo,

Meg