Allah Las
Long Journey
This band has the retro beach California-culture sound I am loving this hot!hot!hot! summer.
Can I just tell you I want that van? I am experiencing major Volkswagon bus envy!
Earlier this morning I was sitting with my daughter at the local cafe, when a battered and faded turquoise bus with two surf boards strapped to the roof went up the road. Real wooden surf boards! Not that I'm a surfer, or have even surfed other than body surfing, but there's still time. And another trip to Hawaii.
I had the impulse to get in the car and follow them.
I know a lot of you are heading down the highway on family trips or to family reunions. Good luck keeping a grip on your charm and sanity. Here's to having a good time with your nearest and dearest!
Our family took at least one road trip every summer. On the way to Grand Canyon, I remember drawing a boundary line down the backseat of the family car and telling my sister not to cross it. She immediately finger-walked over the line, and I probably put my foot on her side of the line, or probably took her book away and wouldn't give it back, or probably told her her toes looked more like fingers, gross!, or probably pinched her thigh until she cried and told on me, and then guess who was in trouble? Well deserved.
After a brief fight-free break, it would start all over again. It's a wonder our parents kept taking us on road trips. Maybe that's why we started flying for our family trips.
Kids can be such miserable little beggars, my mother used to say. If we were really annoying, she'd call us little shee-ites. Not shits. Shee-ites.
When it got too much, my father would take one hand off the wheel, swing it into the backseat and swipe whoever was closest. If somebody complained that it wasn't them, he'd just tell them, you deserved it.
It's funny now looking back. I can't tell you how many times I lost my religion driving my daughter and her friends around when they were kids.
My favorite memories from that Grand Canyon trip are of the dizzing effect of vertigo walking on the narrowiest of trails, looking down and thinking I would live if I fell all the way to the bottom, the trouble my elder brother got in for loading up his plate at the per ounce buffet, and the candy that looked exactly like rocks that I took for show and tell, and that I didn't have to share.
No comments:
Post a Comment