Station Wagon Trucker
I'm not saying my childhood was anything less than great. I knew my parents loved me, I lived in a quiet, established neighborhood, among what seemed like a thousand kids my age, and I had a dog, a bike, a tree fort, and fast shoes.
What I am saying is that, through nobody's fault but my own, my perspective was somewhat narrow. It's possibly because of that limitation, that I loved long, tedious car rides. Good thing, too, because we did them often. From my home on the mean streets of suburban Omaha, it was almost exactly 600 miles to the adjacent hometowns of my parents in Illinois, and our extended family who lived there.
10 hours in the car, the way my dad drove it. An impressive pace, when one stops to think it was laid down in the era of a 55 mph national speed limit. My mom would pack a cooler full of ham sandwiches, fill a water jug, and grab a sleeve of tiny, bathroom-sized Dixie cups, partially, in hindsight, to limit damage from the inevitable spills, and partially to keep us in a mild state of dehydration to limit delays. Bathroom breaks corresponded with fuel stops...and there was only one of those, so the thinking kid went before we left.
Requesting an emergency stop wasn't a joy-filled experience, in part because an emergency on your part never constituted one on my dad's. He'd pass bathroom after bathroom, attempting to eke out a few extra miles, and to establish that you weren't bluffing. He needed to be deeply convinced, before he'd waste the kind of time an unplanned bladder evacuation would consume.
The car we had during most of my younger years was a station wagon. A giant yellow Chevrolet Caprice, with fake-wood-paneled sides. My dad would pile the suitcases into a red vinyl carrier on top, which left the entire middle and rear seats open. My brother wasn't born yet, so my sister and I had the whole back of the car to ourselves.
And we fought the whole time. Sometimes it was over who got the newest coloring book, or who saw the first car with a headlight out, or who saw the first capital 'W' on a roadside sign. But no matter what we were fighting about, there was always a simmering undercurrent of resentment, punctuated by sporadic flashes of rage, toward whoever got the back seat.
That might seem petty, but hear me out. This wasn't the average third-row seat. The side windows in back wrapped around the rear corners of the car and met the expansive glass of the tailgate, to form what was virtually an uninterrupted 180-degree window.
We could hang a blanket from the clothes hooks on each side of the ceiling, and perfectly close off the rear seat from the world. In more temperate weather, for a kid, this was the coziest cocoon imaginable. In the summer, in the days before rear air conditioning, it was a sweltering sweat box that turned faces red, matted hair, and escalated tempers. Small price to pay, though, because the real reason the seat was so coveted, the reason it was worth threats and screaming and occasional torn-out clumps of hair, was because the rear seat faced backwards.
Once it was closed off with the blanket, you saw nothing but an acre of glass and the endless ribbon of pavement spooling off to the horizon below you. You could be in a spaceship, or a fighter jet or a time machine.
Or - and here is where my limited perspective crops up again - my own semi truck, which I imagined was stuck in reverse. And I was the only driver in the country - possibly the world - who could drive a tractor-trailer that fast backwards.
In those days, I wanted to be a truck driver so badly I could taste it. Tall chrome exhausts, spewing, to my nose, a black cloud of glorious diesel scent. A thousand orange marker lights; on the trailer, the fenders, across the top of the cab. Impossibly long hood, hiding what must be the the most immense, fire-breathing engine imaginable. A dark sliver of glass, through which the driver commanded the giant rig from on high. He could see you, but you were lucky to make out his shadow, or a glint of light from the mirrored lenses on his sunglasses. Uncontested, the coolest guy on the planet.
And to my never-ending pride, I had a connection to his world. A small portal through which I could, for a short time, become one of his colleagues. When I was seven, my grandad had given me a walkie talkie. By thumbing the button on the side, I'd enter the conversational land of my idols. A quick sentence in the deepest voice I could muster, and I'd find out who had their ears on. I'd know when The Fuzz was nearby, or when a Bear had a reefer pulled over on 95. I'd figure out their 10-20, which, on occasion, was right next to my own reverse-traveling truck, and my heart would skip a beat as a passing driver would smile down at me through his side window, CB microphone held to his mustache. He was talking to me.
In my later teenage years, my mom got a conversion van, complete with a game table in the back, and mood lights in the ceiling. My brother was around by then, and to the three of us, it might as well have been a custom 747 with our own pilot. So expansive, comparatively, it felt like putting wheels under our house. A magic carpet of unimaginable comfort and exorbitant luxury.
My desire to be a trucker had long-since passed by then, and I was much too old to look around in the dusty boxes in the basement for my old walkie talkie. And truth be told, I no longer liked those long days in the car. I had books and magazines and decks of cards. We each had individual lights and AC vents over our seats, and we were even free to move about the cabin without crawling over the seat backs, subsequently incurring the wrath of whoever spotted us in the rearview mirror.
And I was bored out of my skull.
Too much comfort, it turned out, didn't do me any favors. There was no blistering heat to overcome. No melted crayons. No truckers to meet on the road. No battles for who sat where. No imagining what could be, and no experiencing life as it happened - as I made it happen. The drive became time to be spent before the real events began. Time to forget about. To divert my attention from, in any way possible.
These days, I like comfort as much as the next person. Maybe more. But I'm watching my time much more carefully. I'm aware I have less of it, and of how quickly it disappears. On my life's clock, it's likely well past noon. I'm only now coming to realize the ease with which life can pass me by, and how too much comfort - a life devoid of challenges - leads to the desire for even more comfort, and then to apathy. I know each minute is one I will never get back. And I have resolved to seize them, enjoy them as slowly and as completely as I can. And to stop wasting so much time
Waiting to get there.