Traveling with Mother was an adventure, a real one, but not one you'd care to anticipate, plan for, or repeat. We didn't take regular vacations like some families, but we'd often travel wherever my father was working troubleshooting mechanical problems on a cotton gin for Murray Gin Company.
One summer Susan, Jan, and I piled in the white 59 Chevrolet. Mother hopped nimbly under the wheel, backed up, avoiding five cats and at least two dogs, and spun out down the gravel driveway, the car's big fins jutting out behind us like wings.
We'd loaded the red and white thermos, filled to the brim with ice and water for the long ride. No air conditioner in this stripped down car bought during a period of family economic readjustment. We also had bologna and cheese sandwiches with mayo or mustard, chips, and homemade chocolate chip cookies that Susan had baked yesterday.
Susan sat up front with Mother, and Jan and I settled down on our pillows for some sleep. We knew once it got hot we would be so uncomfortable we probably couldn't rest. We were quiet for the first hour or so, then started fighting over the division of the backseat. Exactly what constituted half was the first order of business.
Each of us put our pillow on the dividing line, but our heads were abutting. Hitting potholes in the road caused our heads to bump against one another, inciting the next round of verbal sparring. Mother, who was oblivious to childish arguing 98% of the time never said a thing, just noted the Burma Shave signs, reading aloud: "The place to pass on curves you know, is only at a beauty show. Burma Shave."
"What?" Jan and I said simultaneously, bolting upright, still too late to see the signs. Mother laughed pleasantly.
"Watch for them," she suggested. "There will be more. Look out in the pastures. That's where they'll be."
Susan groaned. "Mother, they are just being awful."
"Want some cookies?" I said, feeling a chocolate binge stirring.
"Not for me," my slim Mother said. "I'll wait till after lunch."
"I don't want any yet either," Susan said, "but please save some for us. Don't eat them all."
"I hardly think I'll eat 3 dozen cookies," I returned, reaching into the Collin Street Bakery fruitcake tin, filled to the brim with baked cookie goodness. Jan wanted a couple too, and we didn't fight over that, but after I ate five, it occurred to me that I'd professed my innocence too soon, so I asked Susan to take the can and the other plastic container in which she'd placed cookies and put them up front.
"Why can't she just eat a reasonable amount?" she asked Mother quietly.
"Tapeworm," Mother chuckled.
Susan shook her head and looked out the window.
After a few hours, Mother decided to stop at a Mobil filling station for gas. We were on a two lane highway in central Texas, heading eventually to Muleshoe, near Lubbock, where their claim to fame seemed to be the statue of a mule that stood in the center of town. She pulled directly under the filling station's overhang, and a young man ran out, a red rag hanging haphazardly out of his dark blue cotton workshirt. A second red rag hung from the back pocket of his matching cotton pants.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Fill it up, please." Mother said pleasantly.
"Yes ma'am. Can ya pop that hood fer me?"
While Mother fumbled around trying to find the hood latch, he moved quickly to the pump, removed the gas cap from the car, and inserted the nozzle. We could smell the gas immediately and Jan and I started holding our noses and talking to one another in nasal tones while Susan looked steadfastly out the front windshield trying to ignore us.
"Pop," the hood let loose and raised slightly, which seemingly signaled the lanky young man to move nimbly to the front of the car and raise the hood completely. He then reached in, removed a stick that had oil on it, put it back in, then removed it again, observing it with some interest.
Next, he moved to the back of the car again, removed the nozzle, replaced the gas cap, then ran inside the station, got some paper from a man inside, likely the owner, and brought Mother a plastic clipboard with the paper on it. She signed it.
"Thank you very much, ma'am. Come back to see us. That oil's okay."
"Thank you," Mother said, handing him the clipboard, then pulling forward.
Jan and I were arguing again, so we didn't notice that Mother turned left, going back toward Corsicana where we'd started rather than Muleshoe where we planned to end our trip. Susan started laughing, but didn't tell Mother what she'd done.
"What?" Mother asked, clearly perplexed.
"Where are you going, Mother?" Susan asked in her calm tone.
Mother hesitated. Then "Oh shoot. I turned the wrong way, didn't I?"
By this time, Jan and I got in on the fun.
"Oh, quick trip," I said, real smart alecky like.
"If you keep driving long enough in the opposite direction, will you get where you were going?" Jan asked, making Mother laugh.
She pulled over on the shoulder, looked for traffic, then made a wide U turn, the car lumbering like a big pelican , its wings spread wide, over the dry brown grass and little yellow wildflowers.
Once we were moving along again, we decided to sing. Susan was absorbed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Jan and I, however, were absorbed in nothing but being obnoxious, so we sang hymns, school fight songs, 4-H camp songs, and Camp Fire camp songs ad nauseum.
Mother never said a word, nor did she indicate any irritation whatsoever. She kept her eyes glued to the highway in front of her, the white stripes flashing by marking the time till she saw Daddy again, and every now and then would comment, "I like that, that's pretty," or incredibly, "sing another one," usually accompanied by a loud sigh from Susan.
Around noon, we dispensed the sandwiches to everyone, and watched, as gray rain clouds formed in the west, moving toward us. We were now passing through the red sandy hills and plateaus of west Texas. Mesas, they were called, but I liked the word plateau. It sounded so French.
The rain pelted the car. Jan and I looked at each other, lay down in the seat again, this time heads touching, and put our feet out the back windows. The cool rain made us laugh as it hit our feet like tiny splinters. After a few minutes we drew them back inside.
"Look, look," we said to Susan and Mother, holding our feet up toward the front seat. "They're red and muddy."
Susan was not amused. She glanced back, grimaced, then reached behind her over the seat and groped for the napkins, handing us a wad of them. We went to work, soaking napkin after napkin till our feet were clean enough to double under us on the seat.
The drive seemed interminable. About 6 o'clock, Mother decided we'd stop to eat supper. She abruptly pulled across the other lane of the highway into a large gravel parking lot filled with big eighteen wheelers.
"They always say truckers know where the best food is," she said cheerily, as Susan looked at me over the seat, rolling her eyes.
Mother led the way into the white stucco like building. It had big plate glass windows on each side, looking suspiciously like the Mobil filling station we had left a few hours earlier. A conversion maybe. The truckers had bought gas here in the past, and now they frequented the restaurant.
Opening the large glass paneled door, we were hit immediately by the smell of old cooking grease and diesel, which seemed to float like a heavy fog over the inside of the cafe. We entered to stares. Ten or fifteen truckers sat at small formica tables, eating meatloaf, corn, blackeyed peas, fried okra, something brown, and something gray. No women were in the place at all except the two waitresses.
Big beefy men held their forks, hands clamped tightly around the handles in a way my mother would not allow. They ate huge bites, their mouths barely holding all the food. And they were talking to one another, the food showing clearly, some of it spilling back onto the plate as they laughed their deep, hearty laughs. Their big hands grasped large glasses of iced tea, and they turned their heads back to receive the thirst satisfying contents,slamming the thick plastic glasses down like they were mad at them.
Mother prissed over to a circular booth next to the big plate glass window on the west side of the building where we had an unobstructed view of the trucks parked outside. We followed, heads now down, trying not to stare back at some of the men who now smirked at us. I noted with dismay several flies congregated on the white ledge abutting the window.
"What did you say the name of this place is?" I asked Mother.
"Truck Harbor," I believe, she said, looking around like it was the most normal place in the world for a 43 year-old woman and her three young girls to be.
"Looks like Fly Harbor to me," I whispered under my breath to Susan and Jan, causing them to snort loudly, catching the attention of several of the truckers who exchanged amused looks.
"What'll it be today?" the skinny waitress asked, putting grimy looking menus in front of each of us. Her tightly curled hair was jet black. She wore a white uniform that looked like it'd been around awhile, and a tiny hat, white, trimmed in black, that looked like a series of waves from one side of her head to the other.
"We'll all have sweet tea," Mother said, not giving us a chance to order a cola, "but give us a few minutes to study the menu. We'll be ready soon."
"Okay," she said, popping her gum. "Be back atcha in a few minutes. I'll get your drinks." As she walked briskly toward the kitchen, she thumped one of the truckers on the back of his John Deere cap, causing him to laugh. "See you next week, Big Eddie," she said amiably.
"Yeah, see ya then, Lorene. Gotta long trip this time. All the way to California."
"Well, you be careful. Don't take no wooden nickels," she chortled.
"What's on this menu?" Susan said, almost to herself.
"Well, there's a blue plate special," Mother said. "That looks pretty good."
"Yeah," I groused, "if you don't mind what made the plate blue. Is mold blue?" I looked toward Susan. Mother gave me a look.
The flies were having a great time in the window, buzzing into it, falling down on the ledge, taking off like airplanes and hitting one another like they were landing in an airport without air traffic controllers. Finally, when I couldn't stand it any longer, I just picked up a wad of napkins from the metal dispenser and ended each of their lives quickly. "They didn't suffer," I reassured Jan, who was staring at what I was doing.
"Now," I said, turning toward my slightly irritated mother and siblings. "We can eat in peace."
Mother ordered. Of course just to make her point, she ordered the Blue Plate Special, then talked and talked about how good it was. Jan, Susan and I decided on the safer hamburgers and fries, which actually were not all that bad if you used a napkin first to soak up the excess grease.
"Honey, do ya'll need anything else?" Lorene asked Mother. "Need any more tea or anything? Where ya'll headed anyway if you don't mind me askin'?"
"We don't need anything else, thank you," Mother said like she'd known her all her life. "And of course I don't mind your asking. We're on our way to Muleshoe. How far is it from here?"
"I don't rightly know how far it is, but it'll take you about two hours to get there, I think. Hey, Jake! How long will it take this lady to get to Muleshoe?"
"About two hours" came the reply, in one of the lowest bass voices I'd ever heard.
Mother handed Lorene a wad of bills and Lorene headed off to the cashregister where she rang up our meals and drinks and made change, returning it to Mother. Then Mother left some bills on the table, thanked her again, and we left, feeling stares at our backs.
We slung all four car doors open at once since none of them were locked, and each of us resumed our seats, glad that the marathon ride was nearly over. We couldn't wait to tell Daddy where Mother chose to eat. She always picked the worst place in town. We knew Daddy would make up for it when we got there, taking us to nice restaurants and letting us order anything we liked. He didn't cut any corners on food.
"Turn left," Susan said with authority, glancing at Mother who was looking to the right, her brow furrowed, indecisive.
"Oh yeah, that's right. We came across the highway, didn't we?"
"Umhumh," Susan said, squinting down at her book in the gathering dusk.
Jan and I started talking about the blue plate special, the orange plate special, the green plate special, and others until we ran out of ideas for how the plates grossly became the designated color. Mother ignored us, driving blindly into the night toward a mule that stood sentry over a dust covered town we'd not find much to our liking.
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1 comment:
Loved it!!!
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