Road Trip with Mom: The Final Days
“I haven't finished a thing since I started my life, don't feel much like starting now. Walking out lonely has worked like a charm, I'm the only one I have to let down.
But watching you makes me think that that is wrong.”
We stopped listening to The Grateful Dead after our stay in Grayling. Occasionally, I would switch over to The Grateful Dead channel, but the mood back across Michigan and into Ohio, and the next day across Pennsylvania, didn’t merit the promise of The Dead. As a heat wave combined with power outages killed people back in Virginia and elsewhere in the East (There are now three fewer people in my county than there where when I left town last week, not counting new births. I wonder what they were doing the day I left town.), and the weather grew warmer and more humid as we moved southeast, I gravitated to Southern and Texan rock (with a few hours of the fifties channel for mom). I even caught myself singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama." It just felt right as we passed one farm after another and then crawled up into the Alleghenies, where the traffic slowed down to one lane (I noticed the left and the right switched off for variety) about every ten miles to accommodate road work that looked like it would never be finished in our lifetimes, and the rest stops were sixty miles apart, and the highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi didn’t even offer a scenic overlook. What’s up with Pennsylvania? I sound like a spoiled traveler.
I am a spoiled traveler. I have been spoiled by free timeshares stocked with excellent shampoo samples, by the free time that being a teacher supplies, by places that accommodate travelers and that showcase attractions, and by real beauty. In the landscape, that is. Human beauty was a rare treat outside of college towns.
Occasionally at an attraction or a roadside rest, I would stumble across a family that looked put-together and vaguely aware of its surroundings, and I grew hopeful until they passed me on the sidewalk, and I realized they were speaking some foreign language. I hate to bag on my own citizens of the stars and stripes, but what is it in our national consciousness that inspires so many of us to leave our homes and to enter public places looking like we don’t own mirrors? Do this many people in the U.S. really believe that the mid-eighties curly perm with the straight roots; the stained and sleeveless shirt sounding its own barbaric yawp (which I will accept if the guy wearing it also sports some nice biceps, but that’s rarely the case); or elastic-waisted, nylon shorts with faded, flower-patterned shirts of mixed pastel are the best they have to offer the world? Do they see the covers of magazines? Do they watch television? What about TLC? Is their self-esteem so low that they think the only way they’ll ever be able to match a color choice with their skin tone, or a waistline with their body shape is if some concerned friends get them on one of those make-over shows? Or is it that they get out so infrequently that they really believe that collared shirts, shoes and not sneakers, make-up and accessories are luxuries reserved for the rich and famous, or maybe just church on Sunday? Hell, even churches are letting it go these days. Khakis are the new tuxedo.
But enough about tacky. Around the holiday season, do you ever get flustered because you can’t find the perfect ornaments to personalize your Christmas tree? You scour the Home Depots and the department stores and even Pier 1, but you just can find can’t find enough cat ornaments to fill up your twelve-foot tree. And that’s frustrating. And what if you want to decorate your whole house with lighted Cowboys and Indians instead of Santa Claus? Then you’re really at a loss. Well, Mom and I found a place where your holiday decorating prayers will come true:
Welcome to Bronner’s! It’s the largest Christmas store in the whole country! This place takes up the space of like, two football fields. Or a foreclosed, sharecropper’s farm in the thirties. I think angels were communicating with me in the parking lot on this day because I finally figured out that there was a panoramic function on my camera. While it would have been handy to know this at Niagara Falls, I am glad the information came to me like a voice from above as I attempted to capture the size of this place.
And judging from this welcome sign at the west entrance (yes, there is a west entrance, where red-vested employees greet you at the information desk and hand you a map of the place), people from all over the world come here to Bronner’s to buy their Christmas shit.
Now you can honor the Baby Jesus under your beer tree!
We stopped here on our way out of Frankenmuth, Michigan, which is actually a very well-kept and colorful little, Bavarian town just south of Saginaw Bay. I didn’t take a picture of the feature of the town that most impressed me, the variety of gorgeous summer flowers lining all the streets (like hydrangeas the size of basketballs), because Mom and I both were just so sick of taking pictures at that point that we had to force ourselves to take these:
Mom, amid the healthy lavendar, with the local newspaper.
Mom in front of a fountain, a beer museum in the background.
A covered bridge.
I mentioned that the weather got warmer as we moved south. This bridge would have been so impressive to us if it hadn’t been ninety degrees on the last day of our epic tour. We snapped some shots and hustled to the car for a shot of some air conditioning.
And that’s all folks. No pictures of the endless highway construction through Pennsylvania. No more pictures at all, in fact. On July 1, 2012, Mom and I pulled back into that driveway, gave each other high-fives and hugs, and sat down to our first home-cooked meal in seven days-burgers, coleslaw, and fresh-picked corn-on-the-cob.
I would like to wax sentimental, but I am tired now, and simply satisfied that I finished what I started. I think Mom and I learned a lot about each other on this trip, that it strengthened our relationship in ways I didn't predict. I recommend a road trip with a parent, especially if this parent dragged your ass around on road trips, or camping trips when you were a kid. Such road trips should never end when the whining children are grown. Adults actually like the attractions.
But watching you makes me think that that is wrong.”
We stopped listening to The Grateful Dead after our stay in Grayling. Occasionally, I would switch over to The Grateful Dead channel, but the mood back across Michigan and into Ohio, and the next day across Pennsylvania, didn’t merit the promise of The Dead. As a heat wave combined with power outages killed people back in Virginia and elsewhere in the East (There are now three fewer people in my county than there where when I left town last week, not counting new births. I wonder what they were doing the day I left town.), and the weather grew warmer and more humid as we moved southeast, I gravitated to Southern and Texan rock (with a few hours of the fifties channel for mom). I even caught myself singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama." It just felt right as we passed one farm after another and then crawled up into the Alleghenies, where the traffic slowed down to one lane (I noticed the left and the right switched off for variety) about every ten miles to accommodate road work that looked like it would never be finished in our lifetimes, and the rest stops were sixty miles apart, and the highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi didn’t even offer a scenic overlook. What’s up with Pennsylvania? I sound like a spoiled traveler.
I am a spoiled traveler. I have been spoiled by free timeshares stocked with excellent shampoo samples, by the free time that being a teacher supplies, by places that accommodate travelers and that showcase attractions, and by real beauty. In the landscape, that is. Human beauty was a rare treat outside of college towns.
Occasionally at an attraction or a roadside rest, I would stumble across a family that looked put-together and vaguely aware of its surroundings, and I grew hopeful until they passed me on the sidewalk, and I realized they were speaking some foreign language. I hate to bag on my own citizens of the stars and stripes, but what is it in our national consciousness that inspires so many of us to leave our homes and to enter public places looking like we don’t own mirrors? Do this many people in the U.S. really believe that the mid-eighties curly perm with the straight roots; the stained and sleeveless shirt sounding its own barbaric yawp (which I will accept if the guy wearing it also sports some nice biceps, but that’s rarely the case); or elastic-waisted, nylon shorts with faded, flower-patterned shirts of mixed pastel are the best they have to offer the world? Do they see the covers of magazines? Do they watch television? What about TLC? Is their self-esteem so low that they think the only way they’ll ever be able to match a color choice with their skin tone, or a waistline with their body shape is if some concerned friends get them on one of those make-over shows? Or is it that they get out so infrequently that they really believe that collared shirts, shoes and not sneakers, make-up and accessories are luxuries reserved for the rich and famous, or maybe just church on Sunday? Hell, even churches are letting it go these days. Khakis are the new tuxedo.
But enough about tacky. Around the holiday season, do you ever get flustered because you can’t find the perfect ornaments to personalize your Christmas tree? You scour the Home Depots and the department stores and even Pier 1, but you just can find can’t find enough cat ornaments to fill up your twelve-foot tree. And that’s frustrating. And what if you want to decorate your whole house with lighted Cowboys and Indians instead of Santa Claus? Then you’re really at a loss. Well, Mom and I found a place where your holiday decorating prayers will come true:
Welcome to Bronner’s! It’s the largest Christmas store in the whole country! This place takes up the space of like, two football fields. Or a foreclosed, sharecropper’s farm in the thirties. I think angels were communicating with me in the parking lot on this day because I finally figured out that there was a panoramic function on my camera. While it would have been handy to know this at Niagara Falls, I am glad the information came to me like a voice from above as I attempted to capture the size of this place.
And judging from this welcome sign at the west entrance (yes, there is a west entrance, where red-vested employees greet you at the information desk and hand you a map of the place), people from all over the world come here to Bronner’s to buy their Christmas shit.
Now you can honor the Baby Jesus under your beer tree!
We stopped here on our way out of Frankenmuth, Michigan, which is actually a very well-kept and colorful little, Bavarian town just south of Saginaw Bay. I didn’t take a picture of the feature of the town that most impressed me, the variety of gorgeous summer flowers lining all the streets (like hydrangeas the size of basketballs), because Mom and I both were just so sick of taking pictures at that point that we had to force ourselves to take these:
Mom, amid the healthy lavendar, with the local newspaper.
Mom in front of a fountain, a beer museum in the background.
A covered bridge.
I mentioned that the weather got warmer as we moved south. This bridge would have been so impressive to us if it hadn’t been ninety degrees on the last day of our epic tour. We snapped some shots and hustled to the car for a shot of some air conditioning.
And that’s all folks. No pictures of the endless highway construction through Pennsylvania. No more pictures at all, in fact. On July 1, 2012, Mom and I pulled back into that driveway, gave each other high-fives and hugs, and sat down to our first home-cooked meal in seven days-burgers, coleslaw, and fresh-picked corn-on-the-cob.
I would like to wax sentimental, but I am tired now, and simply satisfied that I finished what I started. I think Mom and I learned a lot about each other on this trip, that it strengthened our relationship in ways I didn't predict. I recommend a road trip with a parent, especially if this parent dragged your ass around on road trips, or camping trips when you were a kid. Such road trips should never end when the whining children are grown. Adults actually like the attractions.