Here in the fambulance we are headed west, en route to rendezvous with friends and family in Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.
My wife is driving as I type. (If grant money is available, there is a boutique motion sickness research project begging to be done in that I am utterly unable to read in the car—one paragraph and I’m bound to barf—and yet I can stare at my laptop screen while typing from here to the Rockies and not be bothered.) Our daughters are strapped in behind us, listening to an audiobook and drawing in sketchpads. For purposes of entertainment in transit, there will be games of license plate bingo and “I Spy,” and we will allow some sessions with the portable DVD player (our van is of a vintage predating—or a model precluding—pre-installed screens) for a movie or two after dark, but there will also be extended (some say enforced) stretches of frank boredom (and very possibly sulking) (the kids too), which my wife and I suspect reinforces the ability to think for oneself.
People are also reading…
I will try to make it all the way to the Minnesota border before uttering my first “in my day” declaration regarding the Spartan conditions of travel in my day, which in my retelling were just short of Conestoga. In fact, there was a stretch during my childhood in which our large family’s transportation was reduced to one old farm truck, and half the clan rode to church in the back, wrapped in sleeping bags and protected from the wind (but not the feed dust) by a sheet of plywood Dad bolted over the bed. On my first true road trip—from Wisconsin to Wyoming—Dad let me drive Interstate 80 at the age of 16 while he napped on a mattress in the back of the van, an act of abiding trust and foolish faith that astounds me still. Perhaps he was a closet fatalist. Regardless, much has changed in the era of shoulder belts and air bags.
Thus far in the trip there has been little in the way of sightseeing, although we have spotted several hundred immobile wind turbines, a World War II era International Harvester fire truck being trailered to a new home, and a sign for a business purporting to serve “all your meat needs,” which seems the heartiest sort of promise. Also, the grain silos just keep getting bigger. Sadly, by the looks of much of the corn—uneven and stunted in the wake of all the early season drenching—I wonder if they will be filled to capacity come fall.
It is inevitable, on a trip like this, that at some point the van will feel too small. The cycles of family harmony will slip in and out of sync. Fuel will run low on all fronts. But for the moment, the sense of adventure is still keen. The youngest child has made fewer than 47 requests to watch a movie, and we are running a 50/50 ratio in the category of planned/unplanned bathroom stops. We’re a fairly roadworthy little crew, whether driving our domestic highways, hiking seaside trails in the Caribbean, or hitching a ride on a bus in Central America. Nothing dramatic, but we get around and get along. Best of all we know that over time memory has a way of minimizing the moment of grumpiness in a South Dakota rest stop while simultaneously enhancing the glow of campfire and the scent of S’mores later that night.
Back home, the chickens have a babysitter, as does the homestead itself. It’s good to know folks who’ll keep an eye on things. To have neighbors who make it a point to be neighborly. Who make it so that when we are ready to go home, it will be good to go home.
But for now, we’re westbound.
An original “Roughneck Grace” column exclusive to the Wisconsin State Journal. For more of Michael Perry’s writing, visit www.sneezingcow.com. Perry photo by Andi Stempniak, Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.