The Summer Road

It's summertime.  I'm not on vacation; not on a road trip.  But today came close.

Every week or so I have to make a trip and back to St. Johns, a small town about the furthest 18 miles away there could ever be.  The drive takes 25 minutes tops but seems like 26. Or 30. Or more. It just seems a whole lot further than the 18 miles claimed on the highway sign. But, like when I was a student in L.A., sometimes a little drive time lets your head work through things and, on occasion, good things come of it. Like today.

At noon I set out for St. Johns to visit a patient there.  It was a beautiful, beautiful day. Sunshine and the big white clouds that are such a massive and distinctive feature of a summer's sky here in Michigan.  The fields, those that survived our late spring deluge, are beginning to fill with waist-high corn and golden wheat and driving along you feel fortunate to live among this great agricultural bounty.

And then the traffic starts to back up. There are only a dozen cars headed west between my town and the next but they are all starting to queue up behind the large open box hauler who is trudging along at 52 miles an hour.......he behind the couple in the little van he can't pass. And suddenly I'm becoming annoyed and my thoughts turn to the need for a super fast car to pass the whole lot and zoom ahead.

While thinking that way, draping my hand over the top of the steering wheel, impatiently proceeding along my 18 mile course, I started to think about summer drives long, long ago.  Back then I was small fry in the back seat.  Up front was my Dad, pipe gritted between clinched teeth, silent, wing-window whistling and ineffectively cracked open in deference to the smoke. (This window was cranked just enough to accommodate the width of the matches he would eject.)  His hand lay over the top of the steering wheel; periodically he would lift it just enough to allow a glance down at the speedometer as it faltered in the lowest ranks.  He would lay back, watch, and study, waiting for the moment when his big yellow Impala could spring to life and launch us ahead of the pack. And when that moment presented itself, launch he would.  He would pop to life, sit forward in the seat, and use full scale body language to urge that big Chevy along.  His foot would snap that gas pedal to the floor and we'd be off!  More than once Mom would find need to reach forward and steady herself placing one hand on the dash.  And, on occasion, there would be a well measured comment, born of annoyance more than fear, from Mom on the the risky nature of more than a few of those launches.

We survived every one of his summer missile launches into oncoming traffic-- and all the many miles he chauffeured us up and down the west coast. Happy to report, I might add.

Enjoy your summer road. Launch some happy memories