HEADIN' SOUTH

Although it was an Impala advertised on television at the end of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, our baby-blue and white two-tone,1957 Bel-Air did exactly what Dinah advised when she sang: "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet." That Bel-Air drove us all the way to Florida for our summer vacation! No air-conditioning, no highways, no Cracker Barrels - just our hair blowing in the open-window blast of hot wind, two-lane blacktop roads through the deep South, and Mom and Pop restaurants in small crossroads towns to feed us. Because the farmers' tractors and old jalopies frequented the two-lane blacktop roads, passing was often difficult, frustrating Dad's goal of averaging 55 miles per hour. Since there wasn't a national speed limit until 1974, Dad set his own goals and timetable to reach Florida. The trip was a little over a thousand miles from St. Louis to Tampa and took us full three days of solid driving.

The little restaurants we found in the small Southern towns of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia served strange food like grits, fried green tomatoes, and chicken fried steak with red-eye gravy. I hated the tasteless grits, the greasy fried tomatoes, and the idea of red eyes in my gravy made me gag. Everything, right down to the small fruit-filled pies, was fried. Tables hosted small baskets filled with packets of wrapped Saltines. So fancy! Were those to be our hors d'oeuvres? Tables were usually covered with red and white checkered oil cloth, slightly gummy from the heat, humidity, and grease. When we took our seats at a table, the wooden chairs loudly scraped against worn linoleum floors. Since it was difficult to discern whether anyone working in the place noticed we had entered the premises or even cared, the noise at least notified them we were sitting down at a table and a waitress would saunter over to hand us menus covered in plastic that was as viscous as the table cloth. Ceiling fans lazily rotated overhead, sloughing off any dust balls the blades might have accumulated onto our food. The further south we got the worse the water tasted and by the time we visited St. Augustine, we loudly exclaimed how the water smelled like rotting eggs. Hydrogen sulfide - a.k.a. sulfur. People in the South moved in slow motion because by damn it got hot! Mom complained that the waitresses moved so slowly by the time they brought our drinks from the kitchen to our table, the ice in the sugared tea had melted, making the tea "less than iced but a little cooler than warm." That was Mom doing physics. When we stopped for breakfast, regardless of what was ordered, our plates were half covered in grits, oozing in butter. Without fail, I ordered the French toast that was served with a sticky pitcher of Karo which even the insects would not go near for fear of perishing in the stuff. Suffocation by syrup. I did love that French toast though.

The fun part about stopping for a meal was how we all piled out of the car to freshen up before going into the restaurant by parking directly in front of the large windows of the restaurant through which diners and waitresses could watch the Oberlin family's ritual grooming. First Mom would spit on a handkerchief and wipe away any dirt she found on our sweat-streaked faces. Next came the combing of the hair, the hair that had been wind-whipped into tangled, knotted masses. To transform us three kids into refined, polite children instead of grubby, heat-stroked, irritable waifs, Mom employed a fine-toothed comb to tear through our tangles like a 14th century flagellant, using the comb as her instrument of mortification. My brother was exempt and I envied him his buzz cut. At ten years old, standing in a sun baked parking lot with my face screwed up in pain while Mom detangled my hair repeating "Hold still. I'm almost done" actually felt like an eternity. Eventually, faces clean and hair smoothed, we put sandals on over our sweaty little feet and marched into the eatery where people stared at the tall young man with the red-headed wife and three skinny, blond-haired, scabby-kneed kids. Stared because we were strangers who drove into town in a spanking brand new car from "up North." Yep, stood out like sore-thumbed Yankees. Give them folks an extra helping of grits! Never mind that Missouri had been a slave state and remained so throughout the Civil War; we came from north of the Mason-Dixon line, so we were considered damned Yankees regardless and often were treated with reserved politeness, quizzical derision, or like aliens (no, not the human type but like we were from another planet). Of course, we did not draw this type of reaction from everyone we came across, but it happened enough that even at ten I was aware that we were not altogether trusted or welcomed. Southern hospitality has remained an enigma to me ever since.

After three days and two nights of road trip fun heading south on U.S. 41, we reached Florida. Once we hit White Springs where the Stephen Foster guide sign on the Suwannee River can be found, we all sang Foster's song, Old Folks At Home as loudly and happily as we could. It was as if we had completed a pilgrimage to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes because at long last, we were crossing the state line into sunny Florida. A couple of years later, my mother's younger brother, his wife, and their nine children caravanned with us from St. Louis to Florida. The back of my aunt and uncle's mini-van was crammed with kids, toys, and bags of snacks. At one point, we stopped for ice cream at a roadside stand and all sixteen of us gathered around to scarf down ice cream cones and visit with one another - a much needed break in the long drive down, especially with so many kids in tow. When finished with our treats, everyone piled back into their respective vehicles and headed south again. However, about ten miles down the road, one of my cousins yelled out from the back of my uncle's van that their youngest, Patty, wasn't with them. They had so many kids, they had not noticed she was missing; they had accidentally left her behind. She was just three years old. In 1959, there were no cell phones. No one wore seat belts. And then there was no Patty. The van made a quick Chicago U-turn in the middle of the road and the sudden movement set loose little arms, skinny legs, bags of potato chips, a ball, a doll or two, and several UFOs that could be seen rolling across the back windows in a jumble. Of course, seeing this mayhem inside our uncle's van set off hilarity amongst my sister, my brother, and myself. As she was often prone to do, my mother turned around in her seat to swat at the three of us as if we were flies and we ducked and rolled hoping to miss getting hit. The strategy was to position oneself lower than your siblings so that Mom's blow would land on their bare leg or arm instead of yours. In the meantime, my uncle yelled out to my father as he passed our car going in the opposite direction: "DO YOU HAVE PATTY?" My father shouted back: "NO!" At which my uncle screamed: "GOTTA GO GET HER!" and stepped on the gas.

Patty was found sitting calmly at a picnic table next to the ice cream stand. My aunt jumped out of the van and hurried over to take her into her arms and Patty's chunky little face brightened. She calmly smiled and sweetly said: "Hi, mommy. Fanks (meaning thanks)." Since Patty was found and safe, my parents felt free to spend the rest of the trip laughing and talking about the incident. My mother decided this was a sign from God that my aunt and uncle should stop having children. I wasn't too sure why God would care one way or the other, but apparently my parents believed that when you begin to lose count, it was a good time to stop having kids. Perhaps to ensure she wasn't forgotten again, Patty rode the remainder of the trip with us. Dad liked to drive with his left hand and drape his right arm across the top of the front seat and Patty, for some reason, enjoyed resting her small, round face on that arm. Of course, this was a time that preceded bucket seats and seat belts. Dad sang to her and teased her, asking her to bite his arm. She adamantly refused and when asked why, she responded: "Too hairy!" For a thousand miles from Florida back home to St. Louis the same request received the same response and neither my father nor Patty ever got tired of the game. "Patty, bite Uncle Bobby's arm." Patty shaking her head: "No, too hairy!"

Quite the character, my uncle was a man who loved high drama, especially when it involved his children, so when we came up to the Stephen Foster guide sign, signaling we were now crossing into Florida, he stopped and made all his children get out of the van. Of course, my parents also pulled over and stopped, so Eddie, Linda, and I also had to get out of our car and join our cousins. Then like a band director, my uncle waved his arms in the air and began to sing, "Way down upon the Suwanee River . . ." insisting that we all sing along with him. The problem was that other than the first line or two, none of his kids knew the words so they stumbled along making up the lyrics as they went along. You could hear among the warble: "Far, far away/There's where my heart beats the clover/There's where the old fucks stay/All up and down the whole train station . . ." My mother didn't laugh out loud, but I did see tears of laughter stream from under her sunglasses and down her cheeks.

Singing to Saint Stephen Foster became a tradition, a recognition of our crusade to the tropics, but we still had a way to go before we reached paradise. We were not in heaven until Dad got his beach towel spread out on the sand just a few yards from the lapping waves of the ocean where he could sleep and bake himself until his nose turned a bright tawny gold. In the 1950s, heaven meant no Depression, no world war, an education, a good-paying job, a house, shoes, and driving a thousand miles to sit in the sand. For a man who as a child had eaten horse meat for dinner, milked a goat in the backyard to avoid a vitamin D deficiency, stuffed the soles of his shoes with cardboard to wear to school, and slept on a cot near the stove in the kitchen because the family's city flat was filled with relatives who needed a place to live, driving a new car a thousand miles in the mid-summer heat to take his family on vacation was a dream come true. Despite the years of deprivation and war, my parents were filled with dreams and in their photos, their faces were filled with happiness and excitement. I think the excitement came with hope, an expectation that the future held great promise for them and their children. I wonder today if any of us can imagine what that might truly feel like.