Rules of the Road Trip

Back in July, I took the ultimate vacation. I freed myself of a schedule, of commitments and of the constraints of time. My family and I went on an old-fashioned road trip. We went West young man.

1 car
6 people
7 states
10 days
3000 miles

I learned a lot along the way. I learned that Bonnie, of Bonnie & Clyde fame, never shot a gun at anyone except herself. I learned that friendly tourists are preyed upon by predators in Dallas's Dealey Plaza. I learned that my children's cultural references are not the same as mine: They looked at me with blank stares when I mentioned the grassy knoll, and said we had to go see what was left of the Branch Davidian compound (which we did), and sang Oklahoma as we crossed the Red River.

For ten days, I was Queen of the Road, taking my children to see America. With open minds and an open plan, we took advantage of the rare opportunities to see the world's largest urban bat colony in Austin, TX wagon ruts remaining from the Chisholm Trail crossing in Round Rock, TX, the Comal River, which is the shortest river in the world, in New Braunfels, TX, the house where Lee Harvey Oswald hid the gun in the days leading up to the assassination, the cemetery of circus performers in Hugo, OK, the Mississippi homes of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, and so many more places between all of those.

Everyone must take their children on an adventure like this. I can't wait until we can strike out again in another direction. There's nothing like that ribbon of highway passing beneath my vehicle as I let the road take me to where ever it might lead.

Tips for a Successful Road Trip:

1) Travel light - When packing to leave, remember that every morning you will load the car. Every night you will unload the car. Every day you will ride in the car with the possessions you've selected to accompany you. My oldest son insisted on bringing his guitar on our trip. For ten days, due to its delicate nature, we choreographed our packing around it. It went in and out of hotel rooms with us and made back-seaters whine when it slid forward and knocked their noggins. By the time we arrived in Hot Springs, Arkansas I wanted to use it to bust mailboxes as we passed them at 60 mph.

2) Take a road atlas - Yes GPS is the new modern technology for getting from point A to point B. But on a road trip you don't always know what point B is. A road trip is mostly about driving in a general direction, not to a specific location. An atlas reveals all the places you can go, if you get the notion. Also, there are still many remote, rural places where a GPS device does not pick up a signal.

3) Open a FaceBook account - Or an account on any social media platform. I used FaceBook from my Droid to track our trip. I checked in at all the places we visited. I wrote status updates about what we were doing and seeing there. I uploaded pictures. Now that we're home, the details of our trip are recorded and saved in my FaceBook history. And all the people who followed our trip on FaceBook tell me again and again how much fun they had "traveling" with us.

4) The key is free - Believe it or not, a long road trip can cost as much as staying in a nice resort. Expenditures include meals, gas, lodging, attraction admission fees and sundries. Therefore, stay in hotels that offer free breakfast and free Wi-fi. Take a cooler and fill it with lunch supplies for picnics. (A couple of our best stops were lunch on the Natchez Trace one afternoon and lunch on another day on the banks of the San Antonio River.) Buy snacks and drinks at grocery stores instead of convenience stores. And skip amusements like the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. So much of America is free (for example, The Alamo and Tupelo's Elvis museum) or low cost (for example, the National Military Park in Vicksburg, MS and the 8th Airforce Museum in Barksdale, LA).

5) Take an ipad or laptop - Every morning I used my hotel's free wi-fi, my road atlas, and my ipad to map a loose plan for the day. I figured out what cities and towns we would pass through or near and researched on the Internet to make a list of what we might want to see. This gave direction to our day without locking us into anything.

6) Be flexible - Austin was not on our agenda, but on our way to San Antonio I decided at the last minute that we simply had to stop there. That evening we witnessed, for free from the Congress Avenue Bridge, the world's largest urban bat colony take flight. Without flexibility, we would have missed this wondrous piece of nature. Create a loose plan, prioritize stops, cover ground, but be constantly willing to go off script. We came home with way more stories to tell, like the one about how we got swept into a march on the Mississippi State Capitol.

Distractions!

I know, my attention span is short. I have no grounds to fuss at my children for not listening to me all the way through a tirade.

Etsy has distracted me from what I should be doing, which is blogging. So, today, I'm making up for that and adding my Etsy store, Paper Pragmatist, to a post. Though other stuff shows up there from time to time, my store is primarily dedicated to reclaimed materials that can be upcycled into handmade artwork or crafts. And of course, true to form, I write both informative and entertaining product descriptions. The laughs are free.

A Winning Personality

Below is a story I wrote about my mother and published in my weekly newspaper column. After reading it in the paper, she scolded me: "People are going to think I have roaches in my house!"

The story is true. She did have a roach in her house. I told her that everyone who lives in Georgia has had a roach in the house. Anyone who pretends she hasn't can't be trusted.

Besides, her worry about what people will think is severely misplaced. She should really be concerned that now they know she's hording VHS tapes in her closet!

Shall We Waltz, Madame?

                As if it was not enough to slip and fall – THUNK! – hitting her head on a chair on the way down, the body was missing. When my mama skidded across the slick of Raid sprayed liberally the night before by her own hand, she noted to herself on the way to the floor that the greasy, hip-breaking film was the only evidence of the assault that occurred a brief eight hours earlier. An intruder had surprised her in the kitchen.

My daddy heard the thud and found my mother sprawled in a dazed heap, reviewing the events of the previous evening, paranoid that her vulnerability would draw out the vile creature. She clearly remembered startling and side-stepping and letting out a choked yelp of horror. It had been no figment of her imagination. She had snatched the can of poison from the cabinet beneath the sink and let loose with it before retreating at Olympic speed-walker pace.

                All of that said, there are worse things than a missing corpse. 

My mama, feeling generally defeated, hobbled to the bedroom to prepare for her day. There! At the foot of the bed! The intruder poised in an unsteady, unpredictable pause of zig-zagging, giving off the aura of brazen defiance coupled with triumph, and perhaps even an invitation to awkwardly waltz. Without hesitation she put her left foot on top of it with exacted pressure, pinning it down without squishing the life out of it, because she simply has no stomach for such ghastly scenes.

Maintaining her precision perfect stance, she waited for my father, who, ignorant of her predicament, busied himself piddling around the yard. All alone in this precarious circumstance with the unwelcome visitor, her posture faltering, she searched her options. If she let up, her tormenter would surely make a break for better ground. So she waited, confident my father would soon rescue her as he’d done when she wallowed unbecomingly in the residue of last night’s disturbance. He would valiantly collect the crawler and scuttle it into the toilet. Flush.

The strain in her legs neared unbearable, as did the idea that the day was getting away while she minded her prisoner. As time passed, it became painfully apparent that even though she put her foot down, the revolting specter beneath it still held all the power. From its pressed position, it rendered her helpless and immobile. Pivoting, carefully, she positioned herself to sit on the bed.

Determined to arise from this trauma unscathed, however, she surveyed her surroundings. An extensive collection of VHS tapes peeked out from the closet. As if steered by God to give testimony to the indefatigable argument that He has a purpose for all things, she rose and began a slow pivot to angle her right arm toward the closet while keeping her left foot securely atop the intruder. Sssstrrrrreeeeeeeetch, she reached and grabbed a short stack of tapes. Wiggling and waggling on her free foot with renewed hope, she returned to her seat on the bed.

Implementing the strategic second-stage attack on the adversary depended on elemental swiftness. Having put her foot down for so long, she now lifted it and . . . abruptly ceased the descent of the of VHS tapes to the back of the interloper. As if it was not enough to slip and fall – THUNK! – hitting her head on a chair, the body had cracked and oozed. The palmetto bug, to my mother’s horror, grotesquely reclined, victorious in a pool of its own spoils.

                When my mother puts her foot down on me for publicly romanticizing this morbid dance of death, I will not fare as well as the wretched roach. I do not possess its winning personality.

(Lucy Adams is the author of Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run. She lives in Thomson, GA. Email Lucy at lucybgoosey@aol.com and visit her web site, www.IfMama.com.)

Road Trip! Road Trip! Road Trip!

Today, I get my hair cut at 1:00.

Tomorrow, I embark on an epic journey with the four ankle biters. We're driving from Augusta, GA to Dallas, TX on the I-20 corridor. Good behavior in the car will earn a stop at Bass Pro Shop. Bad behavior will result in a tortuous tour of the antebellum Gorgas House in Tuscaloosa. Whether they're good or bad, we're definitely stopping off at Eudora Welty's childhood home in Jackson, MS and the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, LA. These two must-sees are on my bucket list, now that I know they exist.

If the kids aren't making me drive too fast and crazy by the time we reach Bessemer, AL, I'll treat them to a visit to the Hall of Culture to view Hitler's typewriter. Every good road trip should have an educational component.

The rules to my road trip are simple: If they fight in the backseat, we'll spend the entire vacation in art and history museums with me reading every word on every plaque out loud to them in public. My incredible tourist experience will be excruciating and punitive to them. If they play along with my little adventure and keep their eyes peeled for the next roadside oddity, we'll do the 16 minute driving tour of the National Military Park in Vicksburg, MS and take a side trip to see a big yellow rocking chair in someone's front yard in Ruston, LA.

This ill-conceived notion of good family time spent cooped-up in the car together may be the death of me. That's why I have a hair appointment today. It's important for a southern lady to look decent, even when, especially when, she's crashing and burning.

Guidelines for Naming a House

No plaque with an estate name has yet settled to the left of my front door just above the mailbox. For 100 years the bare brick has patiently waited for a pewter plate to light upon it and change the face of the house, to elevate it to the status shared by all properties known not by street numbers, but by descriptive words.

After thorough research, I've compiled a list of rules for naming a house. One guideline that is absent, but bears mentioning, is to never ask your close friends for brainstorming help, particularly if they've imbibed alcoholic beverages at the time of the asking. Everything they suggest will violate rule #1 below. If you plan to continue peaceably living in your neighborhood, do not violate rule #1 below.

1) One must act as a responsible citizen when naming his or her house/property. In other words, if the name is to be posted or used on mail, avoid tawdry, racy, suggestive titles, as well as expletives, even though you may not be able to talk about your old bag of nails without including them.



2) A house name makes a statement about the property or the occupants.


3) Make sure no other properties/homes in the local vicinity already have the name with which you want to christen your house.

4) House/property names can be historic, sentimental, descriptive, humorous or simple. Distinguishing features of the house, plants and/or animals within the bounds of the property, or the view from the property/house can be included in the name.

5) Choose a distinctive moniker, something memorable that sets the house apart from others nearby.

6) Remember, your house will be there far longer than you. Make the name about the house/property and not about the people.

Happy 4th of July!

Eat some watermelon.

Play some baseball.

Shoot some fireworks.

Remember the men who boldly signed their names to a treasonous document to create a country that would have to be won by selfless sacrifice.

Relativity is Not a Theory

Relativity is not a theory in July, when temperatures in Georgia start topping out over 100F.

Theorum: Folks don't have to be kin to point out the relatives.

Proof: If 10 unrelated friends stand on my front porch at 9 o'clock p.m. on a day that the high hit 112, then someone will inevitably have his weather app open and be calling out the current temperature.

If someone calls out the current temperature at 9 p.m. and that temperature is between 94 and 98 degrees, then everyone will remark on what a pleasant, cool evening we are having.

If everyone remarks on the chill of the 97 degree night air, then someone will say, "It's all relative."

We learn to appreciate what we've got, because complaining would only make us miserable. That's the Theory of Positivity.