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LONESOME HIGHWAYS  |
The Family That Drives
Together, Thrives Together
By JOYCE KIEFER
of TheColumnists.com
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... Joyce Kiefer, 2002 |
It’s amazing how hundreds of miles look exactly
alike along the two-lane blacktop of Nevada State Route 375–brown
earth covered with low, scratchy brush; hills scoured by windy
heat that hits like a blast furnace each time we step out of
the car. And no one on earth is there but the two of us. More
correctly, no one from Earth.
Of course, space aliens have been sighted in this vicinity, or
the State of Nevada wouldn’t post a big sign naming this
the Extraterrestrial Highway. And the citizens of the highway’s
solitary town–Rachel–wouldn’t plant a hand-made
sign with paintings of flying saucers and the information “Population:
58 Aliens ?” in front of the main place of business, the
Little A’le’Inn, a combination bar, motel and souvenir
shop.
Never mind that what glints and flashes away in the desert night
is probably experimental aircraft from nearby Area 51. One look
at the flying saucer that hangs in mid-hoist from a truck parked
in front of the Inn tells the real truth.
This is the reality a road-hypnotized tourist wants to enjoy
and I was loving it, despite the fact that my husband, Bill,
and I added 200 miles to our trip home from Las Vegas to drive
the E.T. Highway. It made this lonely drive the same kind of
fun as traveling Route 66, the way I remember it as a child.
For four generations road trips have been the heart of my family
heritage.
We have learned by experience that a good road trip takes you
away from home and shows you how others live and want to present
themselves, the geography that shapes their lives, the places
whose history saturates the atmosphere they breathe like a humid
day in summer.
It also provides a launch pad for the imagination: entering the
fantasy of roadside kitsch, wondering what people do for a living
in some God-forsaken place, trying to guess how a town got its
name. A good road trip has one ground rule: Never think of your
car as a shuttle that insulates you from your surroundings as
you fly along the highways at 80 miles per hour, racking up 400-500
miles per day. Instead, consider your vehicle as your home on
wheels. Inside is your family for better or worse; outside is
a different back yard every time you open the car door.
The wisdom of road trips became part of my education as soon
as cars went back in production after World War II. My Dad bought
a Pontiac sedan and set out plans for the three of us–himself,
my mother and me--to drive around the entire North American continent.
He had worked at a bank in San Francisco long enough to earn
a three-month sabbatical. We would split the time in two. First
we would drive to Acapulco, Mexico, to visit his family and childhood
friends. About a year later we would drive cross-country to the
East Coast and through the Province of Quebec. We would start
both trips with Route 66 in San Bernardino.
Both my parents made it clear that the drive was not something
to be endured until we reached some destination. They thought
that as a student in the upper grades of elementary school I
was old enough to become a good observer, to note how people
lived differently from how we did in the San Francisco Bay Area.
They wanted me to learn not to judge others by our yardstick
but to detach myself enough to accept people as I found them,
while at the same time I might wish them a better life or better
behavior. That was hard to do when I saw child beggars in Mexico
City or “Whites Only” signs posted by drinking fountains
in the South.
The first thing I learned was to be flexible with my sense of
distance. In some states the next town can be 100 miles away
while at home one town began where the other left off. It could
take several days to get through one state or several states
to get through one day. Staring at telephone poles as they marched
to a vanishing point on the horizon helped me place boundaries
on the wide open spaces. I drew pictures of these roadside companions.
At night, encouraged by Mom, I would sum up the sights of the
day in a small, blue spiral notebook. On the return from Mexico
I wrote:
“We left Laredo early in the morning and traveled through
all desert land. Occasionally we stopped to stretch. While dining
at Jimmie’s CafÈ in Marfa, Texas, in walked a man
with a wide brimmed hat, boots, and guess what?–a belt with
bullets, a holster and a gun. He wasn’t a policeman, either.”
I collected post cards of each place that fascinated me. Many
of these were of the auto courts (West) or tourist homes (East
and Canada) where we spent the night. Each lodging was distinct.
I don’t recall motel chains or even much use of the word
“motel.”
We would start to look for a place to stay around 6 p.m. Mom
would ask to see a room. She’d sniff for the smell of mold
or leaking gas and observe the general atmosphere. Following
her general rule of selection, she’d never take the first
place we saw. Dad would fume after two or three rejections. She
usually wanted a kitchenette so we could save money by cooking
our own dinner. Travel cuisine was simple. I’ll never forget
the fried bologna.
One prerequisite for lodging was a mechanical way to keep cool
at night. This meant a fan or a huge, dripping box attached to
a window. I didn’t know what air conditioning was until
we took to the road. Nightly fog does the job around San Francisco.
In the car we cooled off by dipping into a pot with a block of
melting ice.
After we got settled and ate dinner, we would walk around the
town or sit on metal garden chairs to visit with the other guests.
We enjoyed the regional accents. Dad would chat up the owners
to find out what it was like to live in whatever part of the
country we were in. Mom and I would savor the new experience
of balmy summer nights.
Were there scary moments that I can recall? Getting lost in Boston
traffic (“California, get out of the way," they yelled);
watching a bear cub in Yellowstone almost succeed in hoisting
himself through our car window; discovering our Travelers Cheques
had been stolen in New York City; knowing we were really stuck,
especially in Mexico, if something happened to Dad because Mom
refused to learn how to drive. And the joys? New York City, the
road show of curio shops and bizarre signs along Route 66, Quebec,
all those historic places we’d read about and finally saw,
scenery on a grand scale, driving down the mountains into the
lush area surrounding Acapulco, the Wall Drug Store in South
Dakota.
These trips were the lore of my childhood and a gift from my
parents that I was determined to pass on to my children.
I wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t like road trips.
Bill had taken two cross-country trips from his home in Western
Colorado to Indiana where a large part of his family lived. The
six Kiefers would sleep overnight in the cornfields. No motels
for them. My family, on the other hand, never camped.
We merged our experience and decided we’d take our three
children–Jane, Dave and Julie–to visit as many of the
national parks in the west as possible and camp there. We wanted
them to know what the world was like beyond our home in Silicon
Valley. Our outdoor cuisine was based on Spam. To save gas we
drove a small VW station wagon without air conditioning. A squirt
bottle and open windows worked just as well.
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debates the chances of running over an extraterrestrial. At right, the Kiefer children pose at the rim of the Grand Canyon. |
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The back seat was an interesting place. Since seat belts weren’t required, the kids invaded each other’s space. Julie sweetly took advantage as baby of the family by leaning over everyone else as she pretended to sleep. Jane would scrunch up and read and Dave would stare out the window. Once in a while someone would feel queasy and get to sit in the front. Being way smaller than Bill, I then got to squeeze in the back.
On our travels we learned survival. One night at Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington I took the kids to the campfire program so they could learn more about their surroundings. Bill stayed behind. He was tired of walking through the constant drizzle that kept us from actually seeing Mt. Rainier. A bear emerged from the dusk, attracted by the lingering smell of fried Spam. He snatched our ice chest and started to drag it off. Bill yelled and made lunging moves. Surprised by such aggression, the bear dropped it and lumbered away.
Early the next morning Jane was sitting in the corner of our tent, writing in the journal I encouraged her to keep, when a tremendous snarling and thumping started up outside right next to her. The rest of us woke up and froze into wide-eyed silence. Jane was petrified. Our bear had returned with a friend and they were quarreling over something. It was the food the backpacker next door hadn’t stored properly. Bill decided to let them fight it out.
One year we took a month off to drive to South Dakota. “You must have relatives there,” people replied when we told them where we were going. Why else would Californians head out there? To pass by Devil’s Tower in Wyoming because it looked so interesting in “Close Encounters.” To see Mt. Rushmore. To see Wall Drug Store.
Our most common trek was through the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah along Highway 50–called “the Loneliest Road in America” by people who have never seen Highway 375. This old Pony Express route was our shortcut to visit Bill’s family in Grand Junction, Colorado. He and I still drive that way. The absence of habitation along the way has made us all observant. One year a new coat of paint on the firehouse in Austin, Nevada, (pop. 400) caused everyone to sit up and take notice. A road just outside of town still draws me like a buried magnet. If it’s my turn to drive, I fight hard to resist taking that thin, gravel path with a sign that promises fossil ichthyosaurs 50 miles away. Some day . . .
Our eye for detail has also taught us that it is possible to see and not see at the same time. A few years ago we noticed something new at the city park in Delta, Utah. It was a rock with a plaque in memory of the Japanese internment camp located 15 miles away in Topaz. We never knew it existed and yet the people sent to that camp came from the San Francisco Peninsula–taken away right under my nose when I was a small child.
Of course, we filled our car with informative brochures wherever we went and seldom wasted time stopping for snacks or a leisurely lunch. We stayed away from amusement parks, tourist traps and freeways as much as possible. Too much to see of the real thing, whatever that was. Sometimes the children gritted their teeth.
But they carry on the spirit of the family tradition. When they were in Kansas for a wedding, Julie and her husband stopped to see the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City. Jane’s husband dislikes car travel but she and her girls will be crossing the desert by car with the rest of our family when we go to Grand Junction this summer. Dave and his family drive regularly around the west.
But there are differences. Our kids’ cars and ours are now air conditioned. Like Bill and me, they listen to tapes to keep awake and, yes, amused. Dave’s girls watch videos in the back seat.
When she was six, Dave’s daughter Allyson described one place they visited: “Daddy made us look at everything in the museum.”
I silently cheered.
Like the bear claw marks on our ice chest and the boxes of slides taken by Dad and Bill, we cherish the family legacy of travel as part of our collective story.
We’re still on the road and it continues to shape who we are.
© 2002 by Joyce Kiefer. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. The photos are from the Kiefer family archives. All rights reserved.
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JOURNALIST, CLICK HERE: DAVID KIEFER |
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