Just Another Family Car Trip

Traffic has slowed to a crawl.

Not a usual thing for a small, semi-hard-topped, two-lane, secondary road twisting through the foothills of Southern Alberta.

The Stringams join the end of an already long line of cars.

Dad peers ahead through the windshield. “Huh. Weird.” 

“What on earth could be causing this?” Mom spits on a Kleenex and starts to scrub the face of her youngest son, Blair, perched on the seat between them. “Careful with that chocolate bar, son, you’re getting it on your father.”

“Can’t see, yet. But the line will be straightening out soon and…ah!”

The line has done so and disclosed the culprit.

A house.

White clapboard.

Two storey.

Not something you see in the middle of the road every day.

Usually that’s reserved for bungalows…

“Well, look at that!” Dad exclaims.

Immediately, everyone—except Diane who is perched happily in the back window with a book—surges forward, poking their heads over the front seat.

Important note: It’s the ‘50s. Seatbelts and safety measures and car accidents haven’t been invented yet.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Jerry asks. “Is that a…Why is there a house in the middle of the road?”

Dad shrugs. “Obviously someone is moving it to a better spot.”

“A whole house?!”

“Yup.”

“How do they do that?” George has joined the conversation.

“They get a big giant to pick it up and set it on that trailer.”

“Mark!” Mom chides.

“Cool!” George says. “Could we get a giant to come and move our house?”

Jerry rolls his eyes. “Dad’s teasing you, Pimple Pants!”

“Don’t call me ‘Pimple Pants’!”

“Why not? Pimple Pants!”

George dives for Jerry and the two start to wrestle.

“Boys!” Mom reaches over the seat and tries to separate them physically.

Without effect.

“Hey!” Dad warns. “Don’t make me come back there!”

Silence.

Then, “George started it.”

“I did not!”

“Boys!!” When Dad roars like that, you know it’s past time to shut up.

Compliance.

The house creeps along. The Stringams creep along behind it, more cars joining them every minute or so like the growing tail of some large, unwieldy monster.

“Mom! I have to go potty!” Blair is standing on the front seat, holding himself. He starts doing the dance.

“I wonder if he knows we’re here.” Mom pulls her eyes away from the house 15 cars ahead and nods at her youngest son. She pulls the potty out from under her seat. “You’ll just have to go while we’re moving, dear. We don’t want to lose our place in line.”

Dad rolls his eyes. Right. Because the Stringams will be left behind as the rest of the line of traffic moves off at 10 MPH?

“Mom! I hate going when the car is moving!”

“Well, try not to miss.” She turns to Dad. “How long till the turn?” 

“At this rate? About three days.”

The family is heading to the relatives for dinner. Mom and Dad are beginning to hope that their food tastes ‘just as good the second day’.

Mom opens her car door and dumps out the potty, then wipes it out with the spit Kleenex, stuffs it back under her seat and drops the used tissue into her handy-dandy paper bag trash receptacle.

She glances around at her brood. Three of the older four, bored with watching the slowly moving house, have once again scattered across the wide back seat. Jerry and George are now arguing over a car magazine. Chris is reading. Diane is still in the back window—still with her nose in a book. Mom narrows her eyes. A notoriously poor traveler, Diane looks like she’s getting rather green around the gills.

Mom frowns. Might be a good time to distract Diane. She glances out the window, hoping to spot some horses, the only thing known to pull Diane from a book.

But the landscape remains depressingly horse-less.

Blair is now happily parked in his spot between Mom and Dad, looking at the pictures in one of his brothers’ comic books.

Baby, Anita, is perched on Mom’s knees, nose against the window and half-filled bottle of cream soda in her lap.

“Mom! I wanna drink!” George has given up trying to wrench the magazine from his older brother and is now sitting with his arms crossed on the back of the front seat.

“Okay. I just get one here…” Mom mimes taking a glass and turning on a tap. “There you go!”

“Mom! A real drink! Of Pop!”

Dad glances back at his second son. “There’ll be plenty of pop in the well when we get there!” 

“You can have some of mine!” Anita offers her bottle.

George looks at the pale-pink liquid that started out a brilliant red and makes a face. “That’s okay. I can wait.”

“Mom? I’m car sick!” Diane has emerged from the back window and her book on her own.

Not a good sign.

Again the potty comes into play. Diane now sits with it in her lap.

“How much further?” Chris has come up for air.

“A year or two,” Dad again leans forward and peers through the front windshield.

“I’ll tell a story!” Mom volunteers. She proceeds to drag out her Reader’s Digest and regale the family with a humorous gem about being raised in the ghettos of New York.

The story winds down and she closes the magazine.

George sighs. “I’m bored.”

Mom blinks. That was fast. Then her face lights up. “Let’s play a game! How about 20 questions?”

Jerry drops his magazine to the floor. “Okay! I’ve got it!”

“Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

“Animal.”

“Is it dead?”

“Maybe.”

“Hey! You can’t have maybes! Only ‘yes’ or ‘no’!”

The game is played to its usual conclusion.

Elvis.

And another round starts.

Blair and Anita have fallen asleep.

Mom rescues the offensive cream soda bottle just before it tips over. She again opens her car door and discretely empties it out onto the road.

Dad imagines, for a moment what it must be like to follow the Stringam’s car at 10 MPH. Heads bobbing about. Car door opening periodically to expel various fluids. “Oh, look!” He grins and points. “The house is pulling over!”

Mom laughs. “Now that’s not something you hear often!”

Mom always manages to keep her sense of humour. It’s a gift.

Slowly, the line of cars begins to pull out around the house like a stream finding its way around a large, clapboard stone.

Dad pulls up beside the house driver and gestures to Mom, who rolls down her window. “Why don’t you get a travel trailer, like everyone else?” he shouts with a grin. 

“I’m so sorry!” the driver shouts back. “Were you following me long?”

About four years, three months, twenty-one days, and thirteen hours, Dad thinks. “Oh, no. Not long!” 

They wave to each other and the Stringam car moves off.

Just another family car trip.