This is the time of year when many families are experiencing that ritualistic beating of The Family Road Trip. Coolers are being packed, favorite blankets are being clutched and hip flasks are being concealed. And, as usual, tempers will flare before the tailpipe scrapes the pavement in front of the house.

So why do we do it?

Ever since Eisenhower improved our highways, American families have felt the call of the open road. But in 2009, why do we keep answering?

When I was a kid, the family summer road trip was basically a hostage situation. My father's overly ambitious scheduling would have us seeing the lower 48 in six and a half days. We would be in the car for 15 hours a day, using a milk jug as a chamber pot and eating white bread from the bag.

Like most fathers, he was obsessed with numbers. What kind of time are we making? How many states are we seeing? What kind of gas mileage are we getting?

The end result is that I don't actually remember SEEING anything. I just remember sitting in the backseat of an Oldsmobile with my feet up on a cooler, trying to stave off atrophy and paralysis, and fiercely protecting my 2 square feet of the world from two siblings.

My mother, God rest her still-living soul, was a classic over-packer who rarely approached efficiency. Dad would make her nervous with our strict departure time, so she would throw anything and everything into the trunk at the last minute, just to be sure.

I swear, opening the trunk after she had been back there was like setting off an IED. We once hit a bump in Tennessee that sent the contents of a double wide onto the highway. It was like cleaning out an attic as we picked our stuff off the road.

"Mom, did we really need to bring stilts?"

"Just watch for trucks, dear."

Our car was also hotter than Satan's crotch. My Dad refused to run the AC because of the "drag on the engine." Never mind the 2,000 pounds of landscaping stone my mother had packed – the AC was the thing that put a "drag on the engine." Our sedan was basically a traveling convection oven that baked Southern children and poor attitudes. Fights were common and violent. In fact, I remember one time, someone threw a stilt at me.

If others have similar experiences, why do Americans still engage in family road trips?

Because reason does not dictate our decision-making in such matters. Nostalgia does.

Hear Gordon on "The Ticket" KTCK-AM (1310) weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m. E-mail him at gordon@gordonkeith.com.

Print