SUMMER JOURNEYS AND BURGERS
It’s funny (read strange), the things you remember out of all the things that happened in a certain time. What you are left with is a crazy mosaic when trying to recontruct it.
So it is when recalling the one summer we went on a long journey. Instead of our usual short jaunts around the surrounding New England countryside, we left Brockton in the family car, a 1950 something Dodge, and set our course south for Dover, Delaware, where my mom’s sister and her family lived. Our Dodge was second hand, with its best years behind it, though it was a few steps above its immediate predecessor – a Chevy which had as one of its unique features, rusted out holes in the footwells of the back seat through which we could watch the ground below as the vehicle passed over it. This old Dodge had a peculiarity all its own which I will go into later.
We took the Massachusetts turnpike over to New York, before hooking left and pointing the vehicle towards Delaware. Somewhere between that left hook and the city of New York we found ourselves tooling down a four lane highway that descended a long incline with tons of businesses on both sides. And one of those businesses was a McDonalds burger restaurant. And though my mom tells me that there were two McDonalds restaurants near us when we lived in Salem, MA – one of which we must have frequented – this is the first time I remember ever stopping at one for a meal. These weren’t anything like the burgers my mom made at home. Hers were always thick – fat really. These were thin and to be truthful – tasty, (and this was the era before the Big Mac). I was left to wonder why my Mom couldn’t make hers the same.
NEW YORK NEW YORK and getting out
We then passed on through the Big Apple with only one side trip. According to my dad’s dictates we couldn’t miss the chance to swing by the Radio City Music Hall, that mecca in his estimation from his usher days. We just passed by though, having no time to stop and gawk. Though we didn’t go unnoticed, for you see the peculiarity with this Dodge was that whenever you moved the wheel to make a turn left or right, the horn blared. It went off all by itself. An embarrassment to be sure in our home town, but now even more annoying to the jaded New Yorkers warned back on the sidewalk by our noisy passage.
We soon made it out of town and somehow over to Staten Island where we got caught in such a downpour that I thought we were going to wash down the hills and into the bay. No matter how furiously the windshield wipers swished they could not clear off the wall of water flowing over us.
Somehow we made it over to the mainland safely. And another turnpike later, we arrived safely at our relatives and enjoyed a nice visit (they were Southern Baptist, so it meant another brush with religion). There wouldn’t be another get together on the East Coast. My uncle was in the Air Force and they were soon transferred out to McChord Air Force base. We also returned to Washington state some time soon after that, when my father’s company, General Cinema, moved him and us out to open their first twin cinema in the Seattle area.