Essay About Family: The Family Road Trip

My Sister, Niece and Nephew have taken it upon themselves to drive across the country this summer (my brother-in-law has signed on to assorted portions of this summer sized junket).niece and baby gator That desire to put a car on the road and aim it along a cardinal point is a peculiar - I'd like to say uniquely American - trait but it isn't just an American taste. It's pan cultural, like recipes for bread or dough fried in oil; An insight of my brother-in-law Al - we live in a world united not by love of justice beauty or freedom, but by variations of the doughnut. If the motor tour is not uniquely American it does unite many different types of American. Trail-blazing drummers thrashing across the Midwest and west outward from the rail lines in model-T's full of brushes and cheap vacuums in search of the previous generations of wanderer/homesteader now in need of household accessories. The airstream contingent twentieth century sun gleaming off their polished aluminum westering hulls. Ernest Bourgnine at the wheel of the converted Greyhound Motor home, his Boswell of the interstate, Jeff Krulik, in close formation. Jack Keroac, I read that book - borrowed it from a friend who warned me it wasn't as good as it is talked about - I read it anyway. There was some talk about driving, some talk about benzedrine, a lot of talk about other stuff. I can't remember more than that. My Father, saturated with the mid century love of the day trip delivered our family to most places that could be gotten to in a five hour drive from Boston - and that didn't cost anything once you got there.

A cross country trip is a different animal altogether. It takes an singular spontaneity to put small children in a car and set out for America. The thread of spontaneity does not run through the cloth my sister and I were cut from. Mind , I have three sisters, the weave is a similar fabric for all, but different in small telling ways. Ann's and Mine is most near -notwithstanding the purple border on hers. To me this is a beautiful thing, a grand gesture, optimistic, and romantic. Granted A lot of people find reason to drive across the country. Some do it regularly, but in a country of 260 or so million many never do.