We preceeded a trip to Colorado in 1979 with a visit to some friends in Wyoming. That long and winding trip took us north from Kansas City on I-29, cutting over to I-80 through the heart of Nebraska.
We stopped midway through the 10-hour run for a brown-bag lunch at a rest area just west of Lincoln.
We met up with our friends at Little America, a truck stop and resort in Cheyenne.
At that time, it was a Best Western, and it had a penguin on the sign, just like the version in Flagstaff (a reference to the Little America station in Antarctica). And that's about all I remember of Cheyenne, except for hanging out with our friends and their kids and their cat. We snooped around Cheyenne a little looking for western wear before scooting onto Colorado. I guess the Royal Father didn't think there was much to see, either, which would explain why we don't have any videotape archive of Cheyenne -- despite him falling in love with that hulking RCA camera and Quasar VTR.
If you're going to do an all-out Disney World or Disneyland vacation, I have three pieces of advice:
1) Don't do more than three consecutive days
2) Avoid the Fourth of July and the surrounding dates
3) Eat breakfast, for cryin' out loud
Our family failed to do all three of these in 1986, doing a marathon stretch in Florida where we needed a vacation from our vacation. The Royal Father insisted we get to the gates right at the opening. That's a good strategy, but not on an empty stomach. You can swing that as an adult, but as a 14-year-old, it stinks. A boy's gotta eat. So does his younger brother. And have we told you the food inside Disney is crazy expensive?
Dad wasn't fazed. We took on Epcot our first day, starting off with the Journey into Imagination, followed by the 3-D movie next door before moving onto the World Showcase in the back lot. It's around the world in a day: Mexico, Italy, England, Morocco, Canada, Norway, Japan, and Colonial America. Much to see, much to buy, much to eat (if you can afford it), and much music to listen to. We ended up at the World Showcase theater that night before the fireworks show watching a Disney orchestra in a performance that crossed "Evening At Pops" with "Solid Gold."
On day two, we took in those parts of Epcot we couldn't cover in Day One before moving on to the Magic Kingdom and more rides: Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (now defunct), Pirates Of The Caribbean (before Jack Sparrow), the famous Jungle Cruise (with ageless corny jokes), Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, the spinning teacups... and not, NOT, NOT It's A Small World. That theme music burns itself into the brain and cannot be expunged quickly enough.
We had to compete with a Venezuelan youth tour group for space in the lines. You could recognize them by their orange shirts. Once one person ran for a ride, the others followed like a school of fish. The fast-pass system hadn't been invented yet. You had to wait. Strollers and wheelchairs dotted the landscape, even among those who didn't need them. We spotted a few people jumping out of a wheelchair and swapping with the person who was doing the pushing. Perhaps it was a ruse to get priority line position.
Day three finished up those rides in the Kingdom, on the Fourth of July, and in a marathon stretch of time and endurance, the Royal Father insisted we stay through not one but two performances of the Main Street Electrical Parade. The loop of "electro-syntho-magnetic sound" etched into my consciousness. I suspect Dad wanted more videotape time, having just bought a new camera and portable VHS Hi-Fi VTR a couple of months earlier.
(Just a side thought -- doesn't the music remind you of the 1970's theme to "The Joker's Wild?")
He had the toys. I had the runs -- yes, the D-word. It's that Disney food, that expensive and probably greasier than we realize food combined with the lack of breakfast and the constant motion that was wrecking my system. I had to wait past midnight, when we finally got back to our motel room, to reset my system.
The Queen Mother now agrees we should've done it differently. We should've done a couple of days at Disney and taken a break from the people and bustle and gone to the beach or NASA instead of the three-day stretch at the happiest place on earth.
Fortunately, we would spend the next few days in less crowded conditions, venturing up the east coast, pausing at various points in the Carolinas before finally making it to what would be my future adopted emotional home of Williamsburg, Virginia.
Remember traveler's cheques? Remember how Karl Malden told us, "Don't leave home without them?"
Back in the 1980's, I remember the ritual. Mom or Dad would go to the bank or the AAA office and buy hundreds of dollars worth. I remember a bank employee opening up a box with them stacked up and parceling them out in front of us. We never dealt with thieves, and we never had to ask for a refund, but we did have to go through another ritual -- stopping somewhere simply to cash one of those cheques. Dad handled it while we would wait in the car. Or, we could rely on Master Charge/MasterCard, which would get us through the sit-down restaurants and hotels, but not the fast-food joints. And we still needed walking-around money for the petty expenses here and there.
You might think they would still have a place in people's hearts given fear of credit-card ripoffs and identity theft while abroad. But even back when those checks were en vogue, they were still a pain in the rear. You had to get the cash out, buy the cheques, record the serial numbers, sign the checks once and then again when you used them and get refunds on the ones you didn't spend. American Express touts them as a form of vacation budget control. But you can do the same with a prepaid, reloadable debit card. Visa makes a TravelMoney card that combines the protections of traveler's cheques with the convenience of a credit card. If only we'd had that back in the 1980's.
Either way, they sure beat personal checks, which come with a whole new set of problems.
I didn't fall in love with Colonial Williamsburg at first sight. It took 18 some years for that to happen, when I ventured back just on the whim of retreading a family vacation from the past. I had done it with Walt Disney World the year before. Why not Williamsburg?
Looking back on it, I still don't understand what drew me back except for sheer curiosity. I had no taste for living history. My college freshman history course became a stench in my nostrils with too much reading. I had other studies that needed to share the workload. Looking back further, Boston hadn't amped up any desires either. Nothing at Bunker Hill, Lexington or Concord reached in to grab my 8-year-old heart. I could say the same for Charleston and St. Augustine, Florida.
So where did the history bug bite? It wasn't on vacation. It happened in a long series of episodes and thought processes I trace back to 9/11, when all of us, in some form or another, questioned what it was to be Americans. I dressed in Continental Army garb that year -- in this case, a poor imitation.
That costumey Revolutionary War get-up from 2001.
I was on my way, but not to any trip in the re-enacting past, not until that trip to Williamsburg in 2004. My journal reveals my thought process, especially on that first evening in April, when it seemed nobody was around, and the hotel was half-empty.
In the Governor's Palace garden at Williamsburg, 2004
I came into my room. The room is clean, it’s okay, it’s nice. But I gotta tell you, I was feeling a little bummed out, because I thought, well, you know, nobody’s coming here. Did I pick a bad time to come? I got my tickets, and I thought, well, I’m not gonna sit around here all night. This was like 7:00 at night, so I decided to go into the marketplace here in Williamsburg, and then I ran into the crowds and the historic shops, historic houses and I remembered why I came. And it was a good feeling. My enthusiasm was back up again. I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do. There were people roaming around in tricorn hats and breeches, and the interpreters were out there doing their thing, leading the candlelight tours. I went down the street, shot video and picked up some tickets for tomorrow night -- a couple of things I’m going to do.
And later on that night, after I’d walked around the place and shot some video as the sun set, I decided I was in the mood for a little bit of fun so I went to Josiah Chowning’s Tavern, a place I’d heard about the last time I was here, but we never went into, a colonial tavern. And I gotta tell you, it was fun! I mean, it was really neat.
Inside Chowning's, 2004, one mug of many.
I got half drunk that night at Chowning's on Williamsburg Ale. I'm glad I walked. I'm glad I made it back to the hotel in one piece. But once my head was clear, I began to take in the other sights and atmosphere, especially in the night-time programs:
Wow, I just came back from a wonderful experience on one of Colonial Williamsburg’s nighttime programs. It’s called “Cry Witch,” which is a reenactment, so to speak, of a trial we think took place in 1706 with a Virginia woman accused of witchcraft, where it’s done in the Capitol building and the audience portrays the jury, who ultimately vote to decide this woman’s guilt or innocence. And they also get to ask questions during the trial, too. A few brave souls addressed the court, those who were brave enough, and I was not one of them, asked a few questions of the governor -- er, not the governor, but his Excellency.
I guess you could call it interactive drama at its best: very, very compelling, very watchable production. I was seated in the front row, and let me tell you, it felt real. Very, very real. I was on the edge of my seat, literally. I mean, the actors were that close and 200 some years away from me. Welcome to the past. I just felt it tonight. That was spooky, that was scary and that was unforgettable.
So the process continues... and when it is complete, on the evening on my final day....
Would I do it again? Maybe in about five or six years. Give it some time, give it some space, maybe not for four days, but I’ll definitely be back one of these days. Do it again, somehow, somewhere, someday.
I would be back in 2008, with friends, wearing a proper Continental Army uniform or proper fancy 18th Century Ball attire. And that was just the start of it.
Drive from Kansas City to Denver, and you'd better have a generous supply of road music. The iPod needs to be loaded up, the tapes need to be at arms reach, or the CD's ready for insertion. Five hours is a long time to be staring at the land of wheat with no grooveable music on the radio -- if you can get anything on the radio.
I didn't feel the full effect of that reality given the hazy memories of my first couple of trips into the west. It hit full force though in that 1987 trip, where the dearth of civilization was compounded by the Royal Father's decision to split off westbound I-70 in Oakley, Kansas and take a secondary highway into Colorado Springs.
"There's not a lot of services," I remember the AAA agent telling us when she was putting together the TripTik, that paper instrument that helped get you where you were going before GPS devices. It didn't matter to Dad.
As you would expect, the barrenly spacious roads lay scarred with cracks and potholes. They apparently were so sparsely traveled birds sat on the pavement, not flying away as we approached unless we honked the horn. Ahead of us along the horizon, the Rocky Mountains materialized as we slowly closed in on them. The car held up, the gas sufficed, and we were in Colorado Springs without the need for emergency aid. On the way back, we took I-70 all the way in from Denver, giving us better driving conditions and no bird hazards.
Western Kansas is one of those places you fear a breakdown in the depths of your soul. Included on the list are most of south central and western Nebraska, western Texas, I-10 in California east of Indio to the outskirts of Phoenix, and parts of northeastern Missouri. The list isn't longer only because those other barren lands are places I have not personally motored through or been in the back of a car to witness.
During the great Texas to Tucson move of 1999, the cassette player in my battered Chevy Celebrity barely worked. I relied on the radio, which spun in an endless seek loop for a large stretch between Kerrville and El Paso. I got lucky and hit a station from Midland along the way, but I felt I was in a space capsule returning to Earth from a moonshot during the radio-blackout phase. I counted at least two cars broken down on the side of the road. We gotta get through this, I thought. Let's just gun and run.
My anxieties eased up once I hit Van Horn, Texas for a fuel stop. By then I felt well enough to eat from a bag of snacks I'd shoved to one side by the stack of dirty laundry in the front seat.
The back-and-forth between Tucson and Los Angeles requires similar preparations. Radio silence is prominent from outside of Phoenix to outside of Quartzite and again from west of Blythe, California to the Indio area. I can't even use streaming apps on my smartphone because data isn't available along these stretches. No, I'm not paying for satellite radio. Time to hit the phone's music stash.
It's a beautiful place to explore during the day, but Cape Cod is no place to lose yourself at night. I don't know how it happened, but we seemed to be driving in circles during one New England getaway in 1980, unable to pierce the darkness and return to the Boston area and make it back to my aunt's house. Brother and Michael didn't seem to know we were lost, at least not at first. I gather we just thought it look a long time to get where we were going.
So as the Royal Father and Queen Mother worked on the navigation, "Cape Cod Nights" played on the radio, along with several cute commercials for a boat supply store and a clock shop (to the Percy Faith Orchestra's rendition of "Syncopated Clock"). We finally busted out of the loop and made it back to my auntie's sometime around 11pm.
As an adult, you would think your servant would have soaked up the knowledge of what not to do. I didn't. Not when the street system enabled me.
McAllen, Texas and Tucson, Arizona share a common thread: a straightforward grid of north-south, east-west streets bisected by a freeway, with visible central landmarks. For McAllen, it was the two skyscrapers downtown. For Tucson, it's the mountains, especially if I can see the TV transmitters on top. That guidance also works for Phoenix, where I can roughly triangulate my position if I can see the cluster of blinking lights on top of South Mountain.
Back east, the principle doesn't work as well. I know it doesn't work in Williamsburg. With tree-lined streets and highways curving about, triangulating anything proves tougher. On my last trip, I went in what I called "the back way," plunging myself into the darkness of the Colonial Parkway before emerging into the semi-lit driveway of the Visitors' Center.
"Christopher," you say, "there is such a thing as Google Maps."
Yes there is, and I used it during the drive in from Richmond. But the app can be fussy on my phone -- and distracting. I would like to make it onto the proper street alive. And I don't especially care for its computerized voice acting as a backseat driver. I look it when I can and leave the rest to my imperfect internal sense of navigation, which is how we did it before the app came along.
One of the rituals of going to Colorado is getting an old-time photo taken somewhere. Unlike nowadays, where the studios can often throw something over the front of you, getting dressed up required a lot of fuss and some suspension of disbelief.
Here's one from Estes Park, circa 1976:
This was supposed to be a Civil War portrait, but I find a few quirks. Note that your wee servant on the right looks more like Little Lord Fauntleroy than a soldier's son. The Royal Father insists he was a Confederate, but that's an awfully dark shade of grey. I could easily claim he was a Federal. The Queen Mother already looks like she's in mourning for him. Brother Michael -- on her lap -- knows nothing of this spectacle, including the fact that he's kinda-sorta wearing a dress. That's period correct for wee lads, by the way. Mom's hoopskirt covers my legs, but I wonder if I'm wearing shorts... or knee breeches.
Let's move ahead a couple of decades on the timeline and about four years in real life:
I seem to recall Dad calling this look, "The Banker." That hat makes him look more like Willy Wonka, in my opinion. The Queen Mother looks great with the parasol and hat. I don't know if I like my outfit. I can't tell about Michael. I just remember the first time we tried this sitting, Michael was fussy and the photographer could find the right size shoes for your servant. Not that it would've mattered a whole lot, as you still can't see my feet.
Now, 1883 via 1988. Here's my favorite of all of them. The Queen Mother was feeling ill this day, so she was not a part of this photo. (Or she probably didn't want to get into another hoopskirt or bustle dress.) I thought that duster looked great on me. The Royal Father is locked and loaded. The photo is a little dirty, so it's hard to see, but with a shotgun in his hand, Michael looks like he just shot somebody. Priceless.
I wish I could tell you my thoughts from the first time I saw the Rocky Mountains. I would love to tell you about going down a slope for the first time on tiny little skis. If only I could describe my parents taking on the mountain. Did they use the bunny slope, or did they attempt something more challenging?
I can't remember any of those things. Back in the winter of 1975, my 3-year-old brain was still developing and highly selective with what it put in long-term storage, even surrounded by the natural beauty and inherent excitement of a ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado. So here's what I can remember:
I remember looking out at the white slopes from the darkened steps of our lodge room.
I remember eating oatmeal in that room, at night, presumably after a day out in the cold.
I remember watching Password on a tiny black and white TV in the room.
I remember having a blanket over my lap on the trip home, rolling through Kansas and noticing a large blinking TV tower in the distance -- which I am pretty sure was in Goodland.
Things get a hair more memorable in another trip to Colorado about a year or so later. I do remember more of the mountains, more of Estes Park, more its quaint downtown. But I also remember hearing Elton John And Kiki Dee's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" playing on the radio.
My Queen Mother is consistently amazed at how many hotels I can remember we've stayed at, which means I can tell you about that miserable Holiday Inn in Goodland which had flies, or the one on the way to Albuquerque where I just had to go swimming. I remember that time in Springfield, Missouri where the power went out at the Howard Johnson's and we were in the dark for about an hour. Even that giant sign outside the back door with the flashing-light arrow didn't work. And I've previously told you about snatching the stationery.
How do we get our brains to remember all the right things and forget all the wrong ones? When we figure it out, let's first tell our youth so they can start retaining better information.
Your wee servant loved TV and technology, especially personal computers. So you can imagine I had little desire to go along for the ride with the Queen Mother and Duchess Aunt as they shopped for antiques across several summers. I don't think Brother Michael cared for it either. But we're the kids, and they're the adults, and to heck what we thought about it.
They went in and out of odd shops all over New England, with us plodding along in their wake inside the dimly dusty interiors filled with old furniture and mystery wood. Sometimes we got to just sit in the car, waiting and waiting while they took an eternity. And then they wanted to check out another place.
"MOM!"
"Okay, we won't..."
I couldn't understand the fascination with it. I hadn't hit my history groove yet. In my young mind, it was stuff that wouldn't survive the trip back to Kansas City. Why did Mom need so many darn jugs and crocks? But that didn't stop us from going to Brimfield.
It's Mecca in Massachusetts for antiquers, treasure hunters and junk hustlers -- a lineup of shops flea markets, although we focused on just one: J&J's. This gigantic outdoor swap meet wasn't an antidote, but at least the exhibitors varied. I got to thumb my way through old movie posters. I also got some kind of a shock I never understood -- and still don't to this day.
I remember I had touched a spinning wheel when this sudden jolt hit my right arm. The pain worked its way all the way in a wave up to my shoulder before vanishing. I stood baffled, thinking it was maybe an insect sting or electricity. I didn't see any wires or hornets. My arm was all right, and so life went on.
The Royal Father found a classic toy, buying a Mr. Machine wind-up robot.
He didn't get the version you see here; he got the 1980's re-issue, made harmless to children in a new world of concern about kids and choking hazards. He also picked up a couple of more robots here and there in those odd shops. Now if one of those places had a vintage Altair to spare, maybe I would've been hooked.
Nowadays, I'm making regular "junk runs" as I call them, mainly in search of vintage clothing or vintage tech that can be bought dirt cheap, fixed, improved or repurposed -- but crocks are still off the list.
As I explained earlier, we barely had enough room for ourselves and our luggage on vacation, so traveling with a dog was definitely out of the question. Hotels weren't as pet-friendly then as they are now, so Cinnamon and Toby ended up with a dog-sitter (usually the Royal Grandparents) or at the kennel. But when it comes time to move, you have to move the dog with you.
With Cinnamon, we made room in the back of the Toyota Camry and hoped she would behave. She did, although she panted a lot. Of course, with a dog you have to make more rest stops, which include food and water breaks. We developed a workable system in the summer of 1989, when we were shuttling between Kansas City and St. Louis in the process of moving. Cinnamon would eventually lay down on her L.L. Bean dog bed, but that puppy could get hungry.
We realized that in August of 1989, after we had just moved into an apartment in St. Louis while we waited for the builders to finish our new house. Mom, Michael and I needed to go back to Kansas City to continue the process, and Cinnamon was along for the ride. She was getting to eat Purina Dog Chow -- much more tolerable for her than that Science Diet garbage -- but she had a taste for something else during the trip. Somehow, she pawed her way into a loaf of bread we had just picked up in St. Louis, got it open, and gobbled it up without anybody knowing. When the Queen Mother reached in the trunk for the bag, she noticed an empty bread wrapper. That dog had devoured every crumb.
Mom took it in surprising stride. "It's okay," she said, amazed more than anything else as she explained it to Grandma. "I'll just go to the Hy-Vee." White supermarket bread is cheap.
With Toby, we got a little more adventurous. During the big move west in 2000, he got to munch on In-N-Out burgers. When we all went there, we usually picked up an extra cheeseburger, which the Queen Mother would break up and feed to him. I don't know if it was good for him, but dogs will eat a lot of things that aren't good for them. Thankfully, they never tried to chew up the car, or make a few errant bathroom breaks.
I consider it one of the biggest blessings of my life that I didn't have to share a bed with my younger brother. You probably think I'm speaking to our family's financial situation, but I'm speaking about the situation I found myself in for about two weeks every summer, where long days met restless nights because the person on the other side of the bed has issues.
Let's start with the geometry issues. Ideally, in a full-size bed, each person should have 50 percent of the available surface area. I was lucky to wind up with 25 percent. That rule should also apply to the blankets, but that percentage dropped even further: 10 percent. Brother Michael just couldn't stay in his zone. He tossed. He turned. He punched. He kicked -- all while sleeping. I'm still trying to fall asleep, but not only can I not find my space, I can't get Herb Alpert's "Behind The Rain" out of my head after the Royal Father has played it on the car's tape deck.
Hotel beds worked against us. I've told you before how their pillows are probably filled with substandard material. We had moderate success with a Holiday Inn in Terre Haute, Indiana on that first leg to the northeast.
But next summer, just across the street, at the Best Western that's now a Hampton Inn, Michael had a rough night.
He didn't just toss and turn. He whimpered and moaned. His nightmares were my load. The Queen Mother had to keep waking him up. Brother Michael's explanation for it all: "I dreamed you (my parents) were giving me over to this people." Whoever that was. Whatever that was.
Mother, for the record, had bad dreams as well: she dreamt a tornado was closing in on us. I could explain that one: "It must have been that severe weather PSA we were watching on television just before we went to bed."
The next day found us at McDonald's for breakfast, and Michael's appetite wasn't matching up with the portion sizes. Neither was mine, really. I always thought McDonald's served more hotcakes than I could handle in the morning.
Somewhere on the road, through the rest of Indiana and part of Ohio, your wee servant gathers he caught up on his sleep, with 100 percent of the 50 percent of the backseat and the white noise of the road and cruise-controlled engine to lull me off.
Our family does not go out on the road without bringing back goodies. That goes for the kids as well as the adults. The Royal Grandmas and Grandpas were all too willing to drop a modest amount coin on the grandkids -- not ever more than $50 as I recall -- for souvenirs.
What did I buy? Things that would rarely identify your servant with where he's been -- although I did splurge for some Canadian playing cards that one time in Niagara Falls.
But while I was in colourful New England, I also had to have the latest card game from the makers of Uno.
The Queen Mother or Royal Father would also occasionally kick in something for your wee servant for parity if they were buying something for my brother. He could have an expensive eye. We saw it on a visit to The Bear's Pause in Meredith, New Hampshire (sadly, now defunct). Brother Michael had his heart set on a large astronaut teddy bear dubbed "Cub Canaveral," cute and complete in a spacesuit. He ended up getting it, but legend says not without some pining. So the parents had to buy a few little things for the other son to even things out. Exactly what, I forget.
Forgettable junk made up a lot of what I picked up on the road. How do I know? Because I can't remember it, save for a few items:
A mini bicycle siren and bullhorn
"Gypsy Witch" playing cards -- they were supposed to be used for fortune telling, but after a few times through the deck, they just creeped me out
A few books, including "The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual"
Miscellaneous t-shirts, none of which had the words "all I got was this lousy shirt"
The Queen Mother takes the crown for the most provocative t-shirt ever. On our first trip to New England, she picked up a shirt with a frazzled fish that said, "I got scrod on Plum Island."
We had a lot of leeway in our trinkets, but the don't-spend-it-all-in-one-place rule applied. So did the don't-spend-it-too-soon rule. Brother Michael wanted a bandana one summer. We had to talk him out of it because he wanted it from a gas station outside of St. Louis. Wait 'till we get there...
You don't drive thousands of miles in a lemonmobile. My family has been lucky to have decent reliable transportation that has held up through thousands of miles. Clark Griswald was not as fortunate:
We did have a couple of road hazards. One happened in Colorado, in approximately 1979. While cruising through the Rocky Mountains, the Oldsmobile's red "GEN" light popped on. We could still drive, but what exactly was going on with the generator? Or off? To our relief, that tank of a car held up to the nearest capable gas station, where a mechanic discovered a broken generator belt to be replaced pronto. We had just had the car inspected before this journey.
My Queen Mother explained it to a relative thus: "Dave says he's going to the Oldsmobile dealer and lash that belt in their face."
A bigger problem emerged about a decade later near Estes Park, Colorado, where a tire on the Nissan station wagon suddenly mangled itself. We heard and felt something out of the ordinary, but it took a passing driver on a mountain street to enlighten us:
"Hey, do you know your tire is shredded?"
It's not clear how it happened, or why it happened so spectacularly to just one tire. It had to have been something in the rocky Rocky Mountain road. But now, Dad had to deal with it, taking time out of the leisure trip to get the car back to something resembling normal.
To understand the level of frustration, you have to understand that simply buying one new tire was not an option. As I recall it, the Royal Father wanted four -- of a certain standard, preferably from Pirelli. In those days, you had to get out the yellow pages and dial your way around, which is what we did after getting the spare on and getting to our motel room.
While he was supervising the job of getting the wagon re-tired, the rest of us retired to Lake Estes... out on a boat in the middle of the water with GOD's beauty around us.
As a wee child, I didn't care for McDonald's. First, your servant was a notoriously finicky eater (and still is to some extent). That finickiness extended into vacation, where the Queen Mother and Royal Father would usually stop someplace where I could get a peanut butter sandwich.
What were those places? The only ones I can remember with absolute clarity were a Howard Johnson's in Columbia, Missouri (now leveled) and Nikki's in Estes Park, Colorado.
I can tell you exactly when I got hooked on the Golden Arches: the Summer of 1980, at the McDonald's off of Cave Springs Road in St. Charles, Missouri.
We were into the first leg of what would become a regular summer journey into New England to visit my Aunt Shirley, and we were stopping for dinner. I'm not sure how my tastes changed, or whether it was just the right meal at the right time, but I discovered Happy Meals in the brightly-colored box.
That summer vacation, we must've eaten at more McDonald's in two weeks than I had ever eaten at in the past 9 years. What was a relief to my parents at first progressively soured. It wasn't just the food; it was the necessity of having to have cash on hand, because Mickey D's at that time didn't take credit cards. Thus successive summers became a partial exercise in weaning your young servant off Ronald's Place. We managed to have sit-down dinners at Perkins, Dutch Pantry, Denny's and a few moderately classier places on the road which would take MasterCard.
Until then, my folks not only had to tolerate my newfound diet, they also had to tolerate me keeping the Happy Meal boxes -- every one of them. So for vacation souvenirs in 1980, I had several empty, fry-oil anointed cardboard shells. What was I planning to do with them at home? Beats me. In my youth and naivety, I thought they might make good carrying cases for something, whatever that something was. I never found the use, even though the boxes still made their way home with me, after the Royal Father insisted they could be folded down and packed into the trunk with the rest of the luggage without ruining any of them.
Several years later, the Royal Father would end up managing for McDonald's. I would move up to Big Macs, two at a time... but without saving the box.
Whether you follow Mom's advice or not, you're going to need a clean restroom somewhere down the road. In those early years of family vacations, rest areas were out of the question. Once we grew older and could fend for ourselves one level beyond crossing the street, they came back into play. However, parents, you need to tell your offspring not to read rest area restroom walls unless you also want to turn yourself into a walking Urban Dictionary. Also, I have yet to see a restroom hot-air dryer that hasn't been marked up with the words "Wipe hands on pants." Gas stations aren't much better, depending on the location.
Fortunately, Stuckey's has been there to relieve both your system and your sense of hygiene.
That roadside haven for pecan logs also made its reputation on clean restrooms. I wouldn't be able to vouch for that personally because your servant's family didn't stop there save for a couple of forgettable times. I do remember the billboards, though, touting "CLEAN RESTROOMS."
I am blessed to have parents who realize the potty break is a fact of life, not an inconvenience endangering some land speed record. For those families who don't, I am amazed to find devices for sale that let you relieve yourself while driving. I feel for the families who have unconscionably forced these upon their children as part of a non-stop journey.
When you're travelling with the dog, the rest area is an unavoidable detour. In the many journeys Clan Francis made between Kansas City and St. Louis with Cinnamon or Toby in the car, we had a couple of designated rest stops on I-70. One stands out as clear as day because it was located next to Rocket RV (now Spacecraft Manufacturing) near Concordia, Missouri.
We get out, let the pup sniff around on a leash and get down to business. If we're fortunate, it happens quickly, and we don't have to wait to do our end or get into some tangle with a nearby cat. The place is reasonably clean, which is good, because Stuckey's is more than 100 miles away -- and closed.
One thousand miles on the road will give you plenty of scenery to look at and a lot of time to listen to music -- your parents' music.
In the late 1970's and the early 1980's, before walkmans became cheap and affordable to children with little allowance, my brother and I didn't control the radio. While the Queen Mother and Royal Father were merciful upon us by often tuning to whatever CHR (Current Hit Radio) station they could find -- including Casey Kasem's American Top 40 if we were on the road Sunday morning -- we also had to endure their music library. It included the Beatles, but it also included:
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops
Peter Paul And Mary (If I had a hammer, I would hammer in the morning, I would hammer in the evening, until that cassette was destroyed)
Herb Alpert's Rise (which isn't actually a bad album, but it felt too much like disco at the time, and disco was dead)
John Denver (I'm not a country boy)
The Association (which your servant had to dub onto tape from the original LP)
Miscellaneous classical pieces, including one so dreary it should've been labeled "Music To Die For"
My response to this as a kid: barf, barf, barf.
The Royal Father bought a Walkman in the early 80's, and when he upgraded to a new model, it got passed down to my brother and I. We also borrowed or inherited other headphone radios Dad bought, and by the mid 1980's, we could tune into whatever we wanted or stick in our own tapes if the car's sound system was in barf mode.
Dad also had a small black-and-white TV we wedged between the front seats, giving us another option until we fought too much over what to watch. The TV went into the trunk. A few years later, the handheld Sony Watchman arrived at an affordable price. I bought one and so did my brother.
This marvelous device worked very well in the back seat of a car in the analog TV era, where snowy signals still got through. The Watchman also had a handy "sound" setting, which shut off the screen but kept the sound on if you needed to save battery power. I relied on rechargeable batteries, which would work for about a day's worth of viewing.
Dad also got into the act after awhile, putting headphones on while driving so he could listen to a tape while the Queen Mother took in the radio. This led to an awkward moment at the start of one trip.
"Dave, Dave?"
"Huh?"
Dad, my brother and myself were all wearing headphones, all in our musical zones, leaving the Queen Mother with a talking point. "Everybody is wearing headphones and nobody can hear me."
The family vacations of my childhood manifested themselves into curious rituals. The idea is to get away, see something new, enjoy yourself and live it up for about a week and a half. The reality is a drawn-out marathon of driving, sightseeing, motels, fast food, scheduling, annoyances and so much more. We often returned home exhausted, worn out from this supposedly-liberating experience.
It all starts with packing the car. The family vacations of my youth -- at least the ones I can vividly remember -- involved at least three different vehicles:
Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra
Nissan Maxima Sedan
Nissan Maxima Stationwagon
Two of these proved themselves more capable than the third at handling the large amount of baggage that went along with us, including:
Two red full-sized American Tourister suitcases -- containing likely most of my brothers' and my clothing
A large black bag containing mostly my Royal Father's clothing
A smaller beige bag containing the Queen Mother's clothing
A red American Tourister cosmetic case with all the toiletries, pills, and anything having to do with the bathroom
At least three to four camera bags and/or cases containing a portable VHS recorder and camera, numerous 35mm still cameras, and accessories for each
Several other bags, which also contained a Macintosh computer at one point -- you couldn't separate the nerd kid of the family from that machine
Dad had to solve a jigsaw puzzle to get all of this to fit into the trunk every year upon starting out. He would shove things into every nook and cranny to make as much room in the center for the larger items. He shoved and smashed things in where he could. Having kids doesn't help this situation, but my brother and I had a workaround. Our toys and goodies rode in the back seat with us in small beige American Express travel bags. I usually packed mine with notepads, games, magazines and an increasing array of electronic goods as I grew older and these devices became affordable.
"Your father," the Queen Mother complained more than once, "likes to buy these flashy cars that don't have any room in the trunk." Hence we didn't have the stationwagon until it became an unavoidable necessity. But in the Royal Father's defense, who really wanted to be seen with one of those? The Maxima stationwagon at least looked cooler, in silver tones, than the Brady Bunch stereotype of the happy family vehicle. It sure as heck wasn't the Wagon Queen Family Truckster.
Some modifications were inevitable. Dad stayed up late installing fog lights on the Cutlass the night before we set to roll from Kansas City to Cheyenne, Wyoming -- in one day. The Nissans also got the fog-light treatment. The Cutlass also had a CompuCruise driving computer, state of the art in calculating fuel economy and a few other things. Its ability to display speed in kilometers per hour came in handy when we drove into Canada.
Mainly, though, we needed room. We needed every square inch of it in approximately 1984, when the Queen Mother went on a crock-and-jug buying spree in New England and we had to get it all home. We shipped a couple back via UPS, but the others had to go into the stash with the rest of us. We worked out a system where the Queen Mother rode with two crocks -- one on the passenger-seat floor and one in her lap. About three or four others rode in the back seat, separating my brother and I. Nothing cracked, and Mom's lap survived.
When a family lugs so much on the road, naturally conversations take place on what to leave behind. The Royal Father could never understand why that single American Express bag of mine was so heavy.
"What do you have in here, your gold?"
Actually, it was about six months' worth of MacWorld magazines. Ironically, I never heard the Queen Mother complain about the myriad camera equipment. I gather that kept the Royal Father from complaining about the crocks and jugs.
Going Rate: Worth matinee price Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot Rated: PG-13 Red Flags: Intense Sci-fi violence and mild language
A coworker of mine emerged from Batman V. Superman calling it "a trainwreck," and jesting, "I think I'll go home and cry." Clearly this was a movie matchup fanboys were drooling before they found themselves basking in disappointment. This film had potential as the starter of a Justice League franchise for Warner Bros. and squandered it all. It supposedly draws from classic DC Comics storylines, but I have to think some studio suit said, "We have the rights to Batman and Superman, and that Alien Vs. Predator thing seemed to work, so why not this?" Sometimes, studio people are the last people who should be making movies.
It's not that the concept is bad by definition. We have the upcoming Captain America: Civil War featuring a superhero showdown. Deadpool did it quite well. But when you match up two big beloved cape-wearers, it better be good. And good, this isn't. It requires seeing Man of Steel as a prerequisite but not any of the various Batman franchises. The film's execution runs from plodding to murky through the first two acts, including scenes which only increase the murkiness.
We begin with a tangent from Man of Steel, where General Zod's forces are destroying Metropolis as they try to make it habitable for Kryptonian lifeforms. This has more than a few uncomfortable parallels to 9/11, which perhaps was intentional. Caught up in this mayhem is Bruce Wayne (Affleck), who sees the death and wreckage and blames it on Superman (Cavill). Conversely, Clark Kent is seeing way too many stories about the Dark Knight's vigilante justice and wants to stop him. They don't know it yet, but they're about to have a common enemy: Lex Luthor (Eisenberg), a young tech mogul who wants to stop Superman and thinks the key to doing it is getting kryptonite from the wreckage of the failed alien invasion. He needs help from Congress on this one, which is already starting to see Superman as an unelected unilateral agent of justice. Here's where you make up your own political jokes. While we get to the title showdown eventually, we get to see Lois Lane (Adams) look for the maker of some rogue munitions that turned up in Africa while she was chasing down a story, got taken hostage, and got saved by Superman (again).
The film gets bogged down in the psychological baggage of Bruce Wayne and the loss of his parents to a gunman. This is where you Superman fans have to stand up and say, "Hey, Kal-El lost his parents and a whole planet, too!" Equal time is going to be a issue. So will this: Batman is throwing away the "no guns" rule. At least Ben Affleck turns in an enjoyable performance after all the moaning and groaning from fanboys when the casting announcement went out. Cavill picks up neatly where he left off, although I have to be honest with you: Christopher Reeve will always be Superman for me. Eisenberg plays Lex Luthor more like The Riddler from the Batman franchise with a hint of The Joker thrown in. Hey, as long as we're mashing up universes, why not merge characters, too? Oh Gene Hackman, how we miss your smarmy charm as Luthor. And are we in Gotham or Metropolis? Sometimes it's unclear who's on whose turf. How far apart are these cities in the film's universe? Perhaps it's along the lines of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
Yes, Wonder Woman (Gadot) is in the film, if you count this riff on Xena the Warrior Princess as Wonder Woman. I count it as a disappointing tack-on for a superhero who has long deserved to have a film of her own. (When they make that film it has to have Linda Carter in it somewhere.)
The Avengers is what you get when you put a bunch of comic-book heroes together and get the chemistry right. Batman V. Superman is what you get when you forsake chemistry for brooding darkness and try to build a single film around three super-duper superheroes who frankly need their own space.
I've been restraining myself, perhaps even censoring myself. While campaign season has devolved into disturbing new lows, I have held back my commentating fingers from the Facebook status update and this blog. This is the "silly season," one friend has told me, a friend whom I love and support even if we're divided on a lot of things politically. I decided to trust her on this one, and I decided to trust the better angels of my nature. It's not like I didn't have other things to blog and status about, like making that new 18th Century outfit for a ball in Williamsburg, Virginia.
I felt the wave of inspiration creeping back into me on that mildy chilly Saturday morning, as I walked to the historic city's Old Capitol, a building I've toured at least a dozen times before. Every time I come back, I learn something new, or at least I'm challenged to think about why we have the freedoms we have. That's why Colonial Williamsburg does what it does so well. During that tour, we sat around a table where patriots once sat, and your servant had the opportunity to read a clause from a document urging the free exercise of religion apart from the Church of England. The warm feeling of a heritage to be proud of stuck with me, even if the exact wording did not.
Introducing Laird Christopher of Dunans, all for the ball in the outfit your humble servant made himself! #HUZZAH #WilliamsburgBall
Posted by Christopher Francis on Saturday, March 5, 2016
When ball time came, and I had adorned myself in my satiny homemade fineries, I found myself surrounded by dancing friends. I bowed countless times to many ladies, who returned them with curtsies -- which I never really saw because I bowed so low. I turned and led my partners in a courtly and regal matter through nearly two dozen dances. We laughed and enjoyed ourselves even through the mistakes. We worked as a team, uplifting and blessing each other. The afterglow from that evening left me nearly sleepless.
Then the next day at a Presbyterian church in Williamsburg, where I dressed in my kilt and long coat in honour of the church's Scottish heritage and in praise to GOD, I found myself once again surrounded by friends. Few times have left your humble laird feeling so close to Heaven, so close to HIM.
One week later, I saw people in Chicago ready to tear each other apart live on CNN. Just one week earlier, I was submerging myself once more in my favourite town from the past.
I can't tell you the starting point, but I've found a lot of mile markers along the way.
When I saw people saying "Worst. President. Ever." about George W. Bush -- with the periods.
When people started talking about "red states" and "blue states."
When people started throwing moderates under the bus (despite kissing up to them later).
When Facebook became a place where we could easily and conveniently hate on people in a place that supposedly is for "friends." (Tip of the tricorn to my dear Auntie Susan for suggesting this.)
When GOP Representative Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's 2009 State of the Union Address.
When TEA Party members started piling on insults.
When people started kicking up conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth and just wouldn't let it go, no matter how much evidence you presented debunking it.
When Congress became a battlefield, not a legislative body.
When people started talking about "'Murica," not America.
When Senator Ted Cruz made a 21-hour filibuster (which technically wasn't a filibuster, but I say it was) on defunding Obamacare, an exercise that led to nothing but wasted time.
When GOD, guts and guns replaced the Constitution and Bill of Rights in some people's minds as the lynchpin of our free republic.
When Donald Trump entered the race.
When he proved he could boost his poll numbers by getting angrier and insulting just about everything with a pulse.
When he threw people out of his rallies, and people cheered it on.
I will probably think of more things to add to this list later, but you know where I'm going. The Trump phenomenon has come to a boil after years of warming up, and should it really surprise anybody that we're boiling?
I can only come to one disturbingly sad conclusion: We hate Congress, we hate Washington, we want to kill it, and Donald Trump is our hitman. Only Trump isn't armed with a pistol; he's carrying a 20-megaton H-bomb, because we would just love to see it nuked. He's our walking revenge fantasy. We don't care about the collateral damage. We don't care about the institutional damage. We don't care about the emotional damage. We just don't care, period. Dagnabbit, we're going to take our country back from those bums.
This is where you say, "What do you mean, 'we?' Is this the Royal 'We,' as in 'We are not amused?' Or are you talking about me?"
Yes, I'm going to talk about you. I'm going to talk about you because politicians don't come from another planet -- as I have said before. Somebody has to vote them in, and somebody has to accept responsibility for that vote. Maybe you didn't vote for that guy or that other guy. Somebody did. And somebody will vote for that guy or that other guy in the next election.
Tell me something, and tell it to me honestly: how many times, when you went into the voting booth, did you feel like holding your nose? You didn't feel like voting for anybody on the ballot. You felt like your candidates, your parties, and your country had left you behind. But still you voted for somebody, because somebody said you had to vote for somebody, and that the stakes were too high to waste a vote. Or you fell for that lesser-of-two-evils rationalization. Or you just sighed and said, such is life.
Ballots only show who you vote for, not who you vote against. They are bereft of nuance or conditions. You can't add in fine print or riders for the candidates to follow. You take the slate or you leave it. What if we had just left it? What if we had just written in, "None of the Above" every time we were presented with a lineup of less-than-desirable leadership? Through a sad pattern of compulsion, rationalization, and lowering the bar, we've slowly disenfranchised ourselves from the power we should have as the electorate. Or we just don't vote at all. People tell us in those get-out-the-vote messages that our vote is our voice. Why do we keep silencing ourselves?
I still believe some true servant-leaders run for office, but they're getting harder and harder to find. The more enlightened among us steer clear of politics. As I have told you before, who wants to work in the swamp that is Washington? Who wants to be dragged into the declining incivility and partisan warfare? Who wants to get pounded into the ground by dark money? Who wants to prove they're innocent of all the slimy, scummy behaviours we associate with politicians by default? The best and brightest among us in America know better than to run for office; they're too good for the job.
So now we're left with this vision of America microcasmed in Chicago: people who say they love America while they hate each other being influenced by politicians who say they love America but openly want to destroy it. It's a sad sight.
The long walk out of Williamsburg on the last day of my visit left your humble servant just as sad. I knew even before this blow-up we used to be better than this. We used to practice our honours. Politics might divide us, but at least we would dance together -- especially in colonial Virginia. No way would I swap centuries to live in 1700's America, but I know some beautiful things got left in our past, including our ability to come together. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson made up after some ugly campaigning.
I hate it when people take the inspiring outfits and flags of our Revolutionary War heritage and co-opt them for political purposes. That heritage belongs to everybody. Leave it alone. Politics has corrupted enough.
What's staggering is that so many people don't care. They want their hit man. They want their weapon. They will ignore or tolerate so many things so they can see their revenge fantasy against Washington executed -- and perhaps a few political enemies, too. I'm serious. How fortunate are we that we have not seen more political assassinations or attempted assassinations in this climate?
Yes, we've come to that, because we let it happen. Because we failed at the ballot box. Because we failed to encourage the right people to run and discourage the wrong people from running. Because we've politicized everything. Because we really don't love America like we should. Because it's more fun to hate than to love. Because we want revenge for the mess we don't realize we had a hand in creating.
I can't tell you how this will all end up. I can just pray.
And in the worst case, please bury your servant in Williamsburg. I already left my heart there.
Going Rate: Worth matinee price Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, and Ryan Reynolds' bare badoinkus, too! Rated: R (but is pushing NC-17) Red Flags: Gratuitous bloody violence (although cartoonish at time), strong language (multiple f- and s- bombs), brief intense nude sex (although I can't tell you exactly how intense because my Puritan eyes were closed)
I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to see Deadpool, although people have buzzed about this movie for months, and I know a group from the newsroom went to see it on opening night. Then I learned one of my SAR compatriots went to see it and laughed -- a lot. The general rule for your humble servant reviewer is that if I'm going to have mixed feelings about seeing a picture, especially if I have to pay for it, I'll push it aside. Then I remembered I had this free pass to Harkins...
Deadpool is to superhero movies what Blazing Saddles is to westerns. It breaks every rule -- along with the fourth wall -- in a brutal and acerbic send-up of comic-book movies. It is gleefully obscene in as many ways as it can pull off, destroying any belief you had about superhero films having a baseline morality. Truth, justice and the American Way, it ain't. Try cheap shots, revenge, and lots of sex jokes.
Ryan Reynolds stars as the title character, a self-healing, revenge-laden, foul-mouthed anti-hero's hero who underwent an experiment to cure his terminal cancer. The basement-operating-room treatment turned him into The Thing, only it's The Thing that wasn't in the oven long enough. And technically, that's Fantastic Four, and this is an X-Men spinoff. Sorry, fanboys, I shall work to avoid further sacrilege.
Before all this, Deadpool was merely Wade Wilson, an ex-special forces man turned mercenary who made what I gather was a living wage beating people up. At his favorite dive bar, he meets escort Vanessa (Baccarin). After a speed-date on who's life was crummier, they end up in the sack, or a montage of sack sequences where your Newsroom Puritan kept his eyes closed because he went to a see a movie, not porn. This is where the MPAA undoubtedly decided its rating description needed the term "graphic nudity." Even though I can't tell you how graphic, I'll bet you the role of Ryan Reynolds' bare buttocks probably came up in any negotiations over credit arbitration.
Wilson slipped out on Vanessa to have the treatment administered by a token British-accented thug from central casting, Ajax (Skrein). We learn his real name is Francis. I should've made the screenwriters change it. Wha-- what do you mean I skipped around on the plot? So does the film! Add in a few bloody sword fights and gunfights, and that Big Showdown At The End with Ajax/Francis/Whatever and you've got yourself a superhero movie. But don't forget, you've got to add a couple of X-Men along for the ride: Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapičić in heavy CGI).
But really, who cares about coherence when the movie is essentially a visually enhanced stand-up routine by Ryan Reynolds, People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" for 2010 (a fact the film cleverly tweaks)?
And since you're probably going to see it anyway, why are you even reading this?
