Road Trip

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Road Trip seems to be a new-ish phrase. I don't recall ever hearing it before college, and even then, it wasn't like my buddies and I stuffed ourselves in cars to drive across country. Back in the early Barker days, we called it "Driving 'Cross Country in the Back of Our Green '72 Volvo Station Wagon." My dad didn't believe in flying, so anywhere we went, it was by car, or specifically, station wagon (see above). There were five of us: dad (Rene), mom (Yvonne), brother (Ken), sister (Michelle) and I (Jon). Several times we traveled with our pets as well. When we were moving from California to Kansas, we stuffed every living thing we owned in the back of that Volvo: one dog, one cat, and one fish(!). We could kick the Griswald's asses any day.

My dad is kind of a tech-geek and back then there were two things that were HTH (hot-to-have): the 8-track tape and the CB radio ("Breaker One-Nine for a Ten-Forty Six") COOONNNNVOOYY. Needless to say, our Road Trips were real familial gatherings. After the 8-track faded out of existence, my dad installed a Radio Shack cassette tape. This was the shit. Now we could record our favorite vinyl onto cassette and sing to our heart's content (and you wonder why I so love karaoke). Some of our favorite traveling songs were Tom T. Halls's "Sneaky Snake" and the whole album of Marlo Thomas' "Free To Be, You And Me". (I had this whole album memorized.) Sometimes we would just lurk on the various CB radio channels, but it wasn't long before one of us was begging to do some "trucker speak" just to get a response from one of the 18-wheeler rigs. I think they got a kick out of hearing a child's voice over the radio.

Maybe it was because of all of this that I enjoy road trips. I love seeing different parts of the country and I love driving through it. Today I directed the Fam towards Oregon because I found a "Most Awesome Autumn Drives" on the Internets, and you all know how I love autumn.