- a true recollection by David Julian
Back in the day, my pa Fred was an assumed genius who I often believed could improve or fix anything we owned. His handiness with a soldering iron, screwdriver, glue gun or fiber packing tape was a legend in my adoring 11-year old mind. His frugality was obvious, being a self-employed father of four working from our suburban Boston home. When his repair efforts to any broken object failed, they went out to the curb for trash day and exhibited our family’s domestic eccentricities. But there was genius in those discards as they illustrated the humble tinkerings of Dad’s passion for so-it-yourself solutions.
Our first pet Gerbils, named “Davie and Sweetie” even had custom tunnels built from taped-together cardboard rolls, which they promptly dismantled and ate one evening before my confused but delighted eyes. I wondered if I could eat cardboard and survive, but never got the nerve to try. I did once eat a bee on a schoolyard dare, but didn’t get stung. It was not particularly brave of me, I was just lucky and stupid.
My days were filled with my own worldly explorations into the nearby woods, where Is watched nature repeat its rhythms and gained a spiritual perspective of my own invention. When we prepared to head out of town for an occasional family vacation, the house would become a tension convention as my mom Rosalie attempted to exert maternal order and preparation amongst our frequent sibling snipes and packing chaos. I kept out of the way and looked for tasks I could do without much interaction. One of them was to stack things in the back of our station wagon for the trip to elsewhere. I was really good at fitting our stuff into the tailgate, imagining a trip full of bumpy back roads and deft avoidance maneuvers for occasional highway road kills. Dad always avoided the occasional dusty plush toy dropped at 65 miles an hour by another family’s sneezing schnauzer.
I helped load up the car until it was time for the suitcases to be trussed up to the chrome roof rack of our new used black Ford Country Squire wagon. Our enormous steel steed was complete with faux wood side panels and a slow oil pan drip that silently fed rainbows into the rain puddles formed in the depressions of our driveway.
Dad hoisted our various suitcases onto the roof rack with a few short red-faced grunts. On this summer day, beads of forehead sweat dampened the stem of the ever-present burl wood smoking pipe gripped firmly between his teeth. “WHOMP!” went each suitcase up onto the rack, creating a patchwork of unmatched suitcases featuring Scotch plaids and the blue or tan textured plastic of unmatched Samsonites.
I climbed up onto the tailgate to begin tying the miles of ropes we used to secure them. Dad waived me off, proclaiming that this new car’s factory roof rack had a special compression system to hold our cargo tight, and showed me the sliding chrome bars and knurled plastic clamping knobs. I was surprised, then mesmerized once again by such inventive coolness.
I keenly observed and asked irrelevant questions as Fred re-arranged and tightened the apparatus. He let me help affix a spiderweb of bungee cord across the irregularly grouped luggage. I felt elated to contribute something to our readiness and to avoid the audible chaos of my sisters still indoors. Mom brought out some groceries and noticed the arrangement on the roof rack. She voiced her skepticism but I aligned with Dad as always. Soon everything but the kitchen sink was packed into our daunting Detroit demon, leaving hardly enough room for a fly to fart.
I remembered a picture in Life magazine of a bunch of college kids packed into a Volkswagen Bug until all you could see were heads, hands and feet at bizarre angles against the foggy windows.
We were ready to GO!— loaded, locked and leaving for our vacation! We weaved through labyrinthian New England neighborhoods and built speed onto the interstate onramp with the anticipation of the joys ahead. We played license-plate car games and I tallied the number of hawks riding thermals over the fields we sped past. Dad was puffing his fragrant smoking pipe, as usual, and the rest of us sunk into an ethereal boredom after a few games and occasional reprimands for our jostling and boisterousness. Winds buffeted our speeding auto and whistled through the steel and sprung cords above. I lapsed into a fog of relaxing peace.
Suddenly, I was snapped out of a daydream about my favorite teacher by a loud vibrating rumble as if a giant hand had seized our car. Something white flew by my window! I snapped around staring through the tailgate window with horrifying attention. All of our our luggage was tumbling backwards off the roof onto the highway and into the path of those behind us. Pandemonium erupted loudly in our car and time itself was aflame like a shower of hot welder’s sparks. The bungie cords let go and slingshotted luggage sideways off the rack and into parallel traffic.
I saw mom’s black high-heeled shoes tumble dance on asphalt and ricochet off speeding chrome.
I saw feet pajamas and t-shirts flung into the crosswinds, catching on roadside branches as if deflated pink puppets.
A bloated blue suitcase cartwheeled and bounced off the guardrail. Another caught under the bumper of a screeching car, distorting until it burst open revealing a shattered rainbow of garments and makeup.
One of mom’s brassieres slapped onto and covered a third of the grille of the truck looming up behind us. A note of appreciation blared from the truck's trio of chromed trumpets:
"BROOOOOO-BROOOOOOMmm m m m m m m m m"
Assorted books, dolls, games and toiletries became colorful shrapnel under dozens of swerving white-walled Goodyears and Michelins.
Horns honked like a slurred circus calliope soundtrack to the dangerously comical visuals of Dad’s attempt to retrieve mother’s shoes between the speeding cars.
I was glad I hadn't been allowed to rope the Gerbil cage up on the roof above to give them a view.
A pink wheel of mom’s birth control pills skipped erratically until it encountered speeding steel— pink pills probably popped — a detail she tallied for what I assumed would be a hotel wall-muffled post-game melt-down.
The day was alive with action. I whispered “how cool...” under my breath.
Watching his dad chasing a wind-tossed nightie on a five-lane highway is something an observant young boy never quite forgets.
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© 2009, 2010 by David Julian www.DavidJulian.com