Here’s the story.
WHEN I WAS LITTLE I USED TO CALL MOTOR HOMES “HOME CARS”.
I think I thought they were really cool; so novel a little house on wheels – like for Barbie or IKEA. I don’t really remember now though. My mom tells me stories and I have memories in my head like polaroids taken in cars looking out at traffic rushing by my window. Sometimes it smells like grape gum the kind that’s a mile long all rolled up in a circle; what’s that called? I’ve been told I managed to lose a mouthful in my hair at age three.
The picture makes me think of a lot of things. Of Into the Wild, Alexander Super Tramp, the couple he met and their “home car”, the VW bus he died in, and his journey there. My bestfriend (who was more and now is less) loved that movie. She was always more comfortable away from people and cities. She loved to hop rocks in creeks, and that was hiking- one rock to the next, to the next, and the next. Her family never traveled outside the US, but they went everywhere inside- always by car. They drove and drove, cross country, all the way to Wis-con-sin to see Gramma Helen, Aunt Cindy, Leah, Meagan, Elijah, Logan (who I spoke to over the phone for eight minutes), and about a bazillion other cousins. Every little middle of nowhere town, rock jumble, log jam, creek side camp site, rest stop, bad diner, people dirt motel/hotel- they’ve seen ‘em all. It’s the truth; she sent me post cards. Once her dad drove from the east coast to the west coast, all alone in a VW Bug. I think he’d been reading a lot of Kerouac.
The first time I ever drove was in her beater of a van (Vannie) up her street. I nervously clicked my seat belt into place and listened anxiously as she told me what to do. Shoulders hunched, finers gripping stearing wheel, eyes straight ahead, i pressed my foot down and proceeded to FLOOR IT… I almost hit a parked car.
Now she lives in the midwest, but to the southwest of Wis-con-sin. She’s surrounded by cornfields, thousands of miles away from here. Romantic that I am I like to imagine her driving through those fields, golden and rippling in the wind and then Society comes on the radio, and maybe she thinks about me.
