Those Good Old Sunday Drives.....

My sister and I took a drive on Sunday afternoon- it was the quintessential late September day, the weather was sublime and the husbands were quite happy doing what most husbands do on a Sunday in Fall- they were parked in front of the television watching football.



We got to talking about how we were dragged into the car every Sunday for our infamous family drives along the Hudson Valley and beyond. We never wanted to go, made such big fusses that I can't believe our parents didn't bind us with duct tape, throw us into the trunk and dump us on a deserted country road.



At that time, our parents both smoked. Dad puffed on filter less Pall Mall's, Mom sucked down Lucky Strikes like a machine, the little bits of tobacco sticking to her red lipstick. The windows were rolled up tight, the radio was tuned to a news radio station and there was an uncomfortable divide between the two heads that rose above the headrests.



Sissy and I sat on the back seat, our heads leaning against the cool windows, the air filled with wispy clouds of tobacco, usually getting car sick as my father took curves without letting up on the gas. He didn't like to stop, so cries of "we have to go to the bathroom" were left unanswered, so too were the "we're hungry, we're thirsty, we're car sick," whines from the back seat.



The only action that caused a reaction was when we got into a scrap- whether it was hair pulling, pinching or name calling. And that was just a matter of miles. (I still smart from Sissy's pinches- and wonder how she was able to get such a thin layer of skin between her thumb and forefinger nails and squeeze so hard that she left two perfectly formed nail divets in my arm)



I was the queen of hair pulling and Sissy's hair was an easy target. Her wild frizzy mane of ginger hair took up half of the back seat so grabbing it and giving it a fast hard tug, without our parents seeing it, was quite easy. It didn't leave any marks and because her hair was anchored in her scalp with cement, I never had any evidence wound around my fingers.



Once we started fighting, our mother would turn her head and glare, her browns eyes ringed with fire. When that failed, she'd throw her hand over the seat and start slapping, head firmly affixed to the front. Random slaps, in a rapid fire sequence, would eventually strike their target.



Our yelps (and we did this for effect) usually meant the end of that Sunday's drive. My father would swing into a rest area or someone's drive way(Mom would inevitably scold him for pulling into a stranger's drive and to this day Sissy and I feel as though we are violating people's personal space by turning into an unknown driveway) and then we knew we were in trouble. Occasionally, he'd smack our legs, but most often, he'd drive home, his foot glued to the gas pedal. (Mom would yell at him to slow down)



We can't figure out why we spent years doing these family drives when no one seemed to like them. We wished we were back home, racing our Schwinn's up and down our street, playing kickball in the neighboring fields or torturing each other by sticking blades of grass up each other's nose.

Did our parents enjoy these family drives? Did they just tune us out, lost in their own thoughts? Were they trying to escape from their suburban lifestyle?

Whatever their reasons, these drives were our own traveling horror show. And we were the reluctant stars.

And even to this day, I have a soft spot for B horror films...and Sunday drives.