Sometimes, the best things about traveling don’t add up to a whole story to tell, but a mere mention or reflection brings a smile, laugh, or shutter.
During one of those long power drives between national parks back in the 1980s with my parents and sister, we all fell silent and stared out windows, bored beyond belief. Then, my sister’s words cut through the air in her excitable, high-pitched girl’s voice, “Smoot! Population THREE!” Seizing our full attention, we read the sign as we drove past and burst into laughter over and over for miles. What made it all so funny, I can’t put my finger on it, but the mere mention of it decades later, and we laugh all over again.
Also, during childhood, we decided to go on a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls at my mom’s insistence. But my dad, an Army veteran, said he wasn’t getting in that thing. Yet he had no problem putting the rest of us on it. It was a small space with my sister and me snug between the pilot and my mom. She expressed concern that her door didn’t close all the way. As the chopper dipped and turned, my mom stared straight down at the Falls through her glass door, which she was convinced didn’t close tightly. She screamed out of control and wouldn’t stop. Her hands and feet were out like a cat falling, but Her’s were against the door frame, her life flashing before her eyes. I looked at the pilot for help or comfort. He just laughed his ass off.
When my wife and I were on a trip to the North Central Plains with our little kids in tow, we looked into the sky from a restaurant parking lot and stopped cold. None of us had seen anything like it. And apparently, we weren’t alone. Dozens of people stood frozen, gazing at the sky, vocalizing wonder and amazement. It was a spectacular display of a natural wonder, a rare cloud formation known as Mammatus clouds. The translucent cluster of cotton-ball-like clouds protruded downward like an egg-carton foam mattress as far as the eyes could see. It held our attention for some time. Then our stomachs said enough of that, let’s look at a menu!
Traveling through the mountains in the middle of summer, we reached an elevation that turned into a blanket of snow-covered ground. Atop Cloud Mountain, we pulled off, ran out in shorts, and had a family snowball fight. Giddy and back in the car, we quickly turned the air conditioning to heat!
My wife always fills the long drives from point A to point B with pitstops to get out and stretch and see something novel like the world’s only corn palace in South Dakota, The 55-foot tall Jolly Green Giant in Minnesota, or the world’s largest easel in Kansas. My favorite was the Liquor Store Dragon! The 35-foot-tall metal dragon in Kaskaskia, Illinois, would actually blow fire at the poor knight holding a shield! All you needed was a token. And the tokens were sold in the adjacent liquor store. I went inside and thought, damn, for the middle of a weekday, this line is peculiarly long. As I stood there, the lady at the counter smiled and said, “You have that, ‘l just need a token look.” I laughed and got to jump ahead of several people who didn’t seem at all pleased.
Honorable mentions from these quick but memorable stops along the way are when the kids read a billboard that said, “I got my crabs at Dirty Dicks” advertising s seafood restaurant on the way to the Outer Banks. Later, we walked into a pawn shop, thinking we found a pearl on the beach. It wasn’t. But the adventure of trying to find a pawn shop, thinking we were lucky beachgoers, was spontaneous family fun.
Then, there are simple pleasures like a Santa sighting in summer, especially tourist Santa in red shorts at Colonial Williamsburg. Another was sticking our feet in an enormous round fountain where you can sit on the edge in Washington, D.C., on a blistering hot day. And listening to an extremely talented busker play Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” in Boston.
The last mention is when we ate at an everyday Subway restaurant outside Bryce Canyon. Once the worker gave us our food and cups, we filled them at the pop machine. While eating at our table, we heard a rapid dripping in multiple places. Looking down, we realized the tabletop was pooling in a mixture of different sodas. Somehow, the cups had leaked. It was soon an out-of-control mess, but we did our best to pile napkins until it was contained.
I pressed past new customers to explain what had happened and asked for four new cups. The customers and staff looked like my whole claim was out of order. I pointed to our table, but the crowd didn’t seem to think I was on the up and up. I felt embarrassed. Reluctantly, the worker finally gave me four new cups. I insisted he open a new package, thinking all of the cups in the original sleeve might be faulty.
We filled the new cups from the new package and sat down to finish our subs.
We forgot about the whole thing until we heard, drip-drip-drippety-drip! It was a complete repeat of the situation. I wasn’t about to make a scene twice, so we ate while watching the cups flow. When we were done, we quickly did what we could to tidy up – a hopeless cause – and made our way toward the exit.
As we walked out, the other customers at two different tables started gasping and freaking out, saying things like, “Damn, they weren’t kidding, “This is ridiculous!” and “It’s all over my pants!”
From the car, I could see workers scurrying to examine the problem, tending to angry customers, and frantically cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.
I nodded my head in satisfaction at the mayhem I witnessed through the window and laughed as I drove off, feeling vindicated.
By Frank Rocco Satullo, The OhioTraveler, Your Tour Guide to Fun!
