I Didn't Die in the Back of a Station Wagon!

     Family vacations were always fun. Our family owned a station wagon, the kind where the far back seat actually faced backward. Yes, you heard me, it was backward! The window rolled down and we loved to wave and stick our tongues out to the people in the cars behind us. We never wore seatbelts and half the time barely stayed seated!
     The far back seat was the best because it didn’t have the “hump” on the floor that the middle back seat had. No one wanted to sit in the middle back seat because the two people on the sides wouldn’t let you put your feet on their side so you had to keep your feet up on the hump the whole time. This was a major source of contention in the car when I was growing up, especially since I was the smallest of the three kids. I wasn’t the youngest, just the smallest, so it was totally unfair!
     You could also put all the seats down so you could lay down in the back and that is exactly what we did. No seat belts or car seats just a big open area and we kids jumping around back there. Those were good times! All of us could lay down in the back seat at the same time and read books or take naps. The car rides were a lot more fun and would seem to go much faster not being confined to a seat and a seatbelt. Car seats were used but often just as a place for the baby to sit but they were not buckled in for safety.

This is not me or my siblings!

     We took a trip to New Jersey in the station wagon when I was a kid and we stayed in an oceanside beach house which was pretty cool. We kids all stretched out in the back, comfortable and reading good books; life was never better. This was the first time I was introduced to an adult book. Up until that time, I mostly read Judy Blume books, Sweet Valley High and Little House on the Prairie series-type books. It was a V.C. Andrews book called Flowers in the Attic and it was really intense for my age. I read several of her other books and, finally, decided they weren’t for me. It was also the first time I had ever seen the ocean. For my whole life, I have been fascinated and terrified of the ocean with its monstrous waves, ships, submarines, and all the ocean animals, such as whales, dolphins, sharks, octopus and more. I remember being both thrilled and scared to go into the ocean and never really went in past my knees. My sister and I were more interested in looking for boys. My brother, John, on the other hand, was in it up to his head, and would bob along with the waves that would crash over him.
     One car trip we took was most notable because my brother, John threw up on the floor in the middle back seat just a short time before we made it home. That was awful! You just couldn’t get away from the smell.
     We took a trip to Paul Bunyan Land in Brainerd when I was a kid. There is a picture of me looking up at him, he was HUGE! I think there are a couple of pictures of us with Babe the Blue Ox as well. That was quite memorable because he was so large and I was so small.

     I know that I will not remember all the trips I went on as a youth but going to Wisconsin Dells was one I would never forget! We stayed at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Park campground and it was cool because it had a bunch of statues from the Yogi Bear cartoon (on a side note, I ended up marrying a man that can quote and imitate Yogi Bear and Snagglepuss perfectly! Ask him to do it sometime!) This campground had a pool! We visited The Wonder spot, a “mysterious cabin where people can’t stand up straight, water runs uphill and chairs balance on two legs”. They describe the place as a Gravity vortex “where the laws of natural gravity seem to be repealed”. It’s sad to know that this place is no more and a highway took its place. We also had day passes for the Noah’s Ark Waterpark and I had never seen anything more glorious in my life! I always was a water-loving girl and it had everything I needed to have fun forever. I was so sad when we had to leave.

     I’m sure there were other trips we took when I was a kid, but I won’t bore you with any more of them. The important part is that we did things together as a family to build a strong bond together even though we were a his, mine, and ours family; we got there in a trusty old station wagon either seated forward or backward, probably laying down and never once did we wear seatbelts! And we didn’t die!