Chasing Cars with Huck Finn

You want to know how to torture someone? Put them in a car and say "Drive." That's how it seems anyway when you're carting four children, three under the age of eight.  When you, a free-range adult, get into a car, you see miles of open road just littered with opportunity. Try explaining that to a hyperactive three year old who has been sitting in the same spot for two solid hours. But, you know what? Even being a traveling veteran since the age of two, I still don't know what people are talking about when they bring up these pictures. My van was my steed; the gas stations my castles, and the mile markers? Target practice.

When I was knee high to nothing, our family often took long trips. Being in a large southern and extended family is a great thing, but the scattering of it was hard on the gas tank. Nevertheless, every summer found the Cromwell's fifteen passenger van in the nearest parking deck; at least the ones that cleared seven feet. I remember those trips better than I remember the places we were going to because for me at least, the real adventure was getting there.

Mothers are geniuses, don't let anybody tell you different, and mine was no exception. She knew those hours in an iron cage, albeit one as large as ours would be unbearable to our hardwired action-addicted brains. Believe me the Spanish Inquisition has nothing on fifteen hours of trees and billboards. But, she also knew that we could see our adventure and have it too, all from the safety of our seatbelt, something that she was constantly checking to make sure we had not evaded. We weren't in a van driving past dirt, we were caught in a sinking ship being chased by pirates, our Conestoga wagon was being peppered with arrows by Indians; we were atop a massive elephant as we battled the clock in a race to get home: we were anything and everything that we could read.

When we left our North Carolina home, we packed our van full of drinks, snacks, and books. Dad chucked the suitcases into the back where we had removed a seat to make room and mom squared off for departure with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. We knew that after a quick systems check and last minute potty run, mom would crack open the giant plastic folder of cassette tapes and solemnly pry out number one, and feed it into the player. We had our favorite readers, you get attached to stories in a different way when you hear it. I will always hear Huck Finn in one voice. Anything different is just wrong.

Now at twenty-one, I’ve counted all the books I listened to on those car trips. It’s upwards of 40. For thirteen years we listened together, until we were too old to agree on anything.

But every now and then, when I’m alone, I’ll fish out those old cassettes and listen to the whir of the tape rewinding, the click of the shutter, and the three seconds of static before the old familiar voice floats out.

“YOU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”

            I learned to love books in the back of a fifteen passenger, and I’ve never forgotten.