Crossing Into a Summer State of Mind

Reflections from a 60's Childhood on the McEntire Farm, Shingle Hollow, NC
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We are driving across country.  The stops will be limited. Dad likes to say he "drove straight through."  Mom likes to echo, "three days, three nights." For me, the California rows of sprawling tract housing are now forgotten.

In the back of the pink Rambler wagon, we three children rotate seats.  Two, side by side, atop the bench seat.  One in the floor on a sleeping bag, confronting the hump in the middle of the car.   At night, I swap seats with mother to serve as wing to the driver.  "Map girl," that's me.

On day two, we feed our red dachshund green and purple grapes. The dog gets gas - and worse. Dad has to stop. He swears. Mom is ordering us out of the wagon to clean, yet again. I watch her pour water from a milk jug into a towel. When she wrings it, the water marks an impression into the shoulder of the road and trickles a run toward the blacktop edge. Mom in her fitted black skirt and lilac blouse, bending and leaning and bending and leaning to wash the seat. The sleeping bag is ruined. I watch a beetle crawl across her white tennis shoe. Every other week mom washes these shoes. She always adds a half-cup of bleach into the machine.

 In the car, we are always hungry. No more grapes. We reach into the bag mom passes us and pull out cans of sausages and sleeves of saltines. I am no longer interested in the novelty of a bad picnic in the car. I visualize my grandmother's plank table in the hollow piled high with a summer's bounty.

  We travel along Route 66. Traders on the highway get a few of our dollars at restroom stops. I buy an "Indian doll" and hold her while peering out the window, suffering the heat of the desert. My sister, straddling the floor hump, is crying. Mother is "shussssing" her. My brother is making faces at me, and we are kicking each other while attempting to share the back seat. He is gesturing that he is twisting my doll. I think I may break his arm somehow this summer.

We cross into the deep south where some roads in the towns are made of old and crumbling brick. The skins of people walking the streets are a duskier shade of dark. My dad sucks juice from boiled peanuts and spits the shells into an empty bag. My mom's head now reclines to rest. My sister now sleeps as if in a well, avoiding the hump. My brother presses his face to the window on his left. I press my face to the window on the right. At a yellow light on a corner, I connect with a girl's brown eyes.

We cross Hartwell. Mom wakes. Dad talks foundations stories of the dam. All stories lead back to his hours at Hoover. I think about one of his crew, a small, Japanese laborer who always wears tan work clothing. It is his size that sets him apart from the other burly workers. Dad says he is the best of the men. When we have cookouts, the man always pats my head and pulls wrapped candy from his pocket. His English is hard to understand. All the men from work are drinking beer with Dad. Cans are tossed like rockets into a waiting barrel by the grill.

Towards the third day's end, we see red dirt, green trees, and rolling foothills. Mom's voice goes up an octave saying, "We're close!" Dad's arm is now bent, resting upon his lowered window. I think he is pretty proud of his effort. The space in the car is unbearable. The food is gone. The dog's tongue is hanging out. Mom suggests, "We should fill the jug." Dad shakes his head "no!"

Just past Gunwiper, we turn left on the final stretch. Mom starts to cry. My brother kicks me in the stomach. My sister rouses.

We pass my Uncle Elzey's home and several of his grown children's homes. Dad begins to tell us we'd "better behave this summer." I'm anticipating a red dirt hill round the bend on the right with my grandparent's two-story white house looking down.

Beyond the house there is a barn where I'll soon build my private spot complete with a library in the corner of the third floor. No one ever finds me there. I'm watching for the swirl of the creek at the turn. I'll play in that creek every day.

I'm spotting the cagey rooster as we crest the drive. I see my tall Grandpa, stooped at the pump with a bucket in hand. There is no indoor plumbing. How old is he now, ninety? Grandma is pushing open the screen door at the back, smoothing her flour-dusted, blue-printed apron. Dad exhales. Mom is wailing, "we're home."