Tales from the Backseat - Episode 1

Episode 1 – We’re Off to See… A Nudist Camp?

Everyone has childhood vacation stories. Dads taking too many photos. Mom’s obsessively giving handy wipes to each kid after they touched anything. And siblings forever wrangling for ever-precious inches of space on long road trips.

They’re the stories everyone tells many years later at family reunions, with or without scrapbooks and slide shows, making fun of each other’s clothing and antics, often opening old wounds long forgotten or never healed.

My story is from a month’s long cross-country car trip taken by my family in 197…something. Traveling with my family that long revealed the good, bad and ugly in all of us. We saw much of our country; the interesting and even the strange. We met people. And we drove. We drove a lot. But most of all, we made memories that we’ll always remember, for better or worse.

Dad had a thirst for adventure and a love for history. Owning his own business, he worked a lot, so this long trip was designed to see the country’s history and experience it’s wonder with his children. He wanted to see it all, even the most unusual tourist traps in every state.

Starting from our home in the south suburbs of Chicago, we charted a course south, then west, then north and back east logging thousands of miles in our brown Oldsmobile station wagon.

The grind of the road was challenging right from the start. There were no electronic handheld games, no computers with movies on DVD, no headphones or earbuds with small private music devices, nothing. We had an AM/FM radio that everyone in the car had to listen to simultaneously, when we could get a signal.

For me, passing the time was easy. I was a bookworm. I packed a library full of books in the tote bag I won in a reading challenge contest and with my lifelong superpower to quiet the noise around me, I read and read and read.

My siblings weren’t as lucky. My little sister brought some dolls to play with, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the back seat. Being the smallest, she sat on the dreaded hump seat, encroaching on the leg room of me or my brother.

And as the youngest, her favorite pastime was getting attention by annoying my brother. She picked, poked and pinched him, along with endlessly begging him to play with her.

My brother had nothing to do. He didn’t like books or puzzles. He liked sports. You can’t do that in a car. So, for hours each day, he was bored and irritated.

Our first stop was to visit some of my dad’s relatives in southern Illinois. My dad hadn’t seen his cousins since they were kids. They were once great pals, but as things go when you get older, people go different ways and move away from each other.

My dad told us stories about how they played stickball in the city streets and got into some trouble. He loved being a storyteller. He made you feel like you were there, while abundantly laughing at his own tales.

I thought it was a usual I thought to visit relatives you hadn’t seen in forever, but he said my grandmother and her sisters were very close and always wanted family to stay connected, so my dad felt compelled to look them up.

Their house was in a rural south portion of the state and for hours, all we saw out the window was a lot of wide open spaces and farms. They weren’t farmers, but they lived in a small town among them. They lived in a white two-story a-frame house, modest but well kept, with a long gravel driveway.

As we entered the house, I could tell my mother wasn’t thrilled as the house was a little “I don’t want to stick to anything” messy with a lot of clutter.

My father and his cousin shook each other‘s hands, laughed a lot and exchanged slaps on the back with joking comments about how old and fat they both got. I guessed that was normal for grown men. Their children were mostly in their late teens and early twenties, but one daughter who still lived at home, was only two years older than me.

My father‘s cousin Michael, encouraged my brother and I to go play board games in her room while the grown-ups talked. My sister who was several years younger and shy, clung to my mother’s skirt and wouldn’t let go. As we left, I saw my mother roll her eyes. That was one of her irritated tells that I thought was amusing, but didn’t want to see if I’d done something wrong. But she went along, we really didn’t have a choice.

Most kids have to entertain or be entertained by kids who where friends or relatives of their parents on these type of visits. Rarely is it fun, but often it’s tolerable. Games are one universal way to spend time with a relative stranger. Over a game of Sorry, the conversation in the bedroom quickly became strange. Mickey, who was named after her father Michael, was 15 years old. So when she started telling us about the plans for her wedding, at first I thought she was joshing or just pretending. But as she babbled on further about the dress and the music, I realized she was serious. With no question from us, she offered that she wasn’t pregnant or anything, but that her boyfriend was 18 and they both got their parents' permission to get married to start a family right away.

I was thoroughly confused. While I liked boys, I certainly didn’t know why any 15 year-old would want to marry one and start having babies. To me, that was crazy and I probably showed it in my notorious lack of a poker face. But I figured, at only 13 years old, who was I to judge?

After an hour, my mother entered the room with an urgent “let’s get out of here” face and gave us a reprieve. But on the way out, my father‘s cousin said he wanted to take us over to see his brother. My dad agreed and said we would follow them, despite my mother’s big-eyed look to him, miming her objection.

We traveled about 15 to 20 minutes through even more rural area. There were no houses, very few cars and no people. My mother began to express concern that we didn’t know where we were or what we were doing, but my father just brushed it off and said we were already here and he’d like to see him again.

But when we passed a sign that said “Rundle County Nudist Camp,” my mother began to argue.

“We need to turn around. This is ridiculous. We have young children,” she said.

“I’m sure we’re not going into the nudist camp. My cousin wouldn’t be at a nudist camp,” my father said with little conviction. After all, he hadn’t seen him since he was a kid. He had no idea what he was like now.

My mother grumbled and my brother and I smiled at each other, stifling a laugh. I didn’t really know what a nudist camp was. I knew what nude was, kind of. We did get the “paper covered” Playboy magazine in our mailbox every month.

I wondered what they did at a nudist camp. My brother and I went to a day camp during the summer where we swam, played games and did arts and crafts. The kinds of arts and crafts do nudists do puzzled me. Given the fact that we were driving right into the camp, I guessed we would find out.

When we pulled up to a small cabin area with a sign that read “Reception,” my mother's arguments became more fervent.

“We are not going in here. If you want to see your cousin, the kids and I will stay in the car.” She insisted, folding her arms in protest.

My father looked a little perplexed. I don’t really know if he really wanted to go to a nudist camp either.

“Look I’m sure he just works here or something. I don’t think my cousin would be a nudist. But that’s fine, you guys stay here. I won’t be long,” he said and left the car.

It seemed long. According to my watch with the lemon lime wristband at least a half an hour had gone by. I could see my mother become more agitated with every minute, but she tried to keep us occupied. As usual I had my nose in my book and my mother was playing I-Spy with my brother and sister. I think she was hoping the whole time that no one without clothes would ever be spied. I was a little curious but glad we didn’t see any people.

About 15 minutes later my father got back into the car with a strange look on his face. Maybe he saw too much of his cousin.

My mother's annoyed, daggered eyes glared at him. She didn’t like to fight in front of us, so she said nothing. Dad just looked at her and turned the car around without explanation. And just like that, we were back on the road.

Our first night in a motel was an interesting one. My mother had a strict rule about only patronizing certain of the few franchise motels and restaurants to ensure clean and reputable places to lay our heads each night and restaurants that would not give us food poisoning or the unfortunate bathroom call when on the road.

Without internet in the 1970’s, she wrote to the corporate headquarters of motels, chain restaurants and fast-food outlets who would send guidebooks in the mail, listing their various locations, addresses and sometimes directions from a main highway or state route.

Armed with a dozen or so books at her feet in the passenger side of the car, she spent most of our road time studying the guidebooks and dog-tagging the places we’d eat, sleep and see a few days in advance.

The problem was these roadside motels charged extra for each kid and my dad knew the value of a dollar. His biggest pet peeve was being a sucker for people who overcharged.

“The room is exactly the same whether there’s five people or two people in it. There’s no way I’m paying more money just cause I have three kids,” he announced.

So we began what became routine for the rest of the trip. The three of us hid on the floor in the back of the station wagon, lying down surrounded by luggage with jackets and blankets over the top of us. We were told to be quiet and sit still while my dad went into the motel office to get the keys. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t that big a deal, but I remember thinking it was really cheap. As an adult I can see his point and years later those motels got rid of that rule, because it was ridiculous.

The rooms all have two queen-size beds and since we were three children, one boy and two girls, my mother brought some blowup rafts to put on the boxspring bed for my sister and I, while took my brother would sleep on the mattress on the floor.

When we were little, all three of us would sleep side by side on the width of the bed, instead of head to foot, for more room. But we were too old for that now. The rafts smelled like rubber, but the odor dissipated as the trip went on.

Unfortunately, I was always a difficult sleeper and with only one light for all five of us, I wasn’t able to read myself to sleep, so I lied awake listening to the sounds of cars going by on the nearby road, hoping to fall asleep, when I heard my parents whisper-fighting in the bathroom with the door closed. They were talking about the nudist camp.

“So did you see any naked people?” my mother asked sarcastically.

“It wasn’t what you think. It wasn’t like we were at the Playboy mansion,” he laughed. “Quite frankly the site of my skinny cousin and his wife was enough to put me off the whole thing forever. I had a hard time finding places to divert my eyes.”

“Well, we shouldn’t been put in that kind of situation. It could’ve been a terrifying experience for the kids if they had seen a bunch of naked people walking around,” she argued.

“Look, I didn’t ask to be there. I was put an awkward spot and I did the best I could with it. Let’s just move on,” he said firmly.

I heard my mother grumbling and grousing some more, but it was the end of the discussion.

I thought the whole idea of having to talk to people with no clothes on was a little funny, but it must’ve been very awkward for him. As an adult, when I visited nude beaches in the Caribbean and Europe, I understood what he meant. You don’t know where to look. While I don’t begrudge people their freedom, I’m glad I didn’t have to see a bunch of skinny naked people at 13 years old.

When we got into the car the next morning, nothing more was said. What was the point? I was sure there would be more rifts before the trip was finished. It was going to be a long month. We were moving on.

“Kids, are you excited to go to an amusement park?” my dad asked. We all cheered. I was excited. An amusement park sounded good and I looked forward to our arrival at “Silverdollar City” in Missouri. We would be there in only two days.