Listening Post: Out the Windshield
From its beginning, I’ve been a fan of NPR’s Morning Edition summer series “Honey, Stop the Car.” So it was a nice surprise earlier in the week to hear the nation “stop the car” to gawk at the giant roll of Lifesavers that adorns the park in downtown Gouverneur, and to hear Emma Jacobs, familiar to NCPR listeners from her Innovation Trail reporting, get a little national exposure.
Air travel has its pleasures–the Rockies by moonlight, a lacework of villages, streetlights and farmsteads picking out the valleys. And some still love the train, leaning back to watch the land roll by, and the parts of cities no one ever sees. But all around, I have to sing along with the old ad jingle: “SEE the YOU-ess-ay IN your CHEV-ro-let.”
1958 Chevrolet Nomad Station Wagon
I grew up in the great era of motor touring. After the end of WWII gas rationing and the build-out of the interstates, it seems all of America took to the roads. Tourist homes and tourist “traps” sprouted in every village–campgrounds, curiosities, amusement parks, scenic overlooks. As a family, we put thousands of miles each summer on a succession of station wagons the size of mastodons, visiting relatives in Pennsylvania and Indiana, taking the national park tour out west with tent trailer (and Grandma) in tow.
The Adirondack Hotel in Long Lake ca. 1950 and today.
All this came back to me over the weekend as my wife and I made an overnight stay, rather than brave the lurking deer to drive home after the Chris Smither concert in Indian Lake. The Adirondack Hotel in Long Lake, in fact the whole village, seems remarkably the same from mid-Century 20 until now. The only concession to the new millennium is wi-fi in the hotel (and the ice cream stand). We followed the car hood through the Adirondacks the next day on a slow meander with frequent stops—great scenery, homely amenities, curious shops, roadside delicacies–arriving home late in the day.
Had I but the gas money and time, I could have kept going all the way to the west coast and back again, stopping the car a dozen times a day. But only because, unlike my parents, we didn’t have three sugar-hyped kids warring in the back.
Tags: listeningpost
I just got back from a two-week road trip from Miami Beach to Saranac Lake and back, meandering most of the way…. I could have kept going, too.
You’re a man after my own heart. Last Tuesday I made a leisurely drive back from Lake George, stopping at Oscar’s in Warrensburg, (of course), later to tour Gore Mt. Alpaca farm, and a stop at Long Lake just to gawp at the scenery.
My own parents had the travel bug as well. From the family theme parks that still existed in New York State (we made more than one trip to Storytown and the Land of Make Believe) to the Disney parks in Florida & California, my brothers and I had thousands of miles under our belts before we were old enough to have our own drivers licenses. There is little wonder where I developed my sense of adventure & love of the open road!
I used to joke that we would never vacation in Hawaii because you can’t drive all the way there! Thanks for reminding me of my youth.