Trolls, The Amish, and Cows

When my kids were small, I didn't have a car. I lived in the heart of town, and most everywhere I needed to go was easily accessible on foot. Our weekdays consisted of little treks about town, playing in the backyard or the park, and my piano teaching schedule. My three children were very close in age, so they always had playmates.

On weekends, however, my parents often dropped by to visit, and more often than not  they asked if we would like to go for a ride. This was a novelty for them, too. In fact, my parents bought their first car after I was married and had children. Their reason for being car-less was the same as mine. They, too, lived close to everything and walking was much cheaper and healthier. But once they had a car, they wanted to go places. 


First they visited local sites, and then they took extended road trips. Their first long road trip was to drive up one side of Lake Michigan and then down the other. It took two weeks, which was just fine with them. They stopped along the way and explored towns and festivals and museums. We benefitted, too,  by virtue of all the souveneirs and treats that they brought us.

But weekend rides were something that all of us looked forward to. For my dad, who never did learn to drive, it was a chance to sit up front and ride shotgun. For my mom, it was her moment to have something no one else in the family had. A driver's license. For my children, it was an outing with an eagerly anticipated lunch somewhere along the route. And for me, it was a chance to relax, knowing the children were safe in the car and I didn't have to entertain them or constantly be looking out for them. My youngest sister Mary still lived at home, and she almost always came along. 


These were the days before seatbelt laws. Up front, my father held my three year old son Matt on his lap. In the backseat were Mary and I and five year old Sarah. I usually held one year old Rachel. Of course, along the way, all three children swapped adults so it wasn't uncommon for Sarah to end up front with Grandma and Grandpa, and Matt to be on my lap with Mary holding Rachel.


My father never had a son that lived past infancy. He wanted a son. When the fourth daughter was born and my parents stopped producing children, my father had two choices: admit he would not have a son or compromise somehow. He chose the latter. My sister Mary had a farm set at age three, a foot long steel army jeep when she was five, and pretty much any boy toy she asked for along the way. She was a tough little thing anyway because she was the baby of the family and lots of allowances were made for her. She had the legendary family imagination, creating imaginary friends. She had a stuffed dog named Morgan who on at least one occaission clobbered me over the head with a five inch thick book while I was watching an episode of  Disney's "Zorro" on TV. When I chased her into the kitchen ready to reciprocate the clobber, she told my mother that, "Morgan did it." She wasn't spanked. After all, she was the baby. 


Later when my son Matt was born, joining his cousin Dan in the ranks of highly honored males in our female-dominated family, the mantle of "special" was lifted from Mary's shoulders and placed on the little boys. Mary didn't care too much at that point in her life. She was looking at the world through high school eyes, and babies were hardly competition.


So Saturday would arrive after a long week of work and struggle. After a morning of cartoons for the kids and piano lessons for me, we would wait for the phone call from grandma and grandpa inviting us to go for a ride. Since my parents lived less than five minutes away at the time, we barely had time to rush everyone to the bathroom, grab jackets, and be waiting outside when they arrived.


My father always wanted Matt on his lap. The girls and I piled into the backseat with Mary. All of the kids loved Mary. They still do. 


My mother would ask my dad which way she should drive. He would point in one of four directions: straight ahead, straight behind, to the right, or to the left. We all knew his pointing was random. That was the fun of the Saturday trips. Even he didn't know where we were going. It was the luck of the draw. Literally. Every time we came to an intersection or crossroads, my mother would ask what she should do and Dad would do his random pointing thing. We  meandered down big and little roads, often ending up several counties away, and always finding interesting things to see, always having a great lunch somewhere along the way.


Sometimes, we would end up on a dirt road to nowhere or in a woods or on a dead end road. Once we had to back up for a quarter mile because there was no other way back from the dead end narrow cowpath we were on. Another time we ended up in the vicinity of the area where my mother grew up. It was in farm country, a place she hadn't been back to in thirty years. Things change a lot in thirty years, and she couldn't find the farm. Not from lack of trying. We drove back and forth over the same area, over and over, looking for a farm that looked like the way she remembered it. At one point, she saw a narrow gravel path with chains across the entrance. She was sure that was the road she should take, but of course, couldn't. We all sat for a spell and speculated why the road was blocked. Amidst the adult conversation, five year old Sarah blurted out, "Maybe there's a dead cow in the road," which has become a family joke ever since.


Other times, we would just plain be lost. My father, who was the chap deciding which way we should go, never admitted that we were lost. He would go into creative overdrive and fabricate an elaborate story about why we were where we were. One time he said we were in Amish country and told my mother to keep on driving. After twenty minutes or so and still we saw nothing but trees, my mother muttered something about there being no Amish in sight to which my dad quipped, "Oh, those Amish people are shy. They hide behind trees so you won't see them." My children grew up with a somewhat distorted view of their world.


My son Matt's favorite Saturday afternoon ride scenario was the one where my dad swore we were in troll country. He described green skinned, drooling, fanged trolls with red eyes who were looking for children to eat. Matt was only three, but he loved the troll stories. "Oh, Matt," my dad would say with a faux tremor in his voice. "We're in troll country now. You watch out the window and tell us if you see one of those ugly red-eyed trolls." Matt stared out the window at every tree and rock, ready to defend his family by calling out the sighting of a troll if there was one. This happened almost every week. When Matt was in kindergarten he saw a boy on TV with a troll doll collection. "See, " he yelled across the room to me. "Grandpa was right! Look at those trolls. They're real!!"


And so we took rides to troll country, to see shy Amish behind trees, and to spend long Saturday afternoons together as a family, my mother and father, my sister, and my three small children. Today the children are all grown up. Grandpa is gone. Grandma is frail and house-bound. My three children all have families of their own. I hope there is a shard of that nutty creativity of my dad's in them....in their children.. ... that quirkiness that takes a bland moment and weaves it into the awesome, the unbelievable, the forever remembered moment the way my dad did. 


Mark Twain once said that Tom Sawyer was the boy he was, but that Huck Finn was the boy he wanted to be. Stories allow us that flexibility between reality and fantasy. They let us escape for a moment our everyday details and take a breath of fairy tale air, fly to other worlds, speak with other voices. We were so fortunate to have a funny and creative father who loved us and enjoyed making our Saturday afternoons great adventures. They could have been humdrum, go-to-the-grocery-store-and-back-home times. But they weren't They were wonderful. Thanks, Dad, for the rides, and a million other things I'll never forget.