There are things that our parents said during our childhood, that are forever etched into our minds like letters chiseled into a fine granite slab. One of those phrases was one that my mother seemed to scream at us with superior regularity. “We just can’t have nice things!” she would bark, usually after an unfortunate turn of events, which saw one of her favorite lamps turned to a mangled heap on the floor. Or, perhaps a rounded indention in the drywall, which strangely enough, had the same shape as my or my brother’s forehead, which would cause our exasperated mother to bellow that we couldn’t even have a nice home. Apparently, history is repeating itself.
Last week, after a day spent in the yard cleaning up debris from an especially hard winter, I decided that a short nap was in order. I quickly entered the house and glanced at my watch, which told me that if a much needed snooze was in my future, I would need to hurry, as the troops would soon be home. I tossed my dirty boots out onto the porch and positioned the pillows on the couch to my liking. Finally, I gently and slowly lowered my weary body onto the awaiting cushions, only to sink like a rock in water all the way to the floor. I laid still for a moment with my legs and chest nearly touching. I felt somewhat like an accordion to be sure. In the blink of an eye, I had been transformed from a happy nap taking soul into a pitiful old man stuck in an obviously broken couch. After a bit of flailing, I was able to roll off onto the floor, and noticed that the cross brace, which spanned the width of the couch was broken and lying in two pieces amid the dust and debris which had collected in the darkness of the underside of the now broken piece of furniture. “We just can’t have nice things!” I muttered to myself. The rest of the evening was spent repairing the couch and interrogating the kids in a feeble attempt to find out who the perpetrator of such nonsense was. Of course, the ghost that’s been breaking things in our home for years was at fault.
I have adopted the motto, “If it ain’t broke, it ain’t ours.” Nearly everything we own is either only partly working or broken in some fashion. Recently, I noticed a large pile of clean clothes sitting in a basket in the laundry room. Knowing how busy my wife can be in the evenings, I decided to fold and put away the heaping pile. First, I lugged the clothing upstairs and then sorted it according to which room it belonged. After the sorting, I grabbed the clothing that belonged in our daughters closet and galloped into her room, laid the clothes on her bed and opened the closet door. There is a sinking feeling associated with having a bi-fold door, that upon the slightest touch , falls to the floor in a thunderous crash, all while the hapless victim tries to scramble out of the way and catch the door at the same time. No such luck. “We just can’t have nice things!” I mumbled, from beneath the door, as the dog slinked away and out of sight down the hallway. The laundry suddenly took a backseat to the repair job that was required to reinstall the door. Naturally, the ghost had struck again. Sidney, our daughter, had no knowledge of how the door came to be ripped from its track and nearly causing her pitiful father head trauma.
My job often requires me to rise VERY early in the morning to make the long journey to work. I have a routine. My clothing is laid out the night before, lunch packed, wallet and car keys positioned on the kitchen counter, and I’m up and gone in less than fifteen minutes. As you can tell, I’m a mild type-A person. Once in a while, my routine gets turned on it’s head. This past winter, I, as usual, arose from my bed, threw on my clothes, did my business in the bathroom, raced down the stairs, grabbed my wallet and keys and ran outside to my car. Upon my arrival at the car, I opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat, only to realize that someone had been in the seat since I had. Suddenly, my upper torso was hunched over the steering wheel and my knees pressed uncomfortably into the dashboard. Not only was the seat up as far as it could possibly go, but the elevation of the seat was set in a fashion that would have dumped me faced first into the windshield had it not been for the steering wheel. “No problem,” I said into the stillness of the morning, while reaching down to find the button to readjust the seat. I pushed the button. Nothing. I pushed again. Nothing. I then pushed harder. Nothing. I began pounding on the innocent button. Nothing. Finally, I slid out from my sardine like predicament and noticed that the button and its surroundings were ominously rearranged. “We just can’t have nice things!” I whined. I drove to work, and back, with outstretched elbows and knees pressed into the dashboard, while each turn of the steering wheel meant holding my breath to prevent the untimely careening into rivers, ravines, and other vehicles. As usual, the ghost had struck again. “Who’s been playing in my car!” I barked as I walked into the kitchen that evening.
“Not me!” came the kid’s reply, in unison, almost as if they’d been practicing.
I could easily go on for hours, but I won’t. You get the picture. If it ain’t broke, it ain’t ours. So, as a result of my own destructive ways from my childhood, I will continue to be plagued with broken doors, malfunctioning car seats, damaged furniture and a myriad of other items that have been converted into something that doesn’t exactly perform the same function that it was intended to do. But alas, the children, ahem, ghost, is growing up and someday they will surely experience the same frustration as their pitiful old man. I can hear them now, “We just can’t have nice things!”
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
THE BIG VACATION
When I was growing up, my family seldom went on vacation. The word seldom, could easily be replaced with never. Our lack of travel in my youth was an inconvenient consequence of two things. My mom’s hair, and my dad’s desire to ‘stay right here in these mountains’, which inhibited my brother, sister and I from ever venturing very far from the old family homestead. Mom always claimed that she would absolutely love to travel, but we knew that travel meant she would need to craft her flawless hairdo on the run, in hotel bathrooms, and without the luxury of being able to check the ‘do’ in her own bathroom throughout the day.
To be completely candid, we did take many short trips to destinations in the local area, but we kids yearned for a trip to the beach, or maybe Disney World. Often, during the summer months, we would pile onto my dad’s old truck and head across the mountain behind our house to a spot on the river to swim, fish, and cook hamburgers and hot dogs on a tiny charcoal grill.
“I’ll take this for mine, these people that travel off to all these far flung places don’t realize that we’re having just as much fun as they are. It’s cheaper too!” dad would say time and time again. “Isn’t that right Neil?”
No, it wasn’t right. Maybe the cheaper part was right, but I personally had a deep yearning to travel to someplace and make the comparison for myself on which destination was more fun. I always suspected the folks at the beach were having more fun than us.
“Mom, why don’t we ever go on vacation?” I asked, as my mom stood over the stove preparing our dinner one evening.
“Well, you know how your father is. He’s a homebody and prefers to hang around here. You know that I would pack up and be gone in a minute if he was willing,” she answered, while staring at her reflection in the kitchen window and carefully touching each side of her hairdo with the palms of her hands.
Dad was outside, sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper, so I thought that would be a good time to broach the subject of going on vacation. I stepped out the front door and onto the porch and plopped down beside him. “Dad? Can we go on vacation this year?” I asked in my most pitiful voice.
“Now son, you know why we don’t go on vacation. It’s all about your mother’s hair. Besides, we’d rather be right here in these mountains. Wouldn’t we?” he said, never looking up from reading the newspaper.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, before I got up and moped back into the house.
Mom was finishing up making dinner when I sat down at the table and rested my chin in the palm of my hand. “You know, I bet if we incorporated baseball into a vacation, he’d go,” I said to my mom, who had returned to her spot in front of the window to check her hairdo once again.
“Maybe,” she quipped.
At that moment, I had begun to devise a master vacation plan. We would make baseball the focal point of my scheme to do some traveling. My father was and is an ardent baseball fan. He’d played the game for years, and seldom missed a game on television. He loved baseball more than anyone I’d ever known.
Later, I pulled out my latest copy of baseball digest and began to look at the schedules of teams that weren’t too far away, but at the same time, I looked at teams that played in cities that would require us to at least spend a couple of nights. I settled on Cincinnati.
“Dad, why don’t we take a little trip to Cincinnati? The Giants are in town in July and it would be a great series to watch. The Reds and the Giants are neck and neck in the National League West, so that would make it even better,” I said, as my dad’s ears perked up and he stared at me with a look that made me think that he was at least considering my plan. “We could do a few other things during the day to keep mom and Carla happy, and then we could head to the ballpark in the evening.”
“You know, that sounds pretty good. Let me see the schedule.”
And just like that, we were going on vacation. Sort of.
I did most of the planning. I found all of the information concerning the game tickets, and even mapped out the itinerary, which would take us through West Virginia and Kentucky, finally ending up in Ohio. There was one little step that was taken rather lightly though…lodging. We assumed that since Cincinnati was such a large city, hotels and motels would certainly be plentiful. Our assumption would prove to be wrong.
Finally, the day came for mom, dad, Carla and I to pile into dad’s long, dark green 1969 Ford Galaxy and hit the road. Jarrett, our older brother, had finished school and was working, so he didn’t have an interest in making the trip. That particular July day was a balmy 90 degrees and of course the old Galaxy didn’t have air conditioning. So, we simply rolled the windows down and enjoyed the wind rushing past and around us inside the car. “Roll those windows up! There’s too much air on Carla and I,” mom barked from the back seat. Dad and I rolled our windows up and within a minutes we felt as though we were being cooked from the inside out.
“Look, we’ve got to crack these windows. We’re roasting up here!” dad chirped, as he lowered his window slightly. I did the same. Soon though, the crack became a bit larger and before we knew it, the windows had been rolled all the way down again and the winds once again swept around the car like a tornado.
“Who’s hungry?” dad asked as he wheeled to car off the interstate in the direction of several restaurants. We were all starving, and he couldn’t have picked a better time for us to eat. That particular stop would prove to be a pivotal point in our trip.
It’s important to note that my dad and I were in conversation about our baseball vacation up until that point, while mom and Carla sat quietly in the back seat for most of the way. There had been no reason for us to look to the rear of the car. If we had, we surely could have predicted the conniption that was about to ensue. I stepped out of the car and onto the pavement, all the while bending to release the seat so my mom could exit the vehicle which was equipped with only two doors. Briefly, I thought that somehow my mother had been kidnapped and replaced with someone I didn’t know. The woman who occupied the seat where mom had been bore no resemblance to her whatsoever. The woman I was looking at in amazement had a head of hair that only God himself could create. It was similar to what cotton candy looks like before it’s spun onto a roll. Her hair was a mixture of several hairstyles. There appeared to be a Mohawk running down the center of her head, while the sides appeared to making themselves into a rather large Afro. Her bangs drooped to the edges of her eyebrows and one clump of hair stuck out from the side all alone. Apparently the clump on the side was the last remnant of her Aqua Net hair helmet.
“Whoa! What happened to you!?” I said, trying my best to keep the laughter bubbling inside me contained.
“Those blasted windows! That’s what happened! I knew this trip was a bad idea,” the poor soul moaned, while staring at her reflection in a tiny mirror she’d taken from her purse.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, attempting to quell the situation before a complete meltdown occurred. Actually, it looked terrible. She looked as though she’d just made a cross country motorcycle ride with no helmet.
“Whew wee! Mom, I’ve never seen your hair look so…full,” Carla said, while hiding all of her face except for her eyes below the roof of the car. “Dad, open the trunk so she can get her makeup bag. You can fix it in the bathroom.”
Mom did indeed fix her hair, as best she could in a McDonald’s restroom, and that seemed to lift her spirits some. But, within a few miles her head would be once again transformed into a swirling mess of hair that resembled that of a poor unfortunate soul who had somehow grabbed hold of a high voltage electrical line.
So, this incident would be an ominous foreboding concerning the rest of our trip. It was as though a dark cloud of doom floated over us at all times. The car began to act up, resulting in a stop at a service station that consumed a few hours of our time. After the car was repaired, dad decided to let me take the wheel and I promptly drove into a pothole that would have swallowed smaller cars. The four of us bounced violently in our seats, while I stared straight ahead, careful to avoid eye contact with dad. I could feel his eyes on me for a period of time, when I turned to him and asked, “What?”
“Why don’t you turn around and see if you can hit that pothole again! If you try hard enough maybe you can tear the wheels off this time! Damn, did you not see it?” he barked. Carla began giggling uncontrollably, and even my haggard looking mother cracked a smile.
“What pothole?” I asked, occasionally glancing in the direction of my father who had been staring at me for several miles.
“What do you mean, WHAT POTHOLE? Forget it! Just drive!” and drive I did.
Finally, there it was, Cincinnati, and all it’s high rise buildings, the Ohio River and it’s massive steel bridges and most wonderfully, Riverfront Stadium. I could feel the excitement welling up inside me. “Look mom, look Carla, there it is!” I squealed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we see it,” Carla moaned with her eyes closed and her head wedged between seat and he roof support.
“Now we need to find a place to stay,” dad said, as we crossed the river and headed toward downtown. “Stop here, on the street. We’ll walk and find a place to stay. There should be plenty of places available.” With that, we unloaded our suitcases and trudged down the sidewalk like a team of pack mules on the Oregon trail. Dad sported blue jean shorts, which at one time were blue jean pants. He also wore brown church shoes, and black socks pulled nearly to his knees. His untucked plaid shirt flapped in the breeze. My mom, complete with her light socket hairdo, wore matching green terry knit shorts and top. The shorts were slightly lighter that the top. Carla and I stood and looked at each other with scowling faces. Thankfully we didn’t know anyone and they didn’t know us.
Dad was right. There were plenty of places to stay. Nice Places. I stared up at the collection of skyscrapers looming over us and noted that none of them resembled a hotel that would suit our needs. For some reason my mom and dad were surprised that none of the buildings were labeled Motel 6 Tower, Econo Lodge Suites, or perhaps Super 8 Plaza. “Let’s try this one, it looks very nice, maybe they have a room available,” mom said, as she began to dig in her purse.
“What are you looking for?” Carla asked, confused.
“I might have a coupon for this hotel,” mom said, brushing her bangs away from her eyes.
“Uh, I don’t think you have a coupon for the Cincinnati Westin,” I said quietly, careful not to be overheard by the bellhop standing at the door.
“Well, lets see if they have a room anyway,” dad said.
We sauntered into the expansive lobby, and made our way to the front desk, where a nicely dressed man peered at us like we’d just arrived from another galaxy. I stared up at the glass elevator, which was ferrying folks up and down, and also noticed that we appeared to be slightly underdressed compared to the other people standing around. I didn’t hear what the man at the desk told my mother, but it must have been something she didn’t like. She kept mumbling something about her arm and her leg. With that, we headed back to the street to continue our search.
“There, lets ask that guy,” dad said, while pointing to a man pushing a shopping cart across the street.
“That’s a street person!” my mom groaned.
“I know, if anyone knows of a reasonable place to stay, it’s him,” dad answered, while heading toward the man and his cart. After a brief conversation with the man, dad walked back toward us and directed us to follow him. “I told you he’d know of a place. He said there’s a great hotel just a few blocks down, and the rates are very reasonable.”
We walked and walked and walked some more. The shiny glass and granite buildings slowly gave way to brick and mortar and eventually those buildings gave way to structures that only a wrecking ball could fix. The people changed too. Gone were men in business suits, and nice shoes. They were replaced with men in more leisurely attire, to put it nicely. “There it is!” dad exclaimed. “The Dennison Hotel. It looks pretty nice! Lets check it out!” he continued.
My mom stood, staring at the dilapidated building, which had curtains flapping in the breeze from the windows and several people sitting on the window ledges peering down at us. There was a huge sign that had been painted on the building which read, Dennison Hotel 120 Rooms With 60 Baths, Great Rates.
“I’m not staying here!” mom bellowed. “Don’t you see that sign? I’m not sharing a bathtub with a stranger! Forget it!”
“Uh, dad, I don’t think this is the place for us,” I said. “Oh, and mom almost got mugged just now.” Apparently, for some reason, we looked out of place and my mothers large purse looked a bit tempting to a man who took a half hearted grab at it.
“Yeah, maybe we should find something else,” dad said, ignoring the statement about mom nearly getting mugged. “Let’s park at the stadium and we’ll surely find something after the game.”
So, we lugged our baggage back up the street to where the car was parked. We were amazed that the Cincinnati police didn’t find any humor in where I had decided to park our old bomb. I had felt that there was plenty of room for access to the fire hydrant in the event of an emergency. Obviously, the police felt differently. My dad removed the flapping piece of paper from under the windshield wiper, studied it for a moment, folded it and slid it safely in his shirt pocket.
Dad carefully guided the old car into the stadium parking garage, which sat adjacent to the ballpark. Finally, he found a spot and stopped. “Who’s ready for some baseball!?” he exclaimed, while opening the car door.
“Where are our seats? I hope you didn’t get seats in the nosebleed section,” mom inquired. By that time, not only was her hair a mess, but her makeup had given up and wasn’t in the same spot it had been when our journey began. She looked sort of like a blonde Ozzy Osborne.
“Oh no, these seats are low. Well, pretty low,” I said. This was a huge series, and tickets were limited, so upper deck seats were all that were available. But, there were a few rows above us, so my comment about the seats was accurate in comparison to the people at the very top. I should also point out that my mom is terrified of heights.
We made our way to the concourse, and began the slow zig zagged walk up, and up, and up, and up some more. Finally, we exited the tunnel and the view in front of me was nothing short of breathtaking. I could see the players warming up on the turf field, and an ocean of red seats circled the place. Anxious fans made their way to their seats with concessions in hand, ready for the first pitch. My mom evidently liked the view also, as her eyes resembled those of a person who’d just seen a ghost. “How do you like it mom?” Carla asked. There was no reply. She had a death grip on the railing and stood frozen, locked, unable to move. Dad and pried her hands from the railing, and slowly guided her to where our seats were, and gently sat her down.
“Are you OK mom?” I asked, meekly
“I’m fine.”
Throughout the game, we would periodically look at poor old mom, clutching her armrests and staring wide eyed at the field below. Suddenly, without warning, the heavens opened up and began pelting us heavy raindrops. Grounds keepers scrambled to cover the field, and fans raced to the concourse area, and my mom sat. She sat, frozen like a statue, with rain running down all sides of her face and body. She was but a dot in an ocean of seats. She didn‘t look like Ozzy anymore, and I was amazed at how long her hair was when not in helmet form. “Son, go get your mother,” dad simply said.
Mom and Carla spent the rest of that game in the car, while dad and I enjoyed the remainder of the game.
“Now, lets see if we can find a place to stay,” my father said, happily, still thinking about the game. “Neil, you drive. It’ll be good experience for you in this heavy traffic.” Good experience, maybe, but it meant that he didn’t have to try to navigate the car in an unfamiliar city among thousands of other vehicles.
At long last, we made it out of the city and back onto the interstate. We drove, and drove, until we noticed a highway sign stating that the Indiana state line was close. “Why are we going to Indiana?” Carla inquired from the depths of the back seat. We didn’t answer, and I simply exited the interstate and drove in the direction from which we’d come. We finally found a more suitable place to stay, and luckily they even had a decent swimming pool, which would come in handy for Carla, since she and my mom’s ball game experience was now complete.
We stayed for two more days. Dad and I would go to the games, and mom and Carla would go to the pool. Carla swam, and swam and swam. “I’m sick of the pool! I’m waterlog! Let’s go home, this stinks! It’s no fun for us!” she barked.
We did finally go home. Dad and I enjoyed our vacation very much. Mom and Carla, not so much. My mom’s humor did eventually return, along with her flawless hairdo. Dad, as always, said, “You know, it’s nice to go places, but I’ll take these old mountains any day.” And with that, our vacation came to an end.
To be completely candid, we did take many short trips to destinations in the local area, but we kids yearned for a trip to the beach, or maybe Disney World. Often, during the summer months, we would pile onto my dad’s old truck and head across the mountain behind our house to a spot on the river to swim, fish, and cook hamburgers and hot dogs on a tiny charcoal grill.
“I’ll take this for mine, these people that travel off to all these far flung places don’t realize that we’re having just as much fun as they are. It’s cheaper too!” dad would say time and time again. “Isn’t that right Neil?”
No, it wasn’t right. Maybe the cheaper part was right, but I personally had a deep yearning to travel to someplace and make the comparison for myself on which destination was more fun. I always suspected the folks at the beach were having more fun than us.
“Mom, why don’t we ever go on vacation?” I asked, as my mom stood over the stove preparing our dinner one evening.
“Well, you know how your father is. He’s a homebody and prefers to hang around here. You know that I would pack up and be gone in a minute if he was willing,” she answered, while staring at her reflection in the kitchen window and carefully touching each side of her hairdo with the palms of her hands.
Dad was outside, sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper, so I thought that would be a good time to broach the subject of going on vacation. I stepped out the front door and onto the porch and plopped down beside him. “Dad? Can we go on vacation this year?” I asked in my most pitiful voice.
“Now son, you know why we don’t go on vacation. It’s all about your mother’s hair. Besides, we’d rather be right here in these mountains. Wouldn’t we?” he said, never looking up from reading the newspaper.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, before I got up and moped back into the house.
Mom was finishing up making dinner when I sat down at the table and rested my chin in the palm of my hand. “You know, I bet if we incorporated baseball into a vacation, he’d go,” I said to my mom, who had returned to her spot in front of the window to check her hairdo once again.
“Maybe,” she quipped.
At that moment, I had begun to devise a master vacation plan. We would make baseball the focal point of my scheme to do some traveling. My father was and is an ardent baseball fan. He’d played the game for years, and seldom missed a game on television. He loved baseball more than anyone I’d ever known.
Later, I pulled out my latest copy of baseball digest and began to look at the schedules of teams that weren’t too far away, but at the same time, I looked at teams that played in cities that would require us to at least spend a couple of nights. I settled on Cincinnati.
“Dad, why don’t we take a little trip to Cincinnati? The Giants are in town in July and it would be a great series to watch. The Reds and the Giants are neck and neck in the National League West, so that would make it even better,” I said, as my dad’s ears perked up and he stared at me with a look that made me think that he was at least considering my plan. “We could do a few other things during the day to keep mom and Carla happy, and then we could head to the ballpark in the evening.”
“You know, that sounds pretty good. Let me see the schedule.”
And just like that, we were going on vacation. Sort of.
I did most of the planning. I found all of the information concerning the game tickets, and even mapped out the itinerary, which would take us through West Virginia and Kentucky, finally ending up in Ohio. There was one little step that was taken rather lightly though…lodging. We assumed that since Cincinnati was such a large city, hotels and motels would certainly be plentiful. Our assumption would prove to be wrong.
Finally, the day came for mom, dad, Carla and I to pile into dad’s long, dark green 1969 Ford Galaxy and hit the road. Jarrett, our older brother, had finished school and was working, so he didn’t have an interest in making the trip. That particular July day was a balmy 90 degrees and of course the old Galaxy didn’t have air conditioning. So, we simply rolled the windows down and enjoyed the wind rushing past and around us inside the car. “Roll those windows up! There’s too much air on Carla and I,” mom barked from the back seat. Dad and I rolled our windows up and within a minutes we felt as though we were being cooked from the inside out.
“Look, we’ve got to crack these windows. We’re roasting up here!” dad chirped, as he lowered his window slightly. I did the same. Soon though, the crack became a bit larger and before we knew it, the windows had been rolled all the way down again and the winds once again swept around the car like a tornado.
“Who’s hungry?” dad asked as he wheeled to car off the interstate in the direction of several restaurants. We were all starving, and he couldn’t have picked a better time for us to eat. That particular stop would prove to be a pivotal point in our trip.
It’s important to note that my dad and I were in conversation about our baseball vacation up until that point, while mom and Carla sat quietly in the back seat for most of the way. There had been no reason for us to look to the rear of the car. If we had, we surely could have predicted the conniption that was about to ensue. I stepped out of the car and onto the pavement, all the while bending to release the seat so my mom could exit the vehicle which was equipped with only two doors. Briefly, I thought that somehow my mother had been kidnapped and replaced with someone I didn’t know. The woman who occupied the seat where mom had been bore no resemblance to her whatsoever. The woman I was looking at in amazement had a head of hair that only God himself could create. It was similar to what cotton candy looks like before it’s spun onto a roll. Her hair was a mixture of several hairstyles. There appeared to be a Mohawk running down the center of her head, while the sides appeared to making themselves into a rather large Afro. Her bangs drooped to the edges of her eyebrows and one clump of hair stuck out from the side all alone. Apparently the clump on the side was the last remnant of her Aqua Net hair helmet.
“Whoa! What happened to you!?” I said, trying my best to keep the laughter bubbling inside me contained.
“Those blasted windows! That’s what happened! I knew this trip was a bad idea,” the poor soul moaned, while staring at her reflection in a tiny mirror she’d taken from her purse.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, attempting to quell the situation before a complete meltdown occurred. Actually, it looked terrible. She looked as though she’d just made a cross country motorcycle ride with no helmet.
“Whew wee! Mom, I’ve never seen your hair look so…full,” Carla said, while hiding all of her face except for her eyes below the roof of the car. “Dad, open the trunk so she can get her makeup bag. You can fix it in the bathroom.”
Mom did indeed fix her hair, as best she could in a McDonald’s restroom, and that seemed to lift her spirits some. But, within a few miles her head would be once again transformed into a swirling mess of hair that resembled that of a poor unfortunate soul who had somehow grabbed hold of a high voltage electrical line.
So, this incident would be an ominous foreboding concerning the rest of our trip. It was as though a dark cloud of doom floated over us at all times. The car began to act up, resulting in a stop at a service station that consumed a few hours of our time. After the car was repaired, dad decided to let me take the wheel and I promptly drove into a pothole that would have swallowed smaller cars. The four of us bounced violently in our seats, while I stared straight ahead, careful to avoid eye contact with dad. I could feel his eyes on me for a period of time, when I turned to him and asked, “What?”
“Why don’t you turn around and see if you can hit that pothole again! If you try hard enough maybe you can tear the wheels off this time! Damn, did you not see it?” he barked. Carla began giggling uncontrollably, and even my haggard looking mother cracked a smile.
“What pothole?” I asked, occasionally glancing in the direction of my father who had been staring at me for several miles.
“What do you mean, WHAT POTHOLE? Forget it! Just drive!” and drive I did.
Finally, there it was, Cincinnati, and all it’s high rise buildings, the Ohio River and it’s massive steel bridges and most wonderfully, Riverfront Stadium. I could feel the excitement welling up inside me. “Look mom, look Carla, there it is!” I squealed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we see it,” Carla moaned with her eyes closed and her head wedged between seat and he roof support.
“Now we need to find a place to stay,” dad said, as we crossed the river and headed toward downtown. “Stop here, on the street. We’ll walk and find a place to stay. There should be plenty of places available.” With that, we unloaded our suitcases and trudged down the sidewalk like a team of pack mules on the Oregon trail. Dad sported blue jean shorts, which at one time were blue jean pants. He also wore brown church shoes, and black socks pulled nearly to his knees. His untucked plaid shirt flapped in the breeze. My mom, complete with her light socket hairdo, wore matching green terry knit shorts and top. The shorts were slightly lighter that the top. Carla and I stood and looked at each other with scowling faces. Thankfully we didn’t know anyone and they didn’t know us.
Dad was right. There were plenty of places to stay. Nice Places. I stared up at the collection of skyscrapers looming over us and noted that none of them resembled a hotel that would suit our needs. For some reason my mom and dad were surprised that none of the buildings were labeled Motel 6 Tower, Econo Lodge Suites, or perhaps Super 8 Plaza. “Let’s try this one, it looks very nice, maybe they have a room available,” mom said, as she began to dig in her purse.
“What are you looking for?” Carla asked, confused.
“I might have a coupon for this hotel,” mom said, brushing her bangs away from her eyes.
“Uh, I don’t think you have a coupon for the Cincinnati Westin,” I said quietly, careful not to be overheard by the bellhop standing at the door.
“Well, lets see if they have a room anyway,” dad said.
We sauntered into the expansive lobby, and made our way to the front desk, where a nicely dressed man peered at us like we’d just arrived from another galaxy. I stared up at the glass elevator, which was ferrying folks up and down, and also noticed that we appeared to be slightly underdressed compared to the other people standing around. I didn’t hear what the man at the desk told my mother, but it must have been something she didn’t like. She kept mumbling something about her arm and her leg. With that, we headed back to the street to continue our search.
“There, lets ask that guy,” dad said, while pointing to a man pushing a shopping cart across the street.
“That’s a street person!” my mom groaned.
“I know, if anyone knows of a reasonable place to stay, it’s him,” dad answered, while heading toward the man and his cart. After a brief conversation with the man, dad walked back toward us and directed us to follow him. “I told you he’d know of a place. He said there’s a great hotel just a few blocks down, and the rates are very reasonable.”
We walked and walked and walked some more. The shiny glass and granite buildings slowly gave way to brick and mortar and eventually those buildings gave way to structures that only a wrecking ball could fix. The people changed too. Gone were men in business suits, and nice shoes. They were replaced with men in more leisurely attire, to put it nicely. “There it is!” dad exclaimed. “The Dennison Hotel. It looks pretty nice! Lets check it out!” he continued.
My mom stood, staring at the dilapidated building, which had curtains flapping in the breeze from the windows and several people sitting on the window ledges peering down at us. There was a huge sign that had been painted on the building which read, Dennison Hotel 120 Rooms With 60 Baths, Great Rates.
“I’m not staying here!” mom bellowed. “Don’t you see that sign? I’m not sharing a bathtub with a stranger! Forget it!”
“Uh, dad, I don’t think this is the place for us,” I said. “Oh, and mom almost got mugged just now.” Apparently, for some reason, we looked out of place and my mothers large purse looked a bit tempting to a man who took a half hearted grab at it.
“Yeah, maybe we should find something else,” dad said, ignoring the statement about mom nearly getting mugged. “Let’s park at the stadium and we’ll surely find something after the game.”
So, we lugged our baggage back up the street to where the car was parked. We were amazed that the Cincinnati police didn’t find any humor in where I had decided to park our old bomb. I had felt that there was plenty of room for access to the fire hydrant in the event of an emergency. Obviously, the police felt differently. My dad removed the flapping piece of paper from under the windshield wiper, studied it for a moment, folded it and slid it safely in his shirt pocket.
Dad carefully guided the old car into the stadium parking garage, which sat adjacent to the ballpark. Finally, he found a spot and stopped. “Who’s ready for some baseball!?” he exclaimed, while opening the car door.
“Where are our seats? I hope you didn’t get seats in the nosebleed section,” mom inquired. By that time, not only was her hair a mess, but her makeup had given up and wasn’t in the same spot it had been when our journey began. She looked sort of like a blonde Ozzy Osborne.
“Oh no, these seats are low. Well, pretty low,” I said. This was a huge series, and tickets were limited, so upper deck seats were all that were available. But, there were a few rows above us, so my comment about the seats was accurate in comparison to the people at the very top. I should also point out that my mom is terrified of heights.
We made our way to the concourse, and began the slow zig zagged walk up, and up, and up, and up some more. Finally, we exited the tunnel and the view in front of me was nothing short of breathtaking. I could see the players warming up on the turf field, and an ocean of red seats circled the place. Anxious fans made their way to their seats with concessions in hand, ready for the first pitch. My mom evidently liked the view also, as her eyes resembled those of a person who’d just seen a ghost. “How do you like it mom?” Carla asked. There was no reply. She had a death grip on the railing and stood frozen, locked, unable to move. Dad and pried her hands from the railing, and slowly guided her to where our seats were, and gently sat her down.
“Are you OK mom?” I asked, meekly
“I’m fine.”
Throughout the game, we would periodically look at poor old mom, clutching her armrests and staring wide eyed at the field below. Suddenly, without warning, the heavens opened up and began pelting us heavy raindrops. Grounds keepers scrambled to cover the field, and fans raced to the concourse area, and my mom sat. She sat, frozen like a statue, with rain running down all sides of her face and body. She was but a dot in an ocean of seats. She didn‘t look like Ozzy anymore, and I was amazed at how long her hair was when not in helmet form. “Son, go get your mother,” dad simply said.
Mom and Carla spent the rest of that game in the car, while dad and I enjoyed the remainder of the game.
“Now, lets see if we can find a place to stay,” my father said, happily, still thinking about the game. “Neil, you drive. It’ll be good experience for you in this heavy traffic.” Good experience, maybe, but it meant that he didn’t have to try to navigate the car in an unfamiliar city among thousands of other vehicles.
At long last, we made it out of the city and back onto the interstate. We drove, and drove, until we noticed a highway sign stating that the Indiana state line was close. “Why are we going to Indiana?” Carla inquired from the depths of the back seat. We didn’t answer, and I simply exited the interstate and drove in the direction from which we’d come. We finally found a more suitable place to stay, and luckily they even had a decent swimming pool, which would come in handy for Carla, since she and my mom’s ball game experience was now complete.
We stayed for two more days. Dad and I would go to the games, and mom and Carla would go to the pool. Carla swam, and swam and swam. “I’m sick of the pool! I’m waterlog! Let’s go home, this stinks! It’s no fun for us!” she barked.
We did finally go home. Dad and I enjoyed our vacation very much. Mom and Carla, not so much. My mom’s humor did eventually return, along with her flawless hairdo. Dad, as always, said, “You know, it’s nice to go places, but I’ll take these old mountains any day.” And with that, our vacation came to an end.
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