Road Trip

It was a nice sunny late summer day yesterday so the wife and I climbed into the Grand Cherokee for a short road trip back to the old hometown. We went to the ice cream stand for tacos. The wife opted for a vanilla Coke while I washed down my food with a diet. Don’t question why the ice cream place has good tacos, they just do. 

We went past the vacant lot that housed my old elementary school. Nothing remains but the crumbling asphalt and gravel where the playground was.  None of that soft rubber matting you find in modern playgrounds. Kids in the sixties were tough, or perhaps we were just hurt far more because safety was never a consideration. 

We played on stuff like this

We didn’t just go around, but also in and out, banging on the center pole in a churning crash. Sure fingers and arms and legs were smashed. Somehow it was fun. So was the merry-go-round that threw us out like a centrifuge and metal slides that seared our flesh on a summer day. 

The wife went to the antique shop she wanted to visit, bought nothing, and we motored home the “scenic” route. It was scenic only in that it was twisty and less travelled than the other state highway we could have chosen. The vista was flat as you imagine Kansas to be (it’s not) and corn and beans and trees dotted with farm houses and occasional double-wide trailers filled the horizon.

As we came back into the north ‘burbs of the metro sprawl we stopped so the wife could window shop a little more then grabbed a bite of supper before arriving back at the homestead in time to watch pre-season football, a baseball game, and a cowboy movie in a display of simultaneous channel flipping remote control dexterity. The wife was upstairs doing whatever she does and missed the fun.

I suspect it was on purpose.

Vintage