My earliest road trip memory

I was about 4 years old. Mom, Dad, Uncle David and I piled into Uncle David’s black Ford Escort station wagon. I didn’t know where we were going or why. Years later I learned we had gone from our home in Columbus, Ohio to Parkersburg, West Virginia for Dad and Uncle David to attend a relative’s funeral.

I sat in the backseat of that station wagon for what seemed like forever. At one point it started raining. Mom and I had some fun watching the patterns the raindrops made on the windows. There was a faded old Sunoco sign at the side of the highway. I was a little confused, because I didn’t see the Sunoco station it belonged to. In retrospect, I realize I had probably been looking at a billboard for a station that was still several miles ahead.

At one point Dad and Uncle David seemed confused about where they were going. They stopped and they bought an atlas. When I was a teenager, I found that atlas in a box of junk in my parents’ basement: AAA Road Atlas 1995. Today, that atlas lives on the bookshelf in my studio apartment alongside various other road atlases I’ve acquired over the years.

Eventually we reached a small church. Somehow, even as a small child, I was able to recognize a church as a church, even when I didn’t go inside. I didn’t go inside. Mom and I sat in the car by ourselves for a while. I suppose this was when the funeral service took place.

The return trip didn’t feel nearly as long. Perhaps it seemed less novel now that I’d done it once before. But one image from the drive home stuck in my mind for years to come: the junction of two busy Interstate highways, marked with their red, white, and blue shields on big green overhead signs. I distinctly remember taking a left-hand ramp from one highway to another.

13 years later, while my family was returning from another trip to Parkersburg, I saw that same interchange again, and I recognized it instantly. It was the junction of Interstate 70 and Interstate 77 near Cambridge, Ohio. The left-hand ramp we had taken was the ramp from northbound I-77 to westbound I-70. We were effectively retracing the route of that road trip from 1994.

Perspective is a funny thing. To my 34-year-old self, a 2-hour drive covering less than 140 miles feels like nothing at all. I’ve gone on longer trips purely on a whim, with no planning or preparation beyond a full tank of gas. But to my 4-year-old self, it was an entirely new experience…and while I did get a little bit restless at times, I overall found the experience quite soothing.

Perhaps that’s why I’m happiest when I’m driving down a rural highway in the rain.