Fourscore and four years ago, two of my college friends and I decided to take a road trip for Spring Break. It was March. We were at Colgate University, locked away in the frozen tundra of the Chenango Valley, and we knew it was warmer further south.
Road trips are the best. This was one for the record books.
1982-03-19-Spring-Break-ltr-from-DadThe travel agent (a/k/a my dad) knew about college students and road trips. Our adventure turned out to be way more memorable than we expected.
We would travel in Alpha the Omega, my four-speed 1981 Oldsmobile. We would split the cost of gas and road snacks.
We needed to travel on the cheap, so we planned to camp out in a tent when we weren’t staying with my relatives. Now, Mishy was a veteran outdoorswoman and survivalist compared to Mary, and, as a pampered princess, my idea of roughing it was a Holiday Inn with bad decor. But Mish was confident that she could lead the way, and Mary and I were game.
We took with us a standard black-and-white Composition Book to record our adventures, which is how I can give so much detail 44 years after the fact. We all wrote in it. We designated a section just for our thoughts. Mishy wrote her first entry as we headed out of Hamilton at at 3:50 p.m. on March 24: “”Nowhere to go but South – nowhere to stay but at Anne’s – everything will just fall into place!! I hope.”
We drove to Nashville, Tennessee, in one long, agonizing sprint, trading off drivers as we got tired. Along the way, we made up a couple of new words. Mishy coined “smuttered,” which referred to dead, bloody ex-animals in the road. Mary added “obnoxiosity,” which referred to Anne and Mary on the 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. driving shift.
The whole trip we teased each other mercilessly about our shitty driving. A section of our trip notebook was headed “Fuck-ups” and was dedicated to driving errors. Mishy wrote the first of these entries: “Anne: swerves into the other side of the road looking into the countryside – tried to get away with it but was caught by Mary – 10.4 miles from home.”
The notations continued, brutally.
“Anne: ran a yellow light.”
“Mary: ‘Where’s the bump in the road?’ – one hole in the road and Mary hits it in Scranton PA.”
“Mary: almost kills us, not even 5 miles driving – oh, what are we in for!”
“Mishy: has trouble shifting gears. She forgets how to drive a standard. Almost died. Put on your safety belt.”
We took turns choosing the music – Alpha had a cassette deck and I had a big collection of tapes – and started a list of what we listened to.
- Loverboy – Loverboy (Mary)
- Loverboy – Get Lucky (Annie)
- Genesis – [no clue which album, but probably Duke] (Mishy)
- REO Speedwagon – Hi Infidelity (Anne)
- Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (Mary)
- Rolling Stones – Tattoo You (Anne)
- Led Zeppelin – IV (Stairway to Heaven) (Mishy)
- The Doors – Thirteen (Mary)
That was all we recorded about our playlist. Evidently, we got tired of writing everything down. That list would have gotten us only halfway to Nashville, where we arrived at 10 a.m.
Driving fuckups continued.
“Anne: travels up the curb in Nashville.”
“Mary: ‘How does the car wash work? Should you roll your window up? Oh, did you get wet, Mish?'”
It was cold. We thought we were in the South by then and sort of felt robbed. We went to the Hermitage and probably saw some other sights, found ourselves a campground, and Mishy pitched the tent. I said that the campsite was cute. Mary thought that was hilarious and recorded it in the notebook.
That night, it rained. When I awoke early the next morning, shivering, I looked up to see beads of water clinging to the underside of our tent. I reached up, and both Mish and Mary yelled, “Nooooo!” as my fingertip freed the drops from their static pressure and dumped what felt like a cold gallon of water on the three of us. We packed up and soggily headed to Memphis at 6:30 a.m.
We had a pilgrimage to make. Elvis had died just a few years before, and although Graceland was not yet open for tourists (it would open that June), we could visit the grave of the King on its grounds.
Driving fuckups continued.
Mary was driving, and we got hopelessly lost in what appeared to be a seedy part of Memphis for 45 minutes, then finally figured out how to read a map and found Graceland. Unlike Mishy and me, Mary had learned to drive in a city and claimed to be good at driving in one. We teased her. “I don’t like driving in hills,” Mary complained. “I like highways.”
“Anne: almost (inches away) puts us into the ground with Elvis.”
We left Memphis at 1:00 p.m. and arrived at my parents’ house in Des Arc two hours later. I took my friends on a tour of the booming metropolis. (At the time, the sign at the edge of town proudly proclaimed a population of 2,121). We spent the next day – a Sunday – hanging around the house. As was common during the political primary season, there were politicians wandering around, mostly unsupervised. One who we knew came to our door around lunchtime, and Dad invited him in.
So, Mishy, Mary, and I shared a frozen Tony’s pizza with the future President of the United States. He was running for his second term as governor of Arkansas after having been beaten due to raising the fees for getting car tags during his first term. He felt the pain of his constituents, learned his lesson, and was never not elected again.
When he won the New Hampshire primary, I got calls from both of my 1982 traveling companions asking the exact same thing: “IS THAT THE CUTE GUY WE HAD PIZZA WITH AT YOUR PARENTS’ HOUSE?!” Yep. That was indeed the guy. “You said he was going to be president someday. You told us that day!” (I forget which one said that, but I had to preen a little over my prescience.)
The next day, we headed to Scott, where my mother’s family’s plantation was. How could I bring my friends to the South without exposing them to the wonders of the fruits of the labors of the enslaved?
Mary recorded another driving fuckup. “Anne: Do you drive on sidewalks in Little Rock often, or just today?”
We spent part of the day there, and then we headed south mid-afternoon. The next stop was Vicksburg. My friends had to see the place where I went to high school and gaze with gravitas upon one of the most notorious battles of the Civil War. That’s Alpha the Omega in the photo below. I’m not sure where the bike came from. Maybe I was taking it back to school? I don’t recall having a bike there, but maybe I did…
We rolled into Vicksburg about 10:00 p.m. and set up camp. The next day we packed up and got ready to head out and couldn’t find the car keys.
Driving fuckup, in giant letters with an even bigger asterisk: “WHERE ARE THE KEYS?”
We couldn’t find them because they were locked inside the car. Fortunately, I had a credit card or a checkbook, and we found a phone and called a locksmith. That’s him, below. According to our trip notebook, I thought he ripped me off. He probably didn’t. I was probably just miffed because I had lost the damn keys and wanted to blame someone else.
We toured the battlefield, and I took my friends past All Saints to gawk at it. Next, we headed to New Orleans, arriving there at 10:00 p.m.
Fuckup. “Mishy: Not only does it take Mishy until South Louisiana to learn how to drive a standard, but once she does learn, she bypasses Pizza Hut twice.”
I have no idea whether we got a hotel room or camped out. I know I didn’t call any of my school friends for accommodations, so we must have camped somewhere. We spent quality time in the French Quarter, enjoyed a walk in Audubon Park, and went to the aquarium.
We left via the Pontchartrain Bridge late the next afternoon. Driving across that vast expanse of water was a little unnerving, so we decided to take advantage of the benefits of an anxiety-reducing herb. As we passed the calming herb back and forth among us, heedless of anyone watching – because who could possibly be watching – a guy in a car behind us pulled out to pass us. He sounded an actual siren and shook his finger at us as he passed us. Was he a cop?! Paranoia replaced anxiety, and we decided thereafter to be more circumspect.
Fuckup. “Mishy: Gulf shore, and Mish has once again taken leave of her dexterity. She panics every time a light (red or green) shows up in the distance. She calls it smooth shifting when her passengers don’t fly through the windshield. I knew we brought her along for something.”
We arrived in Fort Walton Beach and found a campground about 11:30 p.m. We pitched the tent, unpacked, and prepared to spend a couple of days enjoying the surf and sand before heading to Savannah, Charleston, and back to the frigid North.
By 10 a.m., we were lying on beach towels in our bathing suits. Slathered in baby oil, we soaked up the warm Florida sun until 3:30 on April Fool’s Day.
That’s right. April Fool’s Day. And on that particular April Fool’s Day, there was no bigger fool than this lily white college girl with translucent skin and no base tan. I woke the next morning with a blister the size of a large orange on my left upper arm, and the rest of my skin bubbling and sizzling like the cheese on that pizza we had shared with Bill Clinton a few days before. I declined to go back to the beach, opting for a trip to the emergency room instead. I had second-degree burns over every bit of my exposed body.
I got a big tube of Silvadene cream and an admonition to be gentle with myself. We left Florida at 5:00 p.m. and headed northeast. By 11:30 p.m., we stopped in Waycross, Georgia, to sleep. Mishy and Mary had to do all the driving because I couldn’t. Hell, I could only wear my bathing suit – my skin was so ravaged, I couldn’t even put clothes on. My teeth chattered with chills from a fever, and every inch of my sun-exposed skin was in agony.
Fuckup (not driving-related, but recorded nevertheless): “Anne is too sunburnt to perform natural bodily functions. Is that stupid?”
We did not make it to Savannah or Charleston. We decided to press on, back home to Hamilton.
Fuckup: “Mish admits that before the trip she couldn’t drive a standard. As a matter of fact, she had only driven one once. If she had told us before now, we wouldn’t have let her behind the wheel. It’s a wonder we made it this far.”
Sometime the next day, we stopped again at an Emergency Room somewhere along the way. My damaged skin had become too much for me to handle, and that giant blister on my left arm finally popped. My skin oozed. This time, I got antibiotics in addition to more Silvadene. We got a little sleep and kept going.
Fuckup: “We made a complete circle around Washington, D.C. while following another car from Colgate – 1 hour delay. Meanwhile, Mishy’s bladder is bursting.” I’m not sure whether it was Mishy or Mary who was driving. Probably Mary, since she liked highway driving in cities.
The very next fuckup entry in the notebook is an entire conversation:
Mary: “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Mishy: “Okay, in Scranton (20 miles).”
Mary: “OK.”
(10 minutes later)
Mary: “That’s a nice rest area.”
Mish: “Oh! You wanted to go to the bathroom!”
Mary: “Yes.”
Mishy: “Can you wait until Scranton?”
Mary: “Yes.”
Mish: “Or shall I go around Washington again?”
We made it back to Hamilton the next night. It was dark when we arrived, and it was snowing. I was still in my bathing suit. I couldn’t bear the sensation of clothing. I was too swollen – and the tops of my feet were too burned – to put shoes on. I let Mishy and Mary take the car and, barefoot and still in my bathing suit, I hot-footed my way through the snow to my apartment.
A few days later, I was out of Silvadene and had to go to the campus health clinic. I made my way there in agony.
I remember the doctor advising me to wear looser-fitting clothes. Other than sweats, I didn’t have any. I had gained about 15 pounds that year – I probably weighed about 135 – and somehow my wardrobe was not growing with me. Plus, I was swollen and retaining a lot of fluid because of the burns. I appreciated the advice and the inescapable message that I was fat.
(In fact, the night we arrived in Des Arc, my sister was there. In an exaggerated country drawl, she had said, “Looks like you’ve put on some LBs, there, Anne.” LBs. Pounds. Thanks, sis. I lost the weight the next school year, kept it off for several years, then gained it back – and eventually 130 more – when I returned to Arkansas.)
Sun poisoning once in a lifetime is more than enough. My skin didn’t peel off in thin layers, like it would in a normal sunburn. It cracked off in big chunks, and the new skin below was tender and pink. As a result of this misadventure, I’ve acquired the privilege of enjoying polymorphous light eruption and the precancerous lesions of actinic keratosis on top of the eczema and eternally dry skin I already had.
I would truly like to say I never allowed the sun to touch my bare flesh ever again, but that would be a lie.
The next summer, Mishy and I backpacked through Europe together. We’d occasionally split up to travel with new companions for a short time, and meet back up in a designated city on a designated date. We split up after a visit to Rome. I went to the Amalfi Coast with Sophie, a Canadian girl we had met in Nice, and Mishy headed to Greece with somebody else. We planned to meet up in Salzburg in a few days.
Instead, I stupidly sunbathed topless on an inflatable raft in the sea and once again ended up with a horrible sunburn. This time, even more of my skin was affected. I sent Mishy a telegram via the American Express office, which, in those days before cell phones, was how we had agreed to communicate when we parted company temporarily. Instead of meeting her in Austria, I spent ten days in the little village of Priano, almost naked in my room in the pensione, slathering myself with Italian Silvadene.
While I languished in Priano, Mishy went to Greece, Austria, Germany – even beyond the wall into the Eastern side of Berlin. (The wall wouldn’t come down for several more years.) Sophie stayed with me, having made friends with the son and brother of the pensione’s owner. I finally healed enough to tolerate clothing, and we left for Venice. Mishy and I reconnected in Salzburg a couple of days later.
She examined my chunky, peeling skin. She shook her head and rolled her eyes at my latest travel fuckup.
It was definitely one for the record books.
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