Road trips have a hold that won’t loosen up

“One more song about moving along the highway, can’t stand much of anything that’s new…”

– Carole King

Road Trip? I’ll go!

This has been a constant mental problem for me since my teens when David Walsh, fresh from a fistfight with his contractor father, stole a dump truck and smashed down the wall of the truck depot. The next day (I was home, skipping school) he showed up at my house and said he was running away from home. “Let me get my coat,” I said and joined him in the new dump truck. We were gone for two weeks and returned as heroes on the corner. Even my high school principal refused to suspend me, because he was laughing so hard.

A decade later, I was toiling, unhappily, in the Boston insurance racket when Doug, a roommate of a fellow worker, said he was off to Florida and the exciting world of waiting tables. Anything was better than insurance. “I’ll get my coat,” I said once again. That wound up becoming a year of adventures from Florida to San Francisco. In 1992, I was suffering from an extreme case of February cabin fever and I read a Boston Herald column about Red Sox spring training in Fort Myers, Fla. I got my coat. My corresponding mental problem is a compulsion to volunteer my furniture-moving skills any time anyone is relocating. I have no idea what the root of the problem is, but I found myself volunteering (!) when Frank and Miss America announced their intention to move from Portland to Palatka, Fla.

Frank, who has stationery proclaiming himself “The Smartest Man in New England,” failed to check his wall calendar. He had decided to move over Fourth of July weekend. The first day’s traffic was so horrendous that it took from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. to get to North Carolina and a (thankfully) reserved motel room. That was the first day. The second day, we got stuck traffic in South Carolina for the “I Didn’t Know She was My Sister 500” road race.

Finally the highway opened up and I remember why I volunteer for these missions. The road was clear and flat, the cruise control was set for 75 and the Sirius radio was set for the intergalactic blues station. (I wonder what the Martians think when they pick up a Tom Waits broadcast?). There are few pleasures like the open road.

We pulled off Interstate 95 for some authentic road food (pulled pork sandwiches) at the King of Ribs in Florence, S. C. It was 90 in the shade, but we ate outside, because we were happy just to get out of the vehicles.

I have decided that tailgaters should be beaten, cruise-controlled lane hogs should be jailed, and New York drivers with Yankees logos on the back of their SUVs should be executed.

When we finally got to Palatka three days later and unloaded the 24-foot truck (Frank brought everything from his high school test papers to his old LPs) and got into the swimming pool, it was a very good thing. As I floated in the 80-degree pool water, I decided to get professional help about this moving compulsion. The road trip weakness was just fine.

“Been gone so long, the road calls me dear…” – Tom Waits

Send complaints and compliments to emeara@msn.net.