Going to Grandma Overby's House.
When I was a kid, my family lived in Georgia, first in Augusta and then in Macon. Daddy's folks lived in Mississippi, near Meridian. I was a child during the 1940's and 50's. Daddy had bought a '37 Ford used and kept it in perfect running order. He drove trucks for living and became a mechanic from necessity. ( Our car was black.)
Fine ride, don't you think?
Then he bought a 1950 Ford that had been in an accident. That car he repaired and drove into the 60's. Ours was black, though I'd have loved to have the red car here.
Many of our readers won't know that those cars had windows we cranked open and closed and NO air conditioners. Daddy did all the driving, and we headed to Mississippi at night, when we could, to avoid the daytime heat and traffic on US 80. Mama didn't drive the cars for a long time. She just didn't.
We didn't stop to spend the night anywhere on these trips. Mama packed an ice chest with sandwiches, water, and sometimes Cokes. Back then we weren't familiar with fast food, and we lived too cheaply to stop at restaurants. I can count on one hand the number of times we did. I was grown before I considered that we were poor back then.
Mama and Daddy usually took the old crib mattress, long after they replaced the crib with youth beds, and put it on the back seat so some of us could lie down. The mattress was a little wider than the seat and could be used as a pallet at Grandmama's house. My younger brother and sister slept through the dark hours, but I leaned on the driver's seat and talked with Daddy while Mama slept beside him in the front seat. He and I discussed everything, including grammar when he decided to take the GED and go to college. I brought him up to snuff when I was beginning the sixth grade. I was a bit of a nerd before there were nerds.
By daylight the others would wake up and I'd stretch out and read to distract myself from car sickness, which seemed to come with morning. I'd read and wish we could stop the car! I probably was making a mistake by reading, but I loved to read, and who knew? Daddy's smoking probably didn't help, either. Again, who knew?
Sometimes I'd wish we could stop for food, but I knew the money wasn't there for extras. I also wished we'd stop where there were restrooms, too.There were picnic areas with wooden tables and trash cans and maybe a out house. Daddy preferred stopping in places we could slip out of sight and water the grass. (I'm not kidding.) We didn't use expressways because they weren't any for a long time. According to Daddy, country side roads offered cleaner places than the gas stations did at that time. He seldom let us go inside them before he checked them. He approved them for our use even less often.
We'd play games similar to cow poker. Daddy and my brother would read car tags and we would all claim stores, churches, houses and cattle as we passed them. I especially liked claiming horses. We didn't want to have a graveyard on our side of the road, because they erased the things we had claimed before that.
Mama, my sister, and I would put rollers in our hair so we'd look good when we got to Grandma's house.
We kids asked "Are we in Mississippi, yet?" a lot! We'd cheer when we passed the Welcome to Mississippi sign. Needless to say the males liked to stand in one state and aim over the state line to pee. The girls didn't try that.
Once we left Meridian, we counted every minute until we came to the dirt road leading to Grandma's house in Watubee, near Pachuta. The miles from Median were the longest and slowest of the trip until we stated back home.
Grandma's house was very old with a front porch and my grandma and sometimes cousins and aunts and uncles waiting for us.
More memories to come.
What are your memories of traveling when you were a kid?
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Mary Marvella
www.MaryMarvella.com
