Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Relatives & Road Trips

Once again, TGIM. I look forward to every Monday, for sharing Memories of My Mom with you. I hope this blog creates a happy Monday for you.

Today is National Visit Your Relatives Day and Friday is National Road Trip Day. Additionally, next weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, which is generally considered to be the unofficial start of summer – and one of the most popular weekends for family road trips.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, there are proper etiquette guidelines for a variety of different things, one of which is travel. It’s basically the same behavior expected anywhere else – demonstrating consideration, awareness, and kindness toward others.

Acceptable acts of etiquette that are additionally anticipated, especially when traveling, include dressing appropriately, respecting other peoples’ personal space, keeping noise levels down, maintaining cleanliness, sharing (such as armrests), as well as thanking and tipping service staff.

You should also be aware of the “cultural norms” wherever you go, to avoid offending the locals. Research their community’s customs. Know and respect their laws, as well.

I remember some of the road trips we took to West Virginia, when I was young, to see our relatives from Dad’s side of the family. Mom wrote satirical editorials about our family road trips in her “No Laughing Matter” columns. To hear her tell it, you’d think they were the inspiration for “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983), instead of John Hughes screenplay.

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in… “No Laughing Matter”, By Gloria Pitzer

HOW TO TRAVEL WITH YOUR KIDS…

(And Live to Tell About It!)

“I HAVE NOTHING against traveling with our kids – as long as we can go in separate cars.” – Gloria Pitzer

A CURRENT POLL, taken among the mothers of the Sears sandbox symposium shows 10 to 1 in favor of going around Harsens Island on a skateboard, as opposed to traveling anywhere by car with their kids – even to the mailbox at the end of the [200-foot long] driveway.

For one thing, any trip is going to be automatically rated ‘X’ when, before you can get out of your own driveway, you must first settle which child is going to sit next to a window and which child won’t.

Before the trip is scarcely underway, we can always depend upon the child who rolls the window down, because they need some air, to be sitting next to the child who wants the window up because they’re cold.

The Sunday supplement ads for vacation-minded families, who want matching luggage, are a waste of time. Who wants matching luggage, when it should, by all rights, be packed in a U-Haul truck and immediately be disorganized the minute you unlock the motel room [or cabin] door…

Because this is usually the exact moment I have to find a clean shirt and slacks for the one who spilled their Dairy Queen [treat] all over themselves. If I told him once, I told him a hundred times: “Let me hold the shake for you while you drive, Honey!”

The real trouble with packing, I feel, is that you usually end up taking all the wrong kind of clothes. When you leave home in the middle of a driving snow and the skies are icy grey and bleak, it doesn’t occur to you that 450 miles south you’ll be shedding the snow jackets and galoshes; wishing you had brought those shorts and tennis shoes, after all.

It is completely ridiculous to allow any child to pack their own suitcase. Chances are, they will try to convince you that one change of underwear is going to be adequate for a 10-day vacation…

That’s when I visualize myself spending all of my time sitting out the duration of our trip, watching my enzymes and bleach race their way to the dirt and grime in some out-of-the-way, ‘coin-op’ laundry [facility].

Some of the motel rooms we’ve stayed in, have been pretty nice; but then there are some others that left us feeling we could have had the same conveniences, for which we were paying $50 per day, for free had we stayed at home. If [I] can’t wash 6 days [worth of] dirty underwear in the wash basin, [we] can’t stay there!

Not one of the lovely travel brochures I read showed ‘the happy family’, as they pull up to the Pennsylvania turnpike gate without realizing that the baby ate the toll card along the way.

I can say, with all honesty, that we intimately know every public restroom on the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes… not to mention, three plazas in West Virginia and several in Niagara Falls.

Another thing about traveling with the kids is that, invariably, the best restaurant is always just around the bend, after you’ve [already] stopped at the worst [one]. We are further engaged in the constant inquiries of the children who will, at annoying intervals, in the perfect unison of an acapella choir ask: ‘When are we going to get there?’

The remainder of the trip is spent… painfully telling them that I never wanted to read the roadmap for [Daddy] in the first place; and how was I to know that he wanted Exit 7, not 11! And how do you explain to the service station attendant that you were foolish enough to let your wife read the map and now you’re lost?

I’ll be darned if I know – but, before we take another trip with the kids, we’ll have a bumper sticker on our car that reads: ‘Approach with caution – driver under the influence of children!

I’d be rich if I had a dime for every time me and my siblings fought in the back seats of the car, during a family road trip. Mom or Dad would usually say: “Don’t make me pull this car over.” That was our one-and-only warning that severe consequences for our actions were forthcoming if we didn’t stop misbehaving.

We all knew what would happen and none of us wanted to be reprimanded so we’d quiet down – for a little while, at least – until one of the boys got bored enough that he’d try, again, to harass one us. When on road trips with my own kids, I found myself experiencing the same backseat sibling rivalries. I said and did the same things as my parents.

Traveling with young kids is a challenge. It’s definitely a whole different ball game than when traveling with close friends. Screaming kids in the back seat can make a 4-hour drive feel like 8 hours, while our friends can make an all-day-drive pass by in the blink of an eye.

These days, entertaining kids, especially on a road trip, usually involves some kind of electronics or screen activity. We didn’t have those things when I was a kid. They were fairly new when my children were young (and not yet made for travel). To quell the boredom antics, Mom often initiated a game of “I Spy” or “20 Questions”; as did I, for my kids, too.

Other forms of entertainment, depending on the ages of the children, included sing-alongs, coloring books and crayons, story books or comics (to read quietly), and a license plate game, using the letters as an acronym, from which to create a phrase of words. Passing out snacks and drinks always helped to deter the boredom antics, as well.

MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in… “No Laughing Matter”, By Gloria Pitzer

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION

(And Other Fond Memories of Days Gone By)

I SEE THE NEIGHBORHOOD kids are in the spirit of summer… and it makes me remember, quite fondly, those days during which our own five youngsters were home and very much underfoot.

Although, some of the memories are pleasantly enjoyed today, in the absence of our offspring, some of those by-gone days were not all pretzels and beer!

I recall really trying to enjoy summer vacation, even though I had the feeling I was just a first grade version of ‘See Mother Run’. Most of the vacation weeks (and I use the reference loosely), were spent wandering through aspirin lectures, asking perfect strangers: ‘How many more days until school opens?’

As I [remember], we stopped spending vacations with the children; considering how, one summer, we spent 2 weeks on the turnpike… and lived to tell about it…

There honestly were positive virtues to the 9am to 3pm [school] schedules, which left us mothers 5 days a week, from September through June, during which we were not answering dumb questions. For one thing, it was none of the kids’ business why I looked pale and plump in a bathing suit.

I knew, the minute I walked into Chubby Chicks’ Swimwear Boutique, summer (for me) would mean running under the lawn sprinkler in very dark glasses and a body shirt, cleverly created out of a porch awning by some shut-in from General Hospital!

Actually, it was my husband’s idea, out of consideration for the neighbors, that he only let me sit on the patio in my bathing suit after dark. He also claimed that I discouraged mosquitos. This is the same man who would stand on the porch, whenever I sang in the shower, so the neighbors could see that he was not beating me!

The same man, mind you, who would come home from (and I quote him exactly) ‘an exhausting day of fishing’ and ask, seriously – when was I planning to clean off the top of the refrigerator, did I write to his mother, did I have fun at the Book Mobile with 5 kids and would it be alright if we ‘ate out’…

That, by his definition, was hot dogs in the backyard over a fire in the grill that I would have to make. He just didn’t understand why I spent my summer vacation counting the days ‘til school opened again!

But then, he never had to find band aids for braless Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe [‘action figures’], who got sucked into the vacuum cleaner hose periodically. My lovable, better half never had to wander through a vast wasteland of Pop Tart wrappers and Mr. Misty cups.

[Meanwhile,] seven neighborhood kids motorbiked their way through the yard, the flower beds and into the center of a National Noise Abatement Program, sympathetically excused by three probation officers who did not have to live next door to them!

Summer vacation, as some laughingly refer to those 10 weeks [mid-June to September], is NOT a vacation; but more like an endurance test – during which, those families who stayed together, got on each other’s nerves!

It was enough to leave a mother looking like a wire service photo that, by all rights, should have been printed under the caption: ‘NEVER MIND SENDING HER KIDS TO CAMP – HELP SEND THIS MOTHER AWAY!’

It’s mothers that need the vacation – not the kids! Ten weeks of kids at home and Mother could develop a personality [like that] of a dental drill with a voice to match! But, as I recall, telling the 5 kids one day, everything would be alright as soon as Daddy got home.

And the questions I had to answer all by myself – questions like: ‘How many more days until school starts?’, ‘Can I have a popsicle?’, ‘Can I have my allowance?’, ‘How come you’re always yelling at me?’, ‘Have you seen my tennis shoes?’, ‘Why doesn’t anybody like me?’

…And those were just the questions my HUSBAND asked! Compared to all those [questions] that the kids would ask me during the day, I could [better] take those which my husband posed to me. He meant well. But he never did understand that a mother’s vacation doesn’t start until school does!

As my own children have told me, regardless of all the sibling rivalry, family bonding from road trips (and visiting relatives) created wonderful memories that we’ll carry with us throughout our lives. It’s the kind of bonding you’ll want to repeat with each generation to come.

LAST THOUGHTS…

Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my memories of my mom, her memories, and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective. I look forward to hearing from you!

IN CLOSING…

In honor of TODAY, being National Cheese Soufflé Day, AND May, being National Egg Month and American Cheese Month, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Betty Crocker Style ‘Golden Dream Cheese Souffle’”; as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Monthly Cookbook of Secret Recipes (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; July-December 1981, p. 4). As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.

#NationalCheeseSouffleDay

#NationalEggMonth

#AmericanCheeseMonth