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Holly Lake Effect

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"...it's summer and a-travelin' we will go..."
A number of things happen when you derive across country with members of family. 1: You find out that you are not as spry and as competent as you thought you were. 2: You discover that your patience is not the well-controlled snake-in-the-woodpile you thought it was and 3: You realize how much fun family members can be. They are humorous, they are smart, they are concerned for your welfare (that last one is a bit of a conceit). Anyway if you survive a trip of say 1800 miles in an ordinary car (not an RV or an SUV or any vehicle with bathroom facilities and running water)with two or more other persons, at least one of whom is under 15, you can say to yourself proudly-"I can survive anything".
The main focus on such trips is "are we there yet" with the person asking the question totally clueless as to where "there" is. The second major area of concern is "are there any more jellybeans?" (this can be translated "salted nuts", "popcorn", or "chocolate kisses"-whichever you had the most of, starting out). If you know for a fact that you are low on the desired food product and you are more than 80 miles from a place where such might be purchased, panic will inevitably set in. You can offset this by pretending to be asleep or by taking little nips from a bottle wrapped in a paper towel. Food needs and the items that will tend to them are a big part of life on the road. The bathroom is the second most popular topic. Selecting a place which might offer such a facility with a reasonable array of fixtures is a big challenge. The appearance of the host facility (filling station, drive-in, grocery store,etc) in general implies the quality of the restroom and the "scale of one to ten" allows extensive movement from town to town while panic builds until it becomes permanent.
There are of course less earthy desires that motivate the inhabitants of the tour vehicle. Sightseeing is one and readers of billboards or "Welcome to Louisiana" pamphlets will suddenly become vocal about which off-road attraction is a "must see". One inevitably becomes with strange suddenness a history afficionado who must see the :"oldest chocolate shop in the south" or the "home of the south's most notorious robber (or murderer-depending on the state you are in)" or possibly the place where some nasty natural phenomenon such as an earthquake or suddenly opened sink hole caused distress to thousands. One must see these things in order to be fully informed on this or that great state. Others are prone to want to see lakes close-up or even talk a stroll around a fruit farm. Occasionally you will have a tour participant who will just want to walk in the woods and commune with nature and probably get lost. On these people you must hold a stop watch so that they don't keep you from getting to Meridian before midnight.
Sight seeing is a problem to be reckoned with on a long road trip. People in cars have a tendency to be carried away by large billboards advertising snake farms, the home base of the only three legged duck in the country or the former home of a group of famous jugglers. Television has taken some of the grandeur out of such attractions but after you have driven non-stop for over three hundred miles, the urge to investigate returns.
Such attractions usually turn out to be very insignificant yet they all seem to have in common elaborate gift shops which are received with much more enthusiasm than the twenty-foot alligator or the man-eating African lion. This creature is usually so old and tired, with hair falling out in clumps and with a growl that is so much more asthmatic than ferocious that it receives only a cursory nod from the people over fifty and a derogatory remark such as should not be uttered in public from the under twenty viewers. Being disappointed in one such display, however, does not cool the ardor for the next one and consequently the chances of getting to the motel under deadline become more and more distant as does the light in the sky.
Sight-seeing is essential if not productive. In Mississippi and Alabama, traveling I-20 does not offer much to see. One small town is another small town and you don't get close enough to most of them to have any opinion. The only thing we said regularly was "if we lived here we'd be home now", a singularly unproductive pronouncement though it scans well. Sight seeing in these states is mostly laughing about funny town names like Chunky and Taboomba and imagining what it would be like to be the mayor or the queen of one or the other. Kudzu is an amazing sight and we spent a lot of time thinking up uses for this stuff that wraps around and covers over all practical equipment including houses. We discussed at length its edibility and wondered if any of the small town restaurants were taking advantage of its presence. We kept looking for billboards that touted kudzu salad or boiled kudzu with parsnips, wondering if there were any demands for it.
One of the most decisive actions to be taken by a group of such travelers is the selection of where to eat. There are those who favor food that is rapidly produced and dangerously seasoned, food able to be consumed in the car with paper napkins while others crave being seated at a white linen covered table with a menu in French or other unknown language. Bouts of near-violence occasionally accompany such decision-making. Methods to achieve compromise range from taking the "it's the adults who pay and the adults who choose" position to putting up with wailings delivered in an unbelievable range of volume. Both of these are incapable of achieving compromise. It is, after all, the driver who decides simply by threatening to pull over to the side of the road and remaining there until morning which can be accomplished by making the key to the ignition disappear. Once in the restaurant if no restrictions are placed on choices, things may go smoothly. If some considerations are imposed such as cost ceilings, origin of certain food products (genetically modified corn ) or emotional concerns such as beef achieved by merciless killing of a living cow, there may ensue small skirmishes butr eventually the consumption of food overtakes the need to express opinion.
On smooth highways you can expect occupants of the car to sleep if only fitfully. You can also set restrictions on the number of highway historical markers for which you will pull to a stop and for the number of yard sales you wll allow to be investigated. The one thing you cannot compromise on is the need for restrooms so that the entire journey consists of moving from one reasonably clean looking fuel stop to another.
If anyone is still speaking civilly at the conclusion of the road trip it can be considered to be a miracle. The very fact that some are still comunicating in whatever manner they choose raises hopes that the next segment of the trip will take place under the assumption that 1. We are all family 2. We are all friends 3.We all have to get to our destination in a single vehicle with a single driver. 4. We all desire to arrive with some part of our nervous system undamaged and still having the ability to produce evidence of man's improvement since the creation.