Patronising male nurses & Do you find undergrounds mater

[Stargzer]

Larry, you never had a dad who dragged you out of bed at 3am to tour Route 66? I'm so Jealous!

mark homebody-by-choice-chromosomal-nomad Bailey

Nope. I took I-66 to Front Royal ages ago in Boy Scouts when we had summer camp in Fort Valley.

[Bailey]

Maybe you just didn't look outside the window, I saw lots of the signs every time we drove the scenic route [through Missouri] from the northwest to the west.

mark knows-this-country-50's-style Bailey

[Perry]

Maybe you just didn't look outside the window, I saw lots of the signs every time we drove the scenic route [through Missouri] from the northwest to the west.
mark knows-this-country-50's-style Bailey

That route needs some 'splaining!

[Palewriter]

Maybe you just didn't look outside the window, I saw lots of the signs every time we drove the scenic route [through Missouri] from the northwest to the west.
mark knows-this-country-50's-style Bailey

That route needs some 'splaining!

Here's the map.

-- PW

[Perry]

I get Route 66. What I don't understand is a drive from the Northwest to the West via Missouri. (Unless of course Mark had meant to type Northeast. That would make sense to my feeble mind.)

[Bailey]

Perry, I didn't get it either, apparently the journey was what was important. At any rate all the traveling made me a homebody for sure. I think he just liked driving.

mark no-more-road-trips Bailey

[sluggo]

I get Route 66. What I don't understand is a drive from the Northwest to the West via Missouri. (Unless of course Mark had meant to type Northeast. That would make sense to my feeble mind.)

What? It's the scenic route!

[Stargzer]

Alas, I see it it not only the younger generation that is geographically challenged.

[Perry]

Don't pull any punches. Which one of us lost souls are you referring to?

[Stargzer]

Don't pull any punches. Which one of us lost souls are you referring to?

The one who somehow traveled Route 66 from Northwest to West and the one who called it the "scenic route."

[Bailey]

Oh good grief, I was 7-8 years old not much interested in hiway signs, but I liked the Burma Shave signs. I do know we were on Route 66 at least part of the time. Many of the trips began from Kentucky, so I might be thinking of one of those... Why my father wanted to go through Missouri was a mystery I never asked about. At 7 it wasn't as much of a mystery, It was just another symptom of the older generation's incipient lunacy, like arising at 3AM to drive in the dark for 4 hours to see the US. We did stop at every alligator exhibit and Gila monster farm on the way, on the way to The Grand Canyon or So. Cal.

mark whatever Bailey

[Palewriter]

Ah, the Good Old Days. When you had to "see the USA in your Chevrolet". When Dad did all the driving, griping the entire time. When the car windows remained tightly closed and Dad almost kippered the entire family with his Lucky Strikes. When the World's Largest Ball of Twine could mean at most a two-minute stop ("Hurry up, or Dad's going to leave you behind."). When baby brother was placed tenderly, without compunction or restraint, on the shelf under the rear window. (Somehow, the laws of inertia must've worked differently back then, or perhaps brakes simply weren't as powerful.) When 'fast food' was the soggy, two-day-old bologna sandwich that Mom retrieved from her new Tupperware Sandwich Freshener. When only wimps used maps. When the best (and only) game was counting telephone poles. When "I've Been Working on the Railroad" could go on for hours. When the Grand Canyon still seemed grand.

-- PW (who missed all that fun, being brought up with a motorbike and very drafty sidecar in the freezing UK)

[Perry]

-- PW (who missed all that fun, being brought up with a motorbike and very drafty sidecar in the freezing UK)

And yet, descibed the experience so well. (Only I was lucky that my father gave up his 3 packs of Luckies a day when I was still in-utero. And that was only because he nearly died of pulmonary complications following the removal of a malignant tumor in his transverse colon.)

[Bailey]

When the car windows remained tightly closed and Dad almost kippered the entire family with his Lucky Strikes.

It was camels but yeah, How come I never saw you in our green Hudson. That Hudson replaced in 1960 by the biggest Mercury station wagon at the time, saw every state in the US, but unfortunately my view was spotty as most of our trip was in the pitch dark. The US still seems a bit stacatto to me. Much like a zigsaw puzzle missing the states of Missouri, North Dakota and New Mexico, and a large chunk of Texas I later got to see, while driving with my mom as a Teen.

mark geographically-challenged Bailey

[gailr]

Scenic family vacations...how that brings back memories. The Burma Shave signs were just ahead of my time, but the bataan-style driving schedules sound quite familiar.

I livened up one such excursion--in a pickup & camper--by stashing my rubber snakes in mom's purse for safekeeping. (It was one of those ideas that seem perfectly logical to a child.) She discovered them as my dad was cursing around a particularly hairy turn of the Needles Highway in SD. Somewhere in the Black Hills two rubber snakes lie in repose, flung by a father so angry that he was speechless and his lips turned white.

-gailr
Memo to self: do not pack rubber snakes on family vacations.