March 2, 2017.
When I was a kid growing up in England, my Dad would pile us all into our decrepit old grey Mini and take the family on a Sunday drive. Under her breath, my Mum would mutter "More like a Sunday push". My father tried, but he was no mechanic (that's a mighty generous statement on my part).
At some point during most of our road trips, the old jalopy would sputter and slowly moan before sighing to a halt. There was almost always at least one billow of blue smoke, the usual backfires and liquids of rainbow colors dripping from Emma's mysterious underbelly. And always always a generous serving of swear words sputtered through tightly clenched teeth. Our Sunday outings were in no way a form of religious activity.
Dad named the car Emma. He named all his cars Emma. The ole Mini was a standard and a good deal of crunching and grinding of gears would take place the first few minutes we were pulling out of the driveway. Dad was not a car guy.
No matter how many hours Dad spent cursing and clanging about under the rusty bonnet (hood), we usually ended up waiting on the side of the road in the rain after a few lovely English countryside miles.
The car had an odd musty smell and no heat. This was the '60s so there was no air conditioning, no radio and springs that protruded at odd angles from the seats. I like to remember them as "conversation pieces".
I liked to sit in the middle between my younger and older sisters, "straddling the hump". Of course, there were no seat belts and we'd roll around in the back seat with not a care in the world. It seems to me that Emma lacked any form of shock absorbers. I would take along my skipping rope and hook the wooden handles under my shoes, then whenever we'd hit a bump in the road, I'd pretend I was riding an imaginary horse and lean forward, pretending to be a wildly talented equestrian in some form of show jumping competition (see, the craziness started early). This fantasy contest protected my derriere from being bounced through the floorboards.
I was made well aware that it bothered the hell out of my sisters.
My father smoked a pipe and, while I love the smell of a good pipe tobacco, being locked into an already smelly auto, the addition of the pipe frequently caused me to get carsick. In true British aristocratic form, my Mother would attempt to hold off my vomiting, "Here, have a tea biscuit, dear". For some reason they were aways at the bottom of her handbag, nasty malt-flavored cookies with lint stuck on them and sometimes a sticky cough drop too. To this day I can literally toss my cookies if I catch a whiff of one of those biscuits.
When Emma was having a good day and we weren't standing in a ditch or knocking on a farmer's door to ask for help, the Sunday drive was one of my favorite outings. I loved reading the map, seeing horses and other farm animals alongside us, marveling at miles of stone walls, old windmills and farmhouses.
As we three girls got older, we stopped going on these outings. Dad got a new job with a real car and Emma was hauled off to the great junkyard in the sky. I think I was the only one in my family who was sad to see her go. The day she left for rustier pastures, I had one more ride in the back seat, straddling the hump and clutching the skipping rope 'reins', riding one more round of jumps. I bid her adieu and thanked her for being a part of our family for several years (I was about 9 by then). The old girl did her best and, 46 years later, I still think of her with a big grin on my face. And I'm even more crazy about road-trippin'!
Thank you so much for sharing our journey! Happy Trails.
#thefamilysundaydrive,#growingupinengland,#learning inventiveswearwords
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