I vacationed several weeks in July in Colorado with my teardrop camper, mountains, a traveling companion and old friends. Some old friends are long lived and others long treasured, some both but never the less friends. Then for nearly four months it has been waking up in the same place every morning. Having a sticks & bricks home is more work and responsibility than investment and reward. Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans was an appreciated getaway. Road time is always equal to destination time. I hadn’t forgotten but rediscovery is like a booster shot against doldrums.
Driving time lets me reflect and butterfly (verb) from one idea to another. I never know when or where one thought will springboard off into unchartered water. Driving still requires diligent focus so the mind can’t afford to wander too far. On several occasions there has been the idea to write an essay on places I have spent the night. It will make a good story without any embellishment. Last Friday I did a rare thing, stayed in a motel. No defense necessary but I am a hard core pinchpenny in that regard. Without making a case, I can sleep just about anywhere and I do. All I need is a safe, clean, climate friendly space; I bring my own soft pillow. I remember $22 overnights at Motel 6 and Econolodge and it doesn’t seem all that long ago. But I am old now and time doesn’t age well with frugality.
My $62 overnight last week provided what I need (safe & clean). The hot shower was appreciated but not necessary and I found several electric outlets that worked. The TV glowed with no sound or tuner and the wifi came and went away like a late night, AM radio station. It rated one star on the five star scale and I can make that work; went to sleep at 6:00 p.m. and was back on the road at 2:30 a.m. For me to get value from a $100 room I would have to stay awake and admire the curtains all night.
It begs the question; is this a peculiar weirdness or just another age related throwback to another time. I liked the 20th Century at the time and even with the flexible, stronger, more resilient body I don’t want to redo that period. If motel prices were rolled back to 1980’s rates I would still condescend. Our first real family vacation (I was 12 going on 13 - 1952) five of us in our overloaded ’47 Plymouth took off for Yellowstone. It was long before Interstates, campgrounds and google maps. With 45 & 55 mph speed limits several hundred miles in a day is a good day. Along with my parents, Grandpa Roy and little brother, wiggle room was nil. The trunk was full of clothes and soft stuff with a canvas water bag hanging outside, over the license plate. Two folding army cots, blankets, an improvised camp kitchen and whatever else was deemed essential but no space to pack was assigned to the borrowed roof rack.
In Nebraska on the second day a rear leaf spring broke and we lost a day. The unexpected expense just meant we would have to cut back on spending. Back on the road we stopped the car to fix food and to camp at night, washed up in the dish pan. Compared to mules and a covered wagon, we were convinced how lucky we must be. Mom & Dad slept on cots beside the car, Grandpa slept in the back seat and I slept with a blanket and little brother on the ground. In Yellowstone we splurged, rented a cabin with one bed. Grandpa slept outside in the back seat and my brother and I slept on the cabin floor and loved it. This was the good life, traveling was never better.
The Plymouth was still dangerously overloaded and we had to drive slow. On my 13th birthday we arrived in Cheyenne, WY late in the day but celebrated with a restaurant dinner; I had the Rabbit dinner. It was getting dark with no convenient place to camp so my dad paid for himself and Mom at a tiny motel then parked the car close to the cabin. Nobody noticed the old man in the back seat or the two boys on the ground. I am sure, if she were alive today, my mother would still feel guilty for three unpaid sleep-overs, even if we were outside. To her disapproval, my dad never had any such guilt anxiety and told the story as if it were a clever stroke of ingenuity.
So now, after this nostalgic reflection; I think maybe my long suffering discontent with motels and traveling sissies who need more than they need; I think there is a logical backstory and credible rationale for my ‘Covered Wagon’ attitude. I do think in recent years (my lifetime) ‘Fast Forward’ technology and quality of life has reached a tipping point. Carl Sagan noted and I paraphrase; in a society where more and more of what we depend on (actually need) results from a system of science/technology infrastructure, fewer and fewer individuals know anything at all about either science or technology and that is a ticking time bomb.
Telltale anomalies and outright warnings (Global Warming) that surface in the greater science community are generally dismissed by political and/or economic authorities; Sagan’s ticking time bomb. Barely 2 years ago a freak cold snap seriously damaged and shut down the power grid in Texas. By the second day there was no supporting infrastructure to keep people safe. No power to pump fuel, to transport food or keep it frozen, grocery stores had empty shelves by the next day; just one of many important systems that depend on other systems. The great failure of that lopsided dependance is; only a minuscule percentage of people have skills and access to fix technical things and they are not elected officials. The risk of exploiting that ‘real’ power in their own personal interests is scary. Even if everyone wants the right thing for the right reasons, there are not enough expert ‘fixers’ to fix everything in the next few days or weeks. Even a week without electricity would cripple the nation and that possibility (like in Texas) is unlikely but it is just as real. So I keep on sleeping in my truck or on the ground. It doesn’t fix anything but I get my sleep and feel a lot better.
