A nostalgic trip to the days before tablets
Travelling, before technology, consisted of maps, puzzles and unlimited imagination
When my young (under six) granddaughters are packed into the car for a road trip, their parents make sure the girls are well prepared.
Strapped in their booster seats in the rear of the van, they have videos, headphones and cold drinks within reach.
Road trips were a little different when I was their age.
To give you an idea of the vintage of my road trips, here’s a conversation I remember between my father, my mother and a gas station attendant while filling up outside Hamilton before a trip to Detroit:
“How much, sir?” asked the attendant. “Put10 in please,” replied my father. “Will that be 10 dollars or 10 gallons?” asked the attendant.
“That will be 10 gallons,” said my father.
Laughing, my father then turned to my mother.
“What’s so funny?” asked my mother.
“He asked if I wanted10 dollars or10 gallons. We could get to Detroit and back on 10 dollars.”
The only technology we had was a station-fading AM radio with scratchy reception through a seveninch speaker.
So before Walkmans, cellphones and tablets, our parents had to keep us occupied with books, puzzles and games. And we had to use our imagination. We didn’t have the luxury of riding in roomy vans with individual seats. We sat in the back seat while Dad drove and Mom played cruise director.
Two of us sat in the back seat, each with our own space.
Three proved more of a challenge, and the youngest usually ended up in the front between the parents.
We seemed to have no end of in-car activities while travelling up Hwy. 11 to a cottage or heading west to Michigan to see relatives — none of which involved a screen.
With a small makeshift platform in the middle of the back seat, we played card games: Go Fish or Mille Bornes, a European-based game about travelling (although, we had issues with the cards in kilometres when all the signs outside were in miles).
We ate up miles while colouring, as long as the crayons didn’t roll under the seat and we had separate sets of crayons so we all didn’t fight over the most popular colours.
Working on jigsaw puzzles could be awkward as pieces were easily dropped or the whole thing could go flying during a sudden stop.
Although the majority of our road trips happened in summer, we played geography and math games — we just didn’t know it.
For example, we would read licence plates, with the winner amassing the greatest variety of different plates. Reading the different slogans on the U.S. plates was also treat for the backseat adventurers.
Checking out U.S. billboards was a great way to pass the time. For some reason, two Burma Shave signs have stuck with me: “Thirty days Hath September April, June And the speed offender Burma Shave” And: “Spring has sprung The grass has riz Where last year’s Careless driver is Burma Shave”
Another favourite was counting trucks, and of course you had to get the truck driver to blow his horn as you drove by.
We would also count freight cars while waiting at a railroad crossing.
We used road maps for the geography game, where you named a place and the next player had to think up a place using the last letter of the previous place.
Obviously family road trips are different today (not to mention, Burma Shave have been a thing of the past since the early 1960s).
However, from one generation to the next, there has been one constant.
Every 10 miles (now 15 kilometres), someone in the back seat still yells out, “Are we there yet?”