I used the road and some parallel ones once in 1975 to get from our house in Oklahoma to my aunt’s house in Sherman, TX. My cousins had been staying with us. Our grandparents, in their Ford Torino, took us to Sherman. We spent the night and came back to Duncan.
It was hot. Damn hot. There was no air conditioning. Our granddad would trade cars at the drop of a hat. But a/c was often not part of the deal. Whether in hot and humid Oklahoma or in hot and dry Roswell, there often was no a/c in any of the many cars he traded for.
My cousins, Jeff (my age, around 12) and Jamie (around 6) kept the windows open and sweated. My grandparents fussed at each other. She would ask a question, he would snap an answer, a short, sharp bark, almost like a command. His responses to her would often get like that. Either minor irritation or outright hostility, like in that baking car 100 miles along 70 East and down to Sherman. We arrived damp and 10 pounds lighter. The cousins were glad to get to their own rooms.
I slept in Jeff’s room. Jamie bugged us as usual. Jeff and I sometimes fought. Sometimes, as a little brother myself, I would side in solidarity with Jamie in his interminable war with big brother.
The seats were sticky. We wore shorts. T-shirts. Tennis shoes. I think we had comic books. My uncle was a manager of a Wacker’s five and dime (Texas/NM/CO/OK version of Woolworth). My aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, did many things. There was fun, but mainly heat and humidity.
Having just moved to the very humid land of the Cross Timbers from the very dry atmosphere of the High Mountain Desert lands of New Mexico, the mid-70s were a damp, dripping, mildewing, moldy, miserable, mess. We went to school in stiff new clothes to classrooms that didn’t have air conditioners. Just like my grandfather’s Ford Torino.
Once along the way, there might be a stop for a coke and a restroom break, but if there was, I don’t remember it. Maybe when we went south from 70 at Ardmore to Gainesville, TX, just across the Red River border, where we switched to US 82 to Sherman. Maybe.
I remember 70s chemical-smelling seats in the back, Jeff leaning out one window, me out the other, Jamie slumping over us in the middle.
140 miles. About two hours and 15 minutes. Roasting, baking, basting in our own juices. Granddad, you couldn’t find a car among the stock at Valley Chevrolet that was a used Ford with a/c? You love to haggle, why’d it have to be about white walls than climate control?
I tried my technique of kneeling in the floorboard and lying facedown on the seat. God knows the fumes I was breathing from that sticky plastic coating. We slept fitfully, started scraps of our own. I listened to the brothers and silently thanked an ostensibly higher power that I was a little brother by five and seven years to teen sisters with no little brother to fight with myself. Jeff and Jamie on Mom’s side of the family and Jeff and Mike on Dad’s warred constantly. Bruises were given to each other often.
Older and bigger, Jeff and I would bike away through the cemetery by their house leaving Jamie alone among the tombstones, panicking. I tried not to be too much of a snot, but then I was a bit of a snot as a little brother, so sometimes it was just fun.
One year, Granddad had surgery. Aunt Pat came to Duncan, picked up Mom and scooted back to 70 West to Roswell. For some reason lost in time, Jeff got to go. I had to stay with Jamie. He loved my dad, his Uncle Marion, just like every other kid. And Dad paid him plenty of attention, for reasons that would later become apparent. Then I found the sting of jealousy. I was a loner kid, happiest alone, but hey, I’m YOUR kid, Dad, he’s NOT. It reinforced my gratitude for not having a little brother. We fought some, made up. It was a long week. He had fun. Parts I enjoyed, parts were filled with injustice and indignation.
The surgery successfully passed, the sisters came home. Jeff got to go to the hospital and be the center of attention. Jamie left, I went back to lonerism. Reading a book. Being left alone. That was my shtick. There wasn’t room for cousins or constant play or parents. Me, a book, maybe a little hike in the backwoods pretending to be an army or marching band, waving a flag.
It might sound like I hated my cousins. Au contraire! I loved them and enjoyed getting together (and still would), but sometimes, when you’re a kid, you fight and love and hug and roll in the dirt and get in trouble and tease and troll the younger ones, get dismissed by the older ones. But all my cousins are well-beloved still.
But always, for whatever family reasons, there were sticky trips, with beloved cousins sweating as much or more than you, where the tarmac of US 70 West seemed to be taffy. Soft, gooey, surely sticking to the tires. The smell of asphalt in the summer of West Texas is an enduring memory. It’s used in Six Flags Over Texas and it bakes there too, creating a smell that is unforgettable.
Just as unforgettable as my grandparents’ plastic seats in their Ford Torino, running down the road, a torturous journey shared with my favorite cousins.