Staying Fit
Illustration by Chris Lyons
It’s Friday afternoon in Atlanta, and despite our best efforts to avoid traffic, here we sit. I’m in the back seat while my 83-year-old father drives and my 80-year-old mother navigates. I haven’t been in this situation in close to half a century. My father (aka Daddy) inches up closer to the car in front of him, much too quickly in my opinion. I stomp my foot on the back floorboard as if I could stop the car on his behalf.
“Whoa, Daddy, could we stop a little sooner and allow more space?” I nervously ask.
“He’s fine and you’re going to drive us nutty with this,” replies my mother (aka Mama).
And just like that, I’m 14 again.
Travel writer Terri Marshall credits family road trips as the catalyst for the wanderlust that guides her life today.
Courtesy Terri Marshall
This unplanned road trip with my parents started as a rescue mission after my flight from Atlanta to New York was canceled. As a 61-year-old frequent traveler, I know how to deal with flight delays and cancellations but in this instance, after roughly three weeks of travel, all I wanted was to board my plane and go home. A ground stop at LaGuardia Airport led to the flight cancellation, and the earliest possible rebooking wasn’t until three days later. I begrudgingly left the airport and checked in to a nearby hotel feeling exhausted and defeated.
I woke up the next morning to a call from my parents. “We’ve decided it’s time for us to take a little road trip, and we think you should join us,” Mama said. They offered to drive south from Chattanooga, Tennessee, into the nightmare traffic that surrounds Atlanta, take me back to their house for the night and then make our way north to Virginia. My husband, Greg, planned to drive south to a meeting point and bring me the rest of the way home to New York City.
So, on this Friday afternoon in the summer, although the drive between their home in Chattanooga and Atlanta should take about two hours, the highways are packed with stop-and-go traffic. I know driving into this mess isn’t easy for them, so I decide I should keep my well-meaning back-seat driving suggestions to myself — even if that means repeatedly biting my tongue.
A few harrowing hours later, we made it to Chattanooga and began preparations for the second leg of the rescue mission. Watching Mama pull everything together, I noticed how many things remained consistent with the road trips of my youth. A cooler was packed with snacks and the hard plastic green Esso gas station beverage cups with a white band at the top that my parents collected with each fill-up in the 1970s. Mentally packed for the journey were years of road-trip memories to chat about along the way.
Throughout my childhood, summer vacations typically included a road trip. Sometimes we traveled from our home in Florida to visit grandparents in North Georgia and Tennessee. Other years, we journeyed across the country for a week or two.
In the early 1970s, when customized vans were all the rage, Daddy — a devout do-it-yourself type of guy — insisted on creating his own version. He bought a white cargo van void of windows except for the windshield and two side windows for the driver and front-seat passenger. He decked it out in true 1970s style with shag carpeting. He also built a bench for the back that would double as a sleeping bunk for my younger brother, then added beanbag chairs for seating. When the customization was complete, we took our stylish ride on the road.
An unexpected road trip gave author Terri Marshall time to reflect on childhood cross-country excursions with her parents.
Courtesy Terri Marshall
My Uncle Jim, Aunt Barbara and cousin Jana joined us for many of our adventures. All seven of us crammed into the van and gallivanted across the country visiting iconic sites like Mount Rushmore and South Dakota’s Corn Palace — because, if you’re traveling in a self-customized cargo van, a stop at a building decorated with thousands of corn cobs surely must be on the itinerary.
Another summer, we ventured to New England with a brief drive through New York City. We lined the beanbag chairs up behind the van’s front seats, straining to see the bright lights of Broadway through our limited windows. The Statue of Liberty was viewed in the same fashion — a brief glimpse of Lady Liberty to check it off the must-see list.
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