Summer: Rides and Jiggles

Back in the olden days when I was growing up with my six sisters and three brothers, sometimes my dad would take us all on a car ride during the summertime, in the evenings.

Back in the day…

·        after the gas shortages of the 1970s but before gas prices began to rise, going for a long ride in the car was an economical activity.

·        we didn't have air conditioning in the house—I didn't know anyone who had central air, and while window units were not unknown to me, we didn't have any in our house until I was a bit older—but there was air conditioning in the car.

·        there were no laws requiring seatbelts was in the future. There weren't even shoulder harnesses, only lap belts, and no one used them. As a result, you could fit a lot more people in a station wagon then than you could now.

"Let's go for a ride," my dad would announce on a summer evening, followed by happy whooping and hollering throughout the land. Quick as a flash, we would all rush up and put on our pajamas, grab a book or two, and maybe our pillows. Then we would pile out of the back door in our bare feet and pile into the back of the station wagon. Sometimes, my dad would put the back seats down and the whole back was one flat platform. Other times, he left the back seats up and the bigger kids sat in them, while all the littler kids piled into the back flat-bed part.  Once we were all in, my dad shut the back gate, backed out of the driveway, and off we went!

We loved it.

Sometimes, we would stop at Dairy Queen and get ice cream cones. If we didn't, one of us would ask, "Hey Dad, can we stop at Dairy Queen to get some ice cream?" Sometimes he said yes, and sometimes he said, "No, not this time, we don't have any money." When he said no, we weren't sad, because going for a ride was still pretty cool. It just would have been EVEN BETTER with ice cream (what isn't?).

We would play race with other cars. If a car passed us in another lane, we "lost." We urged my dad on to drive faster, but he would just laugh and go his normal speed.

Or, we would figure out that the car behind us contained a spy! When the driver turned the same as we did, we shouted out, "oh no, the spy is still there! Turn again, turn again, dad, we have to lose him!" When we finally did "lose" the spy, we were always confounded because, what do you know, there would be another spy right behind the last one!

Or, my dad would go to a dirt road (there were lots of these, back in my day) and do Crazy Driver. He would swing the steering wheel wildly as the car lurched from one side of the road to the other. We rolled around the back of the station wagon, laughing like…crazy! "Crazy driver!," we'd yell, "crazy driver!" "Warren!," my mom would say, nervously, gripping the front glove compartment, and finally she would say, quietly, "that's enough." "Awwww," we whined, "more crazy driver! More crazy driver!" "No, no," my dad would say, laughing, "that's enough now."

As the day faded into pinks and purples, we would settle down and watch the sunset. We would arrange ourselves so we could lie down and still see the sky. Or we would read our books. Then, we would fall asleep.

And now come the hazy memories of being lifted out of the back of the station wagon and hearing crickets chirping…being carried upstairs into bed and being kissed goodnight by dad, the bringer of ice creams, and races, and spy chases, and crazy driver. The bringer of rides!

Then, there were jiggles. Jiggles are what my dad called short rides.

"Do you want to go to the store with me?"

"How far away is it?"

"Not long, just a jiggle."

"Okay."

Sometimes, one of us would have the idea for a ride.

"Can we go for a ride tonight?"

"No…not tonight."

Pause.

"Can we just go for a jiggle?"

And sometimes, he said yes.

Thanks, Dad.