'We carry with us maps from long ago.," writes Julie Checkoway in her memoir Maps, an account of her deprived childhood and later travel and research in China.
The first leg of our trip was both a going forward and a looping back. My long-ago maps were first refreshed when we left Auburn, MA, our first stop "west" and went through Sturbridge to get on Rt. 84. Sturbridge has been a significant place in my life for many years, first as a half-way spot between Providence and Lee, where my best friend Judy lived. We would meet for a picnic at the Brimfield Reservoir with her aunt's dog Poochie, and later with my friends Jim and Patty from Attleboro. In later years, that same spot became the place of the Judy-swap when Judy was visiting from Kansas and her sister Mickey would meet us there for lunch and an exchange of Judy and her luggage.
Moving further west, we encountered Danbury, Connecticut, the biggest city near Ridgefield, where we lived when we were first married. I taught at Darien High School while there, the same school that my dear friend Patty had attended, thus linking pieces of my present with my past and the friends with whom I'd crossed paths. Driving into White Plains and to the Tappan Zee Bridge brought back memories of trips to New York City when we lived in Ridgefield, going to meet my mother at the Scottish games, and traveling to see Michael's family in Delaware.
The most vivid maps I experienced on the drive were those on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes. My earliest memories of the road in New Jersey were of driving to Pennsylvania in the 1950s so that my father could play with his dance band in Ligonier, PA at the Rolling Rock Club, a private club with members of the famous Mellon family. New Jersey played a large role in my life again as I attended Rutgers, my first graduate school, to study English literature for one glorious semester in 1968. On this trip, we stayed in nearby East Brunswick (more on New Jersey in another post), a confusing, bustling web of large strip malls on a divided highway. The only way to get here from there, it turns out, is by driving about half a mile to a turn lane, looping around, and going back in the other direction. A blur of cars, glass, large display signs: consumerism at its hectic best. If you miss the turn--you've got it!--you repeat the process at the next turnaround.
These maps or memories so moved me that I suddenly began to cry crossing a bridge on the Penn. Turnpike. Tears out of nowhere, seemingly. Memories of driving with my parents, watching for "my" Palomino horse at the Ligonier exit, staying in hotels for the first time and eating out a lot. Not fast food, as I told my students recently, but local restaurant fare, Howard Johnson's, or picnic fixin's from a nearby grocery. The NJ and Penn Turnpikes were the first highways of their kind back in the '50s, with most roads being two, sometimes three lanes at most. Now the NJ Turnpike is 6 lanes on each side, divided through New Brunswick by 3 lanes for cars only and 3 for cars, trucks, and other vehicles.
Those early "adventures" shaped my life in many ways, opening up the possibilities of travel, meeting people different from those in Boston, and learning, from my parents' example, how to navigate not only the highways of the time, but the subtle cultural differences and ways of being that exist in just the span from Mass. to Penn. Curious that my parents' peers used to wonder what such adventures would deprive me of--the small house with the white picket fence, living in the same neighborhood until grown, stability, etc.--but they rarely thought about what the experiences would provide or understood that with your family as your core and a delight in the open road, the other elements would not be so necessary.
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