I got to thinking a few days ago about how Dad would ask Mom if she wanted to go for a drive. If she said, "I don't care." That meant road trip! And it meant purchasing food from the store, nothing homemade.
Depending on the length of the trip, Dad would purchase a gallon of root beer which could be purchased at the A&W in Boise. The other traveling food stuff was maple bars and or cans of Vienna sausage.
Occasionally, Dad would purchase a roast whole chicken. We little savages would upon that poor chicken, devouring the entire thing, bones and all. This would be at an outdoors picnic table, no mess allowed in the car.
The trips themselves would usually involve a trip to Mountain Home. From there would travel back to Emmett with a stop at the Boise Berglunds.
If the trips were shorter, just around the valley, Mom and Dad would discuss where the old farmhouse was that the stayed in as a teenager. Dad would rebuild all the power lines he worked on. We knew we weren't going to be fed and we were bored out of our minds.
Today when we went shopping, I decided to buy a couple cans of Vienna sausage. Boy, have times changed. The cans back in the day were oblong and had a key to fit in the to metal strip to open the cans. This was Mom's job for some weird reason.
The cans I purchased today, were round, probably only hold six sausages. The can itself is a pop top. I purchased two just in case there was an emergency case of nostalgia. What packaging nightmare is next? Plastic!?
Another thing we often did while Sunday Driving was sing in the car. The car had no radio. We sang the popular tunes from "The Hit Parade". This was a show where various artists would sing songs from the top hits and it became difficult at each week they had to come up with a different interpretation of the same song. We got to the lyrics fairly well that way.
When we eventually rode in a car which had a radio, if Mom thought we sang the same song a bit too much along with radio, she would reach over and turn off the radio. End of party.
One very early trip, when Richard and I were three and four, the folks drove to Seattle. We parked outside this ladies house while the folks knocked. We were invited in and the lady made cinnamon toast. It was wonderful. I never had it again until adulthood. Mom simply never made it. I am sure we begged to eat the wonderful, delicious cinnamon toast. These days I mix cinnamon with Splenda for my toast. Tasty, no sugar. Yummm.
