By Ann von Dehsen, June 18, 2020 — Being the season of road trips, my mind goes back to my family’s yearly trip to the Poconos for a week’s vacation. Now we lived in northern New Jersey, and in 1958 the Blue Route and Northeast Extension did not exist, making this a 3-hour ride. We were a statistically correct American family. My father in the driver’s seat, my mother in the passenger seat, and my sister Ellen, age 11, and me, about age 7, in the back seat, free form since seat belts had not yet been invented.
The windows of the very big Buick are rolled down and my parents both lit a cigarette as they listened to a radio show called “Rambling with Gambling.” Not long into the trip, Ellen and I began to sing the entire score of one of many Broadway shows for our parents. This is how you know we had great parents: they actually listened to and applauded every song despite the fact that we could not sing to save our lives.
At some point, our mom would hand out paper and crayons or markers so we could draw the sights outside our window. I proceeded with an even row of green at the bottom of the page and an even row of blue at the top of the page with stick figures and flat boxy buildings. I tried not to get discouraged as I looked over at Ellen’s creation — after all, she was almost 5 years older than me. Her drawings featured perfect perspective and shading, realistic people, and animals. Well, this was actually a foreshadowing of her future career as a brilliant watercolorist and muralist.
Well, besides being artistic, my sister Ellen had a flair for the dramatic. About halfway through the ride, she began to mention her hunger and mention it and keep mentioning it and get louder and then finally gave out a dramatic, “If we don’t stop soon, I am going to faint.” So, luckily, we were usually near a favorite little lunch place where they served grilled hot dogs in those little paper holders along with frosted mugs of root beer.
Ellen’s eyes were often bigger than her stomach and she had at least 2 hot dogs and then we’d endure a brief period of her stomach distress back in the car. Eventually, things calmed down and we often spent the rest of the trip enjoying travel bingo as we entered the town of Mt. Pocono.
