Dad routinely rallied the family into the Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon for destinations unknown. The adventure often began after church and Golden Bear pancakes, when all the genuflecting and fidgeting (which not a prayer in the world could have stopped) was over for the week and stomachs contented for the moment.
Children were dispersed from fore to aft in the enormous, paneled wagon. Mark usually sat between Mom and Dad in the front, Chris and Jim took over the center, and Mia and I were allotted the very back seat, facing rear traffic, the perfect spot for making faces at innocent travelers and gesturing to passing truck drivers to sound their horns.
When a willing trucker tugged the cord and blasted his horn, Mia and I would dive below window-level and there, on the wagon’s stained carpet flooring, we’d squirm and giggle until the semi rumbled past.
We almost always knew an outing was coming by the mere action of Dad steering the car from its usual route. Most of the time, I'm not sure he had any specific directions in mind, other than anywhere but home.
He and Mom always managed to find some place special: a faded, old amusement park on its very last go-round; an old-fashioned soda fountain and ice cream parlor in a long forgotten neighborhood; an orchard serving cold, sweet, back-teeth-tingling cider and fresh made cinnamon sugar donuts, thoroughly warm and wonderful.
Early on in each journey, a voice from somewhere to the rear of the station wagon would call out, “Dad, where are we going?”, all of us knowing full well what his response would be.
“I'LL never tell!" he’d dutifully reply like the start - and finish - of a grand soliloquy, as all eyes in the back of the cavernous station wagon looked to the rear view mirror, to Dad’s dark, playful eyes, for a clue.
Which would never - EVER - be forthcoming.
Hearing those three words from Dad electrified imaginations because it meant something wonderful lay ahead; some place where five children, from toddlers to teen, could be delighted and diverted on a Sunday afternoon.
Somewhere we could be all together in the moment and in the memory.
Occasionally, however, the excitement waned with the miles and things turned ugly. Once, Dad got so fed up with the carload of chaos that he actually followed through on the rarely-executed parental threat: "Any more fussing back there and you can ALL walk home!"
In the middle of rural Illinois, on a stretch of road where a solitary farmhouse lay amid dormant, desolate cornfields for as far as the eye could see, Dad made each of us exit the auto, including little Mark, who had to be torn from his usual place of residence on Mom's hip.
I don't remember seeing Mom's face during our expulsion.
My eyes were focused on Dad.
He wouldn't.
He couldn't.
He did.
I watched the Grand Safari disappear over a small grade and then the horizon, then I looked to my brothers and sisters, all silent and still. Without comment or tears, I turned toward the barbed wire fence enclosing the field before us and leaned, hard, wishing the farmhouse there in the distance was my REAL home.
Besides some surely tattletale-worthy grumblings, few words were spoken as we stood by the quiet roadside. There was, however, some serious finger pointing as to who finally pushed Dad over the edge. The nail-bitten and dirty-digit majority likely pointed to his namesake, James the Third, truly uncanny in his ability to “engross” a captive audience. Yet each of us, well aware of our roles in this road trip gone wrong, knew the truth.
We were a perpetually moving mass of turmoil.
And understandably, Dad occasionally needed to subdue this rowdy, 10-legged beast with five mouths.
This particular approach was very effective.
By the time Mom convinced Dad he’d made his point, the meek Easter sun was beginning to sink toward the pink horizon (In other words, about five minutes.), Mark was becoming a heavy weight in Chris and Jim's arms, the blood on the knee of my thick, white leotards (from leaning against the barbed-wire fence) was beginning to dry against my skin and all promises of a happy outing had been extinguished.
Dad, however, had a huge smile on his face the moment he stepped out of the station wagon with a camera in his hand and it remained there through the entire, very quiet trip home.
Very fun, Dad.
That night, I consoled myself in chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks and the knowledge that each time Dad turned the wagon toward another weekend adventure, all past car trip hardships were like semis in the rear window - big and blustery, but soon left far behind.
And all I could see was just ahead.
“Where are we going, Dad?” would come the question from the back of the Pontiac.
“I’LL never tell,” came his faithful reply, leaving five young faces grinning and giddy.
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