traveling to Fox Lake -a brief childhood memoir (the Crooked Road)

it is early,... father has been up for over an hour, checking on things. he is making sure that he is satisfied with the state in the greenhouses, where the carnations grow... that all is in line and that the boys have a handle on things.

inside the garages the car was loaded the previous day. filled with suitcases of clothing, jackets, miscellaneous items that are used daily,...clothing. A small Zenith television set sits, wrapped in a blanket, on the back seat, there are pillows, another blanket, and some jackets wedged between the television set and the rear of the passenger seat.  Next to the television on the seat is a booster seat, the 1960's equivalent of a child car seat,... the purpose is not to protect, but to allow the child to see out the window of the large, four door sedan.

Mother is putting perishable food items into a cooler.  That was a metal container, round in fact, that held perhaps a gallon and a half of items,.... just enough to see us through the day, so that no groceries would be needed until the following day.  A little lunch meat to make sandwiches for dinner, some cheese, milk for the child to drink. Perhaps a small container of orange juice.  Other food items are in a box that will go into the trunk of the car, next to the suitcases.

We exit the house, going down three or four steps into the garages.  Father is opening the garage door in front of the sedan.  We all climb into the car.  Seat belts exist therein, but it is not required to use them.  There are no seatbelts in the backseat, where I climb into the booster seat, which sits firmly in it's spot, in the middle of the backseat. From my perch I can see out of the side windows, and have a partial view out of the front windshield, so that I can see where we are going.  

Father drives, maneuvering the sedan out of the garage onto the gravel of the yard.  Straight ahead is the road, and father makes a right turn out of the wide driveway.  I look out the right side window at our yard and the sheds. We pass the home of father's eldest son, which is on our property to the north of the greenhouse building sheds.  That home sits closer to the roadway than the other building. In the rear view mirror father catches my eye... "sing for us" father says,... and so we begin. Perhaps I begin with the ABC's, or perhaps some song I heard on the television this morning, when the Today Show was on.  Whatever the song, I do not begin if I do not know at least an entire verse of the song I sing...

I have long since forgotten, but I imagine I may have sang the Roy Rogers song Happy Trails To You, or Down By the Old Mill Stream, possibly a hymn.  At that tender age I had to sing what I could remember, because I had not yet learned to read.  But I was the entertainment for a portion of the trip to the lake house.  I sang until I ran out of material, continuing only if father could think of some song I had forgotten.  Sometimes I simply circled back to my starting point and began again.

My young mind has already begun memorizing various routes to our destination.  Father never goes the same route twice in a row, prefering to wander a bit, sometimes leaving the usual path to investigate where does "this" road go to.  We travel north for 2 or 3 miles as father decides where to make the left turn, perhaps onto Route 14, perhaps not.... we continue on to Rand Road, this could be the road we travel on for more than 40 miles,... but no, as he often does, father only takes Rand as far as the crooked road.  This is a favorite of ours,..little more than a farm path, the crooked road is a gravel road for the next 3 or 4 miles. Lined with potholes, it is a slow and bumpy ride.  Here I am allowed to do other than sing... I can actually freely make noises associated with the bumpy ride, mouth open, just letting sounds escape in an Ahhahh..ahhAhh... of sounds.

Coming to the end of The Crooked Road (now known as Arlington Heights Road) we again turn left onto Highway 83, perhaps for a half mile and into Long Grove, or continue a few more miles up to Gilmer Road..... either way we travel west northwest toward Fairfield Road.... there to travel more northward, after another left turn, to make our way onto Highway 59... from there to Grass Lake Road... we are almost there, and I sit up straighter and pay closer attention at this point, the long ride nearly over.  We might stop in at the little store to pick up some item or another, perhaps a loaf of bread; whatever we still need to tide us over before tomorrow's trip into Antioch for groceries and other supplies. 

Exiting the parking area alongside the little store we travel southward on Drexel Boulevard.  It is not really a boulevard, which would be a broader roadway with a grass median between the lanes.... this is a simple paved road, blacktop, because they could never do all the work needed to make it concrete.... Drexel is mostly hilly -small hills,.. a little twisty, but not curvy at all.... it is a mile, more or less, an then we glimpse the lake, in little views between houses.... past the large Cape Cod style home,..past the neighbor's big white garage, there stands a small old garage, probably originally built to house a horse-drawn carraige... it is a small, grey structure... the sedan would never fit inside there! I am not allowed to go inside that little garage, and must never ever walk beyond it toward the roadway.

Father parks the car alongside the roadway, and gets out to open the gate.  Once swung aside, father affixes the metal gate to a post and walks on up toward the house... Mother slides across the front seat and slowly drives the sedan up the driveway -  two gravel paths through the grass, spaced just so that an automobile can drive without traversing onto the grass.  Up the last little rise, parking next to the rock garden.  Before us is the lake house.  The lake house is a large structure, sturdily built, spacious, comfortable enough to while away the summer months.  Thus is the summer of my childhood.


happy trails....

Trigger with Dale Evans and Roy Rogers

(I no longer remember the words to Happy Trails to You)


there are places I remember.....