Chapter 5: The Long Ride

Each year, within a few days of the end of classes at Ithaca College, we would pack up Nelly, the family’s 1952 Nash Rambler, and set out for my grandmother’s home in Kingston, Massachusetts.

In the days before the interstate, it was a grueling four hundred mile journey on narrow back roads and two lane highways. The trip took about fourteen hours depending on traffic and pit stops. We called it “The Long Ride.” Preceding each trip was a lively discussion about whether or not Nelly Nash would survive the trek.

The journey to Kingston was to drop me off to live with my grandmother for the entire ten weeks of summer.

I loved the long ride, and the Mohawk Trail was one the high points. For some reason I was convinced that if I watched carefully, I could spot actual Mohawk Indians in the forests along the highway. I never did but I never stopped looking.

My father would drive until fatigue finally overwhelmed him. He would pull off the road. He and Joyce would recline the front seats and fall asleep. My sister slept in the back seat.

I curled up on the floor’s backseat well and fell asleep to the Doppler shifting lullaby of cars and trucks singing through the night. I loved that sound. I meant I would be at home with my grandmother before the next bedtime.

Every summer for the first eleven years of my life, starting in June and running through Labor Day, I stayed with my grandmother while Joyce, Charles, and my sister lived the life of gypsies during the “summer stock” theater season. My dad hired himself out as a freelance director to any theater group staging a summer production.

For my father, his summer was a busman’s holiday. For me, my summer was a sanctuary. Thank God, the tradition of spending the summer with my grandmother continued for several years after my parents got divorced.