My fireman buddy told me to avoid the highways last night. I had to get to Plainwell from the west side of Kalamazoo. The scenic route, in the dark no less, led me to detours and cars idling in long centipede-like lines. When I got to moving again, traffic slithered like a snail. I kept an eye on the clock. Being rush hour no one seemed to be in a rush.

            How were the others keeping preoccupied? In the way-back days of the Buick station wagon, the Barrett kids didn’t have any electronic diversion devices. We’d pull up our imaginations, dust them off, and have at it.

            “Stop touching me.”

            “Mom, John is staring at me.”

            “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’m trying to listen to the news.”

            “I spy something green.”

            “Your boogers.”

            “Oh, honestly.”

            “Rock brakes scissors, paper wraps rock.”

            “Are there some highway bingo cards in here?”

            When we headed somewhere, we couldn’t keep from touching each other. I tried eating sardines the other day thinking they might taste better forty-five years later. Nope. Anyway, our space wasn’t a VW Bug or a telephone booth, but we should have won some sort of prize. How-many-can-you-fit-in-a-station-wagon wasn’t a competition, but a necessity.

            Last night I was alone in a red truck idling. I wished all my sibs were stuffed in next to me with my Mom interjecting short statements into our follies.