visiting grandma

Before Linda was born we had a VW.

(Remember when there was A volkswagen, and A ford, and A chevy? But I digress yet again).

We drove the 4 hours to visit my parents with some regularity. Miriam’s parents were an hour and a half away, much of the time, and we visited there too, but honestly, not as much.

In case you have not packed for a weekend with 5 people using a VW beetle as your suitcase, it takes some doing. So, I would take the back seat out (easy to do) though the car battery lived under the back seat on those models, and pack.

The technique I devised involved loading so that the top layer was blankets and flat. I might even have put a piece of plywood in to help that effort. We packed pretty light, there was no choice, but we were not deprived.

There was an old VW joke that you were not really packed until you had carefully filled the space under the front seats, and we did that too.

The sleepy girls would lie crosswise in that space, all tucked in under the blanket (VW’s were not famous for their good heaters, remember?). They would sleep while we drove. (Kinda illegal now, but that was another era). T

Sometimes we would schedule the trip so it was at night, but often it came after a long day in the photography studio, and just worked that way.

About half an hour from our destination, Arline, who was about 6, would raise up and say: “Are were about there daddy?”

How fondly I remember that little voice and that question. As far as our trip goes were were almost there, but I am not sure of the larger implications.

If it was after mom and dad went to bed, we knew where the beds would be. The back door was unlocked. We carried the sleeping little girls in and put them in their beds. We all had a good rest.

I remember things like that with such fondness, now that they grown and gone. I was not a perfect dad by buckets, but I sure did love those little girls (and I still do).