Looking Backwards

When I was a kid we took a big vacation to Patrick’s Point State Park in Northern California. It was just this side of 500 miles from Fresno, and the drive took nearly 12 hours with rest stops and meal breaks. Every mile of it and every minute of it I spent facing backwards. It wasn’t that I was being particularly unfriendly, far from it. You see we were in our 1968 Chevrolet BelAir station wagon and the third seat, the seat to which two of my brothers and I had been assigned via age bias, faced to the rear.

So my younger brother, Steve, and my older brother, Bill to whom I’m nearly an Irish Twin, and I sat facing not only the other way, but our entire view to the rear was taken by the front of a travel trailer. Only by looking to the side could we tell whether we were rolling along the dusty oleanders of Highway 99 or the massive, dripping redwoods of 101. If we craned our necks all the way around in Linda Blair fashion, we could actually see what some of the signs said before they flashed by showing their silvery backs. “Hey, I saw a Deer Crossing sign,” Bill would yell. “I think that one said something about a junction,” I would counter, raising the bet. Steve, who had the worst seat in the car, facing backwards in the middle, and could see even less than his brothers, would just sulk and whisper something about putting a banana slug in someone’s sleeping bag.

Now if you’ve never had the opportunity to ride for an extended period facing the wrong way, you’ve missed out. Imagine never knowing what was coming next or being the last to know you’ve arrived. Think about never being able to participate in conversations and when playing license plate bingo, you miss out on those Idaho, Colorado, and Texas plates because six people have seen the car bearing it before you even knew it was coming. I didn’t even get a California for Pete’s sake, and I cheated and said I got an Oregon from a temporary paper license plate from Joe Orabone's Haus of Fine Cars dealership. At one point I thought I heard the burp of Tupperware being opened and felt certain I smelled chocolate chip cookies from what I began to call the first class lounge. But down in steerage we only had peanut butter and celery; light on the peanut butter and heavy on the celery.

At some point in the trip our view was directed exclusively out the side windows because an animal had the misfortune to run under our Chevy, get hit, and deposit his mortal coil on the aforementioned trailer’s front end. It was just a few feet away, framed in the back window like a scene from a George Romero movie. Judging by the earthly remains, when I worked up enough stomach to look at it, it was probably a well fed raccoon with penchant for mussels and Slim Jims, designed by Jackson Pollack.

We didn't complain too much though. If we did, dad would open the back window slightly and for some reason that made us really sleepy.

Eventually we arrived at the grassy meadows, giant forests, and pebbly beaches of Patrick’s’ Point. We had a great time and I didn’t want to leave, at least until I discovered that somehow my sleeping bag had become the home of a herd of banana slugs.