The Smoking Monkey

This picture proves that a good driver always knows how to embarrass the kids in the back seat.

I remember taking car trips as a little girl in the 1970's. I always had my Holly Hobbie sleeping bag rolled out in the back seat, my Etch-A-Sketch in my lap, and button candies. Remember those? They were tiny dots of frosting stuck to white strips of paper that you would peel off and eat. Gross.

My husband remembers taking road trips in a Ford Galaxy with black vinyl seats that would get screaming hot in the summertime. His bulldog, Torro, would sit in the front seat facing backwards, and my husband and his brother used to have competitions to see who could avoid getting slimed by the strings of dog slobber hanging from Torro's jowls, swinging back and forth to the motion of the car.

He and I can both remember stopping at Howard Johnson and Stuckey's restaurants to eat, and being enamored with all the trinkets for sale there. Those infamous roadside purchases that defined road trips. There were little plastic men on trapezes that would spin round and round, and dog puppets made of beads on strings that would collapse when you squeezed the button on the base. My favorite was the set of black and white magnets shaped like Scottie dogs. My husband's favorite was the very politically incorrect plastic monkey that smoked cigarettes. I'm not sure how such simple trinkets helped pass hundreds of miles worth of time, but they sure did.

Today I worked on gathering necessities for our road trip, and I found myself plugging things in all the live long day. I charged a cell phone, an ipod, an mp3, and two Nintendos. In the 70's, packing the camera meant grabbing the Kodak Instamatic, foil packed film cartridges, and plenty of flashbulbs. Today it involves charging the digital camera, the video camera, and the laptop.

Soon I will head to the "filling station" where there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The first of many tanks of gas we will need for our upcoming trip. I was curious about the increase in gas prices, so I googled and learned that Americans felt the impact of the oil embargo by several Arab nations in 1973, when the average price of gas jumped 16.6 cents per gallon to a whopping 55.1 cents! I also googled and learned that you can still buy a smoking monkey on e-bay for five dollars.

So, as you can see, I've plugged things in and googled, so it has been another extremely productive preparation day.