The Shortcut

We visited my Mother’s mother in Wisconsin many summers. Daddy, inventor of the Surr Shortcut, always found a different route from California to Grandma’s. The Surr Shortcut was any unpaved road that added hours or days to our trip. He could take these because my father’s sense of adventure didn’t allow for motel reservations. Geography required that our trips always started out through the desert.  

Daddy, Mummy and two year-old Polly usually sat in the front seat. Nancy, just 12, Jack, 10, and I, almost 7, sat in the back seat. Because Nancy was the first-born and, and Jack was the boy, and Daddy, being English, was strong on primogeniture, Nancy and Jack were a dyad, always at loggerheads, when they weren’t joined in plotting to keep me in my place. (We all thought Polly was the bee’s knees.) Most childhood pictures of Nancy and Jack show Nancy with a stranglehold on Jack. One shows Nancy holding a flower above Jack’s head, with Jack’s face contorted with tears as he reached to get it. Family dynamics, then, ensured that our trips were not boring.

The trip started well enough. The backseat played the alphabet game. As we got deeper into the desert, the signs grew fewer on the ground. Finally the only things with print on them were the telephone poles. Daddy drove up to several to help us.  Jack finally crowed when he encountered a Z in some zone or other.

Daddy, realizing that the family no longer needed text, found an enticing trail and took it. We drove still deeper into the desert.  As we got hotter and dustier, the atmosphere in the back seat fouled. Nancy and Jack began sniping and picking at each other. Unfortunately, they were sitting next to each other. Nancy drew a line on the car seat with her finger and told Jack that he couldn’t cross into her territory. Even though it was hot, I started braiding the fringe on the wool car blanket. Jack, cocky with his recent win, started testing Nancy’s territory. Words ensued.  Jack called Nancy a “stinkpot”, a word I hadn’t known was offensive.  Nancy elbowed Jack in the stomach and he bellowed. Daddy stopped the car and spanked Jack.

Mother said, “We need to stop for refreshment”, her stock cure for deteriorating family relations. We got out of the car in the shade of a Joshua tree by a dry creek bed and had dry peanut butter sandwiches, apples and warm water. After our snack Daddy did what he had never done before; he drove us back the way we had come on a Surr Shortcut to the main road.