Road trips

When I was young, my family took a lot of road trips. (I don't know how Father could handle all that driving!)We lived in Sackville, N.B., and even though St. John was closer than Halifax, and could be reached in a shorter drive, the Halifax drive actually seemed shorter because you'd go through a wider range of scenery, while the St. John road was pretty monotonous beyond Moncton.

You know that smell of freshly cut grass right after you mow a lawn?  Once we were driving between Halifax and Truro just when the farmers had been doing a big mow.  The smell was overwhelming!

There are some famous American movies about road trips. (It's such an American theme!  The sea in Moby-Dick and the Mississippi River in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn function like the road in later stories.) Easy Rider was a hit at the time, but it's dated pretty badly.  I prefer Five Easy Pieces, with Jack Nicholson as a pianist turned oil roughneck going to visit his family.  It was so sad when he was ashamed to introduced his waitress girlfriend Karen Black to them because she was beneath their class!  There's a funny confrontational scene in a restaurant.

I hope that in the future people will take long trips by train, instead of by car or plane.