Thank You, Officer Lattimore!
The pioneers had it so easy.
When they made a trip in their covered wagon, they didn’t have to worry about the price of gas. Restrooms were behind every tree. Cold? Get under a blanket. Hot? Open the flaps on the wagon cover. Falling asleep at the wheel didn’t kill you, and there was no rubber-necking or having to listen to traffic reports. Kids didn’t argue about what radio station to listen to. What a dream.
In contrast, our recent return trip from Corpus Christi was a threat to sanity. If I could drive non-stop, the trip would take eight-and-a-half hours, but I can’t drive non-stop even in emergencies. (On my organ donor card, it omits “bladder” because I don’t have one.) My wife and I have three children. Each can easily add hours to any road trip due to potty stops, temper tantrum episodes, and miscellaneous crises.
The disasters hid themselves at first. We had each kid in the minivan and made it all the way across the huge expanse of Corpus Christi thinking we were doing quite well when Child 1 exploded. A Mt. Vesuvius wanna-be, he spewed chocolate milk lava with ballistic force in unfathomable amounts all over himself, the floor, his car seat, our front seat armrests, and incredibly, the ceiling. (No, I’m not making this up.)
Before the sun even hinted at peaking over the horizon, we made it to a convenience store where a very sleepy clerk gave us directions to a car wash. It had a hose for spraying air fragrance into our van’s carpet. We wondered about turning back to Grandma’s house where Grandpa’s shop vac could do more good, but it was a long way back and we had a long way to go. We performed a thorough parental medical check of Child 1 (we checked his forehead AND his tummy) before deciding to head north again.
We should have made the other choice.
Ninety minutes into the trip we stopped at a Burger King to let the kids play on the climbing equipment and to try to get some mild food into Child 1’s stomach to prevent further expulsions. This was a great plan in theory. As we disembarked, a gigantic red wasp flew into the front door, landed on the dashboard, and crawled down into the defroster vent. My wife, ever in control, looked me square in the eye and said, “You know I’m deathly afraid of anything that buzzes. Our children aren’t going anywhere in that van until you get that out.” Then she herded our three charges inside leaving me to battle the evil that lurked in our dashboard.
I turned on the motor, cranked the defrost on high, turned it to heat despite the temperate zone of deep south Texas, and hoped those steps would drive the wasp out. No such luck. At this point, I began trying tactics I just don’t have the adjectives to describe. I will say that somewhere in the midst of my repetitive standing on the hood trying to see down in the defroster and crawling back in the passenger’s seat with a lollipop stick, a baby’s diaper, and paper towels, two state troopers came out of the restaurant and drove off laughing the whole way. That was not the last of our state trooper encounters.
As I watched them, the wasp came out on his own accord and flew off aimlessly.
Child 1 was now in his third set of clothes from having spewn again so we pulled everything out of the van to clean between the crevices we had missed before the sun came up. Child 2 commenced to crying because she didn’t want to leave the play equipment as we piled back in and continued toward San Antonio.
The crew slept for awhile until we came to Burnett where an 18-wheeler carrying what must have been nuclear waste overturned (I am not making this up) completely sideways blocking all four traffic lanes plus the turning lane so they detoured us through the next county on a single lane trash truck route. That would have been okay, but apparently there was a hurricane bearing down on us from behind because half of south Texas was trying to travel with us down this pothole trail averaging a whopping five mph. The potholes woke up Child 3 who, at 9 months, was teething. Since my wife was driving at the time, I commenced to get on my knees from the front seat and reach around his backwards-facing baby seat to let him play with my fingers. This settled him down because he stuck my fingers in his mouth and promptly clenched his razor teeth into my skin like a guard dog ripping into an intruder’s rear. Did I mention how long this detour was?
Several movies later of Barney, The Wiggles, and Baby Einstein, we reached a McDonald’s the kids really love so we turned in for more playtime on outdoor equipment. Child 1 was now in his fourth set of clothes, and this time we had to change Child 2 because she was in the blast path. Her car seat is made out of the same material as the tiles on the bottom of the space shuttle. (This means our van could blow up and incinerate all of us, but her car seat would still be pristine.) It also weighs about as much as the space shuttle but the shuttle would be much easier to move in and out of our mini van. Yep – it had to come out.
After calming everyone down and letting them wear themselves out playing, we made the longest non-stop trek of the day until we neared Mineral Wells. (Most of this was behind a travel trailer being pulled by people who must have really been enjoying the scenery. You can see quite a lot of it when your average speed is 20-30 mph below the posted maximum limit.) With the town in sight, I met one of Texas’ finest. His name was Officer Lattimore, and I first saw him when he turned on his flashing lights behind me. I looked down at my speedometer and noticed I had the cruise on 73 in a 70. (I am not making up these numbers, either!)
For the record, Super Duper Trooper Lattimore was very professional and very polite in the exchange that took place next. As he walked up and asked me why I was speeding, I could see a quizzical look come over his face. I told him I had no excuses and was just in the middle of some extreme circumstances that made me feel 73 was close enough to 70. His quizzical look could have come from the nuclear fumes of my son’s vomit that were blasting out of the driver’s window and pinning Officer Lattimore’s ears against the back of his head, or it could have come from the extremely loud duo of Child 1 and Child 2 screaming, “Daddy – I have to pee NOW!” Maybe the look was from seeing my wife rolling her eyes over a facial expression of, “No, Officer – these are not our kids; we just found them by the road and rescued them before the buzzards came.” It could have even been from observing my quivering face and hands shaking so badly that I couldn’t pull out my driver’s license. In any case, Officer Lattimore blessed us with just a warning and proceeded to give us shortcut directions to the nearest restroom and we were – and still are – extremely thankful for his professional decision.
At the McDonald’s there, I watched Child 3 trying to eat French fries off the floor and thought, “My great great grandparents had such an easy time…”
When they made a trip in their covered wagon, they didn’t have to worry about the price of gas. Restrooms were behind every tree. Cold? Get under a blanket. Hot? Open the flaps on the wagon cover. Falling asleep at the wheel didn’t kill you, and there was no rubber-necking or having to listen to traffic reports. Kids didn’t argue about what radio station to listen to. What a dream.
In contrast, our recent return trip from Corpus Christi was a threat to sanity. If I could drive non-stop, the trip would take eight-and-a-half hours, but I can’t drive non-stop even in emergencies. (On my organ donor card, it omits “bladder” because I don’t have one.) My wife and I have three children. Each can easily add hours to any road trip due to potty stops, temper tantrum episodes, and miscellaneous crises.
The disasters hid themselves at first. We had each kid in the minivan and made it all the way across the huge expanse of Corpus Christi thinking we were doing quite well when Child 1 exploded. A Mt. Vesuvius wanna-be, he spewed chocolate milk lava with ballistic force in unfathomable amounts all over himself, the floor, his car seat, our front seat armrests, and incredibly, the ceiling. (No, I’m not making this up.)
Before the sun even hinted at peaking over the horizon, we made it to a convenience store where a very sleepy clerk gave us directions to a car wash. It had a hose for spraying air fragrance into our van’s carpet. We wondered about turning back to Grandma’s house where Grandpa’s shop vac could do more good, but it was a long way back and we had a long way to go. We performed a thorough parental medical check of Child 1 (we checked his forehead AND his tummy) before deciding to head north again.
We should have made the other choice.
Ninety minutes into the trip we stopped at a Burger King to let the kids play on the climbing equipment and to try to get some mild food into Child 1’s stomach to prevent further expulsions. This was a great plan in theory. As we disembarked, a gigantic red wasp flew into the front door, landed on the dashboard, and crawled down into the defroster vent. My wife, ever in control, looked me square in the eye and said, “You know I’m deathly afraid of anything that buzzes. Our children aren’t going anywhere in that van until you get that out.” Then she herded our three charges inside leaving me to battle the evil that lurked in our dashboard.
I turned on the motor, cranked the defrost on high, turned it to heat despite the temperate zone of deep south Texas, and hoped those steps would drive the wasp out. No such luck. At this point, I began trying tactics I just don’t have the adjectives to describe. I will say that somewhere in the midst of my repetitive standing on the hood trying to see down in the defroster and crawling back in the passenger’s seat with a lollipop stick, a baby’s diaper, and paper towels, two state troopers came out of the restaurant and drove off laughing the whole way. That was not the last of our state trooper encounters.
As I watched them, the wasp came out on his own accord and flew off aimlessly.
Child 1 was now in his third set of clothes from having spewn again so we pulled everything out of the van to clean between the crevices we had missed before the sun came up. Child 2 commenced to crying because she didn’t want to leave the play equipment as we piled back in and continued toward San Antonio.
The crew slept for awhile until we came to Burnett where an 18-wheeler carrying what must have been nuclear waste overturned (I am not making this up) completely sideways blocking all four traffic lanes plus the turning lane so they detoured us through the next county on a single lane trash truck route. That would have been okay, but apparently there was a hurricane bearing down on us from behind because half of south Texas was trying to travel with us down this pothole trail averaging a whopping five mph. The potholes woke up Child 3 who, at 9 months, was teething. Since my wife was driving at the time, I commenced to get on my knees from the front seat and reach around his backwards-facing baby seat to let him play with my fingers. This settled him down because he stuck my fingers in his mouth and promptly clenched his razor teeth into my skin like a guard dog ripping into an intruder’s rear. Did I mention how long this detour was?
Several movies later of Barney, The Wiggles, and Baby Einstein, we reached a McDonald’s the kids really love so we turned in for more playtime on outdoor equipment. Child 1 was now in his fourth set of clothes, and this time we had to change Child 2 because she was in the blast path. Her car seat is made out of the same material as the tiles on the bottom of the space shuttle. (This means our van could blow up and incinerate all of us, but her car seat would still be pristine.) It also weighs about as much as the space shuttle but the shuttle would be much easier to move in and out of our mini van. Yep – it had to come out.
After calming everyone down and letting them wear themselves out playing, we made the longest non-stop trek of the day until we neared Mineral Wells. (Most of this was behind a travel trailer being pulled by people who must have really been enjoying the scenery. You can see quite a lot of it when your average speed is 20-30 mph below the posted maximum limit.) With the town in sight, I met one of Texas’ finest. His name was Officer Lattimore, and I first saw him when he turned on his flashing lights behind me. I looked down at my speedometer and noticed I had the cruise on 73 in a 70. (I am not making up these numbers, either!)
For the record, Super Duper Trooper Lattimore was very professional and very polite in the exchange that took place next. As he walked up and asked me why I was speeding, I could see a quizzical look come over his face. I told him I had no excuses and was just in the middle of some extreme circumstances that made me feel 73 was close enough to 70. His quizzical look could have come from the nuclear fumes of my son’s vomit that were blasting out of the driver’s window and pinning Officer Lattimore’s ears against the back of his head, or it could have come from the extremely loud duo of Child 1 and Child 2 screaming, “Daddy – I have to pee NOW!” Maybe the look was from seeing my wife rolling her eyes over a facial expression of, “No, Officer – these are not our kids; we just found them by the road and rescued them before the buzzards came.” It could have even been from observing my quivering face and hands shaking so badly that I couldn’t pull out my driver’s license. In any case, Officer Lattimore blessed us with just a warning and proceeded to give us shortcut directions to the nearest restroom and we were – and still are – extremely thankful for his professional decision.
At the McDonald’s there, I watched Child 3 trying to eat French fries off the floor and thought, “My great great grandparents had such an easy time…”