If you grew up in the 60’s the annual Family Road Trip was a bonding experience. This was the time of year when our neighbors packed up the car and drove to Virginia or Wyoming or even far-away California. My family of chronic underachievers drove to Naples.
Naples is about 100 miles due west of Fort Lauderdale; it is an enclave of super-wealthy Republicans from Ohio or Michigan, but back then it was a tiny, sleepy Southern town. It was accessible only by a narrow, two-lane road through the Everglades: The infamous Alligator Alley.
For reasons unknown, my dad loved going to Naples on the Fourth of July. Every year in late June he would say, “Let’s go to Naples for the Fourth!” and every year we were thunderstruck that after the previous year’s disaster (which once included being literally thunder struck) that he would suggest it again.
For an instant time stood still. My sister would invent a pressing social obligation and my mother would darkly remind Dad of the time she developed a blood clot on the trip. My younger brother, would plead illness, while I, a slow and stupid child, would stand with my mouth open, which my dad interpreted, implausibly, as enthusiasm. None of this worked. “We are a FAMILY!” Dad would say. “We’ll get ice cream! We’ll see fireworks!” and we were off.
South Florida newbies think of Alligator Alley as it is today: a smooth divided highway called I-75, but in the 1960’s the Alley was a death trap. The Alley was built at the same level as the swamp so floods were common in the rainy season. In the winter the road would be closed for hours (or days) due to wildfires.
The Alley had no median strip, so drivers mesmerized by the never ending tedium of the ride would routinely doze off and cross the center line; head-on crashes were horribly common. There were also no fences at the side of the roadway, so wildlife crossing the road and being hit by cars were both a source of possible instant annihilation as well as wholesome entertainment: “Let’s count the roadkill!” Dad would say.
The Alley had no passing lanes, so getting caught behind a gas truck or a slow moving Corvair could add hours to the trip. There were also no shoulders so when cars inevitably overheated in the blazing summertime sun they would expire on the roadway and cause traffic backups for miles. Frequently cars would try to pull off the side of the road and simply sink into the canals that lined each side of the Alley, generally with the passengers still inside. Often, they would not be found for years and years.
Cars were not air conditioned back then, and putting five of us in the car in the searing July heat was like putting a turkey into a toaster oven. As the middle child, I had to sit in the middle of the back seat panting and sweating and wishing I was dead while my sister and brother would hang their heads out their respective windows trying to breathe. Eventually, my mother would get annoyed that the wind was messing her hair and insist that we close the windows, claiming it was cooler that way. It wasn’t.
Every year brought a new disaster; floods and wildfires were the least of our problems. There was the memorable year when the car overheated so we made the July trip with the heater on. Another time, my mother decided her blood clot was returning so she sat sideways in the back seat, forcing my sister and brother into the front seat, while I had to lay on the floor, awkwardly draped over the hump and slowly roasting from the heat of the car and the roadway.
One year a rogue tropical storm hit, slowing traffic to a crawl, forcing us to roll up the windows and debate what was quicker, death by drowning, death by heat stroke or death by fiery head on collision with a car coming blindly in the opposite direction.
Eventually the grisly trip would end, but we never did see any fireworks. We’d go to my dad’s favorite ice cream shop and then turn around. (Driving the Alley at night was even more harrowing.) Generally on the return my brother would throw up from eating his ice cream too quickly while my mother, who was lactose intolerant, got gassy. “It’s better to bear the shame than the pain,” she would say with dignity while my siblings and I fought to stick our heads further out the windows. Family bonding does not come easily.