By G.A. Peck
I have fond memories of my first official road trip, and have since loved the means of travel—getting behind the wheel with a destination in mind, but no real agenda for getting there. How relaxing and spontaneous it is to let the miles unfold behind your tires and stop and go, out of whim or necessity.
My first road trip. I was five, maybe six. Young, little, tiny. Somehow my parents managed to scrape together the finances to fund a trip to Disney, and we decided to span the distance between Maryland and Florida in our VW Bug. I remember the trip was long, and by the time we began to see the signs advertising South of the Border (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2211) , we welcomed the small distraction of reading them. I pleaded with my parents to stop there, if only briefly.
My friend Butch reminded me of one of the slogans: “I never sausage a place!” Well, I just had to see this place!
And when we finally arrived, I was enthralled by the flashing signs and the big tower in the shape of a giant Mexican man in a sombrero. There were several buildings then—some where fireworks were sold (we bought sparklers, I think); a restaurant; souvenir shops, and so forth. I had ordered a Sloppy Joe and a Coke at the restaurant, and then my parents shelled out the cash for a tiny American flag on a stick, and a fur-covered sheriff’s vest with a badge, which I wore the rest of the way to Orlando.
In hindsight, I was probably just a tad too young to appreciate Disney World, and have difficulty remembering it all now. But I do recall a few highlights:
The Dumbo Ride: http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/parks/magic-kingdom/attractions/dumbo-the-flying-elephant/
The spinning and churning teacups, which made me dizzy and queasy and reluctant to get on another ride after that. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/parks/magic-kingdom/attractions/mad-tea-party/
The Hall of Presidents, which I found oddly spooky, though I don’t think it was meant to be. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/parks/magic-kingdom/attractions/hall-of-presidents/
It’s a Small World. I loved all the animatronic dolls in motion, but by the end, I was plain sick and tired of that song. To this day, I can’t listen to more than two choruses of it without wanting to pop my eardrums. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/parks/magic-kingdom/attractions/its-a-small-world/
And 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. By far my favorite “ride” of the day. We boarded the submarine. I loved how tiny the space was, and how we all had to pile in it like sardines and jockey for spots at the portholes. I really believed we were moving, plunging into great depths, and when the giant squid grabbed hold of our vessel and rocked it, I screamed and held on tight. I never wanted it to end. There is a GREAT, full-length video of the actual ride here: http://www.20kride.com/
Once Disney had run its course through us, we piled back into the VW and headed north on I-95. The mood in the car was light, despite the long journey we had before us. And I entertained my parents by donning all of the junk we’d bought along the way and posing for my mother’s camera.
We may have been in Georgia when we first saw the billboard advertising the “Land of Oz,” an amusement park in homage to the classic film. My eyes must have lit up. I may have said, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” and pointed at it to make sure he saw it, too. Kids do annoying things like that, and I was no exception.
I suppose it was because the mood was light and none of us were very excited about the prospect of the long drive ahead—or maybe we just grew hungry, and my parents saw this attraction as an opportunity to feed; or maybe it was because my folks knew how special that movie was to me—but they decided to follow the signs, which led us deep into North Carolina’s rural areas in search of this illusive Land of Oz.
And when I say “deep,” I mean it. We drove for hours out of the way, through largely undeveloped areas, up and down hills, through forests of trees. My father nervously joked about the prospect of getting lost and made references to Deliverance. Our stomachs growled. On the trip down, we’d shared a box of Yankee Doodles. They were long gone.
I could tell my parents’ patience was wearing thin, and I was so excited by the prospect of extending our trip-o-fun that I panicked at the thought they might finally conclude that it was a lost cause and do a U-turn. It had not been their intention to drive hours out of their way. It had been meant as a quick stop-off. We needed to get home, after all.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on those images from the billboards and signs that led us to this place of nothingness. We were so alone; it did feel like “us against the wilds of North Carolina” on that drive. I’d read what I could about the “Land of Oz” from those billboards passing us by at 55+ miles per hour. The pictures were what drew me in most of all. I imagined it a magical place, where I could immerse myself into the Wizard of Oz screenplay, to become a character (Dorothy, of course). I daydreamed about some Hollywood type spotting me in the throngs of park visitors and tell me that I should play the role in the modern-day remake of the film. I hoped this imaginary man would not ask me to audition on the spot.
On those signs had been depictions of what the park promised: live-actor character shows, rides and a real-life hot-air balloon you could go up in!
We finally found the place. My parents were thoroughly annoyed by then, and walked a few steps behind them, my chin to my chest, contrite for having talked them into this little aside from our trip. My folks paid the admission price—probably reluctantly by then—and we walked inside. It wasn’t a big piece of property—at least it didn’t seem like it to me then, having the recent Disney experience for comparison.
We were hungry, but we searched for a spot to eat to no avail. We may have gotten some of those sippee drinks in plastic containers shaped like fruit. And so we all grew a little crankier.
We walked the path—naturally parts of it paved in yellow brick. I remember there being a lot of trees, walking through the forest, and wishing that they’d really played it up and decorated it all scary and dark like the one Dorothy had to endure in her journey. But it didn’t scare me. That was probably the first realization I had that this place wasn’t going to be what I expected.
Admittedly, my memory is spotty, at best. I don’t remember eating, or taking in one of the shows, or even any of the amusement rides. As we walked, I hoped, at the very least, to bump into a Dorothy character (or that Hollywood movie agent looking to cast the next child star) in the worst way. But there were just other tourists like us milling about, and not very many of them.
My mood completely deflated when I discovered that the park did not, in fact, have a real-life hot-air balloon, and there would be no soaring above the tree line for me. Instead, what had been depicted as such on the billboard, was actually a ski-lift-type of transport device, that moved people from one end of the park to the other, allowing them to glide along the paths, over the heads of the tourists below, and take in all the sights for the high vantage point. On that day, the little carriages in the shapes of hot-air balloons sat still. It was broken.
I feared that my parents’ moods would take a turn for the worst. I could tell they felt it had been a bust, a total waste of time, coming to this place, and delaying our arrival at home. I certainly felt that way.
But as we headed back the way we came, toward the highway, one by one each of us would say what we disliked most about the little excursion—the lack of sustenance, the broken rides, the long walk on already weary feet, and on and on we prattled and laughed. We were united in our animosity about the experience, so in the end, the little oddball trek into the wilds of North Carolina brought us just a smidgen closer together as a family that day.
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