Road trips have come a long way
— -- "Staycations" notwithstanding, most Americans still take to the road for their family sojourns - a rite of passage that shifted into high gear after World War II. Brigham Young University history professor Susan Sessions Rugh, author of Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations, takes USA TODAY's Laura Bly for a spin down memory lane.
Q: How and why did the road trip become the emblematic American vacation?
A: Car manufacturing started resuming after the war, and as cars became affordable for almost every household, there was this dramatic rush to own one. It was also a cultural decision: Families chose road trips in part because the whole family could be together, and the car became an extension of home — a comfortable, almost living room on wheels.
Q: You also write about development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, and its emphasis on "faster travel through better engineering." Was getting there really half the fun, or was speed the primary emphasis?
A: As Calvin Trillin once said, "Americans drive across the country as if someone's chasing them." I think that was typical. People did try to go further, faster, and there wasn't much wandering along the way. Cars couldn't go the speeds they do now, of course. The goal back then was 350 miles a day, and for them that was a long day.
Q: Speaking of long days, your book cites a 1959 column by humorist Peg Bracken acknowledging that getting through one of those vacations was "harder than it looks."
A: It wasn't always pleasant, as any veteran of family vacations can tell you. That's what was so great about the (National Lampoon's Vacation) movie — we all recognized the over-eager dad, getting lost, the car trouble and the weird relatives. Its staying power is amazing, and I think it's because it reminds us that even bad experiences can bond a family and make us better for having gotten through them.
Q: Care to remember a few of your own?
A: In 1962, back before most cars had air conditioning, we drove a Corvair across the desert with three adults and five children. There was this cardboard box you put dry ice in and hung in the window. But if you were sitting next to the box, you were hit with flecks of ice as they dissolved, and if you were on the other side of the car, you didn't feel any cool air at all. And then there was the time we drove to Yellowstone in a borrowed camper. My sisters and I played cards all the way up and all the way back, and we didn't take one look at the mountains. Of course, I do think scenery is lost on children, by and large.
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