Here is a nice piece from an upstate New York paper about a boy and his Dad. (HT )
A taste:
Let me explain bummin’.
Bummin’ as an art form consists of spending a day out and about together with no particular destination, or plan in mind. It was an activity usually reserved for weekend afternoons during mud time, when there were no decent sports on TV, and it was too cruddy outside to play. It was also our favorite thing to do when I had a day off from school. Since Dad was in the Electrician’s Union, he always had more vacation time than my office-working Mother, so when we had a religious school holiday at St. Joe’s, he was the parent who took the day off to stay with me.
He’d rise at his usual time, and make coffee and breakfast as Mom got ready for work. WBTA, our local AM radio station would be playing in the kitchen, as he listened to the news, interspersed with the commodity reports. (Pork bellies are up 15 cents!) I’d make my way downstairs in my PJ’s, and eat a nice big bowl of sugary cereal, and watch the morning cartoons. Once Mom had left for work, Dad would wash the dishes in the sink, and then turning to me while he was drying his hands he’d ask “You want to go bumming?” That was my signal to run upstairs, and get dressed.
Our destinations always varied, and he never would tell them to me until we were in the car. Then he’d say “Let’s go get apples and see the geese,” or “Let’s visit Ma,” or “Let’s drive over to the lake.” Sitting on the front seat of the big boat Chrysler, as we headed out of town always made me feel like a big kid, even if I needed Mom’s cushion to see out the window.
The fields and farms of Western New York would roll by outside the window, for Dad always took the scenic route. The direct road anywhere was for people lacking time and imagination. Instead he’d take every “short cut” he knew, driving up to Lyndonville on back roads, so we could go through the tunnel under the Erie Canal, or taking a route past the salt mine in Retsof, so he could tell me the story of how deep, and far the mines tunnels stretched underneath the ground.
He knew the history of every place we passed. What the significance of the place names meant, which roads were located along the path of old Indian trails, which hill once had a runaway semi-truck carrying gasoline crash into a house. Dad’s stories always tickled my imagination, until eventually the whole of Western New York was like a storybook I could read by looking out the window of the car.
Whether in the country, or up in the old neighborhood in Buffalo, we’d stop for lunch at some little Mom and Pop diner. He’d order an open-faced turkey sandwich covered in gravy, and I’d have a grilled cheese sandwich, with potato chips, and an ice-cold Coke. My folks were never too hung up about kids drinking caffeine. Given the fact that they drank coffee with breakfast, lunch and dinner, it only seemed natural to let the kids get wired too.
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