Whittoons

Our month long expedition across the United States seemed at times to be an extended tutorial on American History. This subject was Dad’s academic focus in graduate school and as a professor. And he loved the subject and clearly hoped to instill the same passion in his kids. The plan was to see America and absorb some history along the way.

From my perspective , we were dragooned into a mobile classroom. I did not want to read about more dead people, I wanted to whisper to wild horses and wrangle stampeding cattle. That was my destiny. But we would careen off the highway at the first sign of a historic marker. Not all these wayside attractions seemed hospitable. No one else was stopping. Why was that? After seeing white crosses along side the road, what the hell were we thinking when we stopped. We should be booking it. Saving ourselves. Clearly bad things can happen in the wilderness. At least I recognized that after having heard about the Donner Party. (History about cannibalism can be savored.) Keep moving seemed the best advice. No one listened.

And who was to say the facts on the historical markers were the truth? Was the editor of the marker competent to synthesize all the facts and give a balanced perspective on the exploration and exploitation of the West. I think we were getting the Wonder Bread version. Very white but not very substantial.

I would have agreed to stop to watch buffalo roam, and antelope play…but nothing came over the horizon. Burma Shave signs were the only entertainment over miles of vast plains and through waves of grain.

Well before Chevy Chase dragged his poor pooch along the highway in Summer Vacation, Dad unfortunately made the mistake years earlier. Suzette never forgave him.

As we moved through the middle of America, the heat was off the charts, at least as far as we had every experienced. With a busted air conditioner (these were the days when you could hang one from your window), we had resorted to hanging wet towels in the windows and hoped the evaporation cooled us off . The parakeets were gasping for air with beaks wide open. The turtles sloshed around in their tiny pool. Suzette, the poodle, had her tongue hanging out and drool was going everywhere.

At every pit stop we had assigned tasks. After hitting the bathrooms, we had to fill the gas tank, check the oil, fill the burlap water bag on the bumper, buy refreshments, wet the towels and walk the dog. Dad had the assignment of walking the dog at one remarkable stop. The heat was intense, so the family looked like a race car pit team, running around to prepare the wagon for the next stage. We piled back into the car after completing tasks, anxious to at least feel some moving air as we accelerated. As we started to roll back on the road, we heard an odd sound…it seemed like distant whimpering. The sound did not initially register with us, then Mom shouted, “WHERE’S SUZETTE!” We all looked back to the managerie…and no Suzette. Looking out her window, Mom screamed, “STOP THE CAR!!!!!”

Poor Suzette had been valiantly running alongside the car, her leash looped over the antennae. Dad clearly had had one too many tasks to complete. Mom leapt out and rescued the poodle before it had a heart attack.

Suzette had always been a little neurotic. This unfortunate incident would not help her disposition one bit.

Camping had a few trials and tribulations. The Outhouse was one of the horrendous places to explore on your own…especially at night…with a weak flashlight…when the wind howled in the trees. It seemed inevitable that we would be forced, due to bodily functions, to seek out these hellish pits. For some moments you were alone, defenseless and at the mercy of all hideous visions of doom that one could conjure. And then there was the smell. If one had a sensitive gag reflex, this was not the spot to hangout.

Since this offal time, I have had multiple exposures to bizarre toilet design in my travels around the world. One pokes out. In Goa India, I had to use my cheap hotel’s bathroom. Comfortably situated on the toilet seat, I was startled during my contemplation of life by a muffled snorting sound coming from very close by. After a couple more snorts, I looked down between my legs and there was a pig’s snout at the end of the toilet drain pipe several feet below me. This was not sweet Wilbur of Charlotte’s Web but the Lord of the Flies demanding to be satiated. Bacon has never looked the same.

I did construct an outhouse with some fellow campers in my teens. We designed and built the extraordinary edifice in the style of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson’s Glass House…but without the glass, and flat roof. There were no interior walls, just a A-frame roof and a grand view from the two seater. Privacy was not a prerequisite. The occupant was totally exposed to the bracing conditions and the cleansing drafts blowing through. You sat without shame, at one with nature. We were quite proud of our revolutionary design though Architectural Digest failed to recognize our achievement..

We were not traveling as the crow flies. There was no direct line on our AAA map from Connecticut to Washington state. Our wagon seemed drawn to historic sites. Like magnets, their force was powerful in my Dad’s universe. If there was an historic marker or actual historic site somewhere along the route, we detoured. It was inevitable and excruciating. A chorus of groans would arise from the back seat as we felt the car swerve off course towards history.

I saw dead people. At Gettysburg, how could you not, given the displays of battle strategies, images of war dead and the hauntingly quiet pastoral setting where so many were killed. Dad, as an historian, was in heaven with the dead people’s stories. Though in thinking back on this walk over battlefields, I wonder if he was also troubled with memories of his battles in WWII with his Special Forces unit in Italy and his experience with tragedy in Korea. It had not been that many years since he had held a gun in war.

I am not certain if we picked up the two record sets of Civil War songs at a gift shop there, but as a kid I loved the melancholy music from both sides. The vinyl records slipped out of paper sleeves from within blue and grey album covers did bring the spirit of soldiers alive whether they had fought and died for a just cause or a lost cause.

Our historic detours along with a multitude of gas stops and food and bathroom breaks often lead to finding campsites after dark. We became Civil War re-enactors at Gettysburg, pitching in the night, battling mosquitoes and just trying to survive the vicissitudes of tenting on the old campground. Mom struggled with the Coleman stove to get a meal to the starving campers. We ate the grub on metal plates by the light of a Coleman lantern, its delicate mantel of singed fiber could disintegrate on a whim.

Finally we would find our dark niche in the tents and shivered as we buried ourselves in the cotton padded sleeping bags. The countryside surrounding us held the bones of long dead soldiers. Their voices carried a tune in the wind.

My family could rarely get me out of the Davy Crockett outfit. For this portrait, I was insistent that I be allowed to wear my coonskin hat…but higher authorities prevailed. The shirt moved west with us along with my spirit of wildness. And the shirt lives on having been packed for years in a box in our basement.

As mentioned, each evening was an adventure in curses as Dad set up the tent. My siblings needed to master putting up the pup tent. Rain was always a challenge. No one was to touch the tent walls or water would drip inside. There were drips and puddles and wet bags. Though sturdy, the tents could not handle a thunderstorm. We came back after visiting another historic site, and the saturated canvas pulled the stacks out of the sodden ground. More curses. Dad began to call such cataclysmic events – Whittemore fiascos.

Our family headed west in a wagon…a 1955 model. Dad had accepted an appointment to teach at Western Washington College of Education ( now known as Western Washington University). As Connecticut Yankees, this would be are first time exploring the Northwest and settling in Washington State. We packed all our gear in my dad’s hand-built sailboat, hitched it to our Plymouth station wagon, corralled the neurotic dog Suzette, two turtles Ike and Mike, and two inseparable parakeets…and piled in for a month long wagon train to Bellingham. I say we, but I was only five so I doubt that I contributed much to the packing except enthusiasm. I was ecstatic to be headed to cowboy country and vast wilderness. I had my Davy Crockett shirt and coonskin hat. I was ready…

…though not yet culturally competent. Years later on my way to an Editorial Cartoonist conference in Kansas, I stopped by to visit the Alamo shrine where Crockett met his maker. On the train later, I was re-educated by a Tejano on what bastard misfits the Alamo bunch were. Hero today, gone tomorrow.

We had a play room in the back of the wagon if you could find space in the zoo but we demanded breaks as did the animals that could express discontent. Parakeets panted, and the dog would whine joining our chorus for relief. We knew we could get a break if we pointed out historical markers. Our dad was an American historian and was drawn to the markers like cat to catnip.

Setting up camp the first few nights was a lesson in the precise use of swear words by my dad, the professor. These tents were not Ultra-light, with heavy canvas walls and steel poles sturdy enough to withstand gale force winds. Dad was on his own setting up the big tent that I shared with my parents. Climbing inside, he struggled to place each pole. From the outside, the heaving canvas mass muttering curses resembled some beast going through death throes.