A Tribute to “The Van”

Our second book selection was going to start in June, and I wanted something with a good summer feel. I am a sucker for road trips. I would much prefer to drive than fly. Not because of any fears, but I want to see all that I can of America along the way. So I was looking for a good road trip book. I read Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent  and enjoyed it, but it was a little more outdated than I wanted. I finally found George Mahood’s “Not Tonight, Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America” which chronicles his road trip across the USA. Although at first, I was a little confused as to how the title fit in, but after that first chapter it all made sense. It’s the van!! He road tripped in a van!!

People who know me in real life know that I used to have a lovely 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan that I have road tripped quite a few places in. I didn’t realize I was emotionally attached to the van until it was time to let it go. I never named the van or anything like that but I will admit I miss it terribly.

So sometimes we are emotionally attached to irrational objects and don’t even realize it until it’s time to let it go. And sometimes those inanimate objects become just as an important member of your adventures as the human beings you choose to travel with. So with this theme in mind, I am going to share some of my favorite memories in the van.

It was a 2006 Dodge Caravan that I bought in 2007. If I remember correctly, it had roughly 20,000 miles or something on it. Believe it or not, I had “own a minivan” on my bucket list.  I would have been 32 with one kid most of the time. Kenzie wasn’t with us on a weekly basis, so it wasn’t like I needed a large vehicle. I just wanted a minivan. (Now I will say when I was 16 and my parents owned a minivan that I wasn’t that excited about driving it.  The 1986 Ford Escort that I ended up with was way cooler. LOL). My mother was excited about the idea of the minivan because it made it easier for to tag along on our adventures which she did fairly quickly.

The first big outing in the van was a road trip to Tybee Island, Georgia via Atlanta and an overnight stop for a Cardinals game. I planned a trip for Hunter, Kenzie, and me and then my mom and dad tagged along for the thrill of it and to help with the driving and the kids. I can’t say that my mom actually did any driving, although she was there verbally praying for us as we went through a thunderstorm in downtown Atlanta during rush hour. The prayers were appreciated, but sometimes her concern a little distracting. As far as driving went that was the only major issue we had. My dad was a helpful copilot. Kenzie and my mom slept most of the trip there and back. And Hunter didn’t sleep for one second of the 13 hour one way drive. Didn’t sleep on the way there or the way back. We finally had to put him as copilot because he had tuned in to which sister buttons to push in the back. Overall it was a nice maiden voyage.

After that trip, we had a few more uneventful trips for school summer conferences. The same crew made a shorter trip to Nashville and then we later returned to Atlanta, but minus my dad and with Jason King. It was silly for him to drive to Atlanta by himself when I had the roomy van headed the same direction. The next excursion was the Christmas Break road trip to The Great Wolf Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells which was uneventful travel wise other than traveling with my sister which is never uneventful. She doesn’t do well in confined spaces.

Then the next era came along, and when I say the next era, I am referring to the baseball era. Starting at the age of nine, Hunter started doing some major traveling with baseball. In 2009 we started with baby steps because our state tournament and regional tournament were both in Southeast Missouri. Just a couple hours from home.

On some of the smaller trips, I would sometimes end up with a van full of boys heading to various places.

The next year we went big. We had the weekend tournaments in St. Louis and Cape, but then we started the major traveling. Our Regional tournament in Iowa and then the World Series in Winchester, Virginia. It’s also about this time that I found my baseball road trip soulmate in Kim Bland. Most of the time it was just Hunter and me in the van and then Kim, Jeff, and Jace in their car. We decide to pool our resources and team up. I had a bigger vehicle and they offered extra drivers. It was a match made in baseball travel heaven. On two occasions through the years, Hunter, Jace, and Jeff flew to our destinations with the entire team.  And other times, my mom, dad, Bendi, or Charlie was with us, but it was always Kim and I logging those miles on the open highway.

I won’t recount the exact details of every trip, but will share a few of the memorable “highlights.”  

Probably the first and most exciting of our van stories was on our trip to North Dakota. This was a full van – Hunter, Charlie, Kim, Jeff, Jace, and me along with all our luggage and baseball gear for a week.  The boys were 11 at the time, so starting to mature but a bit goofy still. I’m pretty sure Hunter probably said, “Mom, Momma” or some other version at least 1000 times into Jeff’s ear.  Jeff who happened to be recovering from rotator cuff surgery and wasn’t to be bumped , so he was wedged into the van with special care.

This was a drive through the night trip because that is how we had to do a lot of the long ones.  Kim’s mom and step-dad were traveling with us, but driving at their own pace behind us. We stopped at a gas station in Brookings, South Dakota at about 1:00 or 2:00 am.  Kim’s parents stopped at a pump one over because there was a car using the pump next to us. The boys were slightly asleep while Charlie started to pump gas, and Kim and Jeff start to head inside.  But there appeared to be some commotion with the people next to us. They were arguing among themselves, but were getting close to Kim’s mom’s car which did not set well with Kim, and she decided to let them know that.  So a little verbal altercation started between them. Charlie was new to this traveling scene, so he wasn’t sure what to think, but I knew it was just Kim. At this point, the boys started to wake up a little and wonder what was going on while Charlie noticed the guy next to us digging in his console for something which sent his radar off.  Jeff, who noticed the commotion from inside the gas station, began to head outside along with another member of the other party with both of them yelling. At this point I can tell it is a little more heated than normal. This was confirmed when the gentleman walking out of the gas station along with Jeff yelled, “I’m going to pop a cap into their ass!”  Yup, no lie. No exaggeration. I told the kids to get down in the back of the van. Charlie was thinking what in the hell is is going on here. The scenario ended with Kim on the phone to 911 giving our location while the friends of the girl in Kim’s face pulled her away.  (This wasn’t the first time that I had been with Kim when yelling and the police were involved.) We all survived without caps in our asses, so we regrouped and continued on with our drive.  The boys had a big tale to tell once we met up with everyone else in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and we adults still chuckle (in hindsight) about that night in South Dakota. I guess if there needed to be a moral to this story, it would be “Don’t get too close to Kim’s mom’s car!”

The other major van event with Kim (other than the usual fun on the road) happened in Aberdeen, Maryland, the hometown of Cal Ripken Jr.  We were in town for the 12 Year Old Cal Ripken World Series. The boys and Jeff had flown out with the team. Charlie had flown out separately, and my dad had rode out with someone else later than Kim, Joni (who hitched a ride out with us), and me.  After exploring the town for a few days, we were excited to see that Aberdeen had a 7-11. We had been missing nachos and Slurpees after our local stores had closed at home. For some reason, I had decided to stay in the parked running van while Kim, Charlie, Jeff, Jace and Hunter went inside.  I was seated in the second row of chairs with the van being parked directly in the front of the double doors of the store. Again I noticed some commotion inside the store, and the next thing I know two men were busting through the double doors. One looked like an average customer while the other was in a blazer and tie.  “Interesting,” I thought to myself. It became even more interesting when the two men made a couple circles around the parked running van. All of this happened within seconds, but my gut was telling me I wasn’t in a good place. I made the knee-jerk decision to turn the car off, lock the doors, and move to the back of the van so I wasn’t visible.  I didn’t want to become the hostage in the hijacked car situation. After a couple laps around the van, the one took off running behind the building and that was the end of the chase.

Once I reunited with my group, I learned what had happened inside. The runner had tried to pay for something with a credit card. When the clerk asked to see his ID, it didn’t match the man trying to pay. He asked for the card to be returned which the clerk didn’t do. It just so happened that the man in the tie was a detective who was in line behind the first man. When the man realized he was in trouble, he bolted out the double doors with the police officer following. And that was where, my part of the story took place. Inside Kim’s motherly instinct took place and she shuffled those boys back near the Slurpee machine and out of the way. And to quote her, “I was too busy protecting Hunter with my body.” For that I am eternally thankful. But yet again, the boys had another exciting story to tell!

In between the baseball traveling, Hunter and I found time to take an occasional “me and you” trip. With the first being a quick road trip to Indianapolis over Christmas Break to watch a Colts  and then Pacers game. It was our first true encounter with weather while traveling.  We had to leave the Pacers game early because of snow, but the old white van managed to get us back to our hotel before they shut down a portion of the highway. The majority of our “me and you” trips have revolved around fishing. And let me just say that the white van was pretty handy for carrying all of our gear.  On one trip that meant two kayaks. Two kayaks inside the van with three people! It was the summer of the kayak, and Hunter and Dalton wanted to take them with us on our fishing trip to Michigan City, Indiana. No, they didn’t use them on Lake Michigan, but did get them out later on in Southern Illinois on our way home.  So packing them was not wasted. I don’t think there was ever a time or a trip that we didn’t manage to get every single item we wanted to take into that van.

The last baseball trip we made and the moment that I decided I probably needed to think about selling the van was in 2015.  We were headed to Springfield for a State Tournament. We were on Highway 44 near St. James. I had another mom and three other boys with me.  We were driving contently down the highway when I hear a thud and then some banging. I pull over  to the shoulder of the highway to see that my back tail light housing unit his dangling along side of the van.  Thankfully it was still attached by the wires and working. Because I always have my trusty bag of everything, I was able to do a quick fix with some duct tape, which lasted us throughout the rest of the trip. But it was time for me to consider something different and six months later, I sold the white van.

I will admit it was a little more heart-tugging than I expected.  I had traveled the country in than van with Hunter and friends. We had survived death-defying times in that van.  I had spent countless hours listening to stinky boys sing, fart, and talk a big game in that van. That white van had inspired the connection to the Zac Brown Band song “Free” that had become mine and Hunter’s motto – me and you.  I had lived some of the best years of my life with that van. It had found a little place within my heart, but thankfully I have the memories that will stay with me forever even if the van is gone.

So if you aren’t a fan of cross-country road trips, you are missing out on some of the greatest adventures or your life.  And if you are a road trip lover then you understand that getting there is half the fun.  

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George Mahood’s “Not Tonight, Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America”

Bill Bryson “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America“