A fun memory:
I don't remember if it was Christmas 1977 or 1978, but I guess it doesn't matter.
Very early in the morning, I am woken up by my dad. I am already excited because I know what is happening: our drive to Michigan for Christmas. He brings me into the living room where our cheerfully lit and decorated tree, albeit an artificial one, stands. He puts our Gene Autry Christmas album on the phonograph for me to listen to and get excited by as he loads the car up with luggage and, as I later found out, all of Santa's presents wrapped in that special red tissue paper. As a civil engineer, my dad knew how to employ every available square centimeter of trunk space!
My dad also turns on the car, which was a yellow-orange 1971 Ford Torino, to get the heat going. Before the first side of the album was completely done, we are getting into the car, me carrying my stuffed Curious George, my faithful bedtime and road trip companion.
I fall asleep for a bit as it is still dark out, though I am miraculously awake as we get our ticket for entering the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the beckoning toll booth at mile marker 286. Back in those days, way before EZPASS was even a transporation authority's wet dream, actual humans distributed tickets and took in the due money.
Soon after, I was asleep again, but as we got close to the first mountain after over 80 miles of forest and farmland, I popped awake again...our my dad woke me...to see an exciting sign: TUNNEL 1 MILE!
There were four tunnels on the Turnpike: Blue Mountain, Kitatinny Mountain, Tuscarora Mountain, and Allegheny Mountin. The first 2 were right next to each other, dubbed the double tunnel. Tuscarora was about 10 miles to the west, and Allegheny was about 60 miles down the road.
At one time, long before I was born, there were 7 tunnels, but Sideling Hill, Ray's Hill, and Laurel Hill were bypassed.
At mile marker 172, we pulled off at the Sideling Hill service plaza for breakfast. My dad had a philosophy of 100 miles before breakfast, and I think we were at 130 at that stop.
After a good breakfast of whatever Howard Johnson had provided (that company ran all of the service plazas in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana), we were back on the road and I was reading all of the mile markers and any of the billboards I was able to decipher at age 5 or 6.
After a few hours what what I conceived at driving fast (55mph in those days), we were approaching a double set of toll booths. The first was for paying our fee to Pennsylvania, and just a few miles to the west was the ticket dispensing agent at the first Ohio Turnpike toll booth.
I remember being excited to be in a new state, but it wore off as I saw that Ohio was quite a bit flatter than Pennsylvania. I was always excited to see exit signs, though. There were still some hills and a pretty neat arch bridge while we passed through the southern Cleveland area. After Cleveland, it got flat and farmy for a while.
And then something really exciting happened (for me anyway): the sign for Exit 5: 280 to 75, Toledo-Detroit, Stony Ridge!
The ramp off was pretty neat, going a bit to the right and then crossing over the turnpike to the final toll booth, and then on to I 280, which itself was fairly boring until it entered the Toledo area. 280 crossed over the Maumee RIver on a drawbridge, and I don't remember if it was that year, but one of our drives treated us to the drawbridge going up for a passing boat.
Soon after, we got on to I 75 for the final leg of our jouney into the Detroit area.
Normally, we pulled into Royal Oak at one of my grandparents' homes before eating dinner (both sets of grandparents lived less than a quarter mile away from each other) but this time we were so hungry that we stopped at an Elias Brothers Big Boy on Telegraph Road. On that night, Santa Claus was going around talking to kids, handing out candy canes and the promotional Big Boy comic book for kids.
One final moment of excitement came when we were onb Twelve Mile Road in Royal Oak: the Grand Trunk railroad bridge. Now, we had passed under so many highway bridges on this drive, and I was always impressed with the multitude of them on 75 going through Detroit, but this one always looked neat to me from the outside and passing under it.
Wow, thinking back to those times brings a smile and a small tear to my eye since it represents a time of happiness for me. My dad always built those long drives up for me and we often talk about them. In fact I was asking him about what kind fo mileage that Torino got and we talked a bit more and I felt the inspiration to write this.
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