Road Trips with Mamaw

When I was very young, I called her Big Momma.  She wasn’t really big.   I was really small.

Later, my cousins and I called her Mamaw.  Her name was Blanche.  Her nickname was Pigie.  I asked more than once how she got that nickname but never got a clear answer.

She was a scion of one of the oldest families in northwest Louisiana’s Sabine Parish.  She was the strongest personality I have ever encountered.  Finding herself alone to raise two young sons just as the Great Depression crippled America, she had to be strong to survive.

She was my grandmother and she had a profound influence on me.

She worked hard every day of her life and saved her money.  There was little luxury in her life.  Even when something nice came her way, it would more likely be put away for later than used right away.  Like the window unit air conditioner by dad and uncle gave her.  She turned it on when some of us came to visit.  Otherwise it sat silently while her old fans whirled.

Don’t even ask about the beautiful, warm beaver slippers my parents sent her from Alaska.  After Mamaw left us, we found them under her bed.  Still in the original box

She allowed herself two indulgences.  Big cars and road trips.

Every five years, our step grandfather, Papaw Rube, would drive her to the Buick dealer in Natchitoches.   She would pick out the car she wanted and tell the owner what she would pay.  He knew better than to haggle.  At least he knew he would sell a car every five years.  It was always the biggest, four door sedan Buick made. Papaw would stand silently by, ready to drive her home in their new car.

She refused to fly or get on a ship.  Her love of travel was satisfied by cross country road trips in her big Buick.

Her legendary trips started before the appearance of Holiday Inns or the equivalent.  I remember what were called “tourist courts.”  Small, cheap cabins.

There weren’t a lot of restaurants along the roads in those early days.   But that wouldn’t have mattered.

“We like to eat along the way,” Mamaw would say.

She would load her big Buick down with every kind of easily transportable food imaginable.  Baloney sandwiches.  Cans of Vienna sausages and sardines.  Peanut butter.

I’ve eaten many a sardine sandwich under an oak tree alongside a remote road.  I still love sardine sandwiches but no longer need the oak tree or road.

I can see them now enjoying their lunch “along the way.”  Papaw in his fashionable hat; Mamaw in her shorts.  Oh yes.  Shorts.  At home in those days, she dressed conservatively.  But on the road trips, the blue plurale tantum was her uniform of the day.

Sometimes the stash of food in the Buick produced surprises.  There was, for instance, the time she presented my uncle’s family with a congealed salad she had made and transported all the way to Virginia.

She and Papaw drove the Alaska highway twice.  The second time was for my graduation from East Anchorage High School.

I was going Outside for college after graduation with my own car.  I accompanied my grandparents back down the Alaska Highway.  That’s when I learned my grandmother had a lead foot that would match anything NASCAR had seen up until that time.

One day, after lunch at a roadside diner somewhere in Canada, Mamaw left in their car while Papaw and I settled the bill.  We couldn’t catch up to her.  I was pushing my car well over ninety.  There was no sign of her anywhere.

We were beginning to fear she had taken the wrong road.  Then we spotted the big Buick at a gas station.  I still suspect we might never have caught her had she not run low on fuel.

Mamaw and Papaw have been gone from this Earth for a long time.  I like to think they’re somewhere in a big Buick with the back seat stacked full of baloney sandwiches, Vienna sausages, sardines, and peanut butter.

And maybe a congealed salad.