Ten thousand years ago Highway 11 was the kind of road you drove in summer with a cooler of rye bread and cold cuts, a thermos of coffee and another of Lime Freshie. You remember this road as all hills because your dad treated it like a rollercoaster… speeding up as he approached a rise then yelling for you to hold on!! as you practically flew off the top and down the other side. This was in the days before seatbelts. High adventure times. You can still hear him laughing, still see the cigar clenched between his teeth.
It was the kind of road where you stopped the car any old where and dragged the cooler up the rocks and sat there and watched the not very much traffic while you ate radishes and salami. Sometimes you found blueberries.
Sometimes your parents had thought to book a cabin, sometimes they just winged it. You could do that then. Show up and say, hello, I know it’s August but this looks like a nice place, can we stay a week in one of your cabins? Why sure you can would be the answer. Sometimes. Sometimes you would have to drive until ten o’clock at night in the rain looking for a place with a vacancy while your parents blamed each other for not having thought to book a cabin.
You have no idea if this is one of the booked or one of the spontaneous but about ten thousand years ago you fell asleep in a tiny bed on the other side of this window to the sound of your parents’ voices as they talked long into a warm Muskoka night.
The place is still there.
It’s just the road that’s changed.
♦
Other (not always) wordless friends:
Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman
I don’t care if it’s wordless Wednesday, I absolutely love this story. It is the essence of a childhood summer in the sunny long ago – uniquely yours in its details (the rye bread and salami, the cigar, lime Freshie) but one that many can relate to with longing and their own memories. And as for the picture, it too captures that time and place, and the knowledge that small you is still behind that window in some parallel world.
I love the idea of parallel worlds.
Oh Carin, your attention to detail is utterly delightful. What a wonderful story (and picture) to end my day with. Oh, and I’m quite sure I’ve been on a western version of Highway 11 with my Dad and his cigar and those bumps and one of those cabins…
The days of dads and cigars, eh!
Sigh … Love this. Not only have you put the image in my brain, but I’m sure I can smell the rain, taste the radishes and salami. I had a passion for orange Freshie a thousand years ago. I remember sleeping on the back bench seat with my three siblings, two heads to a pillow at each end of that seat, under a scratchy wool blanket … legs and feet kicking and tangling in the middle ’til the night won out.
Am thrilled to know I’ve taken you back to scratchy wool blankets and the tangled limbs of siblings… and orange Freshie!