Tiny Mobile Rooms of Summer
When I was a child, my family and I would spend summers criss-crossing North America by car. We traveled from Los Angeles to Alaska one year, and to New York another. We saw Canada a couple of times, and one year we made it to the border between Mexico and Belize.
We weren’t the most traditional of families — my mother and her long-time boyfriend were an interracial couple, and I quickly corrected anyone who referred to him as my dad or stepdad — but these summer journeys felt like the most all-American of pursuits. Rest stops, national parks, classic country music on the radio — these to me felt like the essence of this vast, sprawling, and varied nation.
The US, of course, is made up not just of its Mount Rushmores and Empire State Buildings, but also its palaces made of corn and record-setting rock collections. Driving the length of highways was an excellent way to make the acquaintance of both the ridiculous and the sublime — although my interpretations of these shifted with age.
As a kid, the indoor roller coasters in the Mall of America seemed like the height of human achievement. (As an adult, sneering along to punk songs about malls made me view them differently.) As a kid, visiting Graceland, and hearing the almost loving detail with which people described the circumstances of Elvis’ death, seemed ghoulish. (As an adult, I can appreciate what a stirring experience it was for my mom, who according to family lore had wanted to immigrate to the U.S. ever since her first exposure to the King.)
On these summer road trips, the three of us slept in our Toyota Previa minivan most nights, with a stop every third or fourth night in a motel or campsite to shower and enjoy some space. At the time sleeping in the car felt like freedom; now I interpret it as thriftiness. Living on cold cuts and peanut butter aligned with the way my picky kid self liked to eat; now it seems remarkable that we could go so long without a hot meal. Brushing our teeth in gas station bathrooms and occasionally being chased out of the Wal-Mart parking lots we tried to stay in overnight were normal back then; now it’s clear that security guards saw us as vagrants.
The money-saving measures my parents undertook on these road trips seemed perfectly reasonable, or even fun, at the time. After all, taking entire months off work to be van-based nomads couldn’t have been cheap. My mom was a nurse, her boyfriend a machinist. Overtime and graveyard shifts in the months leading up to a vacation weren’t uncommon.
I remember one night in particular, sleeping in a Washington D.C. parking lot with the van door open due to the oppressive heat. I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of shouting. A man had spotted our shoes just outside the van, and had been attempting to steal them when my mom and her boyfriend, who were closer to the van’s sliding door, were startled awake. We learned to keep our shoes in the car after that. It was a funny experience at the time. Now I wonder about the desperation of a man who would take such a risk for used shoes.
Mainly, though, I remember my space. There were three parts to the car: the front, where the adults sat, driving and navigating; the middle, from which we’d removed a row of seats, to make room for our cooler, sleeping bags, and clothes; and the back, a tiny space behind the seats that most people would have used to store a suitcase or groceries. This was my area.
As an only child, I was used to having my own space, and the privacy of this area — shielded by the seats on one side and the van door on the other — was a necessary escape from constant family time. I didn’t do much back there. Mostly I read, or made scratchings in an enormous book of puzzles and games. I stared out the window and did a lot of daydreaming. But having a sort of mobile room of my own made all the difference between being trapped in a car with my family and enjoying life on the road. It was my escape from vacation — which of course was an escape of its own.
My area didn’t feel cramped then, but now I realize that as a teenager, I wouldn’t even have fit in that space without yogically contorting my limbs. There was a blissful pre-adolescent period when I didn’t care enough about coolness to mind traveling with my family, and when I was small enough and easily entertained enough to need just a book, a window, and a few feet of space to myself.
The summer-long road trips stopped after several years. It was too much of a luxury to travel for months at a time, sleeping in a car was taking a toll on the grownups, and I was developing other interests. My mother and her boyfriend, who became my stepdad after all, later traded in the van for a car that was more practical year-round. I felt a wave of nostalgia a few years after that, on hearing that the Previa had been discontinued in the U.S.
I haven’t slept in a van since. I have, however, slept on many buses and trains, and on beaches and in train stations, as part of summer trips. In the summer between my Peace Corps years, when I was trying and failing to stretch my stipend, a friend and I bused through the Balkans for ten days and only stayed in a hotel once. I realized eventually that this was sometimes a false economy. Stumbling through new cities bleary-eyed and in need of a nap isn’t always the best way to maximize travel experiences.
Even on trips like this, with friends, family, or partners, there have been ways to carve out a space of my own. Whether waking up before anyone else and enjoying a solitary stroll, or snagging my own row of seats on the same overnight bus as my travel companion, the instinct to have my own room hasn’t left me.
I don’t romanticize this kind of urban camping or complain about it; in being able to travel at all, I’m luckier than most. And the continued urge to save money that would otherwise be spent on hotel rooms is one way that I’m truly my parents’ kid. The need to find some private space while on vacation, though? That’s all me.
Either way, I’ll be keeping my shoes on.
This article is part of our ‘Summer Series’ collection. Read more stories here.
Christine Ro is happier writing about other people.
