Back when I was 10 years old, I was on a road trip with my family. This was no road trip of this day’s proportions, but a real honest to goodness road trip. No cell phones, no iPads or tablets, no movies or books, just me, my two brothers, my mom and dad and the radio that would occasionally play music. The Chevy Impala coup had few safety features and even less room. So perfect for a family of five.

We were traversing the Midwest passing through the cornfields and seeing nothing of note. I Spy got old when the corn was yellow, the sky was blue and the road was gray. My older brother had his eyes on a magazine that had to have been read through at least twenty times by every person in the car. My younger brother would try to sing along to whatever happened to come along the radio waves. I was content to try and nap.

We stopped about three hours in at one of the sparsely laid out diners in the state. Everybody got hamburgers and fries and a bottle of coke in a glass bottle. 

Now, my family all threw away their glass bottles and for went the three cent return. Not me. I scrimped and saved every penny that I could find. I did fall asleep again on the way again and the bottle fell from my hand and began to roll on the metal floor with every turn that my father took. It seemed that the road began to take an unnecessarily windy turn when a particularly annoying song came across the radio.

Now I couldn’t hear the words being sung, but I do know that there was a guitar riff and the word “ski” always came after the guitar riff. Well about 30 minutes after the song went off, my little brother began to mimic the riff and say “ski” after every sentence instead of the riff. 

Now, my father is usually very mild-mannered. He could have given Clark Kent a run for his money with the mild mannerisms. He was very even keeled, but there were bouts of uncontrolled rage ever so often. With the twists and turns, the little brother babbles and “ski”s, and the rattle of glass on metal, my father’s patience had run out.

With very little warning other than the one call to stop all the racket, dad drove off to the side of the road. He flung open the back door lifted out the baby brother, cracked his belt across his hind end with such ferocity that a lion tamer would have winced, placed the baby brother back in the car and dug around in the floorboard looking for that glass bottle, finding the bottle he hauled back and pitched the bottle into the sun with with such strength that NASA should have called him to launch a man to the moon. All that had happened took place within the span of one minute. With baby brother crying and me looking forlorn at the loss of my three pennies, dad took my hand and slapped a nickel into it. 

The road trip continued on with fewer fits of exertion. And amidst the blubbering of baby brother one final “ski” left his mouth and dad shot him a look of pure rage and the trip was quite once again.