It’s time to leave South Carolina: past time, probably. For the last two years you’ve been reading true tales of liquor, lust, and primer-gray Camaros. You are a patient lot.
I can’t leave the Piedmont’s red clay and kudzu without a nod to the songs that meant a lot but just didn’t add up to full stories. Here they are:
“I’m not driving to Colorado every time your grandfather decides he’s dying,” my father muttered. He jammed the last of the luggage into the back of the station wagon. “He rotted his stomach drinking and now he expects everybody to feel sorry for him.”
This would be our last full family station wagon trip across country, but it was far from the first. One of my earliest memories is of my mother carrying me to our Bel-Air wagon before dawn, still in my Underdog jammies, for one cross-country trip or another. We were the original Griswolds, making good time and stopping only for gas and bathrooms.
