Letters to Doug

sometime between eighth grade graduation and the end of my freshman year, dad made a decision... one that ultimately horrified my mother, bored my little brother to tears, and changed my life forever...

soon after this decision, he could be found at all hours of the day and night, out in the old country schoolhouse which was his workshop, constructing a most curious looking thing... which eventually became known to us as simply "The Black Box". We decided that he must have just been inventing another of his oddities, for whatever reason, to use out in the barns or chicken coop, or maybe even on a tractor... it was obviously "something to hold something". But we still weren't satisfied with that bit of guesswork since everything seemed so secretive about it.... and no matter how many times we'd sneak out there and try to get a glimpse of it through the knot holes in the side of the building we came up with no answer to this puzzle at all... and mom was definitely not amused by our daily reports...

then.... one day to our horror, we discovered he'd painted it black!

finally after it had dried completely, we were all summoned to the shop for the grand unveiling... but of what?... what on earth was that square plywood box with the dome shaped lid and snap down fasteners in each corner... worse yet, where on earth was that ugly thing going!

and then finally... he made his announcement... WE and IT were going on trips together! We IN the car and ugly IT attached somehow to the top of the car! ... our mixed reactions hung over the schoolhouse like a dense fog that afternoon... mom vowed immediately that she was NOT going anywhere with that "thing" on top of her head and that was that!.. little brother rolled his eyes and could see his summer plans instantly shot to pieces... and I just stood and stared at "the box" and wondered how much of my personal stuff I could cram into it and how soon could we leave!

and thus began a series of four summer "road trips"... usually starting two or three days after school let out for summer vacation and not returning home until two or three days before school began again in the Fall... or later, depending on dad's mood... getting the kids back to school on opening day was the least of his worries... he considered seeing the United States inch by inch and person by person much more important than anything we would ever learn from books... I later learned he was right!