In 1973 my eighteen year old brother Jack and his friend Blaine decided that they wanted to see what college life was like. Jack had never had any real interest in academics and had dropped out of high school, but both of them were exploring what they would do with their lives. So they drove my mother’s old VW station wagon just over 1,000 miles from Billings, Montana, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I attended a small liberal arts college. It was summer and I wasn’t taking classes. My good friends Patti and Virginia and I had jobs in the campus library and shared an apartment that had a kitchen, a living room, and one large bedroom with mattresses on the floor.
By the time we eliminated what each person didn’t want in a tuna casserole, it was nothing but noodles, tuna, and cream of chicken soup.
Once in Iowa, Jack and Blaine spent a week or so hanging around campus and becoming acquainted with our favorite bars. Then they went on to Champaign, Illinois, to visit my sister Carol. They were just outside the city when the VW decided that it had gone far enough. Carol’s husband Chuck and a friend started working on it in their free time, but they had regular jobs and it was taking a while, so Jack and Blaine hitched a ride back to Cedar Rapids to hang out with us. Carol, at age twenty-nine, wasn’t as much fun as us college women and Chuck was prone to giving advice about getting a job.
It was about three weeks before the car was ready and it was cozy in the apartment with five people. We agreed on very little, but made compromises. By the time we eliminated what each person didn’t want in a tuna casserole, it was nothing but noodles, tuna, and cream of chicken soup. Summer session and our on-campus jobs ended. Patti and I decided to join Jack and Blaine for the drive back to Montana during our break.
What little money we had was not going to be spent on motels. We took turns driving, only making brief stops. Patti did insist on seeing the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, and Mount Rushmore near Rapid City. Even after the repairs, the car was the little engine that couldn’t. On the way up to see the presidents, it decelerated until we were sure it would soon be going backwards and downwards. Using what little bit of good judgment we could muster up between the four of us, we gave up and turned around. To this day, I have never seen Mount Rushmore, but I can say that I was really close.
Once we made it safely back down the mountain, we pulled over for a break. We had barely stopped when Patti and Blaine bailed out of the back seat onto the ground. Smoke was coming from the seat. The battery was located underneath it and somehow a post had made contact with the seat springs. It may have had something to do with the fact that Blaine was 6’5” and Patti had the build of Xena, Warrior Princess. We put out the fire and went along our way, making sure that the two of them never rode in the back together for the rest of the trip.
Patti was fascinated with the largeness of Montana. You could drive for miles without seeing a town or another car. When it was time to go back to Iowa and resume our lives as serious college students, she wanted to hitchhike. Against my better judgment and after telling my parents that Jack was giving us a ride to the bus station, he dropped us off at the freeway interchange.
By the time we made it to Fargo, we were hot, tired, and starting to ponder how lucky we were that nothing too bad had happened along the way. We got on a bus and returned to our normal lives as students. Patti became a librarian. Virginia is an English professor and published poet. Jack got his GED when he was twenty-five and is a district sales manager for a chain of auto parts stores. I’m a retired auditor. Blaine moved to San Francisco and died of AIDS in his thirties.