For me, the anticipation has always been an equally important part of a trip. Throughout grade school and junior high, I replayed previous road trips and previewed the upcoming ones weeks in advance. Now that I’m approaching retirement age, I find that my anticipation has become even more extensive.
Four months ago, JoAnna and the boys and I decided that a Thanksgiving visit to Warren was in order. For the first time since both boys were in grade school, we had an opportunity to make this road tip. No basketball games. No work commitments.
Clock tower topped by a statue of "Justice",
Warren County Court House. Constructed 1876-77
at a cost of $97,435.
We still hedged our bets, though.
“Are you still going to be here for Thanksgiving?” Mom would ask during our occasional phone conversations.
“We’re still planning on it,” I’d reply, not giving her the definitive “yes” I’m sure she wanted to hear.
Apartment building directly across the street from the Court House. Warren has a very rich architectural history, and
although this building is not particularly significant, it's always held a fascination for me.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, the night before an early departure on a family trip to visit relatives in Rockford, Illinois, or Springfield, Massachusetts, found me tossing and turning. I’d be afraid that by falling asleep, we’d get a delayed start. Either everyone else would follow my lead, or Mom wouldn’t be able to rouse me out of a deep sleep. Once I fell asleep, though, the electrical charge of anticipation kept me on a cycle of restlessness until the 5 a.m. wake-up time at which I had set my clock radio.
Andy with his Grandma Nelson, cooking and baking. She experienced great joy in preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her entire family, the first time we've all been together for this holiday in at least 10 years.
On the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, JoAnna and I stayed up reading until 10:30, by which time our bedroom lights have usually been off for a half hour. Five and a half hours later, we were both wide awake and ready to roll. Unlike my childhood years, these hours had passed while I was in a deep and peaceful slumber.
Eddie and Andy in front of Grandma's fireplace. The oil painting in the background is a scene of the Bay of Naples in Italy that Auntie Barbara purchased while she was stationed in Naples during her Navy stint in the mid-1970s.
Less than a month before his 17th birthday, Eddie passed his driver’s test on the second try. Had he approached driving with the same enthusiasm as his dad, he would have, first of all, obtained his license months ago, and, secondly, jumped into the driver’s seat right after we finished packing the car. But Eddie has never shown more than a perfunctory interest in driving. There’s no obvious thrill in it for him. It’s not a rite of passage as it was for me, the first big step in moving toward adulthood and independence.
The overlook at Washington Park provides a dramatic panorama of Warren. When we moved here in August 1957, I remember seeing a billboard with the message: "Welcome to Warren, Home of 15,000 Friendly People." Its population has since declined to less than 10,000. Still a beautiful place!
This view of Warren provided the backdrop for a 1992 family Christmas picture. In high school, friends and I would tie a toboggon to the end of someone's car and have the driver barrel down the narrow, curvy, snow-covered access road.
In other words, I backed the car out of the driveway as we started the first leg of the trip – a dogleg to Milwaukee, where we found Andy waiting for us in Gretchen’s car.
The view looks timeless from here but Warren has changed in many ways -- and not just in the shrinking. A new shopping center, Warren Commons, anchored by a mammoth Wal-Mart recently opened. (Strictly speaking, it's located in North Warren.)
Seen in the background, Downtown Warren -- or "overtown" as we used to refer to it -- still has most of its storefronts
occupied,though the business mix has changed to include much less retail. The stores of my youth -- Kresge's, Murphys, Printz's, Levinson Brothers -- are long gone.
Driving through Chicago has always been Dad duty in our family. The main reason for this tradition is my discomfort with JoAnna’s driving. She doesn’t observe the one-car-length-for-every-ten-miles-per-hour rule. Of course, that puts her in the majority of drivers. For me, though, it’s wearying constantly stepping on an imaginary brake pedal or averting my eyes from the perilously close bumper of the car in front of us.
This latest run through Chicago turned out to one of our worst. Nevertheless, I held onto my optimism until the point where the Edens and Kennedy expressways merge.
“Maybe a lot of commuters will decide to take an extra day off,” I offered hopefully three or four times during the two days before we left. “But that will probably be more than made up for by all the travelers on the road,” I always added.
Regretfully, this was the only effort at a group portrait during our visit. Larry, Andy, Barb, Mom (cutting JoAnna's birthday cake -- we're celebrating early), Eddie, & JoAnna. Dale and Kim are out of the frame.
And indeed it was.
We proceeded at a crawl for a painful 45 minutes. I managed to squeeze our way to the left-hand lane and into the “express” flow of traffic. It probably reduced our view of Chicago’s gray-draped skyline by 15 minutes.
As we reached and happily exceeded the speed limit on the Dan Ryan Expressway, an insistent rain started to fall as if on cue. We simply switched from one driving headache to another. Smeary windshield. Plentiful road spray. Reduced visibility.
The opening of Mom's first letter to us after Thanksgiving.
Dear Paul & JoAnna,
Not much on TV right now so I'll start a letter even tho there isn't much to write about.
It was great having you home. I enjoyed your company so much. You can be proud of Andy & Eddie -- they are great sons. You've done a good job of raising them.
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