1979.
I don't remember what "the family car" was at that time or why we borrowed Ma-Ma Harris' car, but we went in the Nova and traveled in tandem with Uncle Bill, ex-Aunt Doris, Billy, and Brent. They were in a gold LTD station wagon, and we all left from Smithville on Wednesday afternoon.
I remember being sorry to leave school at lunchtime, because Mr. Hyde was going to do his famous chain reaction demonstration in the aquarium in his classroom that afternoon. He had a big aquarium - maybe 40 gallons - but it didn't have any fish in it. It was mostly just a big, empty aquarium in the corner of a 9th grade science classroom, but once a year, Mr. Hyde would set about a hundred mousetraps, arrange them in the floor of the aquarium, then drop in a ping-pong ball to demonstrate what a chain reaction is.
The plan was for the adults to drive until they were too exhausted to wiggle, then we'd check into a motel and finish the rest of the trip on Thanksgiving morning, which seemed reasonable, since the Michigan relatives drove to Tennessee more often than the Maryland cousins or Aunt Bobbye and Uncle Clyde, who lived in Houston, and the way they talked, traveling to Michigan and back wasn't that much more of a deal than going to Knoxville or Chattanooga.
Dad got pulled over for speeding by the Kentucky Highway Patrol south of Cincinnati. That was the first time I was ever in a car that got pulled over, and 40 years later, the flash of those blue lights is bright in my memory
Dad did get a ticket, and he felt bad about it because we were in Ma-Ma's car - like it was going to count against her on her permanent record - and even way back then, I think the thing cost nearly $80 to resolve.
We stopped somewhere for a snack and to regroup after the ticket ordeal. Uncle Billy had pulled over, too, a mile or so down the road to wait for us to catch up and ended up getting questioned by the same trooper about what he was doing and why he was pulled over and was he traveling alongside those speeding people from Tennessee with the same last name.
At the end of the day, we stopped north of Cincinnati but not as far north as Dad and Uncle Bill had hoped we'd get.
