When I drive into work around 2:30 in the morning, I share the road with semis and a few cars, but on the day before Thanksgiving, the early morning road warriors take on a slightly different make-up. I see family sedans, loaded down with goodies and kiddies. The dad or mom, intent behind the wheel and assorted snoring children in the backseat. Nowadays, I can also make out the greenish glow of hand-held video games and the light shining from the on-board TV screen. (I was almost late for work one such morning when I got so engrossed in Toy Story being shown in the mini-van ahead of me, I missed my exit. That darn Mr. Potato Head!) Yes, this is a morning when families are on the move.

In our house, we don't travel for Thanksgiving. In television, November is considered an important month for the ratings and nobody is allowed to take a vacation. You'd think Channel 9 would be urging me to be gone, but they've yet to catch on, I guess. As a kid, we only had to drive about eight miles to our grandma's apartment for the meal and football ritual. The minute we walked in, my brothers would start saying "Okay, Grandma, is it ready?" "When are we going to eat?" "Is it done, yet?" They did this more for the irritation value than because they were really hungry. Eventually, we'd all crowd around her little table and gobble up the gobbler. Of course, after the gorging, my brothers and dad would collapse on the floor, sofa and chairs to watch football. Being significantly younger than all of them, I was ready to do something! And the something I wanted to do was drive! My oldest brother, Randy, had a Corvair and it was just perfect for a kid my size to drive. As we got closer to half-time in the game, I would begin to pester my brothers about letting me drive. It was a timing thing. If I started to beg too early, they'd just get angry and stuff me in the pantry. If I started too late, they'd be in turkey-induced comas and not able to stand, let alone ride in a car driven by a third-grader. So, when the game clock showed five minutes to half-time, I would start in: "You know, it sure would be fun to drive the Corvair...don't you want to get a little fresh air...in the Corvair?" (Rhyming didn't help.) It was usually my mom who would tell my brother, Randy, to take me out for a spin. Now, I should explain that my grandma lived in a little retirement village and nobody was moving around outside on Thanksgiving. There were no other cars to avoid. No curbs to hit. No big turns or busy intersections. It was really like an elaborate Go-Kart track in Branson or as if you'd been shrunk (shrank? shrinked? shronked?) down and placed in a great model train village. Eventually, Randy would take me out and let me drive. Take that, Ralph Nader! When I was behind the wheel, that Corvair really was Unsafe At Any Speed!

When I see folks on the road to grandma's or other points, so early in the morning, it does take me back to other family trips. My dad loved to drive at night. It went back to when he was driving a truck for Skelgas. We'd leave for a trip at one in the morning. He'd be fortified with black coffee and Kents. I'd doze off in the backseat. This was in the dangerous days of intermittent seat-belt use. When my brothers weren't along, I'd stretch out across the backseat. Even when my brothers were along, I'd stretch out on top of them. Unless, I was wide awake and then I'd sit on that little built-in booster seat, armrest deal some cars had in the middle of the front seat. Not the safest perch, in retrospect. How did any of us survive?

I remember waking up one time and looking out the window to see my dad leaning against the car sucking in the cool air. Turns out we were on some road in Canada and he needed a wake-up stop. If this had been a movie on the Sci-Fi channel, some monster would have jumped out of the darkness and devoured my dad...leaving me and my mom to make it through the alien invasion. If it had been a movie on Lifetime, Markie Post or Tracey Gold would have jumped out of the darkness and accused my dad of any number of horrid things that had led to Markie's or Tracey's medical condition/eating disorder/unloved baby/emotionally devastated childhood/gambling addiction--please, pick one or more. I was about 11 at this time so UFOs were my major fear in the middle of the night. Of course, being in Canada, I'm sure the creatures would have been very polite.

It's funny what you remember from car-trips. For example, on one trip to Washington DC, when I was six, in addition to all the historic sites, I vividly remember a toddler playing between the curtain and sliding glass door of the family's motel room. My whole family thought she was so cute that we watched her for many minutes. I think we even took a photograph of her. Again, in this day and age, that action would have been a major red-flag! This all means she must have been one mighty adorable little kid or we needed to get out of the house more often.

From the same trip, I remember seeing a rather heavy-set, balding man get out of his car at a rest stop and the wind blowing his wide, striped tie directly into his chubby face. When my tie blows into my chubby face, I think to myself: Well, now I'm that guy. It's weird to remember such things and yet I get my kids' names confused. (Lately, I just call them all the dog's name, when I can remember that.)

If you are heading out in the next couple of days, be careful and have fun. Who knows what little things you'll remember or, just maybe, you will be someone else's hard-to-forget memory and you probably won't even know it!