The Stuck Family of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

Road Trips- 52 Weeks of Personal History and Genealogy

Week #36 – Road Trips

Week 36: Road Trips. Describe a family road trip from your childhood. Where did you go and why? Who was in the car? How did you pass the time?

Oh, the memories of the station wagon with the fake wood trim down the side. An iconic vehicle packed full of all of our essentials for the next month or two. Being an Army brat, we moved frequently and one packed up whatever one would need until the moving truck would arrive at our next destination.

Once all the belongings were crammed into the car it was time to shoe horn the children into the vehicle. Of course this was in the days before air conditioned vehicles, so the tighter the car got packed the hotter the vehicle became. The miles went by slowly, needless to say ,moving from the East Coast to the state of Kansas. Two 12 hour days of closeness designed to test the most even of tempers.

Being a one car family, as most families were in those days, there was no wiggle room. Parents in the front, three kids in the back with suitcases in the floor wells. All right, now for the coup de grace, cram the 100 pound Labrador Retriever in ON TOP of the kids and away we went! Of course the dog would scramble across the outstretched bare legs of the kids wearing shorts-- to see out one window, and then back across all those legs to look out the other window. (A dog always is convinced the other window has the best view.) Oh, the life of a military family on the move in the 1970s!

Life is Short

A couple of weeks ago I hit genealogical paydirt. I had been corresponding with some McKenzie family cousins and someone gave me an address of a fellow in his seventies who remembered my great grandparents well. He and I shared several emails, although he apologized for the brevity of the correspondence since he wasn't feeling well. He shared an address of another cousin with me who sent me some wonderful old family photographs.

I went to thank the old fellow and his email address bounced back as inactive. I googled him and discovered he had died just weeks after he had shared with me. He was emailing and sharing family history information just weeks before in spite of feeling poorly. If I had waited longer to contact him I never would have received the address of the caretaker of the family photographs. Life is short, the longer you procrastinate on the old fashioned chores, such as writing an old fashioned letter, (which prompted this initial exchange) the more chance you take that the link you are seeking will have passed, quite literally.