Father’s Day: What Remains

His wavy black hair glistened as the light from oncoming headlights and street lamps streamed in and out of the front seat. With his left hand on the steering wheel, my father opened a pack of Pall Malls with his right, pulled out a cigarette between his teeth, and plugged in the lighter, all in one smooth move. I couldn’t wait to see the sparks, hear the hiss, and smell the burn as the lighter pressed up against the tobacco. The Pall Mall dangled between two yellow-stained fingers while the other two fingers and thumb encircled the steering wheel. In the passenger seat my mother scissored her cigarette between two Revlon-tipped fingers.

“We’re almost at the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” my mother announced.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike. My earliest memory of my father is watching the back of his head  moving up and back searching for signs for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He’d driven my mother, my two sisters and I away from our home in Washington, DC, with the false hope of finding a saner life in Terre Haute, Indiana, his hometown. In 1952, driving north on two-lane roads through rural Maryland to hook up with the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a challenge, accepted by both parents. They knew their geography.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike ranks as the first long-distance highway built in the nation’s interstate highway system. Drivers and non-drivers alike bragged that call boxes were installed every mile to connect to an emergency service. Radio stations and newspapers across the U.S. followed the progress of the Pennsylvania Turnpike for its entire sixteen-year construction period.

“We’re headed into the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel,” my father said.

“How did they make this tunnel?” I asked.

“They dynamited a hole through the mountain.”

As we drove into the dimly-lit black cavern, I involuntarily stopped breathing. I could feel the full weight of the mountain above. I gripped the side of the window with my fingernails until we emerged a mile later into the Allegheny Mountains on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The super highway crosses the Appalachian Mountain Range in the central part of the state, passing through four tunnels and over five bridges. My mother called out the names of each map marker, a verification that we were on the right track. Allegheny, Susquehanna, Kittatinny, Mechanicsburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Blue Mountain.

Such was my introduction to the joy of map reading. My parents had the bug already. Nothing delighted them more than seeing a name printed on a big sheet of paper, driving in that direction, and coming across it in real life. It was more than just the practical accomplishment. They interacted with the world around them.

“Look! Shippensburg. That’s where your Navy friend is from.”

“There’s Hershey, where they make chocolate.”

“See the sign for Johnstown, home of the flood?”

There’s no chance we crossed Ohio and Illinois into Indiana without my parents’ succumbing to a drunken brawl. But grace abounds in recollecting those melodious names; navigating the Pennsylvania Turnpike is the only memory I have of my parents ever enjoying each other.