The Slice: Remembering that holiday road

Let’s start with some memories of summer vacation road trips.

“Mom and Dad had a ’55 Chevy station wagon,” wrote Steve Gump. “Our vacations were always to the Washington coast. No air conditioning, so I’m sitting in the back seat with the window down. For some unknown reason, Dad was notorious for spitting out the window, and I was always sitting behind him. Enough said. Vacations were always fun for our family.”

One more reason to always carry a handkerchief.

Catherine Caskey shared a few memories from her own family’s 1950s vacation road trips.

“We always traveled from Iowa to Arizona in August and without air conditioning.

“And Dad yanking my sister out of the car, saying, ‘We drove 1,400 miles to see this hole in the ground’ (the Grand Canyon).

“And practicing our marching band music all the way to Arizona – clarinet, piccolo and snare drum. Dad figured anything was better than listening to rock and roll!”

Lorri Stonehocker said I left something out of Monday’s column about these long-ago summer vacation road trips. “What if you had a parent who smoked during these trips? Omigosh. Horrible, horrible, horrible. How did we survive that?”

Good question.

Warm-up questions: There are quite a few outdoor concerts each summer in the Inland Northwest. I’m willing to bet that at each show, someone in the audience has this fantasy.

For one reason or another, a singer or musician up on stage has to quit halfway through the performance. Can’t continue. And a member of the group steps to a microphone and asks if anyone in the audience knows all of their songs and could fill in for the rest of the show.

So here are my questions. What specific musical group would you fill in for and would you play an instrument, provide vocals or both?

Today’s Slice question: I know a Spokane couple who have a rule about consuming sandwiches they have made for the drive over to the West Side: “You can’t eat a sandwich before Ritzville.”

On the other hand, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law once started a long drive by polishing off their sandwiches almost before they had gotten out of their housing development.

So what is your family’s rule about when to start eating sandwiches prepared for a long trip?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Do Spokane-area families still let little kids camp out in a tent overnight in the backyard or is that considered too risky in 2016?