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Last Saturday we road-tripped it down to the cities to return Juliet to college after her spring break and to visit her brother. On the way I was driving and as such, with a wide view of the road and all around, I was reminded of the games we used to play in the car as a kid when driving on vacation. License plate games, punch buggy, alphabet car, and other letter or word games using the highway signs.
I remember counting the miles go by, watching and keeping track of the mile marker numbers on the side of the road. I also remember something else.
None of those things held my interest very long. I spent a lot of time reading in the car, escaping into the wildlands of my mind’s adventure. I enjoyed watching the fields, forests and hills -- sometimes mountains, passing by like a color television screen through the car windows (we only had a 13” black and white at home and grandma’s house).
Some things that I always notice as an adult, and Saturday was no exception, while driving are the birds and squirrels and foxes and such in the ditches and fields and trees along the highways and side roads. Without the leaves on the trees, the bulky, non-symmetrical, messy, squirrel nests high in the branches are easy to spot. So are the silhouettes of owls, hawks and larger raptors like eagles.
Turning to head toward Cloquet and then afterwards on Hwy. 35, I began to notice the buff brown shapes of rough-legged hawks hunting low over the wetland grasses that border the highway. They’re easy to recognize because of the black tips on their wings and the circular black spot on the underside of those light-colored wings. Those spots are what stick in your memory at driving speed and also what identifies them apart from the red-tailed hawk. The contrasting spots are especially noticeable in the juveniles.
They seemed to be as happy with the retreat of snow as we all are at this point in April and as we inched south and more than a few of their owl cousins appeared like statues in the trees, these skilled hunters swooping low over the brown grasses bent by the winds became more and more plentiful. With the sun strong in the blue sky by mid-morning, they were a beautiful coffee color. That and the view looking up at them flying from underneath against the white cloud dotted sky reminded me of my favorite cappuccino at Sheridan Street Deli. How it warms the hand and the heart and gets the creative juices flowing with just the right jolt of caffeine.
Once down in Minneapolis we enjoyed dinner from one of my favorite Chinese food restaurants, The Tea House, before going to play vintage arcade games at Can Can Wonderland. Juliet and I searched all over for the machine that has Joust as one of its games and I dueled through many lives on my flying ostrich like I hadn’t since the late 80s in the Cherryvale Mall in Rockford, IL. We played Frogger, Space Invaders, a new Japanese motorcycle racing game with a left hand rollerball to steer with. Lots of pinball machines were flipping, vintage golf games and basketball, hockey and baseball mechanized machines from the 1930s and 40s and some pop-a-shot were enjoyed. We didn’t have the three hours to wait for mini golf, but that’s the other side of the coin there.
It was a childhood dream actually achieved, being able to play all my favorite games and more without having to supply the quarters. Endless play.
Each box, a new world of adventure.
I still love those classic wooden and metal booth/boxes with dark sides that draw you into the screen, the feel of the buttons and the joystick, the robotic edge to the sounds and voices of the games. I would have enjoyed a half hour or so of playing Dirk the Daring in Dragon’s Lair, but they didn’t have it anywhere that I could find.
On Sunday, driving back from Northfield after dropping Juliet off, believe it or not, right after the big bridge a rough-legged hawk swooped in from the left of my vision and landed on a concrete post atop the median. The flash of the spots from under the wings was unmistakable.
As we drove north and the temperature dropped, everything began to reverse itself in a way. Eventually, it was no longer spring and the snow was covering the hunting fields of the hawks again. I could no longer taste the hot peppers and savory meats and vegetable combinations. The unction and soft glow of the arcadian lights no longer bathed me in childhood revelry.
With the radio at hand, I could retreat for a bit back to the early 80s, as if I had the command of a pocket full of cassette tapes and my Walkman. I love the power of nostalgia to cloak the present day in a “new” light. Home came into sight eventually, on a wing and a prayer.
