Family Road Trips
north to the border
If we left by 4 pm on a Friday afternoon before rush hour traffic, the Swenson family could be in Warroad before midnight.
Back in the 1960s, lower speed limits and two-lane highways meant a long and meandering ride to northern Minnesota. Gas was 35 cents a gallon then.
Aunt Audrey and Uncle Al lived almost 350 miles north of the Twin Cities.
Spending eight hours in a car with two kids under the age of 10, my parents entertained me and my younger sister Barb with car games. Twenty Questions. Hang-Man. The alphabet game where you had to find the next letter on a billboard sign.
Going “up north” to stay with Mom’s sister always felt special. Like going home, only better. Better because Mom was happy and Dad would be at his best.
This might have been the same year he gave her a waffle iron for Mother’s Day, which made her cry.
On family road trips north, Dad would start out in a slow, low baritone voice. “Oh, the Cannibal King with the big nose ring fell in love with the dusky maid…”
Mom added her soprano voice to the second line of the first verse. “And every night in the pale moonlight, it sounded like this to me…”1 Giggles from the back seat ensued as they beat-boxed with the sounds of smooching.
“She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes...” Mom led us in a full repertoire of folk songs that were part of my parents’ childhood as much as my own.
Dad singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” kept us entertained for long stretches of highway.
Mom taught us three-part harmony to “You are My Sunshine.” She taught us to sing in rounds with “Frère Jacques.” I could have listened to my mother sing all day and night.
On June 16, ten years ago, I attended my mother’s funeral. Only now do I recognize how much Dad had loved to hear her sing, too.
Dad also liked to read the Burma-Shave signs out loud.
Drive / with care / Be alive / when you / arrive / Burma-Shave
Brainerd, Bemidji, Blackduck. Reading the road map in the car was its own form of fun. Each town further north until Baudette, Minnesota.
Willie the Walleye, a two-ton plaster sculpture of a pike fish, greeted tourists as they arrived in Baudette and entered Lake of the Woods County. Originally constructed in 1959, Willie the Walleye stood near where the Rainy River empties into Lake of the Woods.
This week I drove from Wisconsin across northern Minnesota and saw Willie the Walleye and knew it meant I was almost there. After 60 years, the plaster statue has been replaced by a fiberglass replica. It looks exactly as I remembered the original.
Highway 11 runs 36 miles from Baudette to Warroad parallel to the Canadian National Railway tracks along the southern shore of Lake of the Woods. In between are Pitt, Graceton, Williams, Roosevelt, and Swift, which means speeding up, then slowing down, then speeding up.
My legs jiggle. I sit up and lean forward. Time slows and I fight against impatience, exhaustion, yearning. I feel this last stretch of the road in my body like I’m 10 years old. I can’t wait to get there.
I’m here!
I’d forgotten about the mosquitos.
I wondered where this folk song came from and whether it was racist in origin. “The Cannibal King” can be found without attribution in scouting and church camp songbooks from the 1930s to the present. I kept searching further back in time to find the original source. “The Cannibal King” is the title song of a Negro Opera written in 1896 by Will Marion Cook. He graduated from Oberlin College and studied with Antonín Dvořák in 1894-95, became a composer, violinist, and choral director. Best known for his popular songs and Broadway musicals which featured the creative contributions of Black actors and artists, Cook collaborated with Paul Laurence Dunbar on his most famous musical comedy, Clorindy: The Origin of the Cake Walk.
Songs we sang in the car....Red River Valley, My Darling Clementine, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Home, Home on the Range, and Don't Fence Me In...to name a few.
Gosh, Jill, what a great read! Relatable, clever, witty, and nostalgic. Without being overly sentimental. I love the iconic Willie the Walleye. For me and my family it was the goats on the roof of Al Johnson's. Loved how you described that visceral and mental shift as the drive brought you near and around those temporal landmarks of nostalgia. Being back home to what is familiar is great....but the best experience is the GOING part of going back home. Thanks for sharing. Thinking of you! :-)