I think about the long car trips to my grandmother's
summer cottage at Lake Sturgeon. My father cursing the Ontario police, and their, Damned Liquor Laws. No
drinking on Sundays! I guessed this had something to do with the cases of beer we brought from Montreal, and my mother
laughing, and admonishing him to, Drive carefully.
What
sort of place is it, he complained cheerfully, where a man can't even get a drink on a Sunday? I occupied myself
with, I spy games, that grew boring, as we hardly ever saw any horses. Red barns and cows.
The summer heat of Eastern Canada caused the vinyl of the car seats to radiate with a plastic smell, and I loved
arriving at the town closest to our cottage, with its old fashioned Coca Cola cooler, full of new soft drinks.
Grape soft drinks.
Cherry
soft drinks.
An exotic Dr. Pepper
soft drink.
Grapefruit soft drinks,
pale yellow.
Orange crush, too
sweet.
and my new favorite, root
beer.
We fuelled up with Ontario sugars, as Dad filled the car with gasoline,
and then we left the larger roads for farm country roads.
I remember in the twilight,
hopping out of the car, and running to open wide metallic fences, that closed with a simple wood peg on a loop of thin wire,
to keep the cows in or out of the pastures.
After I opened the gates
for my dad, I would swing on the bottom ledge, for a free ride, to stretch my legs, and amuse myself.
Finally, we turned into the well worn yard of our cottage, no real driveway, as my eccentric grandmother used
a boat only to visit her friends on Lake Sturgeon, and the car lights lit up the yard, as my grandmother rushed out to meet
us.
We were home.
