Writer’s note: This is the first published piece I ever wrote. It was featured in the Island News (Port Aransas, Texas) on December 12, 1985. I always loved how Ray Cushing the editor added the editors note under my by-line:
Sunday Driving Recollections
By Mike Jackson
(Editors Note: Mike Jackson is a novelist and poet who works in the Public Works Department of the City of Port Aransas)
Recently, I indulged in a very old and mostly forgotten ritual. I went for a Sunday drive. If you don’t know what a Sunday drive is, ask your grandparents. You see, decades ago, before you had to put up your life savings for a gallon of gas, every American family used to load up in station wagons and pickup trucks and go for the traditional Sunday Drive.
One reason for the Sunday Drive was to burn a tank of gas for no material reason. Another was to give parents a reason to get out of a house full of screaming, fighting, obnoxious children into an automobile full of screaming, fighting, obnoxious children.
In the car, there were games parents would play with their children. These games were used to keep children content during the drive. Games like, “the child that doesn’t fight, scream or talk gets an ice cream cone of his choice”. Back in those days, every family could afford an ice cream cone of their very own.
Another game was “who could hold their breath the longest”. But facts from the “1953 National Survey of Sunday Driving Parents” indicate that the most effective game to play with children was the “If you kids don’t stop screaming, fighting and being obnoxious, you’re going to be grounded till the age of retirement game”.
Besides burning gas
for no material reason and complaining about all the other Sunday drivers getting out of the house and playing games, there were other important reasons for the Sunday driving obsession.
The most important reason for Sunday driving mania was to drive 15 miles an hour in a 50 mile an hour zone, looking at the exact same sites that they looked at on all the other Sunday drives while driving 15 miles per hour in a 50 mile an hour zone.
Unfortunately, not all Americans were into the Sunday Drive movement, even during the Sunday Drive heyday. These people are easily distinguished as the folks in the cars behind the Sunday drivers screaming incoherently at the Sunday drivers for driving 15 miles per hour in a 50 mile an hour zone. The Sunday driver, in his innocent ignorance, never understood that the guy behind him probably wanted to do something really terrible, like drive the speed limit.
What happened? America changed, gas prices jumped and everyone grew out of it. But it didn’t end! The Sunday driver is still very much a part of America today! They are funded by Social Security and they all go south for six months of the year where they Sunday Drive 7 days a week.