Running on Low for the Last Lap Home

Bonnie and Clyde used to take car trips like this, long wonderful drives across the country, stopping occasionally to use the restroom and hold up a bank or a Dairy Queen, then climbing back in the car and licking each other’s ears. Romantic car trips, a hundred cop cars screaming in pursuit.

“Wanna rob a liquor store?” I ask my wife as we speed down the prairie highway.

“Maybe after lunch,” she says, curling up with the TripTiks.

You try to make a family car trip a little fun, and this is what you get. A sensible answer. A car trip snooze.

So onward I drive, passing little towns full of liquor stores and banks and Dairy Queens, regretting what we missed. By Utah, we could’ve been rich.

“Dad, what are you doing?” asks a little girl in the back seat.

“I’m just hallucinating,” I say.

“OK,” she says, going back to sleep.

It’s been a long car trip, 3,000 miles of open road and corn. A thousand horses. A trillion cows. No farmers.

We will pass hundreds and hundreds of farms on our eight-state journey and never see a single farmer in the fields. Maybe they work at night. Maybe they’re in Tahoe.

“What are you doing now?” the little girl asks 20 minutes later.

“Still hallucinating,” I say.

“That’s good, Dad,” the little girl says.

“Yeah, just what you want in a driver,” grumbles my lovely and patient older daughter.

*

We’re headed home, which always changes the mood of a car trip, dampens the energy, saps its strength.

For 3,000 miles now, the kids have had to look at the back of my neck. It’s a nice neck, but after a few thousand miles it becomes less and less interesting.

So they study my ears, the way my sunglasses curve around the top of them, the way the sunlight dances on the plastic.

Then they study my neck again. Neck. Ears. Neck. Like that, for 3,000 miles. All in all, they’ve handled this excitement very well.

“Are we stopping?” the little girl asks.

“No, don’t stop,” says the boy.

“Stop,” says the little girl.

“Don’t stop,” says the boy.

More than anything, they’ll remember the food. Mexican food in Iowa. Cajun in Colorado. The Chinese joint in Nebraska that served a fine plate of snow peas and shrimp, the shrimp seemingly shrink-wrapped in their own skins. Platte River shrimp. Big as a baby’s thumb.

“Good steak,” says the boy, gnawing as if on a Band-Aid.

“That’s a shrimp,” I say.

“Real chewy,” he says.

“The best shrimp always are,” I tell him.

So they cut the little shrimp into tiny pieces, then pour on steak sauce and savor every rubbery bite. Because they know they don’t get shrimp very often. Only in Nebraska, when Dad’s wallet is filled with 50s and Mom’s drinking some blue umbrella drink and talking about her college days.

Nebraska, they’ve found, is a seafood-lover’s paradise.

“How about some lobster?” my older daughter asks.

“Eat your shrimp,” I say.

*

Now we’re gliding home, up through the Rockies on a hot afternoon, with the minivan’s four cylinders chattering like chipmunks.

Every 90 seconds, I look down at the heat gauge, which seems never to move. Cool rains. Hot mountains, the needle never moves. Painted on, probably. Like on a toddler’s play car.

“What are you looking at?” my wife asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“You’re looking at something,” she says.

“The altimeter,” I say.

“The what?”

“Nothing.”

And down the Rockies we go, then into Utah, where my older daughter takes the wheel--the world’s newest driver. For an hour, everything I cherish is at her slender fingertips.

“Remember, I love this car,” I tell her as she zooms along the interstate.

“Sure, Dad,” she says.

At one point we come around the side of a mountain to discover a small herd of deer, maybe a dozen, standing inches from the interstate, nibbling on dry grass and a McDonald’s bag.

“That could’ve been dangerous,” my daughter says, looking at the animals in her mirror.

“You did fine,” I say.

“Wow,” she whispers under her breath.

In Las Vegas, I take back the wheel--for Interstate 15, the world’s longest roller-coaster, bumper-to-bumper traffic at 70 mph, Las Vegas to San Bernardino.

A great way to end a long car trip, the I-15, with a final death-defying drop through the Cajon Pass on a Sunday afternoon, trucks on three sides, their brakes cooking on the steep grade.

“We’re almost home,” says the boy.

“We’re home?” asks the little girl.

“Almost,” says the boy.

“What are you looking at, Dad?” asks my older daughter.

“The altimeter,” I say.

And finally, like Bonnie and Clyde, our glamorous cross-country trip comes to a sudden close, the car’s grill baked with bugs, me just baked.

I get out of the car stiff and slow, pushing the palm of my hand against my lower back the way old men and pregnant women do, trying to straighten up.

“Who left the Silly Putty on the back seat?” I ask.

“That’s not Silly Putty, Dad,” the boy says.

“Yeah, that’s not Silly Putty,” the little girl says.

“It looks like Silly Putty,” I say.

“Well, it’s not,” says the boy.

“Welcome home, honey,” my wife says, patting me on the shoulder.

“We’re home?” I ask.

“Yeah, we’re home,” she says.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.