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Today I am going to write about one of the best road trips I have ever taken in my life.  A trip that is the perfect example of when the actual trip was more fun than the destination.  This trip was to go see Lollapalooza in Raleigh, NC back in 1994 with a group of awesome friends.  We were all really excited to go to this concert, there were a lot of bands playing that we all loved and who doesn’t love a good road trip with friends.  The lineup for the concert was as follows:

Main Stage: The Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, George Clinton & the P-Funk All Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Green Day

Side Stage: The Flaming Lips, The Verve, The Boo Radleys, Guided by Voices, Lambchop, Girls Against Boys, Rollerskate Skinny, Palace Songs, Stereolab, Fu-Schnickens, The Pharcyde, Shudder to Think, Luscious Jackson, God Lives Underwater, King Kong, Charlie Hunter Trio, Shonen Knife, Blast Off Country Style, Souls of Mischief, Cypress Hill, The Black Crowes

There were a bunch of us going, so we took several cars, booked a couple hotel rooms for after the concert to share and were ready to set off on our adventure to the Walnut Creek Amphitheater.  In order to fit more people into less cars, I talked my mom into letting me drive her Suburban, which easily fit like eight of us with no problems.  Two other cars full of people followed us.  The trip down was nothing spectacular.. I mean, we had fun, laughing and doing other stuff, but that was not the leg of the trip that made this particular trip so memorable.  The actual concert was SO GOOD.  I remember it being 200 degrees hotter than hell that day, but we had a blast despite the heat.  When the sun went down and we saw The Beastie Boys and The Smashing Pumpkins - I remember us all talking and saying “this will be one of the greatest concerts we ever see in our entire lives” and it was, to this day, it was.  We stayed to the very end of the concert, found our cars, located our hotel, took turns in the showers of our rooms washing all the sweat off and drank until we all passed out.

The next morning, we woke up and found a Denny’s to go eat breakfast at before leaving for the almost four hour trip back to Virginia Beach.  Now… once we were on the road, I cannot for the life of me remember what started the fight between two of the cars… but I do know that it was a fight that none of us will ever forget.  We STILL laugh about this story whenever we all get together.  Because we were broke ass 18 and 19 year olds, we had packed a cooler full of shit to keep in the Suburban.  T.R. and his girlfriend Lee-Anne (now his wife) were in charge of cooler duty.  Lee-Anne was a total hippy, so she seriously filled the cooler with granola bars and freaking wheat bread, which in itself made us laugh our asses off!  She packed bread… and nothing to put on the bread and granola bars.  WTF were we going to do with that shit?  By the end of the trip, of course all the ice in the cooler had completely melted and we were left with a cooler, filled with water, a loaf of soaked wheat bread and some soaked-ass granola bars.  My friends Seth and Kathryn were in the car behind us, his ultra-sweet Nissan Sentra (Seth, Kathryn and I were the three founding members of the Nissan Sentra Club - since we all drove the exact same car in three different colors).  I don’t know if Seth wouldn’t get off my ass or what… but at some point we decided to start making grenades out of the soaked stuff in the cooler, rolling down the huge back window in the Suburban and pelting them at Seth’s windshield on the highway.  Because we had the back window, we could get a direct hit every time, causing shit to go all over the windshield and make him swerve all over the road.  We were DYING laughing.  It did not take Seth and Kathryn long to wise up, start digging through their cooler and try to pass us on the road and pelt our car with food.

This went on for OVER an hour until we ran out of shit to throw at each other.  That is when our car decided to call a “truce” and act like we needed gas.  We pulled into a gas station/convenience store and got some gas, while T.R. and a few others went in and stocked up on the TWO things, that we discussed would win this war for us.  Eggs and Potted Meat.

We did the best we could hiding our arsenal and getting back into the car before continuing our journey home.  We all felt confident that our plan was going to be the better plan… and honestly we were laughing like complete f*cking idiots.  I mean who does this shit on a highway?  They had also gone in the store, and we could only imagine what they had decided to buy… there was this eery silence between the cars.  Everyone knew this was not a truce and gas stop, it was a “re-up” stop for more ammo.  Everyone was back in their cars and we were back on the road.  We got a few miles down the road, when Seth tried to speed in front of me on the highway, cut me off and throw what they had purchased onto my windshield.  What was it that hit my windshield?

A freaking Hostess Fruit Pie.  THAT is what they decided to buy to continue our on-road, vehicular food fight.  That is when we unleashed an attack on them that should have gone down in the history books alongside The Battle of Gettysburg!  We sped in front of them and with much thought and planning, took out the two dozen eggs we bought and specifically started aiming for the front grill of Seth’s car and the cracks around the hood… each hit oozing egg down into the engine of the car and getting into the vent system.  Because of the extreme heat, the eggs spoiled and fried immediately, sending the most foul “egg-fart” smell through Seth’s car.  We had taken out their air conditioning with the smell and they were forced to ride with their windows down for the remainder of the trip home, or be forced to smell the eggs, have cool air and then vomit because of the smell.  Next up… the potted meat.  We scooped this out of the cans, and aimed for the windshield.  When this stuff hit, it just splatted and spread.  When Seth tried hitting the windshield wipers to clear his line of sight… the windshield wipers smeared a layer of disgusting. meaty grease across the windshield.  We had TWELVE of these pots that we unleashed on his windshield.  Seth and Kathryn were DONE.  We had won and it was such an amazing victory, considering that we had seriously almost wrecked like 30 times as we hit speeds of over 100mph and kept repeatedly trying to pass each other and cut each other off to “get the next hit” in.

Seth had to drive the last hour of the trip with windows open, a car WREAKING of rotten eggs and with his head out the window so he could even see the road because his windshield was WRECKED.  His car was covered in wet granola (think oatmeal) and bread, fried egg and potted meat.  My car was covered in leftover sandwiches and stuff from their cooler and looked like it had been hit with a fruit pie machine gun.  I can only imagine what other cars driving near us were thinking.  When we got off the highway in Virginia Beach, we headed straight for a car wash, where Seth and I both pulled in and we all got out laughing our asses off and seriously telling each other stuff like “good battle” and shaking hands.  It took almost two hours for all of us to scrub both cars clean - but it was TOTALLY worth it.  It went down in history as being one of the all-time best road trips in all of our lives.  Epic even.

The other day, I saw the above book and mitt set called “Tickle Monster” on some website.  I thought it was the cutest thing ever and immediately added it to Ashton’s Christmas Wishlist on Amazon dot Com.  Is this something he wants for Christmas?  No, but it is something that I want him to have for Christmas.  Why?  Because seeing this product made me immediately think of my grandpa and the fifty million amazing memories I have from growing up with that man and the constant games of “Tickle Monster” or “Zombie” that he would play with us until he nearly collapsed from exhaustion.  What made me laugh about the Tickle Monster mitts, is that they would have totally SAVED us growing up.  My grandfather had nails… and would

chase you

hunt you down and tickle you until you bled (at least that is what it felt like).  You would be crying and trying to make it sound like you were laughing and it was hilarious.  As much as you hated it, you wouldn’t trade it for the world because he was just SO AWESOME!  But GOD… if he had only had these mitts.

This was my grandpa’s house in Springfield, PA, which is right outside of Philly, and is where I spent an ENORMOUS chunk of my childhood.  With my father being in the Navy and being out to sea every year of my life and us having no family in Virginia Beach, my mom would load us up in the car and make the 4.5 hour trip up to Philly as often as she could.  Weekend trips, birthday trips, holiday trips - we were constantly at my grandparent’s house growing up.  That trip became nothing to us, it was like a trip to the grocery store.

This is a picture of my mom with my grandpa, her father, James Vincent Wallace.  To look at him, you would never guess what an amazing man he was, but he was.  My grandfather attended Rutger’s University on a full football scholarship.  He also played baseball for them.  After college, he was offered a chance to play in the NFL, but he met and fell in love with my grandma and felt that was no career path for starting a family and family is what he wanted.  He joined the military and was a World War II veteran.  After his time in the military, he worked for a car dealership for 24 years.  My grandparents had 8 children - 7 girls and 1 boy (my poor Uncle Jimmer).  Because of the number of children they had, I was blessed with more cousins then you could imagine and some Aunts that weren’t much older then me growing up.

This is only a handful of the cousins that I have on my mom’s side of the family, in a portrait with my grandparents.  My grandparent’s house was like a madhouse 24/7 with kids everywhere, adults hanging out playing cards or something, our dogs wandering around and yet in my memories, I don’t seem to ever remember that bothering anyone - it was the norm.  There was always a fire burning, there were always kids dragging toys in from the porch, exploring the spooky attic and running down to the basement.  There was running around in the huge yard, playing in the woods, rides in the wheelbarrow… hooked up to the riding lawnmower and snowmobiles.  Most of all there was laughter… tons and tons of laughter - like the time my mom and some of my aunts decided to play strip poker in the middle of the damn day at the dining room table and one of my other aunts (I should say my “favorite Aunt” - in case she reads this - she has always made us make that fact known) decided to drop in unannounced with her sister-in-law - THE NUN.  You have never seen grown women scramble faster or laugh harder.  This kind of stuff was normal in our family.

As much as we went up to see them, they would come to our house too.  If my grandma came, they would drive down in the old Pontiac Grand Prix, but if it was just my grandpa, which a lot of times it was, he took the Greyhound bus - ALWAYS.  We would have to head on up to the True Value Hardware store to pick him up, because that is where the bus took him.  He would come do handy-work around the house and help my mom out, while my dad was away, then he would do the same for the neighbors or anyone that passed by.  He could never just sit, he had to keep busy, UNLESS Jeopardy was on.  If Jeopardy was on, he was watching it.  Not just watching it, answering every single question correctly BEFORE they told the answer - he was AMAZING.

If he wasn’t piddling and whistling, you could find him in his chair - HIS CHAIR.  You were allowed to sit in it WITH HIM… but not without.  He would read in his chair, or work on the Crossword Puzzle or Jumble, or just sit there and watch his grandchildren playing on the floor in front of the fire.  Every once in a while he would get up, go out the porch doors behind his chair and grab more firewood.  If you asked him what he was doing… his answer was always the same “eating chocolate ice cream… what does it look like I’m doing?”

My grandpa was not the affectionate type, but was loyal to a tee!  When you went to hug him, he would pat you on the back and say “alright now… come on… go play” or something like that and I don’t think I ever remember him referring to my grandma as anything other than “woman,” as in “WOMAN… that is enough!”  But you KNEW this man loved you, because he was always doing for you.  Always.  He loved ALL of his children and he loved his grandchildren even more.  He was so proud of his enormous, CRAZY family.  And god knows, we loved him more than anything!

My grandpa died of cancer when I was 19 years old and one of the things I remember was that he had us laughing up until the moment he died.  His obituary stated that he was survived by my grandma, which is not true, she had passed 10 months before him, also of cancer and very sudden.  He had been successfully fighting cancer before she died and in my opinion, just gave up after she passed.  When he died, it was so much harder on everyone, because that meant the end of grandma and grandpa’s house, the end to a huge portion of my childhood.  I wish more than anything that my kids could have known him.  He would have loved my kids so much and they would have loved him.

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