Hot Ride to an Irish Wake

“You kids today have it too easy!” Those are words I vowed I would never say, having heard them approximately three million times while I was growing up. However, I have to admit that I thought of those words today when I was going for a run and I was passed by a brand new red minivan driving down the street. The windows were closed and the two kids in the backseat were watching two separate movies on DVD players that swung down from the ceiling. I thought they had it easy. But they were also missing something. They were missing the trip itself.

There is one car trip I took as a child which I will never forget. It started with the fact that my sisters and I did not want to go. My parents piled us all into the dented old blue Buick station wagon anyway. My father used?the reassuring?phrase we had heard from him many times before: “You’re going, and you’re going to have a good time, God damn it!” It sounded stranger than usual when he said that, considering we were going to the wake and funeral of some distant relative in Chicopee, Massachusetts. A long drive up the?Turnpike from southern Connecticut to Massachusetts was not the way we wanted to spend an August day. That ancient Buick station wagon had no air-conditioning, and it happened to be over ninety degrees that day. So, we rolled down the windows and took off with two adults in the front seat and three kids and a full-grown Standard poodle in the backseat. Oh yes, the dog got to come to the funeral. There was no one at home to watch him, and he hated going to a kennel.

You would think that traveling at sixty-five miles an hour with air coming in the windows would cool you off, but it doesn’t. It’s just ninety-degree air hitting you in the face very fast, while your ears are blasted by the truck and car noises all around you. Of course, that noise made the dog very excited, and he reacted by jumping around?and barking in our ears?constantly.?He couldn’t be stopped since he was actually bigger than us kids. Somehow, my parents seemed oblivious to all this. Adults in those days had a special way of just tuning kids out. My father drove and smoked cigarettes while my mother read magazines and listened to the radio.

Like many men in those days, my father was a chain-smoker. As he finished each cigarette, he would?flick it out the window with his left hand while driving with his right. The problem is that a car traveling at sixty-five miles an hour creates a slipstream. I didn’t know that word when I was a kid, but I did know that every time my dad flicked a cigarette out the front window, the air would catch it, and the lit butt would come in the back window. My sisters and I would try to duck out of the way of the lit cigarette, screaming while doing so. Of course, that would make the dog even more excited, and he would bark and jump around, bashing into us. The seats were cloth, and a couple of times,?a cigarette butt landed on the?bench seat, and the cloth?would start to smolder until we stamped it out with the?heels of our hands.

?After what seemed like hundreds of hours of driving, we reached the cool oasis of Howard Johnson’s restaurant with its familiar orange roof. Stepping into the air-conditioned space was an incredible relief after the road trip. We were almost at Chicopee and had time for milkshakes, hamburgers, and French fries. Then it was off for the final leg of the trip.

The odd part is that once we got to Chicopee, we really did have a good time at the wake, just as my father had said. If you have never been to an Irish wake, then you don’t know how much fun dying can be. There is alcohol for the adults, soda for the kids, and lots of good food for everyone. If the deceased lived a long life, people don’t talk about how sad it is that he is gone. They tell funny stories about all the great things he did when he was younger. The stories about this distant relative made me laugh, but they also made me wish I had gotten to know him a little better when he was alive.

The best storyteller at the wake was my great uncle John, who was known to be more than a bit fond of his drink. A few years earlier John had been diagnosed with stomach ulcers and as a result changed his drinking habits. From that point forward he drank only Brandy Alexanders, claiming the cream was good for his stomach. Somehow, he had arranged for all the fixings to be at the wake. (Recipe for a Brandy Alexander- combine brandy, cream de cacao, heavy cream then sprinkle with freshly grated nutmeg.)

?There is an old Irish expression that says an Irish wake is sort of like a bon voyage party for the departed. The only difference is that you won’t hear anyone say, “I wish I was going with you.”

We stayed at a relative’s house in Chicopee that night, and the next day, we had to repeat the whole arduous journey back home. The heat wave had not abated, and my father had not quit smoking and never would. By the time we got back home, I felt like we had been to the moon and back.

Somehow seeing the kids watching videos in the minivan today brought the whole memory back. Maybe the kids in the minivan will remember what movies they watched as they rode in their isolated cocoon, but?I’m betting they won’t. I do know that I will never forget ducking lit cigarettes flying at my face while my sisters screamed, and a dog barked in my?ear. The strangest part of it all is that it really does come back as a fond memory.