It doesn’t seem like kids get car sick as much now as they used to.

For nine years, from age 4 until I was 13 we maintained a Friday afternoon family ritual. When school would get out on Friday afternoon we would leave Jollyville and head to Smithwick.

The road for some of the way was still unpaved, just a gravel road from Lago Vista to Smithwick. That stretch of road became RM 1431 and was paved, starting in 1958. The road from Whitestone to Smithwick was even more crooked back then than it is now. A way more crooked.

I would become violently sick sometime along the way, coming and going. Many times we’d have to stop in order for me to do my business along the road. I would recover very quickly, once I got out of the car. I would do fine when we traveled in the pickup, in good weather and bad, because we always rode in the back, as many kids did in those days.

I guess if we had child car seats back then that would have elevated me up enough to see out the window, I would have been able to make it without becoming sick. I don’t remember Kenny ever getting sick. Maybe it was because he was holding me down, sitting on me, which elevated him enough to see out the window. He would claim that was the only way he could keep me from picking on him.

Did I ever tell y’all it wasn’t easy being me?