Are We There Yet?: 7 Weeks on the Road

By JoAnn Scott Preciado

The way I remember it.
Barb and her sister Kitty leave husbands home and take their collective gaggle of eight young children from Florida and Mississippi all the way to California for their summer vacation. These two thirty-something moms and their off spring wander into harms way more than once in this fun action filled adventure. There is plenty of suspense and mystery, there's witch craft and UFO's, western folk lore and even a little romance along the highway as they camp across America in a homemade camper In the summer of 1975. Things were different then.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469119854

JoAnn Scott Preciado

JoAnn Scott Preciado was born in Van Nuys; California went all through school in Van Nuys and married her high school sweetheart. She lived life as the wife of a carrier military man. JoAnn has lived and traveled throughout the world. Raised five children, and is now a proud grandmother, and great grandmother. As a teen-ager she wrote a weekly column in the Los Angles limes called "Teen Talk" under Hedda Hopper's byline. That's when she realized she wanted to write for ever. JoAnn has written short stories, news articles, how to books, but this is her first novel. Her book, "ARE WE THERE YET?" is a labor of love.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

T here is always a cool breeze coming off the little lake at the end of the street. That breeze blows threw the spreading branches of the tree’s thick foliage and make the sounds of summer comfort in the shade somewhere between gentle laughter and soft snoring. The tree cooled breezes from the little lake blow in threw the open windows up-stairs and down, across the Spanish tiles and hardwood throughout the large rooms, under the high ceilings keeping the big old stucco house comfortable on the very hottest of days in central Florida serving as the Doogle family’s central air conditioning system.

For the past few weeks, every evening that he’s come home, Mac Doogle has pulled the Ford Econoline van up into the side yard between the open dinning room windows and the big pepper tree just like it is now on this Saturday morning. That very tree is the kid’s fort and hide-out when they play. It’s where they go to tell secrets, and to play dolls, or cars. The neighborhood kids say the tree is enchanted. They claim that it will catch you, grabbing onto your clothes, it won’t let you fall out. The children go to the tree when they’re sad or mad or in trouble. They go to think and dream. It’s quite a tree. Maybe some or all of these reasons are why Mac picked this spot to do the work on the van in the first place. Maybe not play dolls, but certainly playing cars, hiding, thinking and keeping cool. Maybe he is using the tree for his place to be sad or mad as well.

Mac gets up early this morning just like most mornings. He pulls on a pair of worn-out faded and holy blue jeans, leaving the top button undone to expose The beginnings of a serious beer belly on another wise slender firm body. He doesn’t bother with shirt or socks. The shoes he will be wearing are down stairs by the back door. Rumor has it that they were once slip-on white deck shoes, but no one would recognize that now. He bare-foot’s-it down the stair-case after a quick stop in the bathroom at the end of the up-stairs hall where he sticks his generous head of faded red hair under the running water in the sink, combs his ten fingers threw it, then draws both hands down the full length of his face.

Mac Doogle looks closer in the medicine cabinet mirror at his pale blue eyes and ruddy complexion that exemplify redheads. He acknowledges the five o’clock shadow at a quarter to eight in the morning. He decides not to do anything about it for the time being. He’s a good looking man with his deep cleft chin, and the pouty expression that fit so well with the little-boy hair-cut and baby face. Mac is a real good dancer too. He’s a ladies’ man, and a man’s man who is popular with all his friends. Mac has a lot of friends. They always want him to come over and work on cars, and have a few beers. That’s the routine, night after night, drink beer, work on car’s and laugh at the jokes. Mac has a great sense of humor. The joke his friends like to laugh at most is when they ask him how far it is to drive from one town to another Mac answers;

"OH, BOUT A SIX PACK AND A HALF." Ha ha ha!

Drinking and driving have become a sad fact of life that Barb Doogle has to live with.

She stopped laughing a while back; instead she just increases Mac’s accident insurance.

By the time Mac gets down to the kitchen Barb has his coffee poured, black with one sugar.

She is stepping up onto the back porch with the empty laundry basket in her hand. Barb loves to hang the wet wash on the clothes line to dry in the sunshine.

She turns her attention to her two older boys. She lets them know;

You guys can’t play by the tree today. Dad’s working on the camper.

Then there’s nothing’ to do. Eleven year old Willy wilts in a strong expression of disappointment with just the slightest hint of agitation. Now on the ground where he stood, he drops flat on the seat of his pants. His shoulders slumped forward, his legs outstretched, and head thrown back emphasizing to his mother how badly he’s been crushed by her statement. Of course, his side-kick and ten-year-old brother, Scooter follows suit along with their constant shadow, Clarence, who lives across the street.

Ya! na… na… nothin’ t’ do M . . M . . Mamma. Sad eyed Scooter struggles to get the words out. Since he developed a stutter just this past year every word spoken out loud becomes a battle for him, but that never slows him down. Scooter has a lot to say most of the time. Barb is truly sympathetic toward her son’s dilemma.

Well, she thinks for a second, you’ll just have to go across the street and play in the park. Her suggestion is neither enthusiastically received, nor is it completely rejected. They will mull it over and reach a happy solution, she’s confident.

Grabbing the doorknob, Barb swings herself up onto the back porch. She has no need for the three steps on the other side. She enter the small service area where the old washing machine dominates loudly. Looking around the corner of the door-way she sees Mac leaning up against the kitchen counter sipping the mug of coffee she had poured for him. She knows he won’t want any breakfast. He has a Cigarette lit. Taking one out of her pack, she goes to him for a light. She refills her own coffee mug as they sit down at the table in the sun room together surveying the entire back yard from the large windows that encircle the small room.

The house sits on a lot and a half, with a spacious lawn, and seven citrus trees all bearing either oranges, grapefruit, or lemons, one lime, but the tangerine tree died. A bougainvillea of bright fuchsia is always in bloom and climbing right up the backside of the house framing these very windows. Barbs little heaven, her veggie garden is thriving out back near the clothes line. Mac did the digging, then Barb and the kids helped with the planting, but it’s been Barb alone who has spent all of her crying time sitting right down in the dirt weeding and nurturing her garden. Since so much of the time this year, she’s felt like crying, the garden is growing great.

The two of them just sit there sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes and staring out the window not talking. Barb and Mac don’t do a lot of talking to each other these days which leaves them a lot of time to think.

Mac is thinking about the van that he will go out and work on again this morning. He is thinking about the summer-long camping trip that he does not want to go on. Thinking about it makes him angry. His anger takes over.

When Barb makes a decision she thinks it’s just suppose to happen. He thinks To himself.

For ten years they have had a good marriage together, but this year has been the pits. Once they had proclaimed that every time they danced they fell in love, over and over again. Once, with stars in her eyes, Barb had looked up at Mac and asked;

Will I ever stop falling in love with you?

I hope not. He pulled her even closer, and they twirled, and smiled.

That was at least a year ago, or more. She doesn’t know who Mac is dancing with these days. She knows it isn’t her. She knows he doesn’t come home night after night. She knows his drinking is out of hand, and he isn’t taking part in the lives of their children anymore. She knows all this as she sits there at the breakfast table with her sun tanned legs propped up on the chair next to her, sucking in her strong black coffee. In her two hands Barb holds her coffee stained mug which reads, "I TOLD YOU SO"

To go with her cut-off jeans, she is wearing a cropped-off scooped-neck top bearing her midriff, arms and chest testifying to the fact that she is tanned all over. Of course she is shoeless. It’s the family habit to remove their zorries as they enter the house.

Barbara Jo Doogle is thirty-two years old, and already divorced once. She had three kids when she met and married Mac. Anyone who knew Mac Doogle was totally flabbergasted to hear of him marrying at all. He was the confirmed bachelor, but to marry a woman with three kids, never! At the time Mac truly believed that he could not live without her. They were very happy and so much in love it hurt. Together they had two more children. The family of seven had a good life. Not now, now it’s tense all the time. They are polite to each other, but cautious and guarded. All the necessary amenities are in place as far as outsiders can tell. But the honey moon is definitely over.

Mac gets up out of his chair, takes his coffee and goes to the back door, slips on his shoes, and escapes to the silence and aloneness of the tree. There he will spend the better part of the day working on the camper deep in his own thoughts.

Barb gets up too and takes care of the dishes from the kids cereal, then gets another load of laundry going. She stays busy all the time which keeps her mind off the obvious, and her figure in shape. Always working at trying to be in a good mood, you can hear her humming, McArthur Park, a favorite old song from the sixties, while she works around the house.

Barb keeps a clean house even if it is sparsely furnished in a style she refers to as Early Salvation Army. Sure she would like to have nice things, but she has five little kids and other priorities, besides new furniture isn’t all that important to Mac.

At almost nine o’clock the two Doogle girls come down the stairs. Big Sister, Sissie has been awake for hours. She crosses the long living room to the bookcase and returns the magazines she’s been reading. Sweet angel Terry is eight years old. She is second to the baby in the family, And she just woke-up.

Terry is soft spoken like her daddy. She is fair of complexion with pale blue eyes and golden pink hair the color of the sunset that curls in ringlets cascading around her pretty head. She sleepily scuffles over to her mom and leans against Barbs legs. Barb caresses her little daughters head so lovingly then tilts that tiny face upward by her chin and coaxes;

If you smile for me I’ll fix you some cereal and juice. Terry’s not a morning person so the smile is forced and accompanied by eye rubbing to emphasize the fact that she just got up, is not very awake yet, and is smiling under duress. Barb accepts the smile, such as it is, as a sign of hunger and gets Terry her breakfast as she promised.

Terry and Barb shoot a quick look at each other when they hear the T.V. in the living-room change channels. They know that King, the six-year-old baby of the family is in the bathroom, but up until then he’s been watching his Super-Saturday morning cartoons. Sissie, the Doogles oldest child turned the local cable channel on to hear the music while she checks-out Things to do on the bulletin board as it rolls by on the screen. Sissie is the age they call teeny-bopper. That Category fits her to a T. Much earlier this morning she got up and fixed breakfast for King and herself, then left him watching his shows while she went back up stars to the room she shares with Terry. She spent the morning sitting on her bed cutting and pasting photos of Donny Osmond and Davy Jones of the Monkeys, onto empty bottles creating artistic collages, gluing rickrack on to her white tennies (Barb doesn’t know this yet) and reading and re-reading her Seventeen and Teen magazines. This is where she stayed until Terry was awake leaving King to watch anything he wanted for hours.

Sissie truly believes that King has no reason to be upset that she changed his cartoons to music. After all she feels since she is the oldest that she has certain privileges. She did fix his breakfast, and besides he’s had the T.V. all to himself now it’s time to share, anyway he needs to go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine.

That’s her reasoning as King comes out of the bathroom. He does mind that she changed his channel away from his Supper Saturday Cartoons.

King is small for his age, but he’s brave. He stands in the hallway door facing Sissie with his little thin arms folded indignantly across his bony brown chest which he has puffed out as defiantly as possible. His six-year-old knobby knees exposed below the faded navy blue baggy shorts leading down to the little bare feet that are firmly planted and ready for a fight. His lips are clinched tight, and he’s in need of a hair-cut, or at least a comb. As the argument ensues it grows louder. Barb enter from the kitchen, walks over and switches off the television.

Now you can both go outside and get fresh air and sun shine. That doesn’t satisfy either one of them. Grumbling and blaming each other they let the screen door slam on their way out. Terry has finished her breakfast, dressed and heads out the door with them.

Picking up and tidying up once more, Barb pours herself another cup of coffee, grabs another cigarette, slips on her zorries and exits the back door, off the porch and around to the side of the house where the big pepper tree is shading Mac as he works on her camper.

Just the thought of the camper and the camping trip excites Barb, and makes her smile to herself as she rounds the side yard.

Do you want more coffee, Mac? She can’t see or hear him. All the doors of the van are open wide. As she comes closer now she sees that he is working on something laying on his back on the floor of the van with his arms up over his head. Barb crawls in threw the butterflied-open side doors and rolls over onto her back laying next to Mac in order to assess the progress. The bunkbeds had been her idea, of course Mac said it wouldn’t work, but Barb knew he could make it work. He is good at anything to do with cars and mechanics. She had complete faith in his ability. The bunks and the curtains she made of blue denim. They had the van painted fire engine red. It is one of a kind for sure. Barb beams. Turning her head toward him, lovingly she says;

Thanks! Mac, It looks great, I love it. He answers,

Ya! but he says it nicely. Barb slides out the side doors and Mac follows with a screwdriver in his left hand. He hits the screw driver against his right palm and looks at Barb, then he looks down at the ground, he hits his palm again.

What? Barb asks, What is it Mac? He obviously has something to say and is having a hard time getting it out. He looks up at her one more time and throws the screwdriver into the ground by their feet. That’s when he let go of all the anger that has been building for the past several weeks over this summer long family vacation.

I don’t know what makes you think I can just take off on some three month long camping trip – all summer long – all over the country. Just quit my job I guess and just take off. You never bothered to ask me. You just decided that this summer is going to be spent seeing the country from a campers eye view.

At first he shouts, then he sighs. Thirty-two-year-old Mac Doogle is one of those strong silent types, you know, a man of few words, yet here he is ranting and raving, raising his voice to his wife while whipping and chopping threw the air with his hands. He puts Barb in mind of one of those dramatic stars of a rock opera. He turns his back holding his head in pain, then he turns to face her again this time with his head hung low. He never looks her in the eye. All Barb can do is stand there in the shade of the Pepper tree with her jaw dropped open completely taken by surprise while Mac continues his flaying rampage.

"FIX THE VAN MAC, PUT IN AN AIR VENT MAC, WE NEED BUNK BEDS, WE NEED A HITCH . . . It’s always you want, you need, it’s always just about you. Never ask or think about what I may want or need. Well I don’t need or want any summer long trip with the whole family cooped-up in that van camping all over the country. Even if I did Barb, I can’t !"

This is completely out of character, and totally unexpected. He doesn’t even do it very well, but most of all it’s unnecessary. All his fears and worries are put to rest instantly with Barb’s short, quiet, but absolute response.

Mac, she says, trying to get his attention, and calm him down.

You aren’t invited.

If Mac and Barb had been able to communicate better he would have known long ago that he wasn’t going, and he could get on with his real reason for wanting to stay home.

Mac has been trying to find the right time to start a romance with a young thing from the school where he teaches auto shop. She is Mac’s dream girl. She’s young, twenty maybe, a bartender with not a lot of education, which makes him seem so smart in her eyes. How can you pass up those qualities in an extra marital affair.

After Barb let’s him know that she and the kids are going without him he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at her, hands her his coffee mug, picks up his screwdriver, looks back at her standing there one more time. Barb thinks he might have something else to say, but he doesn’t. He takes a deep shaky breath and climbs back into the side doors of the van where he continues his work in silence. Barb can’t think of anything to say to Mac, she knows he doesn’t want to go with them. They need this time away for a trial separation. Their marriage is in desperate trouble. She dwells on the fact that this will be her second failure. This time she has five kids, and their older. This is all running threw her head as she finds herself gravitating toward the front of the yard.

Barb can hear her kids playing in the park as they get up a soft ball game with others in the neighborhood. She wanders over and sits down on the top most of the three long steps that stretch across the covered front porch. She clasps her fingers together and holds them up to shade the suns glare from her eyes so she can watch the game across the street. Willy and Scooter had actually taken her advice. There they are with the boy from across the street, of course, and now the Gallager girls and Terry have joined them. Sissie won’t play right away, but she will sit as seductively as an almost teenager can sit near the game until Paul asks her to join in. Paul and Bubba always think their too old to play with the others, but they always end up in the games just the same, and so does Sissie, eventually whether their playing tag, hide n seek or soft ball. That just leaves King.

King was named by his siblings. The name is symbolic of his status in the family, but it is handled quite regally by all. Even though King is only six-year-old, and a small six at that, if he wants to play, he will, and no one from this neighborhood will complain. If they should, Sissie will let them know the score in no uncertain terms. It’s always been one for all among the Doogle kids. King and his best friend, Mikey will play for a while then they will go back to racing their Big Wheels up and down the sidewalk, then squealing into a hairpin turn around for the race back, over and over again and again. They don’t ever seem to tire of it.

Sitting there in the noonday sun watching and listening to the distant sounds of the social interaction of the park hierarchy Barb is lulled into a far off state of mind when the ringing of the phone disturbs her day dreams and shocks her back to awareness. She jumps-up to run, opening the front screen she picks-up the receiver.

Hi honey. Comes her sisters voice.

Oh, Kitty I’m so glad you called. Mac’s working on the camper, and I’ve been doing the sewing and stuff. How are you coming on your end?

This is who is going on the camping trip with Barb. Kitty lives in Mississippi with her husband, Ralph and their three boys. Until recently, their fifteen year old daughter, Becky lived there too, but now Becky is out in California at Kitty and Barb’s parents house. She will finish school out there.

Barb, Kitty came back all business, You need to have Mac get a ball and hitch on the van. Ralph got the pop-up trailer for us for the whole summer. We can pull it behind the van and have plenty of room for all the kids.

Oh Kitty, have Ralph talk to Mac about that. You know we’ll never get it straight. I think ball’s come in different sizes, and you know how men lie about things like that. Kitty laughs at her sisters joke then adds;

Don’t be silly Barb, you’ve seen one ball you’ seen’um all, besides, how hard can it be anyway? Again they laugh. Now the two sisters are on a roll, It is a contest to see who can come up with a slightly off color play on words first.

Don’t ask, Mac and I don’t ever discuss balls and hard things with each other these days. They laugh, but not so much this time it struck a little to close to truth to be very funny. In a much softer tone her Sister ask;

How are you guys doing? Kitty truly cares about Barb’s sorrow, and loss of a loving relationship.

I’ll tell you this, I’m anxious as hell to get started. Barbara tells her sister about the blow-up this morning, and Mac thinking he was going with them. They talk over their plans for the camping trip west, of their sister, their parents and grandparents and they talk about Becky. They say good-bye and Barb hangs the phone up in Central City Florida, and goes to the kitchen to fix lunch for her gang.

CHAPTER II

I n the spacious kitchen of the tidy K-part military housing unit on a cul-de-sac at the Air Force base in Biloxi Mississippi, the other end of the line is also hung up, by Aaron, Kitty’s nine year old son. As the two sisters were saying good-bye Kitty was looking threw her kitchen window and noticed some commotion out in the street. There she saw her two oldest boys, Aaron and Matt, who seemed to be surrounded by all the neighboring children. As she studied this seen, she watched several of the adults gather as well. Kitty firmly rapped her ring finger on the glass pane of the window. Her