Volume 124 Issue 39
Monday, October 17,2011
kansan.com
SPEAK
A Cross-Country Discovery 48 states later, I finally understand how life is different for everyone.
Cross country: At six-years-old. Christine breaks from her family road trip for a snack in Canada.
I've grown up in a cookie-cutter suburb just outside of Chicago my entire life. It's like they show in the movies — my house is the same as the one across the street. I'm pretty sure every family has a dog. And every day at 5 p.m., all of the dads come home to dinner on the table. While I can't imagine living elsewhere, it could have easily shaped me into a suburban-sheltered kid. I was a step away from crossing a line that would have made me think everyone pronounces their Os as AHs and every kid has a group of friends they've known since grade school.
But my parents decided they wouldn't let their kids grow up that way; so, the Curtin family vacations were born. I'm not talking about family vacations where you fly to a Florida time-share for a week. I'm talking about hard-core family vacations, which involve multi-week road trips, numerous states and hundreds of miles per day. They involve laughs, tears and a whole hell of a bonding.
The first vacation took place in the summer of 1990 when I was 4-months-old. Granted, I have no recollection of that vacation, but apparently I was very well behaved. It was an overnight trip to Madison, Wis., and Dubuque, Iowa. Two states off the list. From there, the trips only got longer, more intense and a lot more interesting.
We never flew anywhere. For those two weeks every summer, my home away from home was a side-of-the-road, you're-probably-going-to-be-killed-by-an-ax-murderer type of motel by night, and our green Chevrolet truck by day. We never took highways. It was always back country roads, so we could really see "how the rest of America lived."
I can't begin to tell you how many hours I spent in the little cab of that truck. It was a two-door, and the pickup portion was stuffed full with bags, tents and every vacation necessity. My brother and I always sat in the back seats. In between us was always a cardboard box filled with coloring books, stuffed animals and every game imaginable, from Car Bingo
We went everywhere. In 17 years, we covered the 48 continental states (I've been told I'm on my own for Alaska and Hawaii). We went to Acadia National Park in Maine, where we tried to go camping until realizing we forgot the tent poles and ended up at a motel in the midst of a storm that knocked out electricity on the island. We went to Washington where we built a campfire on the beach and roasted hot dogs because it was too cold to swim. We went to Montana and hiked up "Big Mountain" for four straight hours, staring at bears in the distance. We went to Virginia and spent days at Civil War battlegrounds. We
to Gameboys. My Dad mostly drove. He would have his sandals off, both arms stretched over the steering wheel, never really keeping his eyes on the road. My mom would sit in the passenger seat, a picture of our family dog propped up on the dashboard in front of her (the thing we missed most about home). She would be filing her fingernails or trying her best to entertain us.
went to North and South Dakota, and drove through countless Indian reservations where little kids were playing soccer barefoot in the dust. We went to California and drove the Pacific Coast Highway, which was right on the edge of cliffs that gave way to the Pacific Ocean below, from San Francisco to Laguna Beach. We stopped in Alabama in the middle of the night, pulled over on the side of the road next to an abandoned gas station and stepped on the dirt.
And... I hated it. If we drove eight hours, I spent seven sleeping. Every now and then, I peeked out the window and saw mountains, pine trees, desert, lakes and cacti, but I never understood why I was being dragged on these trips. After all, it was just endless fighting with my brother and being forced to listen to my parents' lame history lessons.
Before I knew it, it was our last family vacation. I was 17-years-old, heading off to college in a year, and it became clear to us that four adults in a truck for weeks on end
wouldn't be best for our sanity. We had to go out big.
Three weeks. Seven thousand miles. Eleven states. You name a western state, we were there. We went to Yellowstone in Wyoming down to Texas where we ate at a hole-in-the-wall country bar in Amarillo and then headed to the Grand Canyon. My dad was so angry that we were going there (tourist trap, he said) that he refused to drive home. My mom and I had to split up the drive from the Grand Canyon back to Chicago. This was also the trip that I visited the University of Kansas, which turned out well, to say the least.
Now it's been four years since I've been on a family vacation, and to put it simply, I miss it. I may have spent the majority of the time sleeping and complaining, but then I think back to moments where I would look out the window and see something so different from identical looking houses or fenced-in yards with dogs. I think back to standing on top of mountains, or in the middle of deserts, or on the shores of oceans or just in the boondocks.
Now, where do I find myself wishing I could be? Cramped up in that green Chevy truck, waking up from a nap and looking out the tiny window with sleepy eyes to some of the most amazing scenery. I may live in a typical suburban town, but I have memories of thousands of other towns scattered about the United States that aren't typical whatsoever.
It's taken me until this year to realize what my parents were trying to do by taking my brother and me on those long trips. They gave us an experience that most kids never get — the opportunity to learn about our country and see that not everyone lives the same life. People grow up differently, but that's not to say there's any "right" way to live. I assumed everyone was like me, but I've seen that they're not. And that's okay, because diversity gives our country life.
CHRISTINE CURTIN
TRAVIS YOUNG/KANSAN
Jason Phoenix explains different gestures for responses during the demonstrations held by protestors participating in Occupy Lawrence. The local movement has expressed solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. The group is working toward promoting change in local government ordinances.
Kansas, making his home first in Stauffer-Flint Hall — where he sat, forgotten, until 2009 — and then in the University Archives.
The "Russian Jayhawk," as the small carving has come to be known, was a gift of gratitude from an unknown Russian prisoner of war to Conrad Hoffman, a Kansas alumnus working with the YMCA in Germany during World War I.
On Wednesday evening, he made another journey, this time to the offices of the department of Slavic languages and literatures in Wescoc Hall, where he'll live for one year in a glass display case.
"I want the carving to help draw attention to the things
It's a symbol of the long-standing connection between the University and its students doing good in Russian and Eastern Europe, said Marc Greenberg, chairman of the Slavic department.
Hoffman went to Germany in 1915, and it was common for him to receive presents, said the article, from the thankful prisoners who he worked with.
According to the article, the YMCA worked in prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, providing education and coordinating social and athletic activities for the prisoners. The YMCA also helped prisoners develop trades and hobbies by giving them tools and arranging exhibitions and sales of their artwork.
The YMCA post was "an important non-governmental service performing a moral and social function during the First World War," Greenberg wrote in his article "Hoffman's Hawk."
In 1913, Conrad Hoffman became the secretary of the YMCA at the University, leaving his position as a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.
A gift of gratitude
Index
CLASSIFIEDS 7B
CROSSWORD 4A
CRYPTOQUIPS 4A
OPINION 5A
SPORTS 1B
SUDOKU 4A
According to a pencil inscription on his side, the Russian Jayhawk was given to Hoffman in 1917. He was probably carved by either
SEE JAYHAWK PAGE 3
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