Mile 13

For this month’s writing group prompt, my friend Rosabelle suggested “A place you have visited and would like to revisit.” I’m not much of a traveler—I’ve always been a homebody, and have never even had a passport. Most of my favorite places are right here in Oxford County, Maine, and I can revisit them whenever I please.

The place I eventually chose represents “a place in time” more than it does an actual physical place to which I would like to return, even if it still existed—Mile 13 on northbound I-95 in Maine.

It’s midday, Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, 1970. It’s sunny and warm, and the grassy strip along Interstate 95 is the bright, clean green of spring and studded with wildflowers—nothing exotic, just dandelions, bluets, and here and there a few patches of wild strawberry blossoms.

We sit on the ground a few yards down the hill from the guardrail that runs along the shoulder of the highway. My brother Andy is playing his harmonica while I read my book. Between us, there’s a bag of Hebert’s Candies chocolates, because, unlike my mother, who always needs convincing and often says no to a stop when we pass the sign beside the Mass Pike, Andy didn’t even wait for my suggestion before taking the exit.

Andy has longish hair, a beard, and wire-rimmed glasses. He wears faded jeans and a blue chambray workshirt with colorful embroidery on the pockets that he stitched himself. At twenty-three, he’s twelve years older than I am, born at the perfect time to be part of the enthralling hippie culture, for which I came along a few years too late.

I’m too young to hitchhike across the country, make my own granola, or carry a sign in a protest march, all things Andy has done. Still, I’ve grown my hair long, parted it in the middle, and doodled flowers and peace signs on the brown paper covers of all my textbooks.

Last month, Andy chaperoned my sixth-grade field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and now my friends all agree that he is absolutely the coolest older brother they’ve ever met.

He drives—what else?—an aging green and white Volkswagen bus. When he bought it, he removed the rear seats so he could use it to go camping, and our mom helped me measure the windows and sew curtains for it from the most garish Flower Power cotton fabric I could find.

My mother and I live in Milford, Connecticut, where we are preparing for a move across town as soon as the school year ends. I am the last kid left at home and the roomy house where I grew up, and where my four much older siblings spent their teenage years, has been deemed too big.

Because Andy’s VW bus has lots of space in the back, and because she would really like to get me out of her hair for a couple of days, Mom has prevailed upon him to haul several pieces of furniture that won’t fit in the new, smaller house to our camp in Maine this Memorial Day weekend, and, to please, for heaven’s sake, take me with him.

I’m utterly miserable about the prospect of the move, which means leaving behind the only home I can remember, with its eight rooms, full basement, and large lot, all filled with secret spaces for building forts when friends come over, and for reading and writing and dreaming when I’m alone.

Whenever my mother, who has been feverishly sorting our possessions for weeks, suggests that there won’t be room in the new house for my entire collection of books, rocks, stuffed animals, and other treasures, I whine and protest and stomp upstairs to my room, where I throw myself onto my bed and cry into my pillow, making sure not to muffle my howls so much that she can’t hear me.

Last month, she put me on a bus and sent me to Virginia to spend the April school vacation week with my oldest brother, Steve, and his family while she Got Things Done. Now, at the end of May, time is getting down to the wire and she still has so much left to do. With me out of the way for three days, she plans an all-out assault, cleaning and packing far into the night, rising early to start it all again.

I’m thrilled to be on this weekend odyssey, which holds so much promise. A road trip in the quintessential hippie vehicle. A rare spring weekend at camp, ahead of any of our summer neighbors. My big brother’s undivided attention. Hebert’s chocolates.

We left this morning with a van stuffed with furniture and a picnic lunch my mother packed for us. It was not yet quite noon when we crossed the tall green bridge into Maine, shouting in unison, “Once you cross that bridge, my friend, the ghost is through—his power ends!”

Fifteen minutes north of the Portsmouth traffic circle, there was a sudden loud clanking from the van’s rear-mounted engine. One moment, we were cruising along at a respectable 50 miles per hour in the slow lane, and the next, we were coasting to a stop on the shoulder amid an impressive cloud of black smoke, just a few feet from highway mile marker number 13.

We’ve been sitting here on this grassy bank for an hour, maybe two. I’m not at all worried or upset, because Andy’s not; it’s a beautiful day and we’re on an adventure. We’ve finished off the sandwiches, carrot sticks, and tangerines from our picnic lunch and made a serious dent in the bag of chocolates. We’ve talked a lot about the past, the future, and the meaning of life. Andy has shown me how to play a few notes on his harmonica, a Hohner Marine Band in the key of C.

Now we’re waiting for a wrecker to tow us back to the traffic circle. Just a few minutes ago a Maine state trooper pulled over to see what the problem was. He radioed a towing company, and soon I’ll be sitting up high in the cab of the tow truck, between Andy and the driver, as the VW bus, with its load of furniture and its blown engine, dangles helplessly from the hook for the 13-mile ride.

From a phone booth outside the Howard Johnson’s at the traffic circle, Andy will call our mother with the bad news, and she will not be pleased. She will abandon her purging and packing and drive the 200 miles to the traffic circle, where her mood will not improve when she finds me chattering excitedly about our grand adventure.

She will not want to hear how I can play “Hot Cross Buns” on the harmonica.

She will rent a U-Haul trailer, and we will transfer everything to it from the bus and, after supper at Ho-Jo’s, we will all ride in her car for the remaining two hours of the trip to camp, arriving after dark. The next morning, after we carry everything from the trailer down the steep hill to camp and find places for all of it—mattresses and box springs in the loft, a dresser against the wall below the old crank phone—she will insist, over my protests, that we leave right away for the long drive back to Milford.

She will barely glance over at the northbound side of the turnpike when, at Mile 13, I crane my neck to see across the median strip and point out the exact spot where the bus broke down.

But on every trip that I will make from Connecticut to Maine, for all the years between now and when the turnpike will be rebuilt to include an extra lane, and the familiar terrain of Mile 13 will be altered beyond recognition, I’ll look for the green mile marker sign as I pass, and the sloping ground beyond the highway shoulder where Andy played his harmonica, and I read my book, and we ate Hebert’s chocolates and talked about grown-up things.

I don’t know it yet, but I will remember this afternoon as one of the happiest times of my life.