You have to imagine four redheaded people, one 43 year old mother, and two girls 16(just) and nearly 14, and one eleven year old boy with huge feet. They are crammed into a VW412, packed very light with belongings in plastic bags so as to squeeze their stuff into the minimal trunk space under the hood. The boy has a cast on one leg. There are rolls of sleeping bags tied to the roof with tarps strapped over them.This family is traveling eastbound on I 90 toward Fargo, ND.
Every time I see the film Fargo, I say, "I've been in that police station." Because I have.
"Where is your lost and found? Do you have a place where things left at rest stops might be sent?"
"No lost and found, lady."
"Well, do you have someone on duty at the last rest stop on east bound I 90?"
"No, not that I know of. Why?"
"My son took off his shoes when he got back into the car at that rest stop and left his new shoes on the ground. They're still there, and we would like to go back and get them. But we need to know if someone is there to hold them for us."
"I doubt it, lady. Where was this rest stop?"
"The last one before you get here. How long would it take to get back there? Is there an exit to that one on the west bound freeway?"
"Nope."
"How can I get back on the highway to pass that last rest stop?"
"I think you will have to go back to ? to get on the road eastbound again."
"How many miles?"
We decided not to go back for those shoes. It really hurt to leave them behind.
Here's how we afforded that trip. I sold the piano and two pieces of antique furniture for what I thought was a large amount of money: $600.00. It was our trip of a lifetime, the kids and mine, all the way across the country to our old Pennsylvania stomping grounds and to other east coast places, and then home to Washington State again-- a six-week journey. It was such a big deal.
But so were those brand new shoes. They cost about a sixth of the amount of the whole trip!
Surely we must have bought another pair, but the loss of those shoes was the biggest snafu in that journey, approached in angst only by the time when our car refused to start outside a motel at four in the morning.
My inclination is to transcribe the chronological log we made during that trip. The kids started off with color coded pens, but I think the pens slipped through the cracks somewhere (literally.) No matter; the literary earmarks of each child are so clear, and my own ruminations about our visits with various family and friends bring back times and places worth remembering. The trip deserves a "side-bar" of its own, and it may yet get one!
But those gleaming white shoes perfumed with rubbery newness-- soles hardly even marked because the big-footed one was still in a leg cast to the ankle and couldn't go anywhere yet -- the thought of those shoes sitting all alone in a rest-stop in North Dakota still gives me a genuine surge of frustration.
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