2010 Soap Box Archives

America On The Move

This time of year, I usually wake up in a different motel parking lot every morning as our tour takes us all over these United States of America.

Looking out the bus windows in the morning a common sight is a harried looking man trying to stuff a couple of over packed suitcases, a baby stroller and a bag of dirty laundry into the trunk of a small car while a tired looking wife looks on in distain telling him that he should have put the brown bag in first so it would all fit.

There is likely to be a couple of small children hopping and skipping around the parking lot and a bored looking teenager standing to the side texting on a cell phone.

The whole ensemble is clothed in shorts and T-shirts, and dad is likely to be sweating profusely by the time he gets two hundred pounds of luggage into a space that is designed to hold one hundred fifty pounds.

After pushing and tugging and mumbling under his breath, he is finally able to close the trunk. They begin the laborious task of rounding up the rampaging kids, fastening the little one into the baby seat and getting the teenager's mind off her cell phone long enough to corkscrew into the back seat looking as if she'd rather be on any other square foot of soil anywhere else on Planet Earth than in the back seat of the family compact with two fussy, sticky kids who are apt to get car sick and throw up on you at the first serious curve.

Mom plops down in the shotgun seat carefully placing maps, tubes of sunscreen and little Jr.'s allergy medicine on the dash.

Dad takes off his sun shades, wipes his face with the tail of his last year's EPCOT Center T-shirt and eases into the driver's seat only to realize that the big red cooler with the soft drinks and snacks is still sitting on the walkway in front of the car.

After opening the trunk and staring at the baggage -- which resembles nothing so much as a dull colored Rubik's Cube -- he takes it all out and removes some frayed bungee cords, ties the cooler to the luggage rack on top of the car and begins to stuff the bags back into the trunk.
There is a pause in his frenzied packing when he hears, "Henry come start the car and turn on the air, it's roasting in here!"

"Start it yourself Gladys, you can at least do that much can't you?"

"You've still got the key in your pocket, Henry."

Slamming the big roller bag to the asphalt and saying something he hopes the kids haven't heard, dad silently starts the car and turns on the air conditioning, then returns to the rear of the car where after much pushing and shoving he finally closes the trunk lid and drives his family out to the interstate with an intermediate stop at McDonald's.

Another day, another four hundred miles to King's Island, Great Adventure, Six Flags Over Georgia, Walt Disney World or some other place where the family can stand in line together in the smothering heat, get blistered on the beach or pay a visit to one of our national parks and listen to "When are we gonna leave?" or "Booorrring" from the back seat.

Two thousand miles and a million digital pictures later, the family will go back home and fondly remember the family vacation and start planning for next year.

After all it's an institution.

America is on the move.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

©Copyright The Charlie Daniels Band