SUNDAY DRIVE

Don't ask me how, I got to thinking about the Sunday Drive, maybe coz it is Sunday, or maybe it's the crocuses poking through the dirt, or the pee-paw sound of a bird heralding spring, the overcast day. Although hitherto unto now I had completely forgotten about the existence or possibility of the Sunday Drive for a large number of years.

From memory a Sunday Drive require 6 things:
1. A Vehicle any kind will do, truck, car, motorbike.
2. A Driver.
3. Passengers.
4. A Road.
5. Money for gas; and maybe an ice cream.
६. An indeterminate amount of time.

I don't have all that fond memories of the family Sunday Drives, owing to the fact I was the youngest and the smallest, and my siblings were prone to poking me, as siblings are, which made me squeal, I still do can't help it! Which meant when we had the little domed car I had to sit in the front on a board wedged between the parents in their bucket seats, with my three siblings in the backseat. When we had the station wagon I sat in the boot/trunk part, not all that comfortable, nor allowed by law today, but at least no one poked me and could be quite sunny with windows on three sides ( : Either way the Sunday Drive involved staring dreamily out the window at all that passed by in the countryside. The Sunday Drive like theatre does require audience participation, in this case passengers, although the 'performance' itself is mainly the Driving.

Mostly there was no purpose to the Sunday Drive, that was the whole point, you didn't know where you were going. You meandered, the original the journey is the destination experience, route choices were made on impulse. Although secretly you all hoped the Sunday Drive would stop at your favourite ice cream store, and in reality the Driver often did have a plan in mind, they just didn't reveal it. That was part of the deal as they pulled up to the much often visited repast stop of old. You all exclaimed in mock surprise, and excitedly raced in to eyeball every single flavour of ice cream in the open cardboard boxes under the glass refrigerated cabinet, and had the same one you always had. Cherry chocolate, bubblegum or hokey pokey.

I think the Sunday Drive happened more in the winter and spring. In the winter as an antidote to cabin fever and distraction from the rain, which did make the windows kind of misty what with all those people breathing in there. You might stop at some remote part of the road and be let out like puppies to run around on the beach for a few minutes wildly you hair steaming in the wind until you face and fingers were freezing. In the spring you drove by lambs, new grass, daffodils, foals. In the summer if you were near one, you went straight to the nearest waterhole, or beach. Less of a Sunday Drive, and more of an Outing. The only meandering involved picking up more friends to cram in the car.

The Sunday Drive may have been be combined with contemporary hunting and gathering activities, such as going to a pick berries, wild blackberries, cultivated strawberries by the bucketful, more in your stomach than in the pot. That apple orchard by the black stump on the back way to such-and-such, where they sold apples by the wooden box load, in Miss A's childhood; or in plastic bags as tall as an 8 year old in my time. On the way home you might stop at the flower or tomato stand the one you had scoped out as the best on the way up. Take your produce, put the coins in the honesty box, to this day you can still do this in places like the Sunshine Coast.

My Nana took me on plenty of Sunday Drives of the hunting and gathering variety when she came to visit and we were living in the city by then. I returned the favour when I went back to visit her in her 80's. Driving the hour and a half down to see her, and believe me she was ready and waiting (a little too anxiously) at the gate of the old folks home in her finest peacock hued clothes to go out for the Sunday Drive. We went to the Brian Boru pub for fish'n'chips and pavlova, once operated by relatives of Miss A. We drove up the coast to a picnic bench by the ocean on a curve in the road. That may have been the last time I was a regular practitioner of the Sunday Drive, which does really require you to have a car. We did it a bit up the Coast, maybe drive past the house with the arched wall, see if the eagles are out on the rock, look at the colored lights on every ones house in the winter time....

Since my parents, and my grandparents indulged in the Sunday Drive, it's apparent they were well off enough have cars, and some free time. The Sunday Drive is most often done with people you live with, all inmates of a house pile in, including pets. But some one could call you up and say I'm going for a Drive, wanna come? You will say yes, although you have no idea where they plan to go, and maybe neither do they. Sunday driving as an adult with the family can be dangerous, members are prone to reminisce about stories which have become the stuff of family legend. Tales which you now realize have gaping holes in them you could drive a tractor through. Which, when you question the mythologer on, you discover truths you would really rather not know.

Perversely, when you are actually on your way somewhere, an Outing, or emergency, to say a Fair that closes in less than a hour, the hospital, a funeral, a sports meet, and you meet people crawling along the road on a Sunday Drive, you will be infuriated. You will honk your horn, and pound on the steering wheel, gesticulate wildly out the window, yell "come on!" at the top of your lungs until the 4 or more people in the car in front of you finally pull over to the side or you will foolishly gashilit and pass them in the no passing zone at top speed, yelling with some contempt out the window "Sunday Driver!" get off the road!

Fortunately our neighbor Miss D, 80-something, has just dropped by to say hi after I took over some vegetable soup yesterday, and to pass on a spare blood pressure reader for Miss A. Miss D, was able to fill me in on the custom on Sunday Driving on the prairies. Yes indeed, her dad, a farmer, was a proponent of the Sunday Drive, to see how the other farms, his neighbors crops were doing. The Sunday Drive may not have involved ice cream it was 14 miles to the nearest store. When she lived in Vancouver's Westend, she and her husband went on Sunday Drives, out to the forest at UBC, the farmland in Surrey etc.

She thinks the demise of the Sunday Drive, is Television, why she herself has just been watching the women's curling; and paradoxically there being too many cars on the road. I'm not sure where it went. Do people still do it?

I just asked Miss A where she would like to go for her imaginary Sunday Drive. She would like to go to Ponds store at the Mairangi Bay of her childhood, for an ice cream. I would like to go, up north to Trounson Kauri Park, where I heard and saw the beautiful grey/blue rare and endangered Kokako, whose intriguing voice you can hear here, maybe have a swim in the pool in the river there. More of an Outing I guess, but the road is pretty long and winding.

So we are looking for a Sunday Driver, the ideal candidate would be affable, but not verbose. But have you noticed most affable people can talk the leg of an iron pot? While taciturn people can tend to sullenness? Steady on the road, can get hold of a car, able to concentrate on the job at hand while remarking every 6 miles or so, "the lambs are a good weight this time of year"; or "I once saw a hawk on the road here". Fond of ice cream.