We weren’t going to Disney World, that’s for sure. We
weren’t going to Hersheypark, Mt. Rushmore, Graceland, or that weird
Flintstones village in South Dakota. We weren’t even going to the nearest
Stuckey’s. There would be no road tripping. My father was agoraphobic, and
travel was considered too dangerous or, at the very least, upsetting to the
nervous system. There would be strange parking lots he had never negotiated
before and unfamiliar financial rituals with people he didn’t recognize from
church. There could be accents unfamiliar, accidental detours into the “bad
part of town,” and many disorienting decisions requiring road maps and travel
guides.
