On The Road

The New Jersey Turnpike stretches out before us. To me it looks like it runs to the end of the earth and beyond. We're cruising along in our 1960 Edsel. The Edsel is huge inside, there's room for me and Carl and little Cheryl Ann in the back seat and we're not even crowded. My sister can even climb up onto the shelf area under the back windshield to take a nap. I can rest my whole arm outside the window in a shallow gutter formed by the body style of the car. For its time the Edsel was a failure, and they don't even make them in 1964 anymore, but Dad got a good deal and the Edsel seems like a good car to me.
There's not much to look at when you drive the turnpike, so we pass the time trying to count how many out of state license plates we can spot.

It's going to be three hours I think before we get to the world's fair. New York City! Now Philadelphia is always a big thrill for me, but now we're going to where everything is happening. The city of the Yankees and the Statue of Liberty and all kinds of stores and night clubs and millions of people all jammed together. The fair itself is in a part of New York called Flushing. Flushing Meadows, I think. An odd name that twelve year old boys can have a field day with. It sounds like we're going to a large field filled with toilets or something.
I can't wait to get there. I've seen the pictures in LIFE magazine and Disneyland has shown some of the robots on TV. It's going to be a great adventure for all of us.
The highway seems to go on forever, and we're still counting license plates when the scenery changes from trees to buildings and then to large towns and then to cities. A long bridge takes us over what looks like marshes, and then it's going over a river and we're in New York City itself. There's cars everywhere, and we're moving faster and faster to keep up. Soon we're out of Manhattan and heading into Queens and on to Flushing and the fair.
We made it and the future is calling.
Can't wait to tell you all about it.