Christmas Memory Essay, Research Paper

Everyone has memory of the holidays that sticks out in their mind. Some are have sad memories of the loss of a loved one. Some have happy memories like the time they got a puppy for Christmas. I suppose that mine would never really qualify under either of those categories and that is what makes it unique.

It was a cold that December 24th and it was late in the afternoon. My mom, dad, older brother Scott, and I were barreling down I-80 in our 1986 Ford Taurus station wagon. It was 1992 and we were on an eight hour trip crossing Iowa on our way to our grandparents? house. It was a fairly boring trip for Scott in me, who were crammed into the back seat. What made the ride bad was that Iowa only plays country music on the radio. What made it worse was that my mom likes country music so she had turned it up and even started to sing along. To try to get our minds off of music my brother and I were playing poker for Skittles. This was when the speed limit was 55 and we were doing about 70 so needless to say we were going pretty fast as it were. A car pulled up along our right side he made frantic gestures with his hands. We could tell he wasn?t a cop because he wasn?t telling us to pull over. This bothered my mom who started getting paranoid.

My mom decided to speak up with some words off comfort, “Maybe he?s some crazy lunatic who wants to kill us all!” My brother gaze me a puzzled look.

“Now I am sure he just wants to tell us something, dear,” my dad replied. “After all not all people on – hey. Did he just flick us off?” My dad frustrated with both my mom and the other driver decided the best way to get rid off the strange car and my mother?s anxiety was to floor it. Who knew an ?86 station wagon could do 95 mph? I certainly didn?t. Now doing 40 over the speed limit we were pretty sure we would loose the other car, but no, we were wrong once again. The other car came up behind us and started flashing his brights at us so we gave up and pulled off to the side of the road. As it turns out we were right he was not law enforcement personal. He ran up to the window and knocked on it. My dad lowered the window a crack and turned the engine off.

“Get out of your car right now!” he cried “There is smoke coming out from under your hood.” Sure enough he was right. When we were doing 70 the smoke drifted off and was hard to see unless you were behind us. When we were doing 90 we probably couldn?t have told it was there at all. Seeing how we were all sitting in a car that might very well explode the next very second we decided to jump out the doors and run several yards down the expressway, while the guy who pulled us over jumped into his car and sped off.

“Get down!” and we ducked down, my dad shielding my brother and me. There was a long pause.

“Has the car blown up yet?”

“No.”

“Can I get up yet?”

“No.” Some more time passed and eventually we got up. “Kids you stay here with your mother. I am going to take a look at the car.” My dad walked over to the car and popped the hood. White smoke billowed out from underneath. My dad looked under the hood, pretending to know what he was doing. The sun was setting by now and it was starting to get dark. There was nobody around to help us and this was the days before cell phones. We were stranded in the middle of Iowa with no chance getting help.

“What?s that off in the distance?” I asked my dad.

“It looks neon sign,” he replied “looks pretty far off though.” We discussed it and decided that we couldn?t make it that far on foot, we would have to chance it in the car. We got in the car and were off. We accelerated to 50 and the car started making rumbling noises. We slowed down the car to 40 and the rumbling quieted down. We slowed down to 25 and the rumbling stopped. As we slowly made our down the interstate we were passed several times by people who had there horns blaring. We saw in the distance what the massive neon light read, “IOWA 80 TRUCKSTOP”. The sign alone had to have been about 9 stories high. A smaller but still not small sign read, “World?s Largest Truckstop.” Snow had started to fall the car was still smoking but it had died down a bit now. We were about a third of a mile away when the car simply gave up and died. We tried for quite sometime to get that engine to start. My parents were pretty cheap and did not want to call a tow truck just yet. We put the car in neutral got out and pushed. I don?t know how much help I was seeing how I was only 7 at the time. When we eventually we got to the truckstop we discovered for the most part it was a maze of semis. Deeper in we found an Amoco station and pushed it into a parking spot. The mechanics on call were able to fix the car up sometime before dawn and when it was ready we drove the rest of the way to Grandma?s and were able to catch Christmas morning afterall.