When We Left Home, travel essay.

But Sandusky, Ohio's Cedar Point was more than just the carnival rides. Cedar Point had a game I could always win – a cake walks for me. The Guess Your Weight game. Not matter what I was wearing, or how much taller I’d grown from the previous summer, the guessers would always come in at 10 - 20 pounds lighter than I actually was. They’d guess 120 when I was 150. I remember the embarrassment in their eyes as they called me forward to select my prize, and the gleam in mine.

It was usually our church that would sponsor the trip to Cedar Point. A whole coach full of us kids and our Baptist parents. My mother would buy or fry chicken the night before, so as not to spend a fortune on food at the Park.

But, the smell of elephant ears killed me, as did the smell of those candy-roasted burnt peanuts. Nevertheless, when it was time for all us churchgoers to head back to the coach for lunch, those chicken wings, sweet rolls, and cans of ice cold Faygo pops were better than anything they were hawking in the Park. Sometimes our mother could splurge for a salted pretzel and big plastic cup of lemonade. We’d have to split it four ways, but that didn’t matter. It was delightful. It was family.

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I’ve seen photos of me as a two-year-old. Outside, still dressed in my pink onesie pajamas with the feet, chasing chickens with a stick on my stepdad’s family’s farm in Nowheresville, Mississippi. I have my coat on over my PJs, so it must’ve been a cold-weather month. Christmas? It must’ve been one of my first road trips. It probably took them a gazillion hours to get from Michigan to Mississippi. How many times did they have to break for breaks! Bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, spank breaks, with three kids in the car? How much you must love your new bride to take her and her three girls home to meet your folks?  How much chicken had to be fried and packed in aluminum foil.

I wonder what was in the cooler? Drink boxes for us girls? Cartons of milk? Ice chips for my pregnant mother? Ice and whisky in a plastic cup for my stepdad who probably needed that "roady." He loved his Wild Turkey. And he adored us wild things singing B-I-N-G-O in the backseat.