For those who are on the road

With my mother's family in Pennsylvania and my father's in Indiana, I had to wait to grow up before I could enjoy a North Country Christmas. We had a sort of little "practice" Christmas at home, then hit the road for the real thing--you know--three or four generations, all the extension leaves in the big table and the youngest kids banished to card tables in the parlor. We would all pack into one of a long collection of too-small family sedans, including two Ramblers, one Corvair and a Borgward, to brave the white weather. The sweetest music I have ever heard came out of car radios, late on Christmas Eve, beamed across the heartland through a thousand miles of snow.