The Asparagus Can
By: susan peterson stamis
Tags: abyss, antique train, asparagus, cliff, dynamite, father, foreign service, guatemala, highway, mirage, mother, riding shotgun, sister, state department, toilet, train, transportation, vacation
Category: Uncategorized
My father loved a road trip, even with a crabby wife riding shotgun and two crabby daughters endlessly bickering and batting at each other in the back seat. In 1959, Dad piled us all into the car to drive the 2,700 or so miles north from Guatemala City to Los Angeles to spend two months visiting our relatives and eating American food.
Before we actually made it out of Guatemala, we encountered construction of a new highway, and during one long endless narrow winding stretch of rocky road, we were repeatedly whistled at and waved to a halt by men wearing straw hats and bandanas, ordering us to wait for the blasting crew to detonate the dynamite that was blowing holes in the mountainside. Through the new openings barely the width of the car’s wheelbase, the tires of our ‘57 Chevy crunched along the cliff edge by the skin of their white-walled teeth, and over and over and over again I slid across the back seat towards my older sister, crossing the invisible center line she had drawn to mark her territory, risking her wrath to avoid looking out my own window into the terrifying abyss beyond it.
About a half a day later, we made it into Mexico. As Mom pried Dad’s fingers from the steering wheel, we discovered that all the cars making the next leg of the northbound journey were being lassoed and herded onto the rickety wooden flat cars of an antique train. Damp and dizzy after the death-defying drive, we didn’t realize until the first lurch of the old train as it began its chugging trip north, that we were loaded on backwards.
We meandered along for a while, rendered dopey by the clattering rocking of the train and the suffocating heat, but soon enough we were roused from our sweaty stupor as mirages of toilets began appearing in the receding landscape shimmering through the dusty front windshield. The only male in the car, my father could presumably open the car door and discreetly pretend to get some fresh air, and whether he did or not I don’t know, but the rest of us started to squirm.
My mother never traveled away from home without an emergency cooler of rations, including bottles of boiled drinking water, ginger ale, cans of Spam, wet washcloths, rubbing alcohol and other useful things.
I was 8 and cross-eyed with jittery impatience. Mom finally capitulated to the relentless whining, hacked open a precious can of her favorite asparagus, tossed the contents out the window and leaned over into the back seat of the steaming car to help me make use of the empty can, which I then promptly kicked over.
5 comments on “The Asparagus Can”
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About Me
My father was a Consular Officer in the United States Foreign Service. He was first stationed in post World War II Berlin, where I was born in 1950. Subsequently, we lived in the Philippines; Jamaica; Guatemala; Washington, DC; Greece; Ceylon and Mexico; visiting many places in between. I was reared by my parents and nurtured by the various amahs, nannies, and housemaids who, every two years or so, entered and exited my little life.
I was educated in American Schools in “foreign lands,” but the most fascinating classrooms were the exotic locales where we lived, and the most inspiring teachers were the colorful people of those exotic and ancient cultures.
The bi-annual “home leaves” which my family spent at my grandparents’ homes in Los Angeles, California provided a sense of constancy to our nomadic lifestyle. My many aunts, uncles and cousins lived there and I eagerly looked forward to those vacations. We were 1st and 2nd generation Greek Americans (all 4 of my grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the century), and thus had foreignness stamped onto us even though we were Americans.
Two of my father’s siblings were also in the diplomatic service, and we world-traveling cousins were a source of endless curiosity to our domestic counterparts when we came home speaking English with unusual accents, reducing the statesiders to hysterics.With his various cameras, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, 16 millimeter, Super 8 and Polaroid, my father rarely lost an opportunity to document the events unfolding around us. After years of waiting patiently in boxes under the stairs, these photographic records are now fulfilling their purpose as mnemonic retrievals of my little life.
Mnemonic Retrievals 
That is hysterical!!! Perfect comedic timing too!
What? Your parent did not book with travelocity?
This reminds me of a scary episode of “Top Gear” which had me both full of angst and then hysterical laughter.
Hi! I’m barbara’s Friend Marya. I love reading your stories. and this one is incredible. That picture is so interesting!
Thanks! Hugs to you.