With Hope Across America
A Father-Daughter Journey
by Bob Braithwaite
Reviewed by Cathy Roberts
Good books should make you want to get up and do something: eat a delicious meal, fall in love, or even travel with your not-so-small child through 37 states across America.
This book creates that desire to hit the road. Written by Bob Braithwaite, part-time U.S. magistrate, and former district court judge from Cedar City, it has little to do with the law, and everything to do with being a parent, and a child. Not that it is a parenting guide, mind you; rather, it is a guidebook to seeing the United States in a truck accompanied by a willing but skeptical family member.
Hope, Bob’s youngest daughter and traveling companion, is ten when they begin their journeys following Bob’s retirement in 2002. Hope reminds me a lot of my daughter eleven years ago – curious, outspoken, not afraid of criticizing me or her father, and infuriatingly able to support that criticism with indisputable facts. She was fearless when criticizing adults, and fairly oblivious to her own possible failings.
Accompanied by Hope’s collection of stuffed animals, named after the state in which each one was purchased, father and daughter travel through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Washington D.C., North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and of course, Utah. The book is divided into chapters according to the geographical areas they visit over several trips. Bob’s truck serves as sleeping and dining quarters many nights. They see famous sights, such as Mount Rushmore, Washington D.C., and Gettysburg, and also visit many off-the-wall locales. One of the things I liked best about the book is that Bob’s itinerary includes some goofy sights such as the Kazoo museum in Eden, New York, the world’s largest basket, and the Crayola “non-factory” tour.
Bob’s plan for the trip was to allow Hope “to experience our travels without non-stop parental narration – to have her see things and think about them on her own – and to read her own books, play with the stuffed animals she’d brought along, and set her own car-time routine as much as possible.”
He also wanted to “occasionally supplement these experiences with some education without being overbearing. That was the big concept anyway.”
En route to see the Harry S. Truman Home, Bob writes,
[W]e were listening to David McCullough’s Truman, read by the author. We were about two-thirds of the way through the tapes when we got to Independence. As we got off the freeway, Hope said, ‘What town is this?’
I said, ‘Independence, Missouri. It’s the home of Harry –’
‘I know, Dad. The home of Harry Truman. Whoop-de-freakin-do!’
I immediately popped the cassette out. I’d obviously overdone the educational thing.
Having mostly given up on education through audio tapes, he learns to enjoy the simple pleasures of life on the road, such as sunflower seed-spitting, playing made-up car games like Name that Answer, and growing a goatee (a pleasure that elicits a fearless critique from Hope).
In addition to enjoying the drive and the sights, Braithwaite reflects on his life as a judge, describes his family, recounts his connections to earlier places, people and trips, and tells Hope’s story. As young as she is, she has her own history, which makes their trip together all the sweeter.
I suspect this book will remind readers not only of their trips with other family members, but of their trips as children with their own parents. In 1960 our family relocated from Tennessee to California, and my father drove me and my younger brother across the country on Route 66. (My mother and even younger sisters took a plane.) We stayed in motels that my brother and I loved – the tackier the better (I remember one in Tulsa, Oklahoma that looked like Mount Vernon!) Dad drove our 1956 Chevy Nomad, hauling a Hillman Minx (a very small British car) full of belongings. My father’s only criteria for choosing a motel each night was that it have a swimming pool. Dad had a cocktail, took a nap, and then joined us in the pool. Then we all ate dinner, went to bed and got up early the next day to set off across Oklahoma or Texas or wherever we were. (Lest the reader picture my father passed out on a bed in a sleazy motel, while my brother and I frolicked in the pool unattended, exposing ourselves to possible drowning and/or kidnapping, let me remind you that 1960 was a more innocent time.) Braithwaite’s book captures the innocence of the long family road trip.
The book is structured so that Hope’s reactions to the trip are a counterpoint to Bob’s, as Bob used her journal to supplement his. Her misspellings are delightful, and, as her collection of stuffed animals grows, so does a unique understanding of the United States, seen from back roads, as well as from superhighways.
As gas prices climb, many families are reconsidering taking summer road trips. Readers of Braithwaite’s book will know that not taking a family trip, and missing that snapshot of family members on vacation, is a shame. In conclusion, Bob writes, “Life’s journey is like the trip planning process and the trip itself. When you put them all together – a mosaic of small pleasures, small failures and best-laid efforts gone whichever direction they choose to go – you have an overall portrait, of a trip and life worth living.”
Hope’s retrospective view of the trip is simple, and to the point: “I saw parents on vacation – my dad included – having a lot more fun than they like to admit, playing with their kids.”