A sure cure for insomnia

“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?”

— Sarah Addison Allen, author of Lost Lake.

“I get sleepy riding in cars,” a friend admitted as we embarked on a road trip a couple of weeks ago.

“I don’t sleep in cars anymore,” I responded. “I did a lot as a child. Especially at night. Stretched out on the back seat. Or in the back of the big ‘58 Ford station wagon my parents had.”

But I never sleep while traveling in a car now.

Which is different than sleeping while driving in a car. I mention that only because researching “sleeping in cars” for possible background on this piece turned up Googles top choice: “Is it safe to sleep in a car while driving?” Let that sink in for a moment. While considering the hype we hear about artificial intelligence when common sense intelligence seems to have run off the road.

Abandoning the lack of intelligence on the internet, I turned to childhood memories. Recalling when sleeping in cars was commonplace as a kid for vacations and going to my grandparent’s house. Put the kids in the back seat, toss ‘em a blanket, a pillow and a License Plate Bingo game. Dad at the wheel and Mom unfolding the Texaco road map. Done. Hit the highway.

But, that was before seat belts. Before child’s car seats built to the same specs as the cockpit of a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Before increasing numbers of smart cars and drivers who are not. When sleeping in the back seat of a car was comforting. And easy to do.

Even sleep scientists agree. One source suggests the gentle rocking movement of a vehicle can make us sleepy at any age. Can make us fall asleep if we are tired, just like when we were babies and our parents rocked us to sleep. Or, in some cases, drove us to sleep.

According to my parents, a 15-minute drive around town was sweeter music than a lullaby when I was an infant.

“You’d be sound asleep before your father got back to the house,” Mom said.

My best backseat sleeping memories are those in the family’s 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe that featured a wraparound rear window surrounding half the back seat. The package tray, as the area behind the seat is known in automotive vernacular, was recessed about four or five inches. Perhaps Studebaker considered that a safety feature to keep everything tossed up there from taking flight when sudden braking was necessary. Likely not in the Studebaker sales brochure, however, was how that drop down also provided a sleeper berth of sorts for a small child.

Whether short excursions or a family reunion road trip to Kentucky, memories of lying in that big back window and drifting off to sleep remain. The moon and the stars above and the hum of the highway below.

Almost as good were trips from my grandparents’ East Texas home traveling out west to ours in Seymour. A couple of weeks with my dad’s parents was a summer ritual then. And, the journey to get me home usually fell to my grandparents which meant the trip would start early. Unscriptural early.

“Come on, Sister,” my grandfather would announce to my grandmother. “It’s almost three. We need to be on the road.” He always called her ‘Sister.’ Never by her real name of Hattie Lois. Why, I don’t know. I did know, however, that the back seat of their green ‘57 Ford was where I would finish my night’s sleep. Slumbering from Pittsburg to Greenville, always his first stop.

The Ford didn’t offer the same panoramic view as the Studebaker. Lingering sensory sensations from those snoozes were A&P coffee poured from S.V. Aldridge’s metal thermos and Prince Albert tobacco smoke from his pipe.

Why was Greenville his first stop? Because he enjoyed breakfast at a small roadside cafe on Highway 67 before the interstate came through. Floyd’s, I think it was called. Had a plate hanging on the wall which was inscribed, “Elvis ate here,” although I’d bet my grandfather knew little about the King of Rock and Roll.

Up at three and breakfast at Floyd’s would put us in Seymour early in the day. After spending the night sitting up and visiting with my parents, they were up long before daylight the next morning. “Let’s go Sister, it’s almost three.”

My grandfather didn’t linger long with his visits.

I told my friend last week not to linger long trying to stay awake. Car naps are good. And not to worry because sleeping while driving was something I had yet to experiment with.

I will admit, though, that on the rare occasions I might have trouble falling asleep in my bed at home today, a sure cure for insomnia is easy. I just close my eyes and recall the childhood memories that still put me to sleep.

Stars through the back window of a 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe and the hum of the highway below me.