Allen LeBlanc

Instructor: Ms. Ramona Cutrer

Course: English 101

Genre: Memoir

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." – Leo Tolstoy

“If I had a dollar for every time something stupid came out of your mouth, I’d be driving a car with a functioning air conditioner far, far away from here.” My father always had a way with words when it came to speaking to my mother. I agreed with him though. The last place I wanted to be was in the back of my mother’s dilapidated Grand Marquis with no air conditioning, next to my plump older brother. He smelled like stale Cheetoes on a regular basis, but with the temperature of the car rising in the April heat, his stench was unbearable– and we were just getting started. My family knew better than to put ourselves in these kinds of situations. But, here we were, driving in an un-air-conditioned car, to go on a hiking trip together.

We set out for a place called Tunica Hills in eastern Louisiana. Why hiking? My parent’s marriage counselor insisted that doing group activities would improve our family’s relationship. Naturally, if you take a group of people that hate each other, stuff them into a small, hot car and then force them to navigate through a bug-infested hell-bog, they will emerge on the other side in a state of perfect harmony. So, we packed the car lightly, anticipating the trip to be cut short. In our jalopy was: a pile of maps, folded incorrectly, a half-empty can of bug spray, and a picnic basket, containing a pan of lasagna. The trip, if everything happened as it should, was supposed to last all morning and most of the afternoon. My brother was less than pleased about this because he was missing an all day marathon of James Bond movies. But still, we all agreed to go. My mind wandered to the only safe and quiet place in the car, the image of my own reflection-staring hopeless and miserable right back at me. My father began fiddling with the three buttons controlling the functioning windows in the car; overwhelmed by their simple, slightly chipped labels. He cursed as the windows fell and rose, apparently of their own volition. Meanwhile, my brother dug in his feeding trough to sate the gluttonous beast within him. He retrieved what I imagined to be a sandwich, but he consumed it so quickly, I only caught remnants of partially devoured bologna on his face, suspended by globs of mayonnaise. Disgusted, I turned my attention to the commotion in the front of the vehicle. The windows, now bending to my father’s iron will, descended-much to my mother’s dismay. “The wind is gonna mess up my hair!” she whined.

“It’s hot enough to melt iron in here, woman! I’m keepin’ the window rolled down.” My father put his arm on the windowsill. I wiped my forehead, leaving my hand moist, salty, and glistening. I was sweating. Not cool.

“Why is it so hot in here?” I barked. I swept my hand near the vent by my feet. There was no air current.

“The air conditioner’s broken. Can’t handle a little sweat, princess?” my brother sneered. I would have loved to round house kick his grubby, ugly head clean off his shoulders. But, I decided that would only add to the smell of decay coming from his side of the car. My mother was attempting to navigate using a road atlas, but was having trouble reading the map because she had to constantly swipe her hair out of her face.

“Harold,” my mother said to my father, “I think we should pull over at that post office. We ain’t got no clue as to where we goin’.” She set the atlas on the floor.

“For the last time,” my father’s face changed colors, “I know exactly where I’m goin’! I don’t need no directions.” He had no idea where he was going. And he did need directions. Mere seconds later, my father yanked the steering wheel to the right, careening us into the post office parking lot. This detour left us all silent except for my mother. Surprise, surprise!

“You see, Harold! I knew we were lost. Just like ya father to never admit when he’s wrong.” She was addressing the air in the back seat of the car. My brother was rapidly texting on his phone, and I was staring out the still-standing window, imagining I was somewhere else.

“I ain’t asking for directions. I just need to orient ma’self.” Beads of sweat were forming on my father’s shiny, balding head. This meant he was nervous. “Now, if you wanna be a yuppie and go in that office and ask them nice people for directions, be ma guest.” My father rolled his eyes.

“Fine! I just needa moment to freshen up.” My mother bent down to dig into her massive purse. She retrieved a comb and began brushing her hair into the perfect black bob that she always wore. She straightened her flared pink glasses on her nose, and then returned to her purse.

“Oh for the love of God, woman, you’re not gettin’ married again, just go in there,” my father snapped at my mother. My mother looked up from her purse.

“You’re right,” she opened the car door, “and it’s a damn shame.” She trotted off towards the Tunica post office.

My mother returned moments later with good news. The woman she spoke with in the post office explained that the hiking trail we were looking for was only eight miles up a cliff littered with wild coyotes and potential cannibals, over three bridges that may or may not still be there, and along a road that was responsible for several annual deaths. “Better to be eaten by crazy people than to be in this car anymo’,” my father said enthusiastically as he spun our hearse out of the parking lot, and back along the crater-filled road.

The only sound that occupied the car was the harsh crunching noise our rattletrap made after crossing a pothole–and there were plenty of them. Even still, the silence from my family was most certainly welcome. I’d prefer an orchestra of fingernails and steel wool on a chalkboard to their constant bickering.

After half an hour of bouncing up and down in my seat from the anatomy of the road, my nausea began to subside. Outside my window lurked amorphous terrors-shadows of inscrutable horror. The canopy of trees was completely impermeable by the sunlight, that was desperately trying to reach the sparse vegetation choking to death on the knees of great Red Maples. An amalgamation of werewolves, cannibals, and jungle cats most likely stalked our car, hiding in the shadows, marionettes in our headlights.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we reached what we thought was the trailhead. It was a small, round dirt pit with a sign-in board in the middle. The “parking spots” were on the perimeter of the pit, up a ridiculous incline. My mother bent down to dig in her purse again, “Anyone want a mint?” she asked. She continued talking to herself, “I can’t find anythin’ in this darned purse!” The babble continued as my father slammed our car into any number of gears, trying to heave the exhausted vehicle up a nearly fifty–degree incline. My mother was in her own World of Purse, giving everyone a chance to relax. For almost a moment, we were complacent. Then, it happened.

My father tapped the accelerator a tad too hard with his steel-toed boot. The car stalled, and then with all the great force of a handicapped, senior Bingo team, accelerated forward over a hole the size of a small planet. Everything in the car, including my mother’s purse went flying in the air. “MY MINTS! Harold! My mints!” She was screaming so much you would have thought she was giving birth to a cactus. Her mints had flown through the air and onto the floor by my father’s feet.

“Woman! What the hell are you doin’? Get up from under there!” Mom had dove under the steering wheel to retrieve her mints. However, she didn’t realize that slinging her flailing torso over the stick shift was a bad idea. At some point in this episode, my mother hit the stick shift, and put the car into reverse. My father was cursing, my mother was floundering, my brother was choking, and I was dying. Our car accelerated back down the hill and crashed into the sign-in board. Surely, the park rangers were now aware of our arrival.

As soon as everyone recovered from the initial shock, the blame game started. My father threw accusations at my mother, and she deflected them with insults to his midsection. To avoid being hit by the verbal shrapnel flying through the air, I turned my attention to the newly created crash site. The sign-in board was missing a leg, but was still intact. The trunk had opened during the collision, but aside from that minor damage, the car seemed to function up to its regular tin foil standard. The yelling soon ceased and my mother began prepping us on bug safety and how to properly step over a log in case of snakes. “Allen,” my mother called to me, “get the bug spray outta the trunk so I can demonstrate howda put it on.” I rolled my eyes and stuffed my arms into the slightly ajar trunk. Feeling around, I recovered a tire iron and a first aid kit, but no bug spray.

“It’s not here, Ma,” I told her with frustration. After an exasperated sigh, she began a Homer-esque narration, complete with her own Southern invocation to her muse, the holy Virgin. “Oh sweet Virgin motha of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, please come down an’ bless the stupid outta ma boy. Tell him that we look with our eyes an’ not our hands, an’ help ‘im to see that his momma is…” Blocking out my mother’s babble, I treaded towards the car only to find my brother’s portly torso worming into the trunk. I pushed him aside and used my God–given eyesight to locate my mother’s precious bug spray. My brother maintained a hawk-like eye on the picnic basket sticking out of the trunk.

“Don’t worry, chubs, the food’s all yours.” I pulled a can of Pam cooking spray from the trunk. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I turned back to Mother Angelica, “Excuse me, Reverend, there’s nothing but liquid butter in here.” Flabbergasted, she finally paused her Lord loving lips. The silence highlighted every corner of the universe, and all the children of the world were happy and fed. Then she spoke again.

“We’ll just spray it on, and the bugs will slide right off!” She gave us a perky grin, snatched the can from me, and trotted off towards the trailhead.

“Where the devil are you goin’, woman?” My father growled. She spun around and tilted her head.

“Why, I’m goin’ to apply this fine repellant, and then hike with ma boys. You can sit ya fat ass on that rock and bake to death, if you would be so kind.”

“You tol’ me we was havin’ a picnic, so I says we havin’ a picnic.” My father’s face was the shade of a chameleon that had one too many Red Hots.

“Oh, good heavens. How’d I forget? Eric!” My mother bellowed, “Eric!” My loving brother, the spitting image of Ignatius J. Reilly, perked up from the trunk of the car—his face slathered in marinara sauce. I let a small chuckle out but my father was less than pleased.

“Boy! I swear to God.” I swore I saw steam wafting from my father’s sparkling dome. Eric wiped his face with his sleeve, and nabbed the picnic basket. With our supplies gathered and our morale slightly intact, we set off down Trail C, not knowing what could possibly lie ahead.

We marched together in a line. My father walked in front, then my mother, then my brother, and I brought up the rear. A peaceful silence overtook our party. Perhaps we were exhausted from all the yelling, or, more likely, we were waiting until we were deeper into the woods to kill one another. At that moment, I thought of our hokey next door neighbors, the Killderoys. Oh, I could only imagine how they were spending their Saturday. They were most likely sipping apple martinis on their yacht, named Lucille Ball, slowly drifting away from their four-story mansion on their dainty private lake. Picket fences and white-painfully white-teeth filled my memory. My brother smacked his neck and ate the bug he killed with the blow. I was back in reality. We were the Flintstones, and they were the Brady Bunch.

After a few minutes of trekking, we reached our first obstacle. On each side was a drop of over 100 feet, and, naturally, the only way down the path was a very narrow slither of land littered with very thin, rotten trees. My father cleared his throat, “Alright, I ain’t gonna have nobody flyin’ off the edge of this thing. Imma gonna go down first, then the women, then you, Eric.” My father often referred to my mother and I as “the women.” My father assumed a tactical crouching pose and shimmied down the narrow path. My mother was next. She grappled onto my arm, anchoring half of her body to the top of the incline, while stretching her other half as far as she could-like a turtle stretching its neck out into oncoming traffic. My brother, arms at his waist, was not far behind us. I gave my mother a slight nudge, to catalyze this very slow process, and she almost toppled over. “Boy, I swear to God if you knock me down this hill you’ll be on the first bus to the military!” my dad said.

My brother chimed in, “Yeah, watch your step. I’d hate for them to have to shave your …” and then my brother’s foot got caught in a small hole. His legs rolled over his head, followed by the picnic basket, and finally, into me. Our entire family dominoed into each other until we were one great, big rolling LeBlanc ball. We hit the bottom of the hill with a thud, my father breaking each of our falls. He cursed my mother, the ground, the picnic basket, his shoelaces, the Democrats, someone named Carl, the color yellow, John Wayne, my mother again, and the Russians. We pressed on.

Before us was an empty riverbed, baking in the hot sun. My brother’s stomach grumbled as his disappointed eyes met the remains of our smashed picnic basket. We trudged along in the cumbersome silt, moaning and groaning in the torrid sunlight. A swarm of insects descended upon us like a jaguar on a sickly llama. The buzzing of my mother’s babble and the insects was too much for me to handle. I am normally adept at blocking out my mother’s rambling, but the heat was so overwhelming that even she was having trouble articulating her inane thoughts at a decent pace. Far ahead of the crowd was my father, simmering as always. I couldn’t imagine boiling on the outside and on the inside. “This heat ain’t nothin’! You shoulda been in ‘Nam. Dis heat ain’t nothin’ like jungle heat. Plus, you got the Vietcong to worry ‘bout. People fallin’ into booby trapped holes in the ground, feet rottin’ off, it wasn’t pretty.” My father liked to pretend that he was in Vietnam. Or any war at all, really.

“Ma shoe!” My mother cried out. Her foot was caught ankle deep in the slosh beneath our feet. My father rolled his head in a semicircle,

“Can’t we go for two minutes without one of you ninnies wettin’ ya’ pants?” My father tried to move forward to pull my mother out of the muck, but realized he couldn’t move either.

“It’s a damn ambush! Man ya’ stations! Down! DOWN! GET TO COVER, BOYS!” In a hysteric rage, both my mother and my father were thrashing about, ankle deep in quicksand. I sprung forward, leaving my shoes behind in the mud. Eric was claimed by the muck, so I waded to my mother.

“Ma new shoes! Oh, Allen, help ya motha! Oh, lord. Oh, Jesus! I’m …”

“I promise I’ll get you out if you shut up and grab my hand!” I reached out to her, grabbed her hand, and pulled hard. She came loose and collided with me in a spastic fashion. My father, who was now also shoeless, managed to spring from the snare, leaving only my brother trapped. Because he weighted roughly one metric ton, removing him from the goop was going to be difficult. My father, my mother, and I lifted a hefty tree branch up off the ground and extended it towards him. Eric grabbed onto it and, with several coordinated heaves, we extracted him from the goop.

“Bastards. Settin’ booby traps. Nobody messes with Harold LeBlanc! USA! USA! USA!” My father continued chanting. I was amazed that we were able to accomplish anything together other than demolition or collisions. With my father’s chanting in the background, we, now shoeless, in true Flintstone fashion, journeyed towards the woods to avoid the gathering storm clouds. “God damn it! I will not be blown to bits by this lightnin’! Let’s get a move on! I ain’t dying today!” My father’s voice, cracking like a whip, echoed the booming thunder and flashes of lightning. Scurrying up the massive cliff before us was no easy task, but was completely necessary.

I took inventory of our misery: we were lost, sun burnt, starving, covered in whelps, potentially afflicted with West Nile Virus, shoeless, and slathered with mud. In a state of pure exhaustion, I dragged my feet up the massive incline leading back into the woods. My father was barking orders from the top of the hill, and we all kept our heads down, trying to avoid his gaze. My mother, who was somehow ahead of me, collapsed and, landed face first in the mud. She hit the ground with a delicate, but audible thud. “Oh, for the love of Christ. Boy, help yo’ momma up.” My father threw his arms in the air. I looked at Eric, who he was clearly addressing as “boy”, but he simply crossed his arms and stared at me. I moved my mother to a nearby tree, and sat her up. She looked up, her face covered in mud, quivered her lip, and began to cry. She cried, and cried, and then the sky opened up and starting crying too. I was petrified. I had never seen my mother so exposed before, or my family so quiet. My father waddled over to her and put her on his back, carrying her piggyback style. A conundrum, a miracle, I thought. Unity among the fallen? No. This was, instead, a unified effort to escape hell and one another but unity nonetheless.

We hiked over mountains the size of molehills for hours, my mother strapped to my father’s back-calm, peaceful, and silent. The heat that returned at the end of the storm dramatically reduced the bounty we had placed on one another’s heads; so the bickering was slightly less cutthroat. “Finally! Salvation.” My father rejoiced as the tattered remains of the sign-in board came into vision. He set my mother down gently on the ground. “My back’s probably broken. Men ain’t made to carry elephants, ya know.”

Her hand lingered on his arm, “yeah, well, lucky you ain’t a man, then.”

I got into the back seat of our un-air-conditioned car. The stench had worsened dramatically. And, yes, we argued just as much on the way back. But, there we were, sweating, coated in mud and bug bites, miserable as could be, but unified in our misery all the same.