Two Kids, a Volvo, and a Cherry Limeade

In the summer of my seventh year, my family landed in Southeast Texas. We had driven there in a distressingly orange Volvo station wagon with sticky vinyl seats and a "way-back."

Inexplicably, my mom called her Betsy

For a few years thereafter, each month during summer vacation my brother, my mom, and I would climb into the family car and head to town to go grocery shopping. (At the time, "town" consisted of three stop lights, three fast-food joints (the McDonald's didn't come until 8th grade), and one set of railroad tracks that separated us from the grocery store). It was 98 degrees in the shade and the car's air conditioning hadn't worked since the turn of the decade. Three miles with the windows down can seem like three lifetimes when you're not even 10 years old.

As a trade-off for A/C in the store, we dutifully sat through the boring chore of picking out enough ground beef, spaghetti noodles, and Sanka to get us through the month. Food stamps didn't go very far, even back then. Less so now.

When life weighs heavy, it's the little things that get you through. Sometimes in the sweltering heat of the drive home, while the Reese's cups grew squishy in bags in the "way-back," my mom would maneuver that bright orange land yacht into a stall at Sonic and treat herself to a Route 44 cherry limeade. This was long before the drive-in fast food restaurant had grown past its southern roots, so the fountain drink must have been a unique treat to a Yankee transplant like her. A mixture of Sprite and cherry syrup, garnished with a couple lime wedges and an unnaturally red maraschino cherry whose stem was pinched under the plastic lid, it was 44 ounces of crisp, cold, sweet heaven. More than a liter of escapism from the monotony of life in a small town and the stress of providing two kids some sort of childhood on a government-assistance budget.

Heaven on ice, with a lime

Armed with an extra-long red straw, she would nurse that cherry limeade for the rest of the day. When she finally retired to bed, she stored the styrofoam cup in the refrigerator, and continued enjoying her drink into the yawning afternoon of the next day. Long past the time when the crunchy balls of ice (which were delicious by themselves) melted and watered down the cherry syrup, after the point where the Sprite gave up its last bubbles, even past the time that the lime's delicate membranes would shrivel and take on a blush of pink from the cherry dye. My mother paced herself, well practiced at the art delayed gratification. She probably knew that this would be her only treat until the next month, and she relished every sip while she could.

I suspect those limeades were her one indulgence throughout those endless summers shared with two sweaty kids complaining of boredom and a stack of past-due bills piling up on the kitchen table. You have to take cold, carbonated happiness wherever you can find it.

I was thrilled a couple of years back when Sonic spread, however sparsely, into the Midwest...where I live now, in the same state where my parents were kids a few lifetimes ago. Once the weather gets hot here, I make it my mission to embark on a pilgrimage to pay homage to those summers of my childhood. I drive 45 minutes east in my air-conditioned car -- which feels every bit as long as three miles in the back of an orange 1970s Volvo -- pull into a stall at Sonic, and order myself a cherry limeade. Even now, and probably always, they taste like Texas summers and the unspoken strength of a parent and a forgotten, too-brief childhood.

The only difference is I order a large -- the Route 44 size is too much for me. I don't have my mother's endurance.