Family Vacation

Jimmy Barclay's teacher, Mrs. Adams, has asked her class to keep a diary of everything fun they do over the summer. Jimmy decides diaries are for girls and starts a journal instead, and his first entry begins on the night before the Barclay family leaves for Florida to visit Uncle Bert and Aunt Ruby.

The trip is off to a rocky start. Donna, who is twelve, plants herself in front of the television and announces that she is old enough to stay home by herself, since three days in a car with her little brother sounds like the worst idea anyone has ever had. Jimmy packs his own suitcase now that his mother has decided he and Donna are old enough, and he fills it with comic books, a baseball glove, his piggy bank, a yo-yo, model sports cars, and his Overlords of Space laser blaster. Mary Barclay looks it over and asks the obvious question: where are the clothes? It takes three more tries before Jimmy is allowed out the door, and the good stuff has to come out to make room for socks and shirts that itch his neck.

At Whit's End, Jimmy has an ice cream sundae, and Mr. Whittaker hands him a box wrapped in funny-looking paper. It is a brand new invention called Whit's Boredom Buster, made especially for kids on long car rides, and Whit wants Jimmy and Donna to give it a trial run. There is one rule. Jimmy may open it only when he is absolutely, without question, no doubt about it, as bored as he has ever been in his life. Not even a peek.

Back home, Donna ties up the telephone saying goodbye to what sounds like everyone in Odyssey, while George Barclay works on the car with a do-it-yourself tune-up kit. Mary remembers the last do-it-yourself kit, the plumbing one that made the toilet back up whenever anyone runs the shower, and her worry proves fair. By morning the car starts, more or less, though the windshield wipers now come on when someone pushes in the lighter.

The family pulls out fifty-two minutes late, but not before Mary talks George out of sneaking his briefcase along, with Donna taking her mother's side. Twenty minutes down the road, Jimmy already has what he calls car fever. He and Donna argue over the invisible center line of the back seat, over comic books and cassette tapes, and over who is squishing whom. A thump under the tires convinces Donna they have flattened somebody's beloved pet, and she insists on a proper burial until George walks back and reports that the victim is a piece of tire rubber.

After a diner stop and a full hour of praise songs, seventeen of them by George's count, Donna's cassette batteries die and her mood sinks. Her father tells her to broaden her horizons and give the trip a chance, because a vacation cannot be boring before it has even started, and this one could turn into a great adventure. Just then Jimmy spots a man walking along the shoulder. George explains that picking up strangers is not safe, and adds that if his own car ever broke down, he would not expect anyone to stop for him.

The engine dies on the very next breath. George coasts onto the shoulder and lifts the hood, Mary warns him about the hot radiator cap, and Donna watches the stranger come closer and closer up the road behind them. The Boredom Buster is still sitting unopened, and the Barclays are stuck by the roadside with a story that is only half told.