”Crusin’ and playin’ the radio
with no particular place to go.” Chuck Berry

My family used to go on “Sunday Drives” when I was growing up.

We would pile in to my father’s 1960’s era Chrysler New Yorker with no destination in mind. The car was so big that you could be  in different zip codes riding in the same car. My sister and I were allowed to pick directions at each intersection; “Right!  Left!  Indifferent!” we would call from the back seat. We would end up in some unexpected Michigan small town and get ice cream cones from an ice cream shop named something like “The Freeze” or “The Whippy Dip.” On the ride home, my parents would smoke in the front seat, windows rolled down, looking eerily like Don and Betty Draper from the TV show Mad Men while my sister and I would sing along to the AM radio, “Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on.”

Reminiscing about these car rides, I said to my husband one day, “We should go for a Sunday Drive.” His response was less than enthusiastic. Of course the cost of gas has increased from 29 cents per gallon to over four dollars per gallon, which may have dampened his enthusiasm a bit. But even if the cost of gas wasn’t an issue, he just didn’t get the point.

Buddy does. He LOVES to ride in the car. Anywhere. If I ask him (as he hears it)

“Cpihshakepoininaitreatadjfoijgoforawalkapofjgoodboycookiejpoadrideinthecar,”

he discerns the sound bite “car ride” and springs into alert and ready-to-go mode, tail thumping on the floor.

Buddy will go for a ride in the car. Anytime.

Buddy will go on a Sunday Drive with me. He will go anywhere in the car. With paws on the door handle, nose sticking out the cracked window, ears blowing in the wind, he is in car ride nirvana. I’m not sure why he likes it so much. But off we go, simpatico, a couple of road warriors, “cruisin’ and playin’ the radio, with no particular place to go.”