Are We There Yet?

Decades after his first journey, editor and car aficionado Steve Smith recalls the seminal road trips of his life, measured out in cars and padkos

- By Steve Smith

It’s a memory framed by a soft 1970s summer sun. The road-side picnic spot with concrete chairs, mom’s little blue VW Beetle parked beneath big bluegums and our padkos laid out on the table. My mother was newly divorced when she and my four-year-old self departed our small flat in Benoni for a holiday in Scottburgh on the KZN coast. En route, we’d stopped for breakfast: sweet tea from an orange Thermos; peanut butter-and-jam sarmies unpacked from neatly folded wax paper.

We stopped twice more and each time there was more wax paper-wrapped food to look forward to, one of which revealed slices of sugar-dusted jammy Swiss roll, which was the most delicious thing I could imagine back then and a winning strategy in warding off the incessant “Are we there yet?” coming from the back seat. In my defence, there was understandable urgency in ascertaining the ETA. This was my first holiday beyond the beige borders of the Witwatersand with the promise of a great blue horizon at the journey’s end.