Mount Rushmore: Revisited (Lora)

The thing that caught my eye as we pulled into the 6th level of the parking garage at Mount Rushmore was a lovingly restored 1957 Chevy Bel Air, gleaming in the cool, clear South Dakota sunlight.  

This was a distant cousin to the car that transported me to Mount Rushmore in 1957. 

I was a miserable, sullen twelve year old trapped inside this brown and beige Chevy Townsman station wagon   My father decreed that summer that our family was going to drive across the country from Connecticut to California and back again.  In addition to my mother and me, the conscripted family included my brother, who was two years my junior.  And drive we did, three hundred miles a day come hell or high water.  My father was the sole designated driver since he refused to allow my mother a turn at the wheel. The car didn't have air conditioning (or seat belts).  Pit stops were few and far between.  Add to this merry-go-round of agonies, my father had just given up his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, cold turkey.   There were six hands with white knuckles in that car, none of which belonged to him. 

The August heat spun shimmering mirages on the macadam ahead of us while slowly broiling the captives of our mid-century modern Calistoga Wagon.  Agonizing hours of endless highways were punctuated with sudden stops where we piled out of the car to line up for a photo next to the sign declaring Pike's Peak to be 14,115 feet above sea level, or in front of the well-advertised Wall Drug, even though my father declared it, "The world's biggest tourist trap."

As interesting and riveting as I am finding the miles of empty countryside as we drive through it now, back then the boredom was indescribable.  Carsickness prevented me from losing myself in a book, and the lack of preparation for the places we were visiting left me with neither understanding of nor appreciation for what I was seeing.  Between Hartford (our starting place) and Los Angles and all the way back, I sulked and silently plotted my escape, which, of course, I never achieved.  I am certain I made my parents as miserable as this trip was making me.

We arrived at Mount Rushmore after a stomach-churning ride around countless hairpin turns.  Green with nausea, I staggered out of the car in the parking lot and into the visitor center (replaced decades later in 1998).  I remember standing there under the massive wall of windows, sweltering under the magnified intensity of the midday sun, looking at the four white heads carved into the distant cliff and feeling totally underwhelmed.   For me the best thing about this destination was the opportunity to be out of the car for a slightly longer than normal family photo op.

Jumping forward two years to the fall of 1959, my aunts took me to see my first Hitchcock film, North By Northwest.  I was riveted by the suspense, seduced by the handsomely suave Cary Grant, and awed by the coolly glamorous Eva Marie Saint.  Those archetypal bad guys James Mason and Martin Landau personified pure evil and had me on the edge of my seat.   Suddenly the scene cut to a place I recognized the visitor center at Mount Rushmore!  I think I gasped out loud, not from seeing Eve Kendall shoot Roger Thornhill, but from the realization that I had been there.  In that moment I imaged that I was the only one in that theater who had been to Mount Rushmore, and suddenly that trip from hell didn't seem quite so awful.  It had connected me to a unique place and thus had given me, imagined or not, a special status.  And isn't that, after all, what every insecure young teenager longs for?

Years later, watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I said to David, someday when we drive across the country, let's go to Mount Rushmore.  He didn't try to hide his lack of enthusiasm, and for all I knew I would experience the same anticlimax that I had in 1957.  On the other hand I wanted him to appreciate the connection I had to it.   

My husband is an exceedingly delightful and typically accommodating traveling companion.  He dutifully pulls over so I can take a photo of an image or scene that is probably eye catching only to me.  He lets me veto countless perfectly adequate places to eat so I can pick just the ‘right one.’ He didn’t blink when I expressed the desire to visit Wall Drug, “just for old time’s sake.”  I can report that it has grown from the modest sized tourist trap it was in 1957 to a gigantic tourist trap in 2017.  It was a very short visit. 

The road up to Mount Rushmore is just as dramatically curvy, but David, ever sympathetic to my penchant for motion sickness, took the turns slowly and smoothly. And suddenly, the monument came into view.  My reaction this time was the total opposite of the one I had 60 years ago.  I was thrilled, and could only hope that David would enjoy the same reaction as I felt.  It turns out that while my connection came from a long ago visit and a few hours in a movie theater, his connection came from a world away

Mount Rushmore (David)

When Lora said we HAD to go to Mount Rushmore on the road trip I said "yeah, yeah," the double positive that really means, "not if I can help it."  My enthusiasm dwindled from there, as everyone I asked confirmed my expectation: You drive up to the mountain, you get out of the car and look at the four carved heads, you say "So that's Mount Rushmore," and then you get back in the car and drive off.  

But I remembered a connection with this place and time spent in, of all places, Luang Prabang, Laos, and I was happy to have Mount Rushmore on our road trip itinerary, albeit with no expectations. 

I actually enjoyed the visit and spent a fair amount of time just looking at the four heads.  There is a real impact at finally seeing this country's most iconic image, and the longer I looked at the carvings the more personality they seemed to take on.  Then we watched the film of the planning and creation of the monument and read all the informational displays, and the feat became even more impressive.  Did you know, for example, that the original design placed Jefferson to the left of Washington?  They started sculpting the mountain that way but soon discovered a fault in the rock that made it impossible to carve Jefferson in that spot.  So they had to "erase" what they had started and move him to the right of Washington.  As for Teddy Roosevelt, they had to cut back into the mountain 75' before they reached solid rock that could be carved.  With this new information in my head, I went back to spend another bit of time looking at the sculpture.

So Lora was right once again.  "Just try it.  You may like it."

Here's the story about Lora's reference to Luang Prabang.  We were there for a couple of weeks in early 2013 and learned that the local library had informal drop-in sessions where Lao kids could practice speaking English.  We went there on a Saturday and found the place empty except for two young boys waiting for a "teacher" to show up.  We accepted their invitation to sit with them, and class began.  Trying to figure out what to talk about, I pulled a photograph of Mount Rushmore off the wall.  It was a terrific vehicle for creating a conversation.  Ultimately several more ‘teachers’ joined us.  One was from Denmark, one from Canada, and one, a woman named Silvia Marx who was originally from Buenos Aires, lives in New York and has become a dear friend.  By the end of the session, the boys knew about four U.S. presidents.  It was very gratifying, and Lora used my fond memory of it to good effect when planning for this trip.  Here's a link to the 2013 blog posting that tells the story.  It's the Feb. 2 section about 25% of the way through the posting, under the heading "An Afternoon at the Library."