Page 59 - Philly Girl

Philly Girl 43

A Unique Global Positioning System

Mae and I spent a summer traveling around the Great
Northwest in her 1969 orange Vega. Although Mae had an
undeserved reputation as a slacker in high school, she was an
extremely well-organized traveler. She knew how to fold and
pack things in a car in ways that astounded me. I only knew
how to fold the handkerchiefs that I ironed for my father.
Esther was extremely upset about this trip. She thought
of Mae as a hoodlum—her word—simply because she had
tried to get me out of the house one school night in my senior
year after 9 p.m. I viewed Mae as my only real “rebellious”
friend, however, and I treasured that friendship in my quest
to set myself free from my own reputation as a cute cheer-
leader with a boyfriend.
I recall the night we were in a hotel room in rainy Port-
land, Oregon, watching the Democratic Convention on TV
together. I was heartsick and homesick that night, and upset
about the protests I was seeing in real time. I had felt con-
flicted all that year: I knew the Vietnam War was wrong
and I hated Nixon, but my parents had instilled in me the
value of patriotism. They told me we could have landed in a
concentration camp had we not been Americans. I was sup-
posed to feel grateful in this safe haven that was America.
And yet I felt afraid. Why were parents squared off against
their protesting children? I sensed the depth of my ignorance
and my naiveté, and my discomfort that evening was all-
pervasive. All I wanted was to be an innocent child again.
The adventure unfolding on the screen before me was for