There are two picnics, both occurring about the same time in 1946. One concerns the Watson’s and the other the Hewett’s. Both picnics are bittersweet and end with unhappy consequences.
The Watson family celebrates the Fourth of July by attending a family picnic. It’s a tradition ending when Mrs. Watson (aka Mom), suffering an unhappy marriage and post-partum blues, leaves the family for California, San Francisco, where the Lincoln Highway terminates. Mrs. Watson has endured a loveless marriage, and after the birth of her second child Billy, she determines to leave, though her side of the decision is never revealed. It’s just that after the picnic, the husband and boys awaken and find her missing.
“After putting out the red plastic cup, she laid out the sandwiches that her husband had made. She fed Billy the appl sauce that she thought to pack and rocked Billy’s bassinet back and forth until he fell asleep. As they drank the wine that her husband had remembered to bring, she asked him to tell some of those stories about his crazy uncles and aunts. And, when shortly after nightfall, the first salvo exploded over the park in a great distending spray of colored sparks, she reached out to squeeze her husband’s hand, and gave him a tender smile as tears ran down her face. And when Emmet and his father saw her tears, they smiled in return, for they could tell that these were tears of gratitude—gratitude that rather than relenting to her original lack of enthusiasm, her husband had persisted so that the four of them could share in his grand exhibition on this warm summer night.”
Despite the afterglow of the picnic, the following morning, Mom is gone.
Duchess Hewett remembers a picnic after which his father abandoned him in an orphanage. He was eight years old. “Ah, what a delightful day that turned out to be,” says Duchess sarcastically. With his father and Miss Maples (the father’s girlfriend), they picnic in a park along the Platte River, where the grass is lush, the trees were tall, and the sunshine glistens on the surface of the water. “The night before,” Duchess explains, “my father had ordered a fried chicken picnic, cold corn on the cob. He had even stolen a tablecloth right from out of our breakfast plates (try that one, Mephisto!).”
After the food, the wine, and packing the phonograph, they ride into town, stop at an old stone building, and when Duchess waits, the father and Miss Maples speed off, her head on his shoulder.
*The Watson’s picnic basket is stored in the attic “is packed to perfection. Neatly arranged was everything you could need to have a picnic. Under one strap, there was a stack of six red plates, while under another, a tower of six red cups. There were long narrow throughs holding forks, knives, and spoons and a shorter one for a wine opener. There were even two specially shaped indentations for salt and pepper shakers. And in the recess of the lid, there was a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth held in place by two leather straps.” The picnic basket was a wedding gift and never used until almost eight-year as later, at a Fourth of July picnic, Emmet remembers it being magical. Ten years after the fateful picnic, Emmet thinks, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Featured Image: Although a 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser is an important factor in the narrative, the cover features another make of automobile. Someone was asleep at the wheel.
See Amor Towles. The Lincoln Highway. New York: Viking, 2021
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