With my dad and Pappy being preachers and relatives living a good distance away, it seemed we were regularly out on a long car trip. My Mama Mart and Papa lived down in Texas and for awhile it was over an hour trip to church on Sunday since dad preached in Fulton, AR. To make these long car trips go by quickly, we played games.

If we were in Texas, we counted the Oil Wells on our side of the car. This was usually between my sister and me. This game was called Zip.

Then there was Horse. I’ve gotten my sons to play this game. In Horse, you count the horses that you see on your side of the vehicle and at the same time try to spot a grave yard on the other side of the car. If you spot a grave yard on the other side, then the other person has to bury all their horses. If a grave yard comes up on your side, then you do what you can to keep the other person from seeing it.

My cousin Laura liked to play Beaver Cleaver. In that game, when you saw a VW bug, you called out “Beaver Cleaver” and if you called out first, then that was yours and you got to count it.

Pappy got us started on playing the ABC game. In this game, you went through the ABC’s, but you could only use 1 letter per sign or license plate.

But the most favorite game was one my dad came up with. He called it “I Got Something in My Hand”. We each took turns coming up with something, which everyone else had to try and figure out by asking yes or no questions. We had some common questions that we always started with. They were questions like: Can we see it in the car. Is it bigger than a shoe box? I really got everyone once when my item was my backpack. When I was asked if it was bigger than a shoe box, my answer was, “Depends on whether I’m using it or not.” That really had everyone confused.

These games always made the trips go much faster or they helped put us to sleep.