Aside from the obvious fact that a well-planned trip would have ruined the three comedic episodes about the foursome's misadventures, I will point out some facts about the differences in a coast-to-coast driving trip in 1955 and today:
With no Interstate highway system, you had to follow the two-lane highways, which made it much more difficult to estimate how far you could travel in a given day. Driving from A to B might take an hour longer for person A than B if A mistimed things and hit the big city rush hour while passing through town. And those highways did PASS THROUGH the cities, they didn't move around them like the three-digit interstates of today.
I can remember trips where we'd drive, where the speed limit was 65, for 40 minutes or more at 35-40 MPH because of a slow-moving vehicle in front--maybe 30 cars in front of us--in areas where there was no way to pass because of oncoming traffic and too-many curves in the road.
Instead of stopping at a drive through for a meal to eat while driving, delaying you by, maybe 5 minutes, people stopped at actual restaurants where today's lunch might only take 40 minutes from receiving the menu until completing the meal, but tomorrow, due to slower service, might take an hour and 15 minutes. Again, the point is estimating how long things will take was harder.
And as for road construction holding things up--it's been years since we were the ones to carry the flag as the last car going through when construction limited things to one lane for a few miles and that was the way to let the people at the other end know the last car had gone through. My dad used to joke about how we should hide the flag and really mess them up, but of course, we never did.
Also, few vacation travelers would be making motel reservations for a cross-country trip because that would require--assuming you could correctly guess how far you could travel--making an expensive long-distance call, and making it to a motel you never heard of and had no idea if it was a nice place or not. It would not be easy to know which hotel/motel who's number to ask for from the operator.
Most hotels and motels were independent, one-location places and people would commonly ask for a key and a chance to inspect the room before booking the place. Sight unseen, the heroes of our series might well have booked a room at a place as bad as that place in Ohio that was depicted on the series.
Not knowing how far you will be able to travel makes it tough to book rooms in advance, especially more than a day away.
I think the typical foursome driving a long distance in 1955 would have driven as far as they felt like--given the many variables--each day and looked for a nice motel/hotel each evening, much as the Ricardos and Mertzes did.
What they wouldn't have likely done, is gone from Ohio to Tennessee. They would have been far more likely to continue west and pick up Route 66 somewhere near Chicago. Now that would have taken them through Albuquerque: It's just the Tennessee part that seemed like the long way to go, time-wise. The roads go through more mountains and frequently are heading southeasterly. But then they couldn't have run into their old friend Tennessee Ernie.
Overall, their travel provided some really funny moments, particularly the first one set in Ohio. I always wished they had taken a couple of more episodes, maybe stopping to see Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon or Mt. Rushmore, or something and having other troubles.
Why don't we just shoot 'em down and be through with it?
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InherentlyYours
7 years ago
It's not about it being the 1950's. People had brains then. If Lucy did not get lost or whatever, there would be no plot.
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