The following paragraphs come from the beginning of Chapter Eight in John D. MacDonald’s The Crossroads. In it, he satirizes the typical 1950s summer family vacation.

During the first twenty-two days of July the Crossroads Corporation experienced the normal seasonal change in the character of the business. Summer vacationers clogged the roads. The young families stopped at the restaurants and gas stations and motels. The young husbands, with fourteen days, or twenty-one days of freedom, spent it abrading their souls against the shimmer and stink of fast traffic, counting every night the thinning stack of traveler’s checks. The young wives put on pretty summer skirts and blouses in the morning, and by ten o’clock were stained, wilted, wrinkled and rump-sprung, the victims of the attrition of summer heat, sticky hands and road fumes. They called their husbands darling with iron emphasis. Small, weary, wind-burned children whined and threw up. The young families visited dear friends they had not seen in three years, and found nothing to say to them. They visited the showplaces of the nation, made the proper dutiful sounds of appreciation and found them a litter of gum wrappers, bored guides, and ill-mannered children of the other young families. They careened down the endless stone rivers between the bright thickets of billboards. Virginia Beach was where Junie thumped Russell on the head with a rock. Three stitches. The Suwanee River was where the trunk compartment lock jammed. The Grand Canyon was where Baby broke Mummie’s glasses. Franconia Notch was where Tiffin got into the poison ivy.

Tires burst. Speedometer cables squeaked and died. Pebbles chipped windshields. Pets escaped. (You were the one hadda bring that goddam dog in the first place.) Fan belts snapped. Ten billion pieces of Kleenex tumbled along the dusty shoulders.