Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Don’t Make Me Pull Over!
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1969?
WEBSITE:
CITY: Menomonee Falls
STATE: WI
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2018019534
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2018019534
HEADING: Ratay, Richard
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100 1_ |a Ratay, Richard
670 __ |a Don’t make me pull over!, 2018: |b ECIP t.p. (Richard Ratay)
PERSONAL
Born c. 1969, in Elm Grove, WI; married; wife’s name Terri; children: two sons.
EDUCATION:University of Wisconsin, B.A., Journalism, 1991.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Advertising copywriter, author. Red Tettemer agency, Philadelphia, PA, creative director, 1998-2002; EuroCycler, fofounder, 2002-04; Platypus Advertising + Design, Pewaukee, WI, associate partener and creative director, 2003-11; Milwaukee, WI, creative and marketing consultant, 2011–.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Richard Ratay is an award-winning advertising copywriter and creative director who turned his writing talents to book-length nonfiction with his 2018 debut, Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip.
Ratay, who grew up in a family that experienced a number of such family road trips, was inspired to write the book when he, his wife, and two sons were vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Lying on the beach and observing his kids playing in the surf, he suddenly realized how much traditional family vacations had changed since the height of family road trips in the 1960s and 1970s. Destinations were not just different; the journey itself had become totally altered. No longer was the entire family packed into a car, forced to spend days together. The journey, not the destination, was the focus in the 1960s and 1970s when road trips were so popular. However, that had all changed with the advent of air travel. Ratay decided to write about his experience and similar experiences of a generation of Americans on family road trips, which are mainly a thing of the past.
Ratay blends family stories along with history in Don’t Make Me Pull Over!, a “lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane,” according to a Kirkus Reviews critic. Ratay writes about his own family who packed into the station wagon in the 1970s and set off on road trips across the United States. As Atlantic Online writer Ashely Fetters noted, Ratay writes about the “childhood years he spent traveling with his efficiency-minded dad, his beleaguered mom, his two teenage brothers, and a sister perpetually on the brink of puking all over the car.” In addition to the memoir-like parts of the book, Ratay also comments on the origins of the road trip after World War II, when young men who had been dislodged from farms and neighborhoods by the draft were eager to keep seeing more of the world than their own backyard. Such travel was made easier by the vast interstate highway system built in the United States, and the subsequent development of motels strung along the highways. This was the age of the Baby Boom and the economy was also booming. Disposable income parlayed with increased production of automobiles as factories tried to retool from producing airplanes, tanks, and jeeps. The result was a perfect storm of consumerism mixed with adventure on the road. Ratay also writes of the demise of the road trip, spurred in part by airplane deregulation in the 197os and cheaper airfares.
Speaking with Fetters, Ratay remarked that he wrote the book in part “because my parents passed away at a very young age, and my children never had a chance to meet them. Very few of my nieces did as well.” Ratay added: “I wrote the book to capture that experience, so that they would be able to get to know their grandparents a little bit, and also get to know what it was like for us; to give them a taste of what our life was like when we were their same ages.”
The Kirkus Reviews critic further noted that in this “mix of memoir, history lesson, and travelogue, advertising copywriter Ratay waxes wistfully over the rise and fall of the tradition of traversing the United States via the nation’s superhighways.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: “Ratay’s informative, often hilarious family narrative perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips.” Likewise, BookPage writer Sarah McCraw Crow termed Don’t Make Me Pull Over! an “entertaining, funny book.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
BookPage, July, 2018, Sarah McCraw Crow, “Pack It Up, Pack It In,” review of Don’t Make Me Pull Over! The Informal History of the Family Road Trip, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2018, review of Don’t Make Me Pull Over!.
Publishers Weekly, May 7, 2018, review of Don’t Make Me Pull Over!, p. 58.
ONLINE
Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ (July 12, 2018), Ashley Fetters, “The Rise and Fall of the Family-Vacation Road Trip.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, https://www.jsonline.com/ (July 27, 2018), Amy Schwabe, “‘Get Through Chicago before Rush Hour’ and Other Family Road Trip Wisdom from a Menomonee Falls Dad.”
Simon & Shuster website, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (October 20, 2018), “Richard Ratay.”
© Ron Wimmer
Richard Ratay
Richard Ratay was the last of four kids raised by two mostly attentive parents in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and has worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter for twenty-five years. Ratay lives in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, with his wife, Terri, their two sons, and two very excitable rescue dogs.
QUOTE:
childhood years he spent traveling with his efficiency-minded dad, his beleaguered mom, his two teenage brothers, and a sister perpetually on the brink of puking all over the car.
because my parents passed away at a very young age, and my children never had a chance to meet them. Very few of my nieces did as well. I wrote the book to capture that experience, so that they would be able to get to know their grandparents a little bit, and also get to know what it was like for us; to give them a taste of what our life was like when we were their same ages.
FAMILY
The Rise and Fall of the Family-Vacation Road Trip
Richard Ratay, the author of Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip, discusses the factors that turned road trips from an individual adventurer’s pursuit into a family activity—and those that led to their decline.
ASHLEY FETTERS
JUL 12, 2018
A family sits in a white convertible
STEVEN GOTTLIEB / GETTY
The writer Richard Ratay was on the beach in the Dominican Republic several years ago, watching his kids play in the surf, when he started thinking about just how different vacations were for his kids than they had been for him when he was their age.* Why? Chiefly because, unlike the vacations he’d taken as a kid growing up in Wisconsin, this vacation hadn’t required its participants to spend multiple days squeezed into a car. Instead, they’d flown.
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In his new book, Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip, Ratay writes that throughout the 1960s and ’70s, America was at Peak Family Road Trip. The interstate-highway system was materializing from coast to coast at the same time automobiles were becoming a fixture parked in front of family homes; add a generation of dads who’d returned home from war bitten by the travel bug and a new, still-unreliable, prohibitively expensive air-travel industry, and you suddenly had a country full of families packing up their station wagons to go on vacation.
Among them was Ratay’s own family, and in Don’t Make Me Pull Over!, Ratay weaves in the history of American vacation culture with memories of the childhood years he spent traveling with his efficiency-minded dad, his beleaguered mom, his two teenage brothers, and a sister perpetually on the brink of puking all over the car. Ratay spoke to The Atlantic about the origins of the road trip, parenting on the interstate, and why the golden age of family road-tripping was a distinctly American phenomenon. An edited and condensed transcript of our conversation is below.
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Ashley Fetters: In the book, you explain that road trips started out as an individual adventurer’s pursuit, at the dawn of the automobile age. But pretty quickly they became a family activity. What would you say were the key factors in making road trips a staple of family life?
Richard Ratay: The impetus behind road trips, in so many ways, really was World War II. The draft and enlistment swept young men off their farms and out of their urban neighborhoods and sent them off to distant areas of the country to train and prepare for combat, and then they were sent off to fight in far-flung areas of the world. For many of these young men, it was their first taste of seeing the world beyond their familiar surroundings. When they came back to America, they had this travel bug, and, of course, they also were in the time of their lives where they were starting families. That’s when you had the Baby Boom. They had all these kids because of the postwar economic prosperity that America was going through at that time.
They had disposable money and time, and American factories became better than ever at producing vast numbers of automobiles because they improved their production techniques during the war to produce as many airplanes and tanks and jeeps as possible. America all of a sudden had young men who were interested in travel with new families, lots of money, lots of time, lots of cars—and that was really what spurred the travel boom.
There was also the defense aspect as well, that President Dwight Eisenhower recognized. He wanted the ability for the U.S. military to be able to move about the country freely and of course defend all its many coasts and borders. Then there was, of course, the looming threat of atomic war in the background as well, and he wanted to provide a means for urban dwellers to be able escape cities in the event of an atomic attack.
Fetters: The development of the interstate-highway system seems to have played a crucial role in the rise of family road trips, and your book lays out the history of the highway system really engagingly. What surprised you most when you were researching?
Ratay: First and foremost, how incredibly young America’s interstate-highway system really is. Legislation was passed to start funding construction of the interstate, of course, in 1956, but it really took America 25 years to build those interstates. Just a few of the things that have been around longer that our interstates are things like barcodes, microwave ovens, color TV. Queen Elizabeth II of England has been queen longer than America has had its interstate highways. David Hasselhoff has been around longer than America has had its interstate highways. That’s mind-blowing, especially when you consider the transformative impact that the interstate highways had on our country. It’s crazy to think that they’re less than an average life span old. When you’re a kid traveling the highways with your parents, you don’t think anything of it. You just think, Well, these highways have always been here. But they were still building the interstates at the same time I was traveling them.
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Fetters: One thing I found so relatable about your book was the descriptions of your parents disagreeing about how to manage time and manage kids on the road. I especially loved the part about your dad driving right up to the brink of running out of gas. Somehow family road-trip vacations, to me, are where you really see reinforcement of certain, stereotypical parental roles: this idea that dads are risk takers and moms are voices of reason.
Ratay: It bridges generations, right? I mean, this book is very much a love letter to my parents, and a thank-you to them for the opportunities they provided us to visit different areas of the country and enjoy all those experiences together. We still take a lot of road trips in my family, in my present family, and there are times where I feel myself assuming the role of my own father. Saying things like Don’t make me pull over! and kind of becoming him in a way.
I also wrote the book because my parents passed away at a very young age, and my children never had a chance to meet them. Very few of my nieces did as well. I wrote the book to capture that experience, so that they would be able to get to know their grandparents a little bit, and also get to know what it was like for us; to give them a taste of what our life was like when we were their same ages.
Fetters: You gesture a lot in the book at the fact that, before there was cheap airfare [in part due to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978], the journey itself was a bigger part of the family vacation. You mention how driving through parts of the country that you don’t live in exposes you to people living in different ways from you; you describe driving past kids working in the field with their parents. What was the most surprising thing you learned in your own family vacations about how other people lived?
Ratay: Oh, boy. There were so many things. Food was so different in different parts of the country, and people spoke so differently. We’d make it down into New Orleans and the Deep South oftentimes, so to eat things like fried catfish and okra and po’boys and gumbo. Those were very different dishes from what we had in Wisconsin in the 1970s. And the way people talked! I could barely understand some of the people in the South, with their thick southern drawls.
Fetters: You seem a little bit sad at the end of the book about some of the ways in which vacations have evolved since your childhood. Is there anything you’ve made a point to do or emphasize on your own family vacations now, to preserve the ethos of the vacations you went on as a kid?
Ratay: Yes. Yes. I’m very conscious about making the journey part of the destination and its own reward, and so my wife and I are very conscious about picking out great places for us to stop along the way. We went out to Mount Rushmore a few years ago, but we took kind of a meandering route and went through Iowa and we stopped off at the Field of Dreams, where they shot the movie. We were just there for an hour, but it was a great stop.
I think parents can keep finding ways to keep that shared travel experience alive, but it takes a little bit of extra effort: doing some research to find those interesting stops, creating things like playlists to make it real for kids, and being very conscious about limiting electronics usage by the kids while on the vacation, and trying to keep more interactive things like playing games. You know, I still think Mad Libs is a fantastic thing for families to do.
Fetters: I agree! I still think that’s the best car game.
Ratay: It still cracks me up as an adult.
Fetters: Are there ways road trips have changed that you’d consider improvements?
Ratay: Certainly our smartphone maps program and apps. It makes sure we’re all headed in the right direction. Obviously I write pretty fondly of AAA TripTiks in my book, but if you actually want to get where you’re going in a timely manner, it’s sure nice to have those navigation apps. [laughs]
Certainly the reliability of today’s automobiles, too. I remember my dad packing up all sorts of tools and extra belts and fuses, because you didn’t know when you were going to break down on a family vacation. It wasn’t a question of if you were going to break down—it was almost a given that you were. Luckily my brother was kind of a gearhead, even before he was old enough to drive. He knew a ton about cars and he bailed us out on many occasions. My dad bought high-end automobiles, too; Cadillacs and Lincolns, quality automobiles. But it was just an era when automotive quality was not great.
It sure felt back then a lot more like when you went on a family vacation, you were setting off into the wild frontier on a great adventure together. You as a family were going to have to overcome these challenges and find ways to deal with them. I don’t think it feels that way anymore. If something does happen, help is only a call on your cell phone or mobile phone away.
Fetters: It seems like a less stressful endeavor, but also maybe less of an adventure, too.
Ratay: Part of that stress helped families bond together because when something did happen, you were going to have to overcome it as a family. You were going to have to have patience and get through it together.
'Get through Chicago before rush hour' and other family road trip wisdom from a Menomonee Falls dad
Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published 6:00 a.m. CT July 27, 2018
636680648990507955-richard-ratay-and-his-family.JPG
(Photo: Submitted Photo)
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Menomonee Falls author Richard Ratay knows a thing or two about road trips. After all, he took quite a few as a child growing up in Elm Grove. And he's taken plenty of trips with his own wife and two kids.
That's why he decided to write "Don't make me pull over! An informal history of the family road trip."
I was drawn in by the funny — and all too true — title, and, when I read Ratay's account of getting up and on the road by 3 a.m. before his childhood road trips to beat Chicago traffic, I knew I was dealing with a legitimate Milwaukee area road-tripper.
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In both his book and my interview with him, Ratay shared some important advice for parents who want to go on road trips with their own broods.
Savor the journey
The key difference in heading out on a trip in the car rather than a plane is that your family is going to get something valuable out of the journey itself, not just the destination.
Ratay's childhood memories are filled with playing games in the car with his siblings, laughing about the weird signs and roadside stops along the way, enjoying lots of fast food and even a few disasters. Those are all the things that memories are made of, memories that families laugh about for years to come.
Richard Ratay calls the Mount Rushmore road trip the
Richard Ratay calls the Mount Rushmore road trip the "all-American classic road trip." (Photo: Submitted Photo)
Unplug
When Ratay was growing up in the '70s and '80s, his road trip entertainment consisted of toys, snacks, activity books and a few road trip games. Even though we have a lot more possibilities for vehicular entertainment nowadays, Ratay firmly believes family bonding necessitates going old-school.
"On a road trip today, you might have a child in the backseat with headphones on, a sibling next to him texting away and even Mom listening to her own audio book or podcast in the front seat," Ratay said. "We may be in the same car, but we're in our own little worlds.
"To get back to the shared experience we so fondly remember from the '70s and '80s, we have to make a real effort to put down the devices so the trip is less about getting to the destination and more about enjoying that journey."
Make those crazy roadside stops
Ratay said one of the best ways to build memories on family road trips is to stop at all those crazy roadside attractions and pit stops — the places you stop at for no other reason than to say you've been there.
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Ratay's family recently traveled to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore — something he refers to as the classic American family road trip. On the way, his family made the classic stop millions of Americans make at the Corn Palace and Wall Drug.
"Yeah, the Corn Palace is pretty miserable, and Wall Drug is pretty much just a mega mall shopping complex," Ratay said. "But you see those billboards for hundreds of miles, and you've gotta make the stop when you get there. It's such a tradition. Who knows how many generations of travelers have stopped at these places before you? You're following in the footsteps of greatness and upholding part of our American heritage to stop and be able to say you've been there."
Richard Ratay says stopping at all those crazy roadside attractions are what makes road trips so memorable.
Richard Ratay says stopping at all those crazy roadside attractions are what makes road trips so memorable. (Photo: Submitted Photo)
And, of course, since Ratay is a Milwaukee boy at heart, he knows there are a few of those quintessential roadside stops within an hour of home. In his book, he talked about the giggling fits he and his siblings had every time they passed the Bong Recreational Area and the pure wonder and curiosity he experienced upon seeing the Mars Cheese Castle.
Whatever your family's destination, Ratay's bottom line is that you'll get more out of it if you go by car. "My main message is that there's something about a road trip that no other means of travel can reproduce," he said. "You're a small group of people bound together in a great adventure, and it brings you together in a way that few other experiences can."
QUOTE:
mix of memoir, history lesson, and travelogue, advertising copywriter Ratay waxes
wistfully over the rise and fall of the tradition of traversing the United States via the nation's superhighways.
lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane.
Print Marked Items
Ratay, Richard: DON'T MAKE ME
PULL OVER!
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ratay, Richard DON'T MAKE ME PULL OVER! Scribner (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 7, 3 ISBN: 978-1-
5011-8874-9
A historical and nostalgic look at the family road trip.
In his first book, a mix of memoir, history lesson, and travelogue, advertising copywriter Ratay waxes
wistfully over the rise and fall of the tradition of traversing the United States via the nation's superhighways.
Using as a jumping-off point his personal experiences in the 1970s as a child stuffed into the back of a
station wagon with his siblings ("although ordinary Joes couldn't afford a plane ticket, nearly every family
could afford a car, often two"), the author covers a wide variety of topics related to family road trips. He
discusses the construction of U.S. interstates, the need for dining establishments, gas stations, and motels for
the families on the road, and the sights a child might have longed to see, including a whole slew of "World's
Largest" objects or animals. Ratay includes details about the rise of theme parks, including Disneyland and
Disneyworld, Knott's Berry Farm, and others, when more safety features, including seat belts, were
introduced, and how the use of CB radios kept people in touch with one another on the road. He also shares
his thoughts on how cheaper air fare and the need for faster travel have helped make the long road trip
somewhat of a relic. Some of the more minute details--e.g., about the roof design on Stuckey's restaurants
and their distinctive yellow-and-red billboards--may not appeal to a wide audience, but much of the
narrative will find favor with older readers who can readily recall their own experiences riding in the car
while Dad drove and Mom navigated. By sharing this history, Ratay also provides a useful juxtaposition
against the modern vacation, with each person engaged with an electronic device rather than each other and
the surroundings outside the windows.
A lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Ratay, Richard: DON'T MAKE ME PULL OVER!" Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A538294009/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9b8bdfd6.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
QUOTE:
Ratay's informative, often hilarious family narrative perfectly captures the
love-hate relationship many have with road trips.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A538294009
Don't Make Me Pull Over! The Informal
History of the Family Road Trip
Publishers Weekly.
265.19 (May 7, 2018): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Don't Make Me Pull Over! The Informal History of the Family Road Trip
Richard Ratay. Scribner, $27 (288p) ISBN 9781-5011-8874-9
With smartphones and rear-seat entertainment systems, the family road-trip experience has changed
dramatically, writes Ratay in this enjoyable reminiscence on what they used to be. Ratay, an advertising
copywriter, begins his story in 1976, when, as a seven-year-old, he and his family crashed into a ditch
during a blizzard while driving from Wisconsin to Florida; years later, everyone would deem that incident
"the best start to family road trip ever." Ratay recalls taking long car trips with his father, mother, sister, and
two brothers, playing games in the backseat with his siblings while his parents engaged in the "Battle of E"
(in which his mom continually asks his dad to get gas while dad waits for the last possible second before
running out). Throughout, he also explores how America's love affair with the automobile forced better
safety requirements (e.g., enforced seat-belt regulations) and pushed lawmakers to develop an interstate road
system. He explains how road trips influenced the concept of roadside diners (in the 1930s a Georgia pecan
farmer started what would become the convenient road-stop restaurant, Stuckey's), the creation of travel
lodging (a road trip inspired Charles Wilson to open the Holiday Inn in 1951), and how cars were developed
to accommodate entire families. Ratay's informative, often hilarious family narrative perfectly captures the
love-hate relationship many have with road trips. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Don't Make Me Pull Over! The Informal History of the Family Road Trip." Publishers Weekly, 7 May
2018, p. 58. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A538858713/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=22bda0bc. Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
QUOTE:
entertaining, funny book.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A538858713
Pack it up, pack it in
Sarah McCraw Crow
BookPage.
(July 2018): p23.
COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
Summertime means travel--family travel, solo journeys, finding lost places. Two new books take on these
concepts in distinctive ways.
In Don't Make Me Pull Over! (Scribner, $27, 288 pages, ISBN 9781501188749), Richard Ratay uses his
memories of family trips as a portal back to what he calls the golden age of car travel: the 1970s, when he
would sit crammed in the family car's back seat between his two brothers, his sister up front between their
parents. Ratay's dad had some eccentric ideas about saving time and money on their long car trips, and
Ratay recounts these anecdotes with relish.
Ratay also takes a comprehensive look at the family road trip, starting with the patchy history of American
roads and the changes wrought by the interstate system. He gives us the backstory on entrepreneurs like
Howard Johnson, who grew one drugstore into a national chain of restaurants and motels, and Bill Stuckey,
whose stores once blanketed the South. And he delves into smaller but memorable details of '70s-era car
trips: the CB radio craze, eight-track tape players, AAA's TripTik guides and low-tech video games.
Don't Make Me Pull Over! is a love letter to the '70s and all its weirdness, and if Ratay sometimes goes a
little overboard on travel-related puns, that's OK--he just so enjoys his subject. His enthusiasm shows in this
entertaining, funny book.
Northland (Norton, $26.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780393248852) takes a quieter journey, detailing author
Porter Fox's treks along the border between the United States and Canada, the world's longest international
border. "On a map the boundary is a line," Fox writes. "On land, it passes through impossible places--
ravines, cliff bands, bogs, waterfalls, rocky summits, Whitewater--that few people ever see." Fox begins his
journey near Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine, where he puts in for a solo canoe trip up the St. Croix River,
following the path of explorer Samuel de Champlain. Fox's journey has five legs. In Montreal, he boards a
freighter bound for the Great Lakes; in Minnesota, he canoes the Boundary Waters with an older married
couple; in North Dakota, he visits the pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; in Montana,
he follows the border to Glacier National Park; and finally he makes his way to the Peace Arch Border
Crossing, which connects Washington and Canada.
The narrative moves fluidly between Fox's own travels and larger stories of the border, mixing history, travel
writing and nature writing. Fox shows how the northern border is intimately bound up with our nation's
history, particularly in the shifting relationships between European settlers and Native Americans and the
violent and sad history of the United States' treatment of indigenous people. But he also gives nuanced
profiles of intrepid French explorers Champlain and Robert de La Salle, who learned from and fought
alongside Native Americans.
Most memorably, Northland offers vivid, lyrical writing about the strange and beautiful places along the
United States' northern border.
BY SARAH McCRAW CROW
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Crow, Sarah McCraw. "Pack it up, pack it in." BookPage, July 2018, p. 23. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A544601893/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=050a9ef2.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A544601893