Everybody knows about how long a zippy game of "state license plates" lasts-just until your whiny kid in the backseat discovers that nobody drives from Alaska to anywhere and that the Alabama people are pretty scarce too.

Arkansas drivers use homemade plates with backwards "s’s" and draw scary rattlesnakes around the outside in charcoal. So, if you can’t get past the "A"-state plates, it doesn’t look good for finding Wyoming.

Then, of course, you might resort to the old standby The Alphabet Game, in which one competes with everyone else in the car EXCEPT THE DRIVER who has to CONCENTRATE, blast it, and is at a disadvantage. Boy, drivers sure hate to lose games. The object of this, as everybody knows, is to know the alphabet and to find the letters in order before anybody else does and then sing out at the top of your lungs "J-Mart! I saw J-Mart first! My "J"! There’s no such thing as a "J-Mart" of course, but if the sighter is younger than 12, it’s bad form to point that obvious fact out. The alphabet game causes a family to splinter and get broody and mean spirited. It makes kids beg to turn the car around so one can prove there was SO a "Z" in the word "Passing Lane," which should have been "Passing Zone" if the dumb state sign makers knew anything at all.

But I suggest a dumbed-down version of "Botticelli," which is way too hard in its original form for anybody but dang geniuses and makes people with poor memories look bad. So my game is called "Kevin Bacon," and all it requires is that you be able to make death-defying mental leaps in word association.

For example, somebody says "Kevin Bacon" and I say "Piglet," and then somebody else says "Hamlet," and somebody says "Green Eggs and Hamlet," and somebody else says "Mama Cass." (The fact that she didn’t really die by choking on a ham sandwich notwithstanding. What care we for mere facts when we have urban legend and provisional facts?) To challenge, a person has to show that there is no connection at all of any kind and that the person responding is merely tossing out random nouns, such as "Duck Galoshes!," hoping for a sheer gut-it-out hit. You can actually get from Grandma Moses to Aunt Jemima if you’re fast on your feet.

But enough of games. I’d like to give you some general travel hints: First, don’t ever stop at Stuckey’s for any reason. The peanut brittle you will inevitably buy contains some kind of Mexican jumping bean powder that makes children go ballistic after consuming a few shards. Also, don’t make the mistake we did last summer on our way to the ocean. Trying to put ourselves in the mood, we bought an environmental tape called "Sailboat Journey" at a rest stop. Amid the creaking of ancient mooring lines and piers sounded the gentle slap of waves,

. . . and trickling water heading down the billibong or koshkonong or whatever they call the drain-hole in sailboats,

.. and before half a mile had elapsed everybody in the car had developed a terrific need to pass water,

. . . without a rest stop for twenty-five miles. Buy "Sounds of the Sahara" instead. No wait, that might make you thirsty. How about "Sounds of Corn Growing?"

Happy vacance!

-Norma Gay Prewett (Gay Davidson Zielske)