On the road with Mom and Dad: Marge, Mike and Jack Leonard rev up the RV and power up the video camera; we’re taking a month-long road trip through life with NBC “Today” show reporter Mike Leonard, his 80-something parents and his 20-something kids.
There will be a few delays and some unexpected curves, but somewhere during the 2,000 miles between Phoenix and Paterson, N.J. – perhaps while strolling through the Alamo in San Antonio or gaping at the Vanderbilts’ Biltmore estate in Asheville, N.C. – Leonard’s new book, “The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family” (Ballantine Books, 230 pages, $24.95), will seem less about his family and more about Everyfamily.
Sure, that’s the author’s ever-pessimistic mom, Marge “Moose” Leonard, spewing one-liners and trash talk about Bing Crosby, and his usually optimistic dad, Jack “Spoose” Leonard, pontificating on the plight of the working man and singing a few bars of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” but don’t they remind you of your aunt or your cousin or your own parents?
Leonard, whose stories for “Today” often focus on regular folks, said he’s heard from people who say they find bits and pieces of their relatives in his family’s characters.
“Hats off to all those people who are like us – just a regular family,” he said. “I feel like the book is a tribute to all the people out there who are just banging around and trying to make it through life. They have their ups and downs and can occasionally laugh about it.”
In January 2004, Leonard, then 56, took a sabbatical from work, rented two RVs and took his aging parents for what he terms “their final hurrah” – a cross-country trip from their home in Arizona to the New Jersey town where they grew up. Leonard’s three grown kids and a daughter-in-law came along for the ride, which was to end in Chicago just in time to mark the arrival of his parents’ first great-grandchild.
Through Leonard’s deft storytelling, the book is not a travelogue but a rich family biography that flows and curves and bumps along with these admitted “noncampers” who tear up the bottom of their ship less than a half hour into their adventure.
Because Leonard videotaped the trip for some “Today” segments, the book documents his parents’ conversations as the mile markers pass by. The dialogue is often laugh-out-loud funny – his mother is still a pistol – and sometimes heartbreakingly sad. But it is always I-can-relate-to-that real.
Leonard believes everyone has a story, and this book is his family’s: Irish immigrant grandparents, his mismatched parents’ loving 60-year marriage, the rough-and-tumble of growing up with three brothers and the boomer-rich memories of eating Chef Boyardee ravioli and throwing Jujubes during a screening of “Damn Yankees.”
Though Leonard was concerned his parents might be uncomfortable with the book – they are not of the “Oprah” generation, he points out – they have taken it well.
“My dad is so happy that people got to know his father and mother, who were just regular people,” Leonard said. “For him, it’s an emotional thing to have them live again.” The Leonard clan is taking to the road again, traveling in RVs through the Midwest on a book tour, and Moose, now 84, and Spoose, 89, are coming along. Since the 2004 trip, his parents have moved to the Chicago area, where three of their sons live. Though Jack Leonard had surgery to remove a cancerous growth behind his left ear, he is as optimistic as ever, his son said. They seem to be enjoying the celebrity – they were recognized recently while shopping and asked to sign autographs.
Leonard, meanwhile, says he’s heard from people who are planning similar excursions with their families. Keep your sense of humor and expect that some things will go wrong, he advises. “I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who have been somewhat empowered by the book, which is weird, because I’m the furthest thing from Dr. Phil,” he said.
“The way society is now – all the celebrity worship – and people are like, ‘Who am I? Where’s my monument?’ And I think we all have one. It’s small, but it’s important.”
Online: To read an excerpt, go to mike-leonard.com.
