April O'Brien

United States

Preview: We moved around so much when I was a child that I can't tell you what state I was in, or what school I was in, or in what year I went there. And getting from one of these places to another has been some of the most memorable moments of my life.

One of the more memorable trips we took was from Oklahoma to New Mexico. My mom, five kids, a Chihuahua, a Collie, and a kitten, and we were all in a little 1962 Opel station wagon. As with all of our trips across country, (and there were many) none of them were without incident.

It must have been in the dead of summer, because the heat was unbearable. We didn't even know what air conditioning was, and money was as hard to find as cold air. We made it into the middle of a desert in New Mexico before our little car died on us...