Column: Revive the Sunday Drive suddenly it’s once again a great way to escape home and see your city – MSN

Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS Heading southbound on Lake Shore Drive through Grant Park in Chicago on Monday.

With the coronavirus pandemic dragging on and people looking for something (anything!) to relieve the boredom of being stuck at home, I have a modest proposal: Revive the drive the Sunday Drive.

Those of a certain age will remember the Sunday Drive. It was a secular ritual a leisurely car trip with no particular destination, often taken in the afternoon by a family in a wood-paneled station wagon. Such excursions might go through farm fields, to the nearest Dairy Queen, or along a sylvan route lined with money-dripping mansions, like the North Shores Sheridan Road.

Today, with roads of all sorts practically empty, the Sunday Drive beckons anew. After all, its easy to maintain social distancing when youre in a pod of steel. Also, you dont need to wear a mask. And so, instead of going out for a stroll or binge-watching shows on Netflix (or maybe in addition to those things), some people are taking to the road.

My husband and I are reinventing the Sunday afternoon family car ride I used to take with my family in the late 1940s (and) early 1950s, when we lived in San Francisco, Mary Ann Irvine of Oak Park wrote to me in a recent email. With little traffic on the streets," she added, "its easy to drive slowly and stop often to see architectural gems by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I think Mary Anns on to something. So why not head down (or up) Lake Shore Drive, taking in Chicagos skyline cliffs on one side and the blue expanse of Lake Michigan on the other? Preferably, youll have Aliotta Haynes Jeremiahs 1971 song Lake Shore Drive (And there aint no road just like it / Anywhere I found) blasting in the background.

Or try Chicagos historic boulevards, a 26-mile chain of parks and boulevards that courses through the citys North, West and South Sides. Another suggestion: west suburban Riversides Longcommon Road, a park-lined drive designed by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Surely you have favorites of your own.

Such trips, it appears, are permitted under Gov. J.B. Pritzkers stay-at-home order, which allows people to drive on both local roads and interstate highways. Judging by the number of car parades that have popped up to celebrate birthdays and other milestones, the authorities arent cracking down on pleasure driving.

Just dont take advantage of the open road and go 100 m.p.h. down an expressway. Thats the antithesis of the slow, relaxing Sunday Drive.

Building on the precedent of the high-society, horse-drawn carriages that rolled down elegant boulevards in the late 19th century, the Sunday Drive is thought to have originated in the 1920s just a few years after the great influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed at least 50 million people worldwide.

Maybe people wanted to get out into the fresh air, which was thought to improve health. More likely, they just wanted to take their new plaything the car out into the country to escape the crowded cities and towns in which they lived.

Henry Ford, whose mass production methods made cars available to millions, is said to have supported the Sunday Drive because it helped to sell cars.

Indeed, if you Google Sunday Drive and Model T, youll see old black-and-white photos that show families decked out in their Sunday best, the tops of their cars folded down to bring them in the open air. Some journeyed to the countryside for a picnic, their cars sputtered along primitive dirt roads.

Once, a weekend trip to the countryside was a privilege of the wealthy. Widespread car ownership and new roads, tellingly dubbed parkways opened up these pleasures to the middle class.

The very name parkway suggests how such roads differ from the concrete gashes of urban expressways that would be built after World War II: Theyre free of trucks, flanked by park-like expanses of grass and trees, and have relatively low speed limits. Some, like Connecticuts Merritt Parkway, built in the 1930s, are straddled by beautiful bridges that carry local traffic over them.

The popularity of the Sunday Drive reached its apex in the 1950s and 1960s, when cars were still associated with personal freedom, not air pollution or suburban sprawl.

But something changed in the 1970s. Perhaps it was rising gas prices or a heightened environmental consciousness. Or maybe, some urban planners think, suburban sprawl was blurring the once-clear boundary between town and country. Where once there were farm fields and expanses of nature, now there were strip malls and traffic-jammed arterial roads. That made the Sunday Drive a lot less alluring

In the early 20th century, departments of motor vehicles classified (cars) as pleasure vehicles," Julie Campoli, a Burlington, Vermont urban designer and author, noted in a 2014 blog post Bring Back the Sunday Drive.

Now, Campoli observed, cars "are officially known as 'passenger vehicles a more accurate term, since most of the pleasure has drained out of the experience of driving. After a week of sitting behind the wheel, idling and turning, dropping off and picking up, 21st century Americans might find it difficult to imagine loading the family into the car on a Sunday afternoon and heading out for a drive just for the fun of it.

Advocates of pedestrian-friendly cities and mass transit may be shocked to hear me championing the Sunday Drive. But while car use is declining, millions of Americans still rely on four wheels to get around. And in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Drive stands ready as a relief valve for those bottled up in their homes, especially older people who are unable to go out for long walks.

So, go! A Sunday Drive might make you feel better, just like a walk does. As a bonus, you might appreciate the beauty of your city or suburb in fresh ways

Just two cautionary notes: Keep your eyes on the road and dont get out of your car and congregate, especially if youre in Chicago. If you do, the Queen of Keeping Apart, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, may personally come after you.

Blair Kamin is a Tribune critic.

bkamin@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BlairKamin

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Column: Revive the Sunday Drive suddenly it's once again a great way to escape home and see your city - MSN