ARE WE THERE YET? STATION WAGON HELL IS READER'S NEW 'SURVIVOR'.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

It was the Dream Trip Across America: Dad, master of the family station wagon; Mom, mistress of the AM dial; and the kids, listless from the highway, the heat and counting endless telephone poles from the back seat.

Once, this was the ultimate pilgrimage, but today it would be the trip from hell.

``Hell, no,'' said Steven Springer, 20, of Santa Clarita. ``No radio, no real food, no air conditioning. It would be hell on wheels - hell on wheels.''

Inspired by the hit TV show ``Survivor,'' L.A. Life editors have asked readers to come up with their own ideas for reality shows.

Enter Robert Springer, who is Steven's father and came up with the idea of sending families on cross-country trips with TV cameras rolling. The rub: They have to drive in a 1960s vintage wagon sans modern-day comforts.

There'd be no sport-utility vehicles. No FM sounds from oversize speakers. No stereo tape decks. No CD changers loaded with Eminem, Britney Spears or 311 hits. No TV. No hand-held computer games. Not even a cup holder.

``You know, you see all these yuppie moms driving in their SUVs,'' said Springer, 47. ``Their kids are all plugged into their TVs, into the video monitor in the back seat; they have CD players and game-toys. The moms all have cappucinos and Starbucks-like stuff.

``And no one interacts with each other - there's no family time in the family car.''

His station wagon ordeal is simple.

Take 10 moms and pops with three kids per couple. Stick them in an equal number of 1960s station wagons. Then send them coast to coast with cameras recording every move for prime-time TV.

``This is too close to home,'' said a Peterson Automotive museum official who declined to identify himself. ``Parents will be turned off by it.

``This would be child abuse,'' he said. ``Do you really want to put kids into an environment like that where kids are hot and screaming?''

For Springer, however, this was reality.

Harken back to 1962, the year Springer's dad took delivery on the Rambler Ambassador wagon. Or before that, the Chevy Bel Air wagon. Or the previous Plymouth dinosaur in the driveway.

Springer's dad and mom, smoking filter-tips in the front seat. Springer and his brothers and sisters - one in the front, two in the middle, and one ``rolling around in the back.''

Road games like ABC - first person to name sites in alphabetical order wins. And AM radio, with no Beatles, not even Elvis. Only dad-ordered Top 40 hits like Petula Clark's ``Downtown.''

``It was torture,'' he said, ``because my dad always had a certain schedule - three hours before breakfast, three hours before lunch, bathroom breaks - 'Do you really have to go to the bathroom? We gotta be in Utah in four hours.' ''

On Springer's show, each family would avoid the superslab and stick to back roads. Roads lined with diners filled with meatloaf, with gravy, with waitresses named Flo. Roads with neon-arrow motels, squeaky beds, barren campgrounds.

Backroads of whoop-de-dos beside what's left of roadside attractions - of real America.

``These people would enjoy that trip, and would enjoy themselves if anybody would let them,'' said Tom Snyder of Ventura, who authored a travel guide on Route 66. ``If they were in SUVs, the kids would have their TV in the back seat, there would be dual stereos . . . They don't have to look outside - so who's on this trip?''

For Station Wagon Hell, each family must purchase two postcards from national parks such as Mount Rushmore, from state parks such as Anza Borrego, from towns with fewer than 500 residents still yearning for Dairy Queen to start slopping ice cream mush, and points of interest such as ``Banjo String Capitol'' and ``Biggest Ball of Yarn.''

The first family with the postcard wad, the first family with top votes from the fans, wins.

``I figure the prize (winner) would be the last woman to stop and yell, 'Knock it off or I am going to stop the car and you'll wish I hadn't,'' Springer adds.

The winner would receive an all-expenses-paid, first-class trip for two to Hawaii, without the kids. Kids get a home entertainment center, games, TV, DVD and video-stereo system.

Garth Jowett, a popular culture expert at the University of Houston, said Springer's trip sounds like something out of the National Lampoon movie ``Vacation.''

``It would be kind of difficult, without the cell phones,'' he said. ``The problem with 'Survival,' or any of these shows, is that the people themselves are inherently boring.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) What an idea for a show: Bob Springer and wife Alma and the kids (they're borrowed for the photo, nieces Nicole, 11, and Anna Springer, 7, and nephew Erik Springer, 9) in a vintage '60s station wagon, sans TV and air conditioning.

(2 -- color) The drama of it: Zooming down the road - hot, sticky, hungry, kids warring in the back seat.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer