That was awesome. And as an amateur harmonica player I got a particular kick out of the entry in the beginning about Tom’s playing and how holding the tin sandwich out the car window would produce better music.
Celia/Dale - My family did several driving vacations back in this timeframe. No air conditioning, wind blowing in our faces, looking at heat mirages, etc. Entertainment was coloring books, games, counting the number of different state's license plates. Thanks for reviving those memories. I haven't thought about them in a long time.
Asocial as I am, I will always defend that normal people sound much better in a written word format.
I happen to like great writers, although it may be the case that no real writer was ever as isolated as he would have preferred, or as pure as the readers imagine, and yet, like virologists, I still have faith in that impossible animal who is the provider of our pattern-seeking hobby.
Mundane stuff is not my primary interest, but the great pleasure of learning languages is best achieved by reading normal people and their mundanities.
The painter, the sculptor or the photographer are all more real than the writer, given the fact that anyone can write, and the words are not materially needed to write, unlike paint, marble and reality.
Still, I am very thankful when people like Dale take the time to sort out their inner world and put it into linear texts that use more words than charts or drawings.
“Route 66,”by Nat King Cole, Manhattan Transfer, Rolling Stones, and many more musical artists recorded Route 66. This song will never die…. Thanks Celia… Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I'm so glad your father made the effort to log the trip. I was just 10 years old that year, but made a similar solo journey along much of that route in 1973, St Louis to Las Vegas. Very interesting read, thank you.
What a wonderful recollection of a bygone era. What, no Grand Canyon stop??? No souvenirs from Gallop NM? I'm still kicking myself that I did not buy that concho belt! Having my morning coffee and thinking about all the road trips that my Dad took with his buddies back in the 50's. One trip to Mexico in a '52 Ford and smuggling back a drunk parrot in the trunk and the infamous trip from Texas to Florida and ferrying to Cuba to experience the Havana high-life. Dad is 90 (sharp as a tack) and can still describe these trips in vivid detail.
Thanks for sharing this Celia. Us "old folks" like to reminisce sometimes. My Dad took us on a similar journey, but from east to west through the Rockies to Oregon, twice, when we were under 10 years old. I myself made a solo road trip along the newer Route 66 in 1973, delivering a Chevy Impala from St Louis, to a woman in Las Vegas. However, I did not keep a journal of the next few months stuck in Vegas with no where to live. Perhaps I need to chronicle that. Today it's hard to imagine that timeline existed.
One note, I live near the rest of the old Route 66, which continued through central Illinois toward Chicago. There are locations in Springfield that still memorialize that Route.
5 years after this trip occurred, my parents decided, in honour of Canada's centennial, to drive to Expo '67 (in Montreal) and back, in a new Comet, with two very small girls. I was 3. I was the eldest. And we lived on the West coast of BC. And they were camping. And the car broke down every 150mi
No one kept a journal, but I remember a bit of it, and I've certainly heard stories. Mum says she
slept non-stop from Winnipeg to home.
I have a bit of an aversion to road trips now, LOL
What a splendid read as I sit perched on a knoll boondocking just north of Patagonia, AZ. I would love to see the photos, the words with the visual. For me it’s the photos of that era. I am able to spend days looking at old photos, they draw me in. I spent hours walking the halls of the Tucson VA looking at all the photos. How much we have lost with all our modern conveniences.
I have been on sections of Route66 and the nostalgia is overpowering. It takes me to a time and place where "normal" and not insanity reined. It ranks high in the same emotions one gets at a short distance viewing the "swales" the wagon trains made that even after all this time are still to be seen. (depressions in the fields where routes like the Oregon Trail had migrants from large numbers of wagons that created the spaced track depressions of their wheels. Or similarly the emotional trip of melancholy one feels in abandoned pioneer graveyards, or Tombstone where one can walk the actual dirt streets that absorbed the blood from many gunfights.
It is a trip to the past, where men were men and women were women, a place and time where justice came at the end of a rope and criminals were shot down like wild rabid dogs. Such were and are memories that penetrate the mind, soul and body of those still in spirit connected to the reality of sacrifices, pain, and sorrow suffered by our forebearers.
I know a place an hour away where a man from Ireland built a log cabin, married and the couple had six children. They caught dysentery and as each died, he buried them close to the cabin child by child until all were in the ground. With him and his wife left, she died, and he buried her too.
In the grief he suffered, lonely and feeling forsaken, he gathered a few belongings, struck a match, started the cabin on fire, turned, mounted his horse and rode away never to be heard of again. If one is astutely ordered in emotion, one can feel but a small particle of his pain. My friend who is four score years old, and dying, had a distant relative who knew that Irishman as a neighbor, and after the burning of the cabin, walked to the grave sites seven in a row.
That was three generations ago and I am not sure if the graves are still there, but in spite of the time span, if one is inclined to a deep empathy, one can enter into the fellowship of the suffering of that wife and mother, and the over powering emotions of grief the lone husband and father suffered when he burned it all and walked away.
The scars on his spirit and the huge chunks torn out of his heart when he buried six children, and finally his wife, are not humanely fathomable. But that was how it was then in pioneer days. On the farms on the backroads to the nearest village, I drove a neighbor in 1979 to visit someone he knew, and on the way he indicated his boyhood home, and specific rural houses where he indicated people he had known as a boy, had died of TB. He told me that in the early morning, on a still day, as a boy, he could hear the coughing of neighbors suffering that disease and the graves at the end of the lane where it connected to the country road, where people were buried. (quarantine laws)
Who can know the trials and tribulations of the pioneers, but I have been favored in this through others whose forbearers were tragically affected. In the comprehension of such history, I feel I have been favored.
And as usual, the scriptures have a few words of instruction directly related to this story. Paraphrasing, the verse indicates to not think the former days were better than the present for one is ignorant of what he/she thinks on this score. More wisdom.
In 1970, Ieft Battle Creek, Michigan with three friends in a 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport.
Just outside Brazil, Indiana, the differential seized and we came to a screeching halt.
In the trunk was a home 8-Track stereo, and a complete Harley 74,broken down.
Bob, the owner, got $15 each for the car stereo, the home stereo, and the Harley and we split up into two teams of two, with plans to meet at Pioneer Park in Berdoo (San Bernadino).
My team arrived first, in two andl one half days, having left with no money at all, staying at the Downtown Ramada Inn in St Louis and a small motel somewhere in Texas.
Only one of the other team made it, their partner having been jailed for panhandling.
I had somehow got $3 together and rented a hotel room with two double beds for$2,wnd them somehow we came up with money to eat Dennys across from Pioneer Park.
I went cruising with some local kids, and when we got pulled over, I got busted as a runaway, because I was fourteen.
But even with that experience, I can't imagine road tripping from Berdoo to...Wichita?!!!
I have a road trip story that features a side trip to Wichita, and it's pretty much the opposite of interesting. In fact, it gives new meaning to the phrase "Never Again".
about 10 years ago a friend of mine from one of the countries that the IDF is bombing now made an album. great musician but he's not a words guy so he crowdsourced the lyrics. was impressed by how many of the seemingly ordinary people in his circle were also excellent poets.
with a few exceptions (david brooks, the current new yorker crowd), writing is like any other activity. do it long enough and you get good at it. especially if your culture encourages it.
That was awesome. And as an amateur harmonica player I got a particular kick out of the entry in the beginning about Tom’s playing and how holding the tin sandwich out the car window would produce better music.
Celia/Dale - My family did several driving vacations back in this timeframe. No air conditioning, wind blowing in our faces, looking at heat mirages, etc. Entertainment was coloring books, games, counting the number of different state's license plates. Thanks for reviving those memories. I haven't thought about them in a long time.
Same here, thanks for reminding me of how we passed the time.
Asocial as I am, I will always defend that normal people sound much better in a written word format.
I happen to like great writers, although it may be the case that no real writer was ever as isolated as he would have preferred, or as pure as the readers imagine, and yet, like virologists, I still have faith in that impossible animal who is the provider of our pattern-seeking hobby.
Mundane stuff is not my primary interest, but the great pleasure of learning languages is best achieved by reading normal people and their mundanities.
The painter, the sculptor or the photographer are all more real than the writer, given the fact that anyone can write, and the words are not materially needed to write, unlike paint, marble and reality.
Still, I am very thankful when people like Dale take the time to sort out their inner world and put it into linear texts that use more words than charts or drawings.
“On The Road Again,” by Willie Nelson…
“Route 66,”by Nat King Cole, Manhattan Transfer, Rolling Stones, and many more musical artists recorded Route 66. This song will never die…. Thanks Celia… Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Thank you so much!! My father would have been so happy to see that!!
Dale! My LIKE button worked! For the first time in like 3 months. You bring me good luck.
Why are you awake though?
I often ask myself the same thing.
I'm so glad your father made the effort to log the trip. I was just 10 years old that year, but made a similar solo journey along much of that route in 1973, St Louis to Las Vegas. Very interesting read, thank you.
What a wonderful recollection of a bygone era. What, no Grand Canyon stop??? No souvenirs from Gallop NM? I'm still kicking myself that I did not buy that concho belt! Having my morning coffee and thinking about all the road trips that my Dad took with his buddies back in the 50's. One trip to Mexico in a '52 Ford and smuggling back a drunk parrot in the trunk and the infamous trip from Texas to Florida and ferrying to Cuba to experience the Havana high-life. Dad is 90 (sharp as a tack) and can still describe these trips in vivid detail.
Thanks for sharing this Celia. Us "old folks" like to reminisce sometimes. My Dad took us on a similar journey, but from east to west through the Rockies to Oregon, twice, when we were under 10 years old. I myself made a solo road trip along the newer Route 66 in 1973, delivering a Chevy Impala from St Louis, to a woman in Las Vegas. However, I did not keep a journal of the next few months stuck in Vegas with no where to live. Perhaps I need to chronicle that. Today it's hard to imagine that timeline existed.
One note, I live near the rest of the old Route 66, which continued through central Illinois toward Chicago. There are locations in Springfield that still memorialize that Route.
This is precious.
5 years after this trip occurred, my parents decided, in honour of Canada's centennial, to drive to Expo '67 (in Montreal) and back, in a new Comet, with two very small girls. I was 3. I was the eldest. And we lived on the West coast of BC. And they were camping. And the car broke down every 150mi
No one kept a journal, but I remember a bit of it, and I've certainly heard stories. Mum says she
slept non-stop from Winnipeg to home.
I have a bit of an aversion to road trips now, LOL
What a splendid read as I sit perched on a knoll boondocking just north of Patagonia, AZ. I would love to see the photos, the words with the visual. For me it’s the photos of that era. I am able to spend days looking at old photos, they draw me in. I spent hours walking the halls of the Tucson VA looking at all the photos. How much we have lost with all our modern conveniences.
Thanks, Dale. And thanks Celia
I have been on sections of Route66 and the nostalgia is overpowering. It takes me to a time and place where "normal" and not insanity reined. It ranks high in the same emotions one gets at a short distance viewing the "swales" the wagon trains made that even after all this time are still to be seen. (depressions in the fields where routes like the Oregon Trail had migrants from large numbers of wagons that created the spaced track depressions of their wheels. Or similarly the emotional trip of melancholy one feels in abandoned pioneer graveyards, or Tombstone where one can walk the actual dirt streets that absorbed the blood from many gunfights.
It is a trip to the past, where men were men and women were women, a place and time where justice came at the end of a rope and criminals were shot down like wild rabid dogs. Such were and are memories that penetrate the mind, soul and body of those still in spirit connected to the reality of sacrifices, pain, and sorrow suffered by our forebearers.
I know a place an hour away where a man from Ireland built a log cabin, married and the couple had six children. They caught dysentery and as each died, he buried them close to the cabin child by child until all were in the ground. With him and his wife left, she died, and he buried her too.
In the grief he suffered, lonely and feeling forsaken, he gathered a few belongings, struck a match, started the cabin on fire, turned, mounted his horse and rode away never to be heard of again. If one is astutely ordered in emotion, one can feel but a small particle of his pain. My friend who is four score years old, and dying, had a distant relative who knew that Irishman as a neighbor, and after the burning of the cabin, walked to the grave sites seven in a row.
That was three generations ago and I am not sure if the graves are still there, but in spite of the time span, if one is inclined to a deep empathy, one can enter into the fellowship of the suffering of that wife and mother, and the over powering emotions of grief the lone husband and father suffered when he burned it all and walked away.
The scars on his spirit and the huge chunks torn out of his heart when he buried six children, and finally his wife, are not humanely fathomable. But that was how it was then in pioneer days. On the farms on the backroads to the nearest village, I drove a neighbor in 1979 to visit someone he knew, and on the way he indicated his boyhood home, and specific rural houses where he indicated people he had known as a boy, had died of TB. He told me that in the early morning, on a still day, as a boy, he could hear the coughing of neighbors suffering that disease and the graves at the end of the lane where it connected to the country road, where people were buried. (quarantine laws)
Who can know the trials and tribulations of the pioneers, but I have been favored in this through others whose forbearers were tragically affected. In the comprehension of such history, I feel I have been favored.
And as usual, the scriptures have a few words of instruction directly related to this story. Paraphrasing, the verse indicates to not think the former days were better than the present for one is ignorant of what he/she thinks on this score. More wisdom.
In 1970, Ieft Battle Creek, Michigan with three friends in a 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport.
Just outside Brazil, Indiana, the differential seized and we came to a screeching halt.
In the trunk was a home 8-Track stereo, and a complete Harley 74,broken down.
Bob, the owner, got $15 each for the car stereo, the home stereo, and the Harley and we split up into two teams of two, with plans to meet at Pioneer Park in Berdoo (San Bernadino).
My team arrived first, in two andl one half days, having left with no money at all, staying at the Downtown Ramada Inn in St Louis and a small motel somewhere in Texas.
Only one of the other team made it, their partner having been jailed for panhandling.
I had somehow got $3 together and rented a hotel room with two double beds for$2,wnd them somehow we came up with money to eat Dennys across from Pioneer Park.
I went cruising with some local kids, and when we got pulled over, I got busted as a runaway, because I was fourteen.
But even with that experience, I can't imagine road tripping from Berdoo to...Wichita?!!!
I have a road trip story that features a side trip to Wichita, and it's pretty much the opposite of interesting. In fact, it gives new meaning to the phrase "Never Again".
about 10 years ago a friend of mine from one of the countries that the IDF is bombing now made an album. great musician but he's not a words guy so he crowdsourced the lyrics. was impressed by how many of the seemingly ordinary people in his circle were also excellent poets.
with a few exceptions (david brooks, the current new yorker crowd), writing is like any other activity. do it long enough and you get good at it. especially if your culture encourages it.