Cross-Country Vacations - Part 1

When I was a little girl, my father's 2 brothers moved to California.  I will talk about them later.  Today I want to tell you about the first of 3 trips I made with my parents across the country to visit these relatives.

 In 1959 my parents bought a brand new silver Oldsmobile 88.  This car would one day be the car I learned to drive in, but at the time it was going to be our transportation on a great adventure.  My Dad, Mom, sister and I would embark on our first trip across the USA.  My oldest brother was already married and my next brother was in the Air Force.  My sister wasn't thrilled about the trip because she had recently gotten engaged and didn't want to be away from her fiance for 3 whole weeks, but she went anyway.  I was seven years old, and didn't understand the magnitude of what we were about to do.  We had driven 8 hrs to upstate every year for vacation, so I wasn't upset about a long drive.  I liked to sing, and had recently learned a new song, "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", which I sang all the way across the country, driving everyone in the car crazy.

We started the drive from New Jersey with AAA maps and trip-tiks in hand in August. We had a movie camera and a 35MM camera with slide film to document our trek,  The first marvel was the tunnels that had been carved through the mountains in Pennsylvania.   It took about 5 days to drive across country and my Mom made sure we stopped at as many tourist spots along the was as possible.  I think we drove to Chicago and then picked up Route 66.   According to Wikipedia, "The famous highway originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, encompassing a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km)."  Our destination was Riverside, California, just east of L.A. and this was our route.


Growing up, my Dad had made lifelong friends with the Reed boys, 5 brothers who lived near his boyhood home in Pennsylvania.  One of the brothers (Doug?) had settled in Missouri with his wife and 2 daughters, so we stopped for a day to visit them along the way.  


The trip was pretty uneventful until we got to the mountains.  I only remember 2 things about that - that the narrow, winding mountain roads frightened my mother, and that my sister got to drive down the mountain from Flagstaff, Arizona.   I also remember stopping to visit the Petrified Forrest.  However, the event that stands out most in my mind was the last few hours before we arrived at my uncle's house.  We crossed Death Valley that day, and were told later that it had been 120 degrees in the shade.  This was before cars had air conditioning.  We had a cooler with food and fruit juices in the back and my Mom got a large soda size container of ice which she held up to the car's vent windows so it blew the moisture back at us.  We arrived at my uncle and aunt's house sometime in the afternoon.


During that visit we did lots of fun things.  While staying at my uncle Russell's house visited a second Reed brother (Dick?),  my Dad's step-brother Enos and his wife Marie, went to the recently opened Disney Land, and went down to Tijuana, Mexico to the horse races.  I have snippets of memories from each of these.  My uncle Enos had an intercom system throughout the house and they had lots of special appliances because his wife had severe arthritis and was loosing her hearing.  The Reed family had a house that had adjustable walls, so they could change room sizes or make two rooms into one as their needs changed.  On our way back from Mexico I remember waiting in a line of cars to go through the border and boys along the way were selling souvenirs.  I have a Mexican doll puppet, and I believe we bought it from one of these boys. 


On the way home we took a southern route so we could stop to visit my brother, who was stationed in Biloxi Mississippi.  I think he was there for Basic Training.  My mother made a point of getting out on the beach and putting her feet in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  She had done the same in the Pacific Ocean and we had often been to the Great Lakes, so, along with our trips to the Jersey Shore, she could now say she had set foot in the water on all sides of the USA.


The only other thing I remember about this trip was swimming in a pool at a motel somewhere in the South with my sister.  I think this motel may not have been on AAA's recommended list, and the place sticks in my mind because my Mom was not happy with it.  However, I believe it was all we could find and was probably the last night before we got back home.   We must have gotten back after Labor Day, because I was a few days late starting school that year.   I remember having trouble finding where I should line up in the playground to go into class.  All the other kids already knew, but I had a few minutes of confusion until a teacher pointed me in the right direction.   But I did have the best story that year for what I did on my summer vacation.