In 1960, my parents took Elz and me on what to me was the most memorable vacation-trip I’ve ever made.
Jack-a-Bill-a-Timmooo were left behind in Delaware. Peggy wasn’t born yet.
There had been earlier vacations. Our first was in 1951, not too long after Tommy was born, to New England. It was a camping trip. We still had the ‘39 Chevy, and my father had engineered various tricks to make camping possible in that car.
He had Elz and me sleeping in the trunk, and the parents were on a ping-pong table on the ground under a canvas drop-cloth that had been fashioned into a tent.
Packed up, everything fit atop a roof-rack, tied this way and that.
True to form, the ‘39 Chevy broke down on the first day, in deepest, darkest New York City. I think an ignition-condenser bombed.
This was also the time I committed the mortal sin of stepping in my own poo. We weren’t in a campground, so bathroom activities were performed along the paths.
That trip quickly deteriorated from a camping trip. We were soon “camping” in a closed pavilion, and by Toronto it was a garage. The trip also included a ferry across Lake Champlain, and Niagara Falls. (“We ain’t ridin’ no Maid of the Mist. $1.50; are you crazy? We’re broke!”) —Elz got sick on the ferry.
Another long trip was taken in the summer of 1953, shortly after Tommy died (January 1953).
True to form, on the first day, our car, the ‘41 Chevy, overheated on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh, but it didn’t blow its antifreeze all over.
My father, in a stormy pique of roadside mechanical frustration, removed the thermostat from its housing, and replaced the destroyed gasket with a new one cut from a Ritz-cracker box.
The trip was all the way to Corning, Ark., where Tommy had received leukemia treatments from an experimental clinic. The old ‘41 ran fine after the radiator was flushed.
We stayed at a steamy house where my mother had stayed with Tommy, Elz and I swinging on a front-porch swing, batting mosquitoes in the dark. The house overlooked burned-out rural cotton fields.
We also drove through other places in Tenn. and Kent., visiting people my mother knew (other leukemia parents).
We also stayed in steamy, sweaty Memphis. It was awful. I think Memphis was where my mother snapped her first blurred bridge-railing picture. (“That’s the Mississppi River, I tell ya.” “Looks like a blurred bridge-railing to me.” [Actually the first blurred bridge-railing photo was taken in
1952 — where they crossed the Mississippi at Cairo, Ill. — taking Tommy to the clinic in Corning.])
We also visited Lookout Mountain and Rock City near Chattanooga. Rock City, famous for barn-roof signs all over the southeast, had a nature-trail through the rocks.
There was a rope suspension-bridge, known as “Swinging Bridge,” over a yawning chasm. My sister and I had it bouncing up and down. (“Thomas; make them stop! They’re going to break it.”)
In 1956 my parents flew out to Arizona alone on a TWA Super-Connie. Elz and me and Timmooo were left behind. They got on the Constellation at Philadelphia Airport. Pop-pop and I watched them leave.
Their Connie developed engine-trouble along the way (some say an engine caught fire). The engine had to be shut down, and the plane made an emergency landing in Albuquerque. (Although that may have been where they were headed. I ain’t sure of the location of their forced-landing, or their final destination.)
They visited the Grand Canyon, and took the mule-ride down into the canyon. My mother’s mule would nibble grass along the edge of the path overlooking the yawning abyss. “Thomas!” “Eleanor; pull back on the reins.” “I am; it’s not
moooving.”
This also was the trip where they met Roy and Dale Rogers. Apparently Roy and Dale had a child with Down syndrome (like Timmoooo), Dale had wrote a book about it (“Angel Unaware”), and my parents had struck up a friendship.
Faded reddish prints of my parents with Roy and Dale adorned my parents’ bedroom wall for years.
They also visited the West Coast, and took the original California Zephyr from Oakland to Denver. This was the CZ before Amtrak, back when it traversed Western Pacific, Denver Rio Grande & Western, and Burlington Route.
Amtrak’s CZ covers the original transcontinental railroad, first Central Pacific, then Southern Pacific, and now Union Pacific, through the Sierra Nevada over Donner Pass.
I think the original CZ had five Vista-Domes. Amtrak’s CZ has double-deck “Superliner” cars — no domes at all (although some of the Superliner cars are glass-topped “sightseer” cars).
The original CZ navigated Feather River Canyon on the WP, and Glenwood Canyon on the DRG&W. Amtrak’s CZ doesn’t go this way.
Supposedly the scenery of the old way is more glorious.
They could have rode the CZ all the way to Chicago, but got off at Denver and flew back from there.
What’s most memorable about the 1960 trip is no car-trouble. We were driving the humble Blue Bomb, at that time seven years old, but no overheating, no failed wheel-bearings, no blown ignition.
The first night we stayed in a funky motel in the rural Indiana outback. It rained.
The second day we drove all the way to Chicago, staying at Moody Bible Institute. Supposedly this was my introduction to Moody, but I was put off. It was a very urban setting, and that night we were put up in a brick dorm-tenement much like the dingy Sunday-school classrooms at the old Immanual.
My father was from Camden, but I was from the ‘burbs. The idea of my attending Moody was frightening. Plus I wanted a full, four-year college (Moody wasn’t, at that time).
The next day, after being shown around Moody and totally terrified, we drove out the infamous Eisenhower Expressway to the sleepy suburb of Wheaton, Ill., just west of Chicago.
We stayed at the house of some Moody classmate of my father, picnicking out in the back yard, until sent inside by a tornado warning. Nothing happened; just a thunderstorm. The wind didn’t even kick up.
Wheaton was the location of Wheaton College; a college I planned to apply to. We looked it over — ho-hum — I was sure they’d never accept me. Wheaton was the premier Christian college, and had extremely high acceptance standards (Houghton was #2).
The next day we headed out across the vast, open prairie, staying that night in an old hotel in the center of some small town in Iowa. The town was little-changed from the 1800s; about the only concession to modernity was the streets were paved.
My sister and I were in a second-floor room with strident blue wallpaper and a bare bulb. Bathrooms were down the hall. I think the room had historical significance of some sort; like maybe someone famous had stayed in it.
The next day we attained St. Paul, our destination, where we would catch the Great Northern train up into Canada, to Winnipeg.
In St. Paul was another Moody classmate, and we stayed there. But our goal was St. Paul Union Station, where I saw railroads I had never seen before; particularly Soo Line.
I remember we couldn’t leave the Blue Bomb at the classmate’s, so we parked it in a church parking-lot. My father declared that by so doing the Lord would protect it.
And so began the great railroad journey to Olds, Alberta, starting on the Great Northern overnight train to Winnipeg.
Sleep was impossible. We were in coach seats, and enough north for the sun to set at 10:30 p.m. and come up at 2:30 a.m.
Every once in a while a white-coated steward would trundle by, hawking pillows for 25¢. He had a French-Canadian accent: “Pillow? pillow? pillow?”
Crossing an international border meant customs-inspection. We had to stop at the border and customs-agents walked through the train, querying passengers, and acting official (like bullies).
At Winnipeg we caught a Canadian-Pacific train, the “Dominion,” west to Calgary. The “Dominion” was the #2 train; it wasn’t all Budd ribbed stainless-steel like the “Canadian” (#1).
Lots of people were on the train headed to the Calgary Stampede. Elz and I struck up a conversation with a young cowpoke wannabee in the VistaDome.
There were only one or two domes in the train; the last one being the last car, an observation. (Our dome also had a small luncheonette underneath — the “Skyline Coffee-shop.” We always ate there — it was cheaper. No diner for us.)
At Calgary we caught a train of two Budd RDCs north to Olds (it was the CP line to Edmonton). That thing was booming-and-zooming at 110 mph. The railroad rights-of-way were the only place where the 10-foot-tall prairie-grass remained, so the blunt-nosed RDCs would split it with a huge bow-wave.
The RDCs also had extremely loud airhorns. They needed them approaching unprotected rural grade-crossings at 110 mph. Even five miles out of Olds you could hear them blasting through town.
Our destination was the Bastian farm west of Olds. Mr. Bastian was one of my father’s Moody classmates, but had gone back to farming the Alberta prairie.
The Bastians lived in a very rustic farmhouse. I think it had electricity and a phone (maybe not), but no domestic water or in-house bathrooms. If Mr. Bastian wanted to take a bath, they had to drag a large galvanized tub out into the living-room, and heat water on the stove.
The water came from a well, pumped by Briggs-and-Stratton. The windmill was kaput. They were probably using bottled propane.
Bathrooms were two rickety outhouses along the back fence. #2 was apparently intended to replace #1, which was rather drafty. But #2 was right next to #1. I suppose they had indoor locks, but you knocked first.
Mail-service was to drive into Olds to the post-office — no RFD. Once in a while Elz and me would ride bicycles into Olds with the other kids to pick up the mail — which was interesting, because the trucks sounded like they were right on top of you, even though still miles away.
Bastian had most of his money tied up in farm equipment. Their car was a dusty old black Plymouth four-door from the late ‘40s.
But he had a new Oliver tractor that supposedly cost $4,000 (a fortune at that time). He only farmed about 100 acres, so rented out his services to neighbors on his tractor.
He mainly was raising beef-cattle, grazing them (not a feed lot), and his planting supplied the cattle. He had about 100 head.
My parents eventually took the RDCs back to Calgary to catch the train on to Banff and Lake Louise, leaving Elz and me at the farm. But not without taking two side-trips in that dusty old Plymouth.
One was to a scenic overlook about 100 miles from the Front Range of the Rockies. Colorado is like this. The prairie folds down, and the snow-capped Front Range rises up like a wall.
This was where my father counted the number of flies on the back of a cow with Mr. Bastian’s binoculars. The cow was over a mile away.
We also drove to Three Hills, Alberta; location of Prairie Bible Institute, where Mr. Bastian’s oldest child, a daughter, was matriculated. She was home for the summer. (Their next child was a son, about our age — my sister had the hots for.)
Three Hills was named after the three small hills that mark the town. Ho-hum. Each hill had an elevation of about 15 feet, so they looked more like low mounds. Such things would go unnoticed back east, but out in the vast, flat prairie, they are hills.
While my parents gallivanted in the Rockies, Elz and I got roped into various farm-duties. To kill time I would take Mr. Bastian’s .22 pump-action Winchester and shoot gophers.
Once we got lassoed into castrating male calves. Another time Mr. Bastian decided to harvest his big hay-field. He (and his son) mowed it with his tractor, Elz riding shotgun on the fender. (How she did this without her allergies kicking up I’ll never know.)
Mr. Bastian did not have a baler, so he piled his hay in huge haystacks out in his hay-field. I remember grooming the haystacks in the setting sun — all of us, including mother and daughter(s).
Mr. Bastian would scoop up the hay with a multi-tine forklift he had on the front of his tractor. That lift could go 18 feet in the air, and he used to give rides to Elz and me.
(Once my mother got on, and he promptly lifted her 18 feet in the air. “Put me
down; put me
down.” She was scared stiff.)
After my parents returned we took the RDCs back to Calgary.
We would be riding back east on the “Canadian;” Canadian-Pacific’s premier train.
We got on about 4 p.m., and I got a front seat in the first VistaDome.
It’s an image that has never gone away. The train left, and we proceeded east into a thunderstorm. The huge sky was a uniform slate-gray dropping down to the distant horizon. The vast yellowish-brown prairie was table-flat: no trees or houses at all. (Two colors: gray and yellow-brown.)
Every once in a while the F-units would penetrate a herd of running antelope and send them scurrying — the antelope were the same color as the prairie.
I didn’t leave that dome all night, or the next day either. Prairie-fires lit the night horizon. I’d watch the lineside target-signals change from green to red, as we flashed by in the dark in the rain.
The train conductor, or a brakie, was jawing in the darkened stepwell with young passengers. I don’t think I slept at all (I wasn’t leaving that seat).
CPR parallels Route 1, the main highway across Canada (although in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba it was only two-lane at that time). Our train was cruising at 50-70 mph. Cars would pace us on Route 1, disappear, and then reappear.
We could always tell when we were approaching a town. Trackside grain-elevators would appear on the distant horizon. The train would slow as we approached, and Route 1 diverged.
Then as we left the town, Route 1 would reappear.
One place we went through was “Moose Jaw;” actually quite large; a city. We also went though “Medicine Hat.”
We took the Canadian all the way back to Winnipeg, where I saw stored steam-engines in a yard. We had to kill time before getting back on the Great Northern, so took in “South Pacific.”
That same white-coated French-Canadian steward was hawking pillows on the Great Northern train back to St. Paul.
And the Blue Bomb was still in the church parking-lot, never touched, despite its Delaware tags.
By far, the greatest vacation-trip
I’ve ever made. Images still resonate.
