The Adventure Begins
My first big trip was transporting our family across the country to California in 1971. It was a summer vacation that was timed (dictated) by the Caterpillar vacation two-week plant closure in July. In those days everyone left Peoria in one massive exodus! You could recognize this phenomenon wherever you traveled in the country during those two weeks; Caterpillar Caps were on display everywhere!
Our family vacation trips had been limited to the Ozarks or Table Rock Lake in Missouri or the Wisconsin Dells back in the 60’s before this adventure. Our most ambitious trip prior to this had been to the Northwoods of Minnesota the summer before with the Easons and Brietbachs – old family friends from Peoria during that “kids growing up together” era. But this would be our first two-week adventure away from home! Our destination was my Uncle Edwards home in Pasadena California, a suburb of LA, somewhere near the Rose Bowl. That would be our base of operations from which we would travel to and sightsee everything in southern California!
I had purchased a new Oldsmobile Delta 88 Sedan in 1970. It was a massive 4-door green vehicle with a very large engine compartment and an average size trunk. No air conditioning, but power windows and power steering… features that were options you paid extra for in those days. The challenge before the trip began was to fit everything into the trunk, but this was an engineering skills exercise in arranging all the suitcases and bags and boxes that I solved. Off we went!
The Green Oldsmobile
We had gotten across Missouri and into Oklahoma on a hot Saturday afternoon when the first tire blew! That was not uncommon in that stage of the evolution of tires, but the timing was bad. The heat from the pavement combined with the weight from the car’s heavy front end caused the tire to suddenly expire with only a moment of warning when the plies began to loosen, and a rapid thud-thud-thud was clearly heard and felt. That meant changing to the spare tire along the side of the road. But that meant taking almost everything out of the trunk to get to the spare! So after all my careful placing all the pieces of the luggage puzzle together – they all came apart. But we were soon back on the road, heading past Oklahoma City on good old route 66. That’s when the second tire blew! I had no choice but to drive a few miles slowly to the outskirts of Oklahoma City where I purchased a tire at a Sears store and after going through the “empty the trunk” routine once again called it a day. I’m sure this could have been the inspiration for the Chevy Chase movie called National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Tire Trouble on Route 66
I can no longer construct the specifics of our travel except for the side trip we made to the Grand Canyon as we passed Flagstaff AZ. Proof of that event is the photo (attached) of Paul sitting beside Mom’s purse on a low wall with nothing behind him except the Grand Canyon. Paul – 3 ½ years old - and Mom’s purse, probably the same age – were rescued from that picturesque site and on we went to Pasadena.
The Grand Canyon
Disneyland, the Sequoia National Park, and the Hurst Castle (and Uncle Edward’s) were sub-stories that are somewhere in the cobwebs of my memory now. The only additional contribution the car made after the tire’s episode was to overheat as we climbed up to the Sequoia National Park. I had to run the heater to serve as a heat exchanger to dissipate some of the heat from the radiator – that got us there.
California and Home Again
We made it home without any major mishaps but that trip set the standard for other family trips we made to Washington DC and to the Rockies… subjects for future stories perhaps.
