The Dash Goer Post
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When I was 12, my family and I moved from Huntsville, Alabama, to Irvine, California. Dad drove a Chevy station wagon on U.S. Route 66 until he could veer off to the paved parts of I40, which was being built. We stopped at a Petrified Forest National Park souvenir shop in Arizona, where Dad bought a petrified wood table that probably weighed over 200 pounds. Dad loaded the rock-hard table onto the floor of the camper that was pulled by the station wagon, which served as a traveling family motel. Dad moved the table outside every night so the family could sleep in the camper.
On family trips, the population of our car reached 8: 3 males and 5 females. While Dad drove, Mom rode shotgun with a baby in her arms and said, “Dad will pull this car over if you don’t stop fighting!” I stayed in the back of the station wagon with two sisters, where we could lay flat and not touch the door with our feet. We loved traveling in the back because we could play, sleep, and stay out of range of Dad’s dreaded reach-around pinch that could raise welts. The problem with riding in the back was not hearing the Beatles on the radio.
A highlight of our family trip to California was our overnight stay in Flagstaff, Arizona. We arrived at the campground before dusk, where Dad and I hand-cranked the popup camper, which always looked like a time-lapse flower blossom opening up. In late May, we left 60-degree weather in Alabama only to find 40-degree-and-falling weather in Flagstaff, which included a colder-than-usual wind blowing from the mountains. We had dressed for California, which made the sleeping bags our only heat source, so Mom lit the stove and guarded the flame all night. I fell asleep when the camper warmed up and woke up to Mom making breakfast.
From the Flagstaff freeze to the fry of the Mojave Desert, the family melted west. Before leaving Alabama and moving to California in 1967, we handled the oppressive Southern humidity by spraying each other with the hose in the backyard. Of course, we didn’t have a backyard hose to cool the “dry heat” when we left Needles, California, nor did we have fruits or vegetables. At the California border, police inspected every car for fruits or vegetables, which rotted in dumpsters and caused a foul stench to waft our car. At Barstow, California, we emerged from the Mojave Desert like a pizza from the oven.
Our “Westward Ho!” family trip ended in June 1967 at our new home in California. We were introduced to “Hollywood” glam when my older sister started babysitting for Fess Parker, who was playing Daniel Boone on TV at the time. Some classmates from Tustin Junior High who lived close to my neighborhood started a band and the first song they learned was “Light My Fire.” When Santa Claus brought my babysitting sister a Sears guitar for Christmas, I stole it and taught myself how to play the A minor chord. I learned all of “Light My Fire” before moving to the East Coast in 1969. [Writer: Bill Resimont]
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After Christmas, all I could think about, day and night, was riding my new bike. I was in the seventh grade, living in Irvine, California, with Mom and Dad, an older sister, three younger sisters, and one little baby brother. We all loved to ride our bikes, except for our little brother, who got baby toys under the tree that first Christmas in Southern California. I remember coming downstairs to a room full of new bicycles that must have been hidden in the garage from Thanksgiving until after Christmas Eve. My Dad put the bicycles together himself all through the night without waking us up. [Writer: Bill Resimont]