Fifty years ago this coming November, my mother, two brothers and my sister crammed ourselves into a tan 1954 Ford Custom and headed west to California, the land of opportunity. Since this trip has been at the surface of my personal history for the past 50 years, I thought it might be a good idea for all the siblings to reunite somewhere on that famous Americana icon to mark the occasion, so I suggested we meet in Flagstaff, Arizona. That is what we did this past week.
The days were filled with reminiscing, along with the obligatory elderly ailment reports, afternoon naps, sightseeing and food. It is interesting how four people can remember the exact same trip with four very diverse versions. We all agreed the car was filled to its maximum capacity. The floor in front of the back seat was loaded with stuff right up to the height of the back seat. Every cubic inch of the ample trunk was occupied by some necessity of life. In fact, that trunk was the center of a rather momentous event. When we were stopped at the California state line by an agricultural inspector, he wanted to empty everything out of that trunk to make sure we weren’t smuggling in some deadly New York State plant or bug. My mother looked at him and said, “Fine. But you’re going to put it all back in there!” He shut the trunk and told us to go ahead.
We appointed a spouse to take some notes while we tried to recall the dates, times, cities and events that shaped that historic trip. We left Syracuse the Monday after Thanksgiving, drove through Erie, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Missouri, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Flagstaff, and ended up in Redondo Beach. One remembered seeing cowboys in Amarillo, another recalled car trouble there. We laughed at our ignorance concerning tacos (we assumed the word was pronounced tack-o). Our sister was still the object of lighthearted ridicule as we recollected the time she walked out of the restaurant in which we had just eaten with the waitress’s tip money in hand. “Here, you forgot this money on the table.” Of course, nobody is going to let me forget that I, the only child who insisted he didn’t need Dramamine, vomited on Route 66 in New Mexico.
It was a good time. We are not known for staying close to each other, and have had very few reunion-like gatherings. This was a long-overdue opportunity to get reacquainted.
After all the good-byes were said, three cars headed off in different directions. The designated reunion scribe and I headed for Williams, thirty miles west of Flagstaff, to see this town that has attempted to preserve a little more of the historic Route 66 than many other towns. After lunch in a 50’s themed restaurant, we headed for Phoenix and our flight home.
The excitement of this trip was not over yet. At about the I-17 mile marker 322 the hail from a slow-moving thunderstorm began pelting our rental Nissan Cube. We had been in a very bad thunderstorm years before, but we had never seen the inches of accumulation of hail that we saw that day. Truckers were pulled off to the side of the road, so I followed their example. When we started moving again, I was driving on ice instead of pavement. The piles of hail were rubbing the underside of the car. Fortunately, there was no hail damage to the car, and we were able to drive out of the frozen stuff about five miles later.
Overall, it was an enjoyable trip. There were plenty of photo opportunities, fun conversations, the Grand Canyon, a power outage and a hailstorm, but reconnecting with family was the best aspect.
