Probably most every kid raised in the 50's loved Walt Disney. It was mandatory viewing each Sunday night, just before the parents switched channels to Ed Sullivan. And after it opened mid-decade, Disney's TV kids all wanted to go to Disneyland. The summer of 1959 was when I made it!
The success of Road Trip 1 the previous summer must have been the catalyst. I got my map collection out and helped my father plan the route as my year in second grade came to a close. The big day finally came, and we set off from Orlando headed west, in the early morning darkness again, of course.
Daylight came shortly before the breakfast stop in a little west central Florida town called Dunnellon. In the restaurant, almost 100 miles from home, I was shocked to see one of my second-grade classmates at a nearby table. After breakfast, it was on toward Tallahassee, a place where I would spend almost 20 years several decades later. Though the approach to the Capitol building is one of the most memorable panoramas in contemporary Florida, I have no recollection of it, probably because without the phallic tower behind it that came almost 20 years later, Florida's seat of government in 1959 looked little different from the many similar county courthouses we undoubtedly saw on the journey.
The places remembered specifically on this trip, and the route taken, are more vivid than the previous year's trip. We ate lunch at a picnic area between Tallahassee and Quincy on US 90. I was fascinated by the old style water pump at the rest stop. And 24 years later, I would pass the abandoned rest stop location almost every day as I commuted from home in Tallahassee to work in Quincy, which probably contributes to the memory.
We would have followed US 90 west in those pre-Interstate days, including paralleling the L&N rail line that I would come to know intimately long off in the future. The Ultimate Railfan Experience I know that we bypassed Pensacola and spent the first night out somewhere between Mobile and New Orleans.
As I learned later, New Orleans was a specially romantic place in my parents' earlier lives. But the morning we arrived was rainy and windy. I think it was likely a minor tropical storm. Certainly, I recall my first visit to the Cafe du Monde that morning...we were about the only customers in the place. Then it was off along Airline Highway to Baton Rouge, across the Mississppi and Atchafalaya Rivers, and the second night out in a motel on the west side of Houston, along what is now the Katy Freeway.
I probably grew to love Disney from the Davy Crockett series...I could sing the whole title ballad at age 3. So the next day's midday stop at the Alamo in San Antonio must have been a big thrill, though I seem to recall a bit of a letdown to find the Alamo surrounded by downtown instead of the scrub prairie I remembered from the TV.
My first, but not last, trip through the Texas hill country...don't remember the scenery from that trip but loved it later. Third night out was in San Angelo.
The fourth day on the road marked what I know now to be one of the shortest crossings of the Great Plans possible in North America. There were the fascinating oil wells with their up-and-down, in-and-out motion all across west Texas. There were the magnificent Carlsbad Caverns, far dwarfing anything seen at Luray the previous summer. And those marvelous mountains on the drive from Carlsbad to El Paso.
The next morning was spent mostly in Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande, my second foreign country in two years and my only time in Mexico. It was a tourist bonanza instead of a murder capital in those pre-drug war days. I remember a souvenir or two and a visit to a bull ring, though I don't think there was much happening beyond perhaps a demonstration for the gringo visitors.
Now the memory gets hazy for the fifth day out, crossing the Continental Divide and going through Tucson, where we likely stayed the night, though this is the first day of the trip where I'm not really clear on where the overnight stop was. I do remember the next day, climbing the last range of hills between Yuma and San Diego on a winding two-lane road and spotting a car with the same Florida county license plate as ours. Back then the plates always began with a county number, based on population from the 1940 census, I believe. So when we came up on a car with the Florida 7 plate for Orlando's Orange County, I recall waving at the occupants as we passed them (my father sometimes had a heavy foot on the pedal, I guess).
Strange that we did not stop in San Diego, despite the world-famous zoo, but that evening, just a few miles short of Disneyland, we stopped at the Mission of San Juan Capistrano and saw some birds, maybe even some of them swallows. I was more interested in the mission and the gardens, as I recall. Or maybe I was just excited for the adventure to come the next day. That night was spent somewhere near Disneyland.
Unlike Clark Griswold's family, the holy grail was not closed the next day. I don't remember the train ride around the park, which I must have loved...Disney was a rail buff much as I would grow up to become. The memory I do have of my day at the park was exploring Tom Sawyer's Island and going on some Fantasyland rides. And where are the pictures, you ask? My father did slide photography, and I haven't seen any of those slides in probably about 50 years. Not sure whatever happened to them, though I don't miss the mostly boring set-up of the slide projector and screen, to say nothing of all those dull pictures without me in them!
Next day was mostly spent at Knott's Berry Farm, which was back then mostly a real berry farm with a part set aside to simulate an Old West town, complete with can-can dancers in the saloon and gunfights in the street. I do remember the train ride at Knott's mainly for the robbery that was staged on the ride. And I seem to recall that I enjoyed my time at Knott's even more than Disneyland!
After the parents visited with some old friends along the Orange County coast, and my first view of the Pacific Ocean, though not one I remember, we relocated to a hotel in the center of Hollywood. The next couple of days were filled with visits to Hollywood and Vine, Graumann's, sitting in the audience for a TV show (probably local...no clue what it was), and a journey up the canyons from Malibu to visit another old parental friend. I was fascinated by the mini-amusement park he built on the isolated property, apparently for himself and his own kids and grandkids. I remember the mountains and the coast highway, probably around Malibu...certainly the crazy chase scene at the end of Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World looked very familiar. Oh, and here's a specific memory visible from our Hollywood hotel room:
I think we were up even earlier than usual on departure day...the better to get across the Mojave Desert ahead of the midday sun. Santa Clarita to the Antelope Valley to Victorville and Barstow was the route, undoubtedly along the original Route 66 to Barstow. I remember being very unhappy about driving past the Calico Ghost Town outside Barstow without stopping and probably stewed in the back seat the rest of the way to Las Vegas. And what did we do there? We ate lunch somewhere downtown, and my mother put a few coins in a slot machine...then off to Hoover Dam. Since he was a civil engineer, it's not surprising to me now that the huge dam was a must-see for my father.
It must have been late in the day, and since the next day was spent at the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert, I'm guessing we must have spent that night in Kingman, Arizona, little knowing I would spend another night there 21 years later! The canyon was disappointing, as the clouds and off-and-on rain conspired to hide the colors that my parents had looked forward to seeing. Past Winslow, we detoured to the nearby Petrified Forest monument, where I recall being fascinated by the hard-as-rock fossilized flora. That night in Gallup, New Mexico, I remember being fascinated and probably a little scared of all the native Americans we saw on the downtown streets. Back then, for 50's kids raised in front of the TV westerns, the only good In'jun was a dead In'jun!
Other than our overnight stops in what was a rushed trip across Texas and southern Arkansas, there's not much to remember or say about anything. Likely all three of us were tired and ready to be home in Florida already. I recall a brief stop in Lake Village on the west side of the big river, where my father's family had lived for a brief time, which I learned later was about 1910. We also probably drove through my father's Mississippi delta hometown, but from there back to Orlando, I don't have the slightest clue about the route, much less anything that happened along the way.
So began my Disneyland summer, which ended a couple of months later back in the third grade. I thought it was just the second of many more family road trips. There were precious few more to come, but my love for traveling was firmly implanted and remains to this day, when my traveling is limited mostly to Google Maps, StreetView, and following the adventures of my wandering Facebook friends in vicarious mode.
Coming next, I'll jump ahead three years, to a business trip/family vacation memorable mainly for seeing my first in-person major league baseball game in an old stadium in St. Louis and giving me the first glimpses of a place that would be such an important part of the formative teenage years still to come.
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