Decals Optional
By Ron Page
This article is going to be about family summer road trips. I’m guessing some Rotary 29 members included a road trip with your family this summer. I hope you took plenty of pictures and hope you have viewed them on your big-screen TV’s, and that you continue to view them over and over maybe at Thanksgiving or Christmas gatherings. If you aren’t sure how road trips relate to Rotary ideals, I give you a quote from Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Cruising the US and Canada from Key West to Quebec City, from Banff to Yosemite to Carlsbad Caverns in my family’s quest to visit all 48 states, all the national parks, and all the provinces of Canada, we saw much more than just the spectacular scenery. We saw unspectacular people and unspectacular places that looked different and sounded different, but, as Will Rogers might have said, “We liked them all”.
Born in 1940, my earliest remembrances of life on the farm in northern Illinois include saving everything from gum wrappers to milkweed pods for recycling into military products. Most of our manufacturing was dedicated to the World War II effort. If you wanted new farm machinery or a new car, you would have to join the list of thousands of other applicants and wait your turn, which likely did not come up until well after the war, which ended in 1945. Have you ever seen a 1943 Ford or a 1944 Chevy? (You haven’t)
Our 1937 Plymouth was looking like it had participated in the war. Dad had overhauled the motor, but was unable to improve the appearance of the rear bumper that was held up by a chain after he tried using the car to pull a wagon-load of soybeans; and the passenger-side front fender and headlight were in bad shape from a before-dawn collision in fog while coming home from the defense plant where Dad worked nights. (It was a huge bomb factory and depot discreetly built on farmland far from any city – very secret, very secure.)
The proceeds from our grain and livestock sales simply accumulated for several years as there was nothing available to spend them on. I heard my parents speak of being on several wait lists as our factories were making the change from military to civilian production.
Then came 1947 and it was “our turn”. Dad bought two new tractors, a new Dodge grain truck, an assortment of machinery, and . . . . . . . . a new shiny maroon Dodge sedan.
Now, with all mom and dad experienced from the depression straight into the war years, what might they do with a brand-new car?? What else but a family road trip???????? Dad had heard about mountains that remain snow-capped all summer long, and geysers that shoot water and steam high into the air, and huge caves, and cowboys, and the great oceans with big waves.
Thus began our quest to see it all. Late summer was calm on our farm, crops needed no attention, and our livestock had self-feeders and self-waterers. Our neighbor from just across the road would check in on our animals, including our dog during our two-to-three-week absence each summer.
Late summer was hot, even up north, and automobile air conditioning was still on the drawing board, although when driving through Arizona, we did see some funny objects that looked like vacuum cleaners clamped to the passenger-side window. Our understanding was that driving around in Arizona with one of these was very similar to driving around Arizona without one.
The back seat of our unairconditioned 1947 Dodge was just fine with my eleven year-old sister, Joyce, and me, age seven at the time. It was great fun putting our hands out the window and “flying” them against the wind – or shivering when driving in the mountains. Of course, we begged to stop at every “free zoo” or “world’s largest gopher” or “reptile gardens”. And dad had to get a souvenir decal for our car window from our primary targets, including national parks. Each afternoon, upon arriving at our cabin (as with automobile A/C, motels were just on the cusp of being invented), I would watch my dad very carefully apply the decal to our rear window, careful not to obscure our view, as watching and waving at cars behind us was an important aspect of our road-tripping.
Bumper signs were also a big thing. When returning to our vehicle after visiting, for example, Wall Drug Store, we would find a big cardboard sign tied with twine to our bumper. When the rear bumper got full, such tourist stops started filling the front bumper.
Mom and dad were always on the alert for things that warranted our attention. Only two or three days into our 1947 trip, we saw our first sunflower, our first corral, houses that had no second floor, great herds of antelope in the wild, men in cowboy hats, and people on horseback. We went on to see the snow-capped mountains, geysers, and wild animals dad had wondered about.
The four of us, together if the car for more than two weeks every year was a great experience. When we weren’t spotting things we had never seen before, we got to hear stories from mom and dad’s past, or we played games involving things like finding billboards containing certain words. And at every stop we met people. We met other tourists from other states, and we met “locals”.
We made it to all 48 states and every state capitol by the time I was a teenager (Hawaii and Alaska had yet to become states), and we made it to all of Canada except the Maritime Provinces, which would have required island-hopping that did not fit our schedule. As to national parks, we missed only two or three. As with Canada, we had no idea a national park could be on an island. We went from beyond naïve to not-so-naïve. We saw the beauty of nature and the scars we have put on it. We learned about regional food and regional culture. We gained an appreciation for the size and beauty of our country.
Yes, Niagara Falls was spectacular. Yes, the east exit out of Yosemite National Park over Tioga Pass with two-way traffic on a one-way gravel road with no guard rails was horrifying. Yes, eating New Orleans food at the Court of Two Sisters more than 70 years ago was a treat. And I still have a vivid recollection of the mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs. The mountain hikes, bobbing like a cork in the Great Salt Lake, struggling to communicate with folks in French Canada, a kind man in Canada who helped me catch a really big northern pike, and a kind woman in Mississippi who showed us how to set crab pots using chicken nets as bait (a lot easier than fishing) – those were wonderful experiences for a country boy.
To my friends in Rotary 29: If you didn’t have the opportunity to get your family in the SUV for a journey, then plan one for next year. Don’t spend all your time on Interstates; get out on the side roads and see some small towns, stop at historical markers, take in a local festival, try the local food, meet people, understand their viewpoints.
Today, 70 years after making those trips, I treasure the memories or mom, dad, Joyce, and me staying those big national park lodges where we were entertained by college kids who cleaned rooms by day and performed in stage shows for the tourists a by night. And today, I can attest to the wisdom of Mark Twain’s view that travel can cure narrow-mindedness.
Oh, and one tip, be sure to scrape your decals off the rear window after returning home as you will need the space for next year.
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