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Sunshine
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Listening to every heart

0 posted 2004-09-05 10:06 PM



Summer, 1970

The folks’ station wagon, don’t even ask me the make, was limousine long, white, with pink trim.  That’s right.  Pink.  Why car manufacturers would choose pink as a trim, pre-Mary-K, I never knew, except colors were very odd back in the 60’s.  And this was a very early 60’s wagon, I remember…

But it was reliable, even without air conditioning, which, back then in California, one really didn’t need, because you either had cool fog to deal with most mornings, and in our valley, the temperature really never rose much over 75-80 degrees.  In fact, 85 degrees was considered “high”.  But it was the vehicle of choice for a family of six, holding the requisite bags of groceries every weekend; enough kids to make a group to head off to Camp Fire Meetings; or a battery of Boy Scouts; it was pre-SUV, with no bells and whistles, just plenty of room.

In 1970, with me about to be the first one to leave hearth and home for my own tour of life via marriage, mom and dad decided to have “the last family vacation.”  What a trip that was.

And the station wagon was going to be the vehicle upon which to create memories.  Because it was early June that we would leave, we would go south first, on our way to see family in South Dakota.  We would come back via a northern route, as the two-week trip would edge its way into summer warmth.  Being further north would mean cooler climes.

I wasn’t too enthused over this trip, other than to create memories.  I was leaving my fiancé behind, and I suspected that my parents had reasons for this trip other than just creating family memories, although I wasn’t as cognizant of that, then.  After all, hadn’t I begged them to let me bring him along?  They were so mean in saying “no, not this trip.”  Retrospection is valuable…even if it is hindsight.

Mom sent off postcards to family and friends, saying, “Put the bean pot on, we should be there between X and XX” for time and dates were left flexible, in case the car broke down, in case we decided to spend an extra hour or day or moment here, or there, or in case, of well, just anything!

And anything happened.  I don’t remember the exact routes we had taken, but I do remember, that we had visited Carlsbad Caverns.  I remember Mom’s wrong turn, and the beauty of a dappled valley and deer so close to us, we could see the fawn’s spots.  It seemed after that we drove pretty much straight up to South Dakota, in a hurry to see family.  Deadwood City’s dusty streets may still carry a footprint somewhere; the Black Hills were so deeply, darkly green and bright sunlight did indeed make them appear black.  Pierre was wonderful and Rapid City held cousins and hugs.  

We went as far east as I had ever been up to that point when arriving in Harold, S.D., and my uncle and aunt had not changed from when I knew them as a young girl.  And oh, could my aunt make the table groan with good eats.  I left my brother and sister behind one morning to go with my father on a “surprise ride” and having no clue what that meant, left my hair up in curlers, for more family was coming by that night for a huge feast.  So when we got to a cousin’s farm, my “surprise ride” was on the back of a beautiful horse, with the only admonition from my cousin, “to let the horse go where he would,” as he was well trained on where the snake and gopher holes were.

I had never felt so much freedom as being alone, on that horse, my face in the wind, and the energy of the horse beneath me.  I have never forgotten that moment.

On the return to my uncle’s home, my brother started to speak up, but a quick shoosh from my mother and her directions to him to go help my father quickly deterred an otherwise upsetting bit of news.  Mother than immediately set me off to my aunt’s kitchen to help with supper preparations.  [That was something else I learned in the Midwest – dinner was at noon, supper was in the evening.]

So some “tragic” news that wasn’t so tragic didn’t hit my ears until the trip was almost up.  I was left to tend to family memories, making good the time we were together in Wall Drug, in the hills of Yellowstone standing in snow, in June, and when our car decided to take it’s own vacation in Salt Lake City, by breaking down late in the day on a Saturday afternoon.  Shops were closing up, and we were pretty sure nothing would be open on Sunday…not in Salt Lake City.

But good people walk the earth, and because we were “stranded”, the next door motel to the car shop gave us a room for the night at half-price, and we kids “could swim as much” as we wished!  The motel owner, a wonderful woman, made sure that there were plenty of available snacks in the form of cookies and fruit to tide us over between meals.  I remember walking around the grounds of the Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square.  Soon enough, the car was ready to continue us on our way, and it dawns on me, I need to go back someday and thank that woman who ran the motel.

Our final visit was with a girlfriend of my mother’s in Winnemucca, Nevada.  That opened not only my eyes, but the eyes of my mother, when her friend, who was raised a strict Italian Catholic, calmly drove us on a small shopping trip to the store for some additional dinner items, through the area, telling us of various sites of interest, and calmly dropping in, “…and this is our Red Light District,” as she passed by a few quiet streets.

I thought Mom was going to lose her teeth.

On the last leg of the journey, Mom took me aside and told me that my fiancé had been in a small “car accident” a few days ago, but she had checked, and he had suffered no more than a few bumps and bruises, but the car was totaled.  Apparently he had decided to work double shifts and then went to a party with some military friends, had a little too much to drink, insisted on driving back to the base, fell asleep, and rolled the car.  Why I didn’t heed the “signs” back then, I will never know.

So my thoughts coming back down I-5 towards home were fully centered on my fiancé, and tears blurred the beauty of the last sunset of our family vacation.  I tend not to think of that last day of the vacation much, because, as I said, hindsight is a wonderful thing.  It allows one to pick and choose one’s memories.  That summer trip meant much to all of us…and we each remembered parts of it in our own, special way.

The pink station wagon could tell even more stories...

[This message has been edited by Sunshine (09-05-2004 10:57 PM).]

© Copyright 2004 Karilea Rilling Jungel - All Rights Reserved
Larry C
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Member Patricius
since 2001-09-10
Posts 10286
United States
1 posted 2004-09-05 10:36 PM


Karilea,
We've all missed big clues. But then again it does not diminish the memories. Thanks for sharing from your past. Hope to hear some more.

If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.

miscellanea
Member Elite
since 2004-06-24
Posts 4060
OH
2 posted 2004-09-06 04:03 PM


Sunshine,
  I love the description in this, especially about the station wagon and your aunt who could make the table groan with her spread of food!  You left me hanging about your financ; I wonder what happened upon arriving back home. This has been a pleasure to read.
          miscellanea

Skyfire
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since 2000-12-27
Posts 3381
Riding
3 posted 2004-09-11 03:42 AM


If we could see all the signs then we wouldn't get near as much satisfaction from working through our mistakes and learning from them.

And aren't horses wonderful?

and then He created the horse...

wllz.on.ice
Junior Member
since 2004-09-07
Posts 35
the united kingdom.
4 posted 2004-09-13 11:09 AM


makes me want to goto america

so jealous

Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354
Listening to every heart
5 posted 2007-08-03 09:08 PM


Thank you all. I thought I had written a poem about that old station wagon, and here I find that it was prose. So be it.

Perhaps a new story will surface...who knows. But I found myself think of it just today...

and the trips, and times, laughter, and yes, even a little quiet down back there!

Thank you for bringing me back to your thoughts and responses.  I appreciate them all!


Gemini
Senior Member
since 1999-12-15
Posts 1203
Wisconsin, USA
6 posted 2007-09-16 02:06 PM


Sunshine, thanks for taking me with you on that trip.  Splendid read.  Brings back memories of my own childhood.  When I was nine or ten my father had an old Model A Ford.  On a hot summer night he would take my friends and I out for ice cream.  Those were the best of memories.  No air conditioning, just a warm gentle summer breeze through those old car windows as we puttered along.
Jaime Fradera
Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843
Where no tyranny is tolerable
7 posted 2007-09-22 08:56 PM




Part 1
1970.  A year fraught with insignificance.  A year filled with nothing much, a year in which nothing in particular happened.  So what can I write of this unremarkable and ordinary year?
Well, it wasn't quite an ordinary year; that wasn't exactly the case ...

At the time, my two sisters and I were living illegally in Mexico.  (If questioned by immigration types at the border, we were instructed to say that we were tourists.  Mother ran a boarding house for college students attending the local university, and after Christmas I took the 12-hour bus ride to Texas and the school for the blind in Austin.

  At the school we lived in buildings called "cottages," and I roomed with Ricky Goines in "cottage C."  What I took that spring I can't remember, but it was surely all the stuff ninth-graders have to take.  Unusually in my life at the school, I wasn't anxious or frightened.  That would change later.  But in the spring of 1970 I seemed to have no problems with any of my classes.

My favorite class was home economics, which I think use to be called cooking.  I remember our teacher, a Norwegian lady named Esther Knutsun Thips.  Mrs. Thips loved us; I knew she did.  When Mrs. Thips was in graduate school, she did as her project a book called "Cooking Without Looking."  So being in her class we had the advantage of learning the subject "straight from the horse's mouth." so to speak.  (I pray she never reads this.)  Mrs. Thips taught me how to make coffee in an electric percolator----you know, the ones that have a little basket in the middle in which you put the coffee grounds----if they even make those anymore.  She taught us how to handle food properly with utensils, and she also taught us manners.  It was all about opening doors for girls when out on a date, which also included learning the skills of part playing, chair pulling, cigarette lighting and table picking.  There may not have been room in the curriculum for flat tire changing, but maybe only sighted kids could do that.  I thought that as a guy I was expected to do just about everything, and the later realization I could not, and in a sighted world, might not even be allowed to, would come as a brutal shock.

(Under construction)

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