Road trip '59 .2
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| 56 Chevy camper car in Entiat after the trip |
No interstate, two lanes slow down through every little town along the way. Dad can we stop at the Dairy-Queen? Different kind of travel. It's probably been thirty years since I overtook a slower vehicle on a narrow highway, honked my horn and pulled out to pass, trusting the clear straight road ahead isn't just an illusion.
Our old man got a rush out of passing slower traffic. Pull up close behind a lumbering semi, swerve out into the oncoming lane for a look ahead. Duck back when if you see a car. Summertime all four windows wide open, explosion of sound as the wall of air each car pushes clash together, sound we don't hear these days much, can't say that I miss it.**
Another quick look ahead, clear this time tap the horn, at night flash the lights then peddle to the floor, pull out around. Called it passing gear, two speed slush box Chevy transmission shifted into low instant all four barrels in that big carburetor opened wide. Jump that two eighty three to red line, fifty to eighty by the time we got even with the front of the truck. Don't miss the sound of those truck tiers on hot pavement through open windows either.
Oncoming car rushes out of the distance quicker than dad figured, jerk back into the lane, kids looking up at the truck bumper when the shock wave of the oncoming car tears through our little world. Moment of terror survived creates a little rush of joy. Freedom of the open road ahead, at least until we came up behind the next semi. Annah playing with dolls in the back. Drive like that all day long.
Hella dangerous, but it's all we knew. Lock the doors for safety. Mom and dad in front, old man drove most if not all the time on this trip. Kid country behind, Justin got the right side of the back seat put little brother behind the old man, protect himself. Sometimes dad sent a corrective slap aimed at no one in particular, boarder raid from adult world into kid country, closest head got whapped. One trip Justin and I had to share a single pair of glasses after one of the old man's correctional slaps broke mine. Annah moved more or less freely between middle in the front, middle in the back and the play area, cargo area behind where we had a couple pillows, blanket and assorted toys.
After the interview in Entiat we drove over the hump to dad's older sister's place. Norma and Simon, grandparents to us kids on dad's side. Have no idea what she thought of her kid brother showing up on her door step after not only quitting his job preaching in a nice little church in Great Falls, but quitting the church to join different denomination. If there ever were adult concerns around this issue they did not intrude into kids world.
Last time we saw the house at 4230 Brooklyn, sold to be torn down. Parking lot there to this day. We loved that old place, enough memories to fill several childhoods. Even then, with the prospect of the folks moving into a cool place out on the lake, we felt a sense of loss that the big old house would be gone.
In addition to the job lead in Spokane, and the possibility of the church in Entiat, dad had corresponded with a congregation in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Me and Justin imagining ourselves growing up Kentucky gentlemen. They also drove up to Concrete to preach a demonstration sermon. In those days they still manufactured cement in that town, folks came back saying the whole place seemed covered in a fine white powder.
Job in Entiat came through by the end of the month, start August first. Four weeks to blast across country in the camper car to see the Georgia wing of the family. Mothers folks lived in Savannah. Were we six days on the road, or is that the song? I remember Boise Idaho, photo in front of the state capitol that I can't find. I choked and barfed in the Great Salt Lake water in a pool at the camp ground there, some bratty kid pointed me out to his mother. Midwest lightening storm in Oklahoma that scared bejesus out of us, flashes lighting the night like day, torrential rain. Tornadoes threatening. Next day fourth of July with dad's sister's family in Stillwater. Uncle Millard philosophy prof at the college.
Afternoon before the storm, dad's birthday, Justin and I begged and begged him to stop every time we saw a fireworks stand. Finally he pulled into a lot on the edge of a tiny town so we could get a few packs of Zebra fire crackers. At that time a common name for a whistling ground missile was N - chaser. Some of them might have even had 'amaricana' images on the wrappers.
Thin patch of dry shade under Oklahoma sun, fifteen twenty people jostling around the fireworks stand. Small circle opens in which an ancient black man approaches the counter. Suddenly silence, palpable feeling shot through the crowd that I never experienced before or sense, like a knife through the middle of your guts. A faceless voice had called out anyone got a nigger chaser?
Indian family running the stand, straw cowboy hats; early teenage boy shouted through the silence who said that?
Another half breath of silence and the black man spoke. Nigger isn't a man with black skin, nigger is a man with a black heart. Tension released, business as usual.
Couple bucks got enough packs of Zebras to last all day on the fourth. Never lit off the whole thing, took them out one at a time. Set them up under cans, tossed them through the air, and set up our model planes, tanks, and cars with firecracker bombs inside and lit fire to the plastic. Better duck when the cracker go off, hot flaming plastic in all directions.
Tommy home from the farm where he spent summers in those days, N - chasers hit rocks and came back at us, metal winged buzz bombs whizzed like drones with drunken pilots, twisted wreckage of plastic models littered the back yard like the aftermath of D-Day. Bar-b-q burgers and potato salad. One of the best fourth's ever. Early next morning we headed on into the deep south in the grip of July heat and humidity.
5001 Jasmine Avenue Savannah, Georgia, house granddad helped build when he retired, new when we traveled south in fifty three. Wooded area at the eastern edge of town, just a block in from where the solid ground on which the town is built gives way to open grassy marsh land that extends ten miles out to the sea. Cement block house with screened porches on two sides. Justin and I had our cots in the smaller porch, wisteria vines clinging to came poles outside the screens. Larger porch on the back of the house had the dining table, granddad in the kitchen talking through the open window. Mother and grandmother arguing about the Adelle Davis book popular at the time. Grandmother would hear no contradictions, Adelle Davis knows all, mother vehemently disagreed. Never realized the deep animosity between those two until my mother, in her late nineties began worrying about meeting her mother in the afterlife, finding the old woman just as mean as ever.
Strong sense of history at that place. Ghost of a trench on the property purported to have been dug as a defensive position during the civil war. Granddad used a civil war era sward as a machete in the yard, wide blade iron, made from a wagon wheel rim by some double great grand-relative to carry into battle.
Speaking of ancient history, Coke-a-Cola cost a nickel at a little corner store a couple blocks down the street, Jasmine Avenue still a dirt track in those days. Cold Coke with a bag of Planters salted peanuts poured into the bottle, goes down real nice on a hot Savannah afternoon. Chain gang came by one day trimming grass along the side of the road, half dozen black guys swinging golf club type cutters watched by a bored looking white man, shotgun over his arm. Grandmother called us kids in, me and Justin watched from behind the bushes.
That summer granddad had a part time job preaching Sunday services and Wednesday prayer meeting in a little church in Meldrim, a few miles outside town. Sand and dirt street, cars pulled up on one side, folks standing around visiting under a couple big shade trees out front. Family of girls made an impression on Justin and me, something about the way they moved in summer outfits on a sultry afternoon got our imaginations spinning.
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| mystery of sister's rooms behind row of windows across the road |
Not a fire and brimstone preacher, granddad Eason spun little yarns about common life experiences threaded into the general story of that churches understanding of theology. Conversational style, fifteen or twenty minute talk that always built to an emotional point at which brother Eason broke down in tears. One story about a marriage forbidden by racism during his college years came very close to questioning cherished southern tradition. Blew over my head at the time, but a powerful message that no doubt influenced my own feelings of tolerance as a moral principle.
Tragedy struck that little community while we were there. Train wreck at the local swimming hole on a hot July Sunday. Day or two before the fire we drove out there looking around. Nazerines forbid swimming on Sundays, or we may well have driven out that day for a picnic and swim. If the eye witness quoted isn't the same young fellow in the church we spoke with, the story is the same. Folks in the water and on the beach watching the cloud of gas form, unaware of the danger, others running for their lives. He felt the heat at the back of his neck when the fireball erupted. Would have been a good day to obey church teaching.
Another cross country drive in the camper car and we settled into this house across from the school yard in Entiat. Ten minute walk over to the river where Justin and I went fishing every day with the cane poles granddad cut for us in his back yard. Justin got his limit every time***, mom rolled them in corn meal and fried in Crisco, now that's good eating.
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| Back yard Entiat, elementary school behind. Annah, Smokey the cat and Me. |
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| U district street scene at the time Norm and Simon lived just around the corner from here a block or two |
* Dad's buzz actually happened a couple years after the road trip. Psycherist in Wenatchee put him on tranquilizers, must have been the first time out driving high, after church on a Sunday heading up highway two for lunch at Squirrel Tree. Me and Justin and Annah in the back seat, still in Sunday clothes, dad cursing along talking about how the drug gave him a sense of power and confidence passing slower traffic on the two lane. Doc gave him the drugs, must be safe.
**wing vents
*** I didn't catch a single fish that summer, nor for the next three or four summers fishing, not sure why but in any event that tidbit of trivia didn't fit into the paragraph
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