It was supposed to be a two week family vacation to Disney Land, L.A., but it proved to be a communion of souls locked together in a car. Our family of five had meals together, but we never played together. Carl’s father was ten years older than Olive, Carl’s mother, and he never took his son to Little League Baseball or on a fishing trip or a picnic. Olive took Carl to his baseball games and took the whole five members of the team to the game against the city boy.
Carl always played golf on Saturday so when we decided to go on a trip together for fourteen whole days, it threw us together as we had never been before.
On a sunny June Saturday morning in 1955 my family, crowded together in an air conditioned Buick, exits the busy streets of Houston, Texas, starting a two week vacation to Disney Land. My husband, Carl, 46, driving, is usually on the golf course on Saturday. Next to him, Elaine, 20, spends Saturday with her Rice University friends. In the back of the car, Dale, ten, is not used to having his father on Saturday. He is usually building boats in the backyard. I am sitting with Dale on one side and Carol, fourteen, on the other. I am reading aloud Sherlock Holmes for entertainment. Carol says, “I cannot keep up with the complicated plot of Sherlock Holmes so I am reading “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe.
Upon opening a window for a breath of fresh air, Carl lets in a bee, which stings him. Carl cries out. He is terribly allergic to bee stings. Immediately the family responds. Carl, “Here is a cigarette someone has left in the ashtray. Dale, reach in your snack pack and get some liquid, put it on this tobacco on a bandaid and hurry.” Dale is glad to be of use. Carl sighs with relief. We settle back down to reading.
Going north we pass some Texas towns which look poor and dilapidated and then others where oil brought wealth and progress.
SAN ANGELO, TEXAS
Tired, hot, thirsty, we arrive at the H. L. Stone’s Ranch. There are no trees to give shade in the fierce glare, just land, land, and cattle. Hugh Lamar Stone, Jr., Carl’s assistant at the Humble Co., had invited us to visit his parents’ ranch. The elderly couple shake our hands warmly and bring us inside for a cool welcome rest. A black man comes with ice cold lemonade in cutglass glasses. Mrs. Stone wears a soft lavender voile dress with a black velvet ribbon around her neck holding a gold locket. They seem so happy to meet Carl under whose tutelage their only son works in Houston. Everything speaks of oil and wealth, but old fashioned–the heavy white drapes, the mahogany furniture, all the lovelyknick knacks, spoke of a time long ago. I wonder if I will be old like they are and hold a cane to walk with.
The children go wild when Mrs. Stone invites them to take a swim in the tank. “Suits on,” hollers Elaine. We carry the bathing suits separately. The bedroom where they undress speaks of another time with elaborate furniture, and parties, and curtains.
The tank is different from a swimming pool. It’s sides reach ten or twelve feet. Carol, while swimming, says, “Come look, Dale, there’s a frog swimming in here.”
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
Our eyes are popping out, our mouths are hanging open as we drive through the cut out trunk of a huge Sequoia tree. We breath the pungent piney smell of the trees and take in the cool fresh mountain air, and go closer to the water falls and feel the cool spray- on our arms. Dale has a camera and binoculars, and every time we get back in the car from taking pictures, Carl asks Dale, “Do you have your camera, your binoculars, and your head!” He is always joking like that. This time Dale is taking a picture of the Sequoia Water Falls and he puts the binoculars down on a rock and takes the picture of the falls. We do not know what becomes of the binoculars until later, at home, we see Dale’s picture of the falls and there are the binoculars on the rock nearby.
That night we sleep in a cottage and watch deer come up and sneak around the garbage cans. We are afraid we will see big, black bears. The next day we decide to have a picnic–a thing my family never has. (I am used to picnics in my family, but Carl, being the only child in his family, never had picnics). My son thinks this is a grand idea for all of us to sit at a picnic table and eat things we buy at the small make-do meat market. We buy French bread and cold meat and potato chips. I ask the clerk, “Which is the best meat?” In a worldly tone, he says, “All meat tastes the same covered in mustard!”
That day the park people announce “There will be a campfire tonight.” All are invited. Suddenly Carol comes and says, “You see that cute boy over there. He invited me to go with him to the campfire tonight. Can I? Shall I say yes?” Carl and I get real excited. We don’t know what to say. Who is this cute boy? Will they stay nearby? We finally say, “Yes, but don’t go off anywhere.”
The campfire has a jolly crowd. We can see Carol sitting with the cute boy. Carl and I heave a great sigh of relief. All’s well. The next night, our last, as we walk along the counter choosing our food at the cafeteria-style dining room, Dale disappointedly says, “Shoot, I don’t see any hamburgers or french fries or chocolate malts (Dale’s favorite foods). Elaine speaks up, “This is not a soda fountain, Brownie (her nickname for him). “Get some spaghetti. You like that.”
We sit down to an empty table. Carol takes out her mouth retainer (that she wears after having her braces removed) and wraps it in a paper napkin and lays it beside her plate. Finally we finish and walk out into the cool starry night to our cottage. Carol screams, “I forgot my retainer.”
Carl, daddy-like, thinking we can go back and retrieve the expensive retainer, leads us back to the dining room. We look in: all the tables have been cleared and are shining in the semi-darkness. Carl says, “Well, we’ll just have to go through the garbage cans and find it.” He leads us to the back; we can tell we are there by the acrid smell. We open a door and there before our eyes in a vast room are what looks like 5,000 garbage cans. (Trash has to be kept in a sealed room because of the bears). We shake our heads and start back to our cottage. “Impossible,” Daddy says. The next day we leave the bears, the cottage, and the picnic table and speed on our way.
LAS VEGAS
When it begins to rain, I get in the drivers’ seat. I know Carl hates to drive in rain. I am not afraid of rain like I am of high mountains, but the shower turns into a storm. I pull up to a side road and stop. We start telling jokes to calm everyone’s feelings. Dale reaches down in the car to fetch his snack pack. He passes around the last of the peanuts. The car becomes enclosed by an invisible wall of water, filled with the warm breath of five persons—the smell of peanuts.
Later when it stops raining, I pull up to a motel in Las Vegas, the intense heat all cooled away, the fresh clean smell of wet streets. Carl says, “I’ve got a terrible headache. I’m going to bed. You all go without me. Get some supper. Bring me a sandwich and cold drink.”
Although we show him sympathy, we get out of his way; we know he wants to be left alone with his pain. After freshening up we slide back into our car places and roll down the wet pavement. I am leery about my position as caretaker. I know we have to get supper. I draw my resources together, ask the motel man how to go for a meal.
“The closest place is the Casino.”
I get out and park. The three young people follow. I feel insecure without Carl. We go in a door. A lot of people pour over handles, pulling them, dropping in coins, picking up spit-out coins. We walk in slowly. A big burly policeman in all his scary importance comes up to me. “Madam, you have children. It’s against the law to be in here. You must get out of here!” Quaking in my boots, I ask, “Which way to the dining room?” We slither out as if we have done something awful. I have to keep pushing myself to go on. Get food for the children. They’re hungry. Get sandwich and drink for Carl.
We find the food place. We eat. We get things for Carl. There is something important I have to do: take the girls to a famous night club. We will never be here again. It is my responsibility.
We get back to the motel and go to our rooms quietly. Carl’s room is closed. We always have two double rooms, with a cot in one of them for Dale.
“Which night club do you want to go to?” I ask. Elaine answers, “The Sands.”
“Carol, you wear your blue suit; that makes you look older than fourteen. Here, put on these earrings. That’ll help. Put on makeup. Act like you are eighteen years old.” While the girls dress up, Dale sneaks into his bed. He is glad not to go out. I dress up as best I can, not disturbing Carl. The three of us drive down the wet pavement, looking up at the gaudy lighted signs. Here we are at the place everyone talks about. We see the huge lighted “SANDS.” I park, push myself to go on. We are ushered to a table. I know we have to order drinks. The only thing I can think of is “Order Cokes.” I do. We watch. It is “The Andrew Sisters.” Everything is gaudy, loud, smells of liquor, people clapping, loud jazzy music. The jokes go over my head. People clap and guffaw at things that do not impress me much. This is supposed to be something wonderful. I stay as long as the girls seem interested, but soon I am ready to leave the smoky, noisy, dancing and singing place. We stay long enough for the girls to get a taste of a nightclub.
The next morning as Carl drives away from all the signs feeling better, Carol says, “I’m glad we saw Las Vegas, but I never want to come back here again.”
When we get to Carmel we see the ocean, the clean refreshing, billowing waves. Dale finds a candy store that has fudge filled with nuts and marshmallows. Carl suggests we go to a movie. This is a first. We never go to movies as a family. The children go to movies they like and we go on Saturday night while they stay with Elaine. She is our baby sitter if she doesn’t have a date, and Carol has a host of friends who go in for slumber parties. We have grand family fun at the movies. It is a Bob Hope film, “Sorrowful Jones,” that makes us laugh and laugh, another band that binds us closer together.
FOOD
Our stops for meals become a joke when Elaine, Carol, and Dale begin to call all cafes we go to, “Ptomaine Tommy’s Stomach Pump Cafe.” It’s true we go to cheap cafes because we are still smarting from the Depression and World War II. Dale will ask his Daddy, “How much can I spend?” Answer comes, “Fifty cents.” That pays for a hamburger, french fries and a chocolate malt which pleases Dale completely.
Then we go to a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Dale remembers to this day all the exotic things. He says even now 44 years later, “I can still smell and taste Pressed Duck. I had a whole tea pot of green tea, and I drank five or six cups.” He remembers the fabulous “Don, the Beachcomber Restaurant” and at a cocktail party given us by some of Carl’s Humble Oil friends, Dale remembers the smoked salmon. The black man at this home barbecue says of Dale, “That boy can sure eat!”
BORGER, TEXAS
On our way home we settle back into our car personalities. Elaine keeps trying to teach Dale phonics to no avail. Coming down the twisting, turning, mountain roads Carl turns the driving over to Elaine. It makes me dizzy to read then. When we get to the Texas Panhandle we plan to stop at a friends home in Borger, Texas.
As we approach the small city we can’t believe our eyes. Black soot sifts through the air. It lands on the ground. It covers everything. (Now, I know what made it. After the discovery of oil in 1925 Borger grew as the industrial center of a vast natural gas and oil field). We drive through unbelievable areas of refineries — carbon black plants, synthetic rubber factories – ink factories. So when we enter the home of our friends out of the 100 degree heat, the chemical smell, the black soot raining down, we enter into a cool room smelling fresh with crisp white curtains closing out the sight of black and are handed the most welcomed green crystal glass of ice water.
The main thing I remember about the final drive home is the difference between the Texas towns that have oil and those that do not. As we drive into our driveway, the children begin to sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow..” about their father.
(E. P. We learned a lot about the world, but more than that we learned how to get along with each other in the family and play together.)