Vacation Memories : On the Road West During the Depression

In the early years of the Depression it seemed that we were always on the road--my mother, my sister and I.

The same road, too: south from Denver to pick up Route 66 in Albuquerque and straight on west to California. Always Denver to Los Angeles or Los Angeles to Denver.

The trips would usually start, at least from the Denver end, with a fight. My mother and father had what one relative described as a marriage made in purgatory.

They seemed to be able to put up with each other for only a certain amount of time and then, when the leaves would start to fall, my mom would propose a trip to California. Dad would stay behind to run what was left of the family business.

It wasn’t as if we were going to Palm Springs. It was usually to spend a few months living with Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Alvin on a farm in Downey.

On a Shoestring

Of all the treks to California, and I remember five of them, one was different. It was on a shoestring, like the rest, but it was special.

That year my father hadn’t been able to find enough money for the trip, but rather than see the start delayed, he promised to have a money order for $25 waiting for us in Albuquerque. That was good enough for mother. We loaded up the Essex and left.

It was just south of Denver when we first saw the motorcyclers. The man had a pilot’s helmet with goggles, and the girl who rode behind, with her arms around him, had nothing on her head but her long blonde hair.

On the straight stretch between Denver and Colorado Springs they came up to the back of our car, then eased around and passed us.

My sister and I waved. The girl, a thin blonde with uneven teeth, grinned and waved back as the motorcycle thundered by, sped on and quickly disappeared in the distance.

My mother tugged at her driving gloves, talked about how dangerous motorcycles were and ended by commenting on the wind “whipping that poor girl’s hair to death.”

Travel Routine

We all gradually settled into our usual travel routine, developed on the numerous trips we’d taken over this same road before--me with my crayons on top of the luggage in the back seat, my sister trying to read Nancy Drew while my mother hummed “Red Sails in the Sunset” or a few of her other favorites that always wound up sounding like “Red Sails in the Sunset.”

That’s the way it went hour after hour, my sister, my mother and me riding toward a horizon that stayed forever away or toward a shimmering patch on the road that was always ahead and running on as fast as we were.

“Why don’t we ever catch it?” I asked.

“It’s a mirage,” my sister said. “It’s something you see that isn’t there.”

“Well, smarty, if it’s not there how can you see it?”

My sister, who was six years older than I, muttered something and was immediately scolded by mother. I loved it.

There were empty roads and long periods of silence with nothing but the sound of the engine and the wind rushing past the windows.

If we saw a train my sister’s thin shell of sophistication would crumble and we’d be halfway out the car windows waving at the engineers. They’d always wave back and sometimes they’d even pull the handle that worked “The Lonesome Hobo,” which is what we called train whistles then. The real hobos, and there were a lot them in those days, would wave too.

Motorcycle Again

Then the motorcyclers went by again. The girl dug her chin into the man’s shoulder, motioned toward us and they both grinned and waved. They looked as if they meant it, that they were happy to see us.

“They certainly don’t seem to have much in the way of possessions,” my mother said.

“They’ve got each other,” my sister said.

“Well, sometimes, that’s enough.”

If you waited till late to check into a motor court, which was the name for motels in the ‘30s, the rate was much cheaper. So my mother always drove a very long day.

The next morning, just outside of Albuquerque, we saw our first Burma Shave sign. It was a family tradition to read them together.

“When things go wrong / they sometimes will / there’s one thing always / fills the bill / Burma Shave.”

No Money

It set my mother to muttering. The promised money had not been at the Albuquerque Railway Express office.

A few miles past Gallup we crossed into Arizona.

What did the sign on that barn--”Chew Cut Plug”--mean? Why were all the barns red? And that sign that says “Rooster Snuff”. . . what was snuff?

Neither my sister nor my mother knew what “Chew Cut Plug” meant, though years later I found it was an ad for chewing tobacco. My mother’s answer about snuff was thoroughly unacceptable.

A little past noon, at a combination cafe and desert museum, we saw the motorcycle but the couple wasn’t around. We stopped to use “the convenience.” On the way back to the car my mother said something about the girl ruining her pretty hair, took off her blue scarf and tied it to the handlebars.

Later, when they passed us again, the girl was wearing it. If anybody had suggested it, I would have denied it, but I might have been falling a little in love with the girl, riding through the desert on the back of that motorcycle.

“No more rhymes / won’t even try / sooner shave / a face that’s dry / Burma Shave.” They had to explain that one to me.

In addition to flat rabbits to count, there were dips in the road in Arizona--low spots that served to let the water cross in the rainy season, without washing out the highway.

When my mother would see the yellow warning sign, she’d always speed up to 40 or 45 miles an hour till we went through the sudden depression and the car stopped bouncing. That was fast then. It was a time when the expression “going like 60” meant speeding.

Later we went through a rain squall and passed the couple. He was going slow because the roads were slippery. An hour after that the late afternoon sun was shining again, the roads were dry and the couple passed us.

Indians by the side of the road held up their wares, but we didn’t have anything to bargain with. We didn’t even slow down. The disappointment was on both sides.

Traffic Accident

Toward the end of the second day it was dark and my mother had slowed the car to a near stop when I awoke. There were police cars and a tow truck ahead and an ambulance with its red lights flashing, parked next to a pool of light around a crash scene.

My sister made a small moaning sound just before a policeman came up and told my mother to drive on.

“Just an accident, ma’am. I think you’d better get these kids out of here.”

My mother told us to put our heads down in that tone of voice that demanded obedience.

A mile farther on my sister said, “But, mother, there’s no one else. . . .”

“That’s enough!” my mother said. She stopped the car, got out and, taking my sister by the hand, walked a few yards down the road into the darkness. When they came back a few minutes later, my sister was silent and my mother’s eyes were wet. We stopped at the next motor court for the night.

In California

The next day we crossed the border into California. Though that, alone, was usually a cause for rejoicing, my mother hardly mentioned it. I kept looking for the couple on the motorcycle but we didn’t see them. When I asked, my mother just said, “They probably just came to their turning” and that we probably wouldn’t be seeing them anymore.

My sister was a bit teary, but in those days she tended to do that from time to time for no apparent reason anyway, so I didn’t think about it much.

“When life’s problems / leave you in doubt / don’t make a face / stand up and shout / Burma Shave.” I read that one alone. No one helped.

We stopped at one of the All-You-Can-Drink-10-Cents orange juice stands on the way into Los Angeles. That, too, was a tradition. My mother bought orange juice for my sister and me.

Familiar Roar

We were standing in the shade of the orange grove drinking when there was a familiar noise that grew to a roar and my sister screamed and pointed toward the highway.

In the direction of the now-diminishing roar there was a motorcycle with two riders. The blonde girl on the back had something blue around her head. In seconds they were out of sight.

“Mother,” my sister said. “Was it them? Was it them?”

My mother nodded. “I’m sure. I know my own scarf, don’t I?”

She stepped up to the stand and ordered herself an orange juice, too.

For years I remembered that sunny day I stood at an orange juice stand outside of San Bernardino, with my mother and my sister who were both alternately laughing and crying for no apparent reason, drinking more orange juice than I’d ever had in my life and wondering if I’d ever understand women.