I had been to Chicago by train, so getting to Chicago was no big deal. We stayed with an older woman who was a supporter of the mission. I think we had stayed with her before. I don't know how long we stayed in Chicago, but it was for a few days, kind of a respite from being smooshed in that Plymouth.
We got back into the Plymouth and headed for St. Louis. Route 66! Chicago to LA on one romantic road. When the TV series Route 66 came on many years later, I would watch and could say, "I've been there, I remember that." Route 66 was everything they say it was and more. I have great memories and horrible memories of that road, but I am glad that I experienced what is really a bygone era.
I don't have too many memories of the route between Chicago and St. Louis. At the time Chicago was as far west as I had been, but when we left St. Louis we were going into the unknown, we were going into the wild west. I had read about the homesteaders leaving St. Louis to stake a claim and begin a new life. So, I was full of anticipation as the man or my Dad headed the car west.
Just the high spots. The road took a 90 degree turn in Oklahoma City right in front of the state's capital. And, yes there were oil wells right there on the capital grounds! Lots of them.
Texas is far from my favorite state. I'll tell you why. Route 66 cuts across the Texas panhandle, and at the time it was truly God forsaken country. We stopped at some small town for some of that bologna and bread, but there was no place to have a picnic lunch. So the adults decided to keep driving west; we certainly could find somewhere to stop. After what seemed like hours there was one tree by the side of the road. As the car slowed to a stop, you could plainly see a curled rattlesnake under that tree. Hours (or so it seemed to a ten year old) later we found another tree, this time with a picnic table and no rattlesnake.
I remember Albuquerque, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona. The Plymouth broke down in one of those towns and we spent a pretty long day there while the car was on a lift.
Dry. Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were all dry. Two things stick out. Since the desert was dry and hot, and since cars in those days could be expected to break down, you hung a canvas bag or two of water from the hood ornament. The bag was not waterproof, so the bag would sweat and as you drove along at 50 or 60, the water cooled and was at least somewhat tolerable for drinking. More importantly, you could top off your radiator when necessary.
Dry. Somewhere along the way in the desert we stopped at a gas station. We were thirsty, so Mom or Dad paid 10 cents for a glass of water for us. The water was nasty, so I could only take about 2/3 of the glass. I threw the rest on the ground. This was before CPR, but the guy who sold us the water almost had a heart attack! I learned something about how precious water can be that day. Maybe that's one of the reasons that I don't drink a lot of the stuff. That's another story.
When we got past the desert we were pretty deep in California. Suddenly there was more of that water stuff (never mind that they got it from Colorado) and it was green again. I remember that the carrots in the trucks were as long as my forearm. I swear!
Remember that I was only 10 years old. I stand by my story.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Driving Down Memory Lane
Got a call from my brothers yesterday.
"What kind of car did you drive across country in?"
"'49 Plymouth (or was it a '47?), black." "Which way?"
"Both."
"Chevy, '50 Chevy (or was it a '52?), green."
"Were they 2 door or 4 door?"
"4 Door."
But wait, the Plymouth may have been 2 door, the Chevy was definitely 4 door, green and it was a '50. The Plymouth was definitely black, I didn't think they made any other color, although subsequent research shows that they apparently did.
Memories. That was a long time ago, and I became so distrusting of my memory that I called my children's mother to check to make sure that I had correctly remembered another fact, unconnected to the above.
Later, in the evening my nephew Peter sent me some "This is Your Life" links to the cars my parents owned during my youth. I say youth, because the first car Mom and Dad bought (Mom would not drive until years later) was that '50 Chevy, green." More about that later.
So, I have been thinking about those memories for the last 24 plus hours.
An aside. Its snowing here in Tonawanda, NY. Coming down pretty well right now, though they tell me it is to get worse. Nothing else to do until the Bills game is on, so I find myself remembering and writing. Up here in Buffalo when they talk about snow they talk about the blizzard of '77. I moved here after that storm, so when I think of a blizzard, I think of the blizzard of '52. We were living above the Sunday School building of The First Baptist Church in Portland, Maine. Portland got so snowed in that they had to borrow plows from Scarborough. Congress Street was piled high with snow. My Dad and I walked miles through the storm to make sure Aunt Ruth and Uncle Clarence were OK. They lived off of Back Bay. To get there you had to pass the B&M Bean plant, which always smelled great to me.
So, here's the story:
The blizzard comes into play because it was 1952. Most of the family belongings were shipped in crates and barrels through New York, the Panama Canal and then to the Philippines by ship.
Our ship was to leave from San Francisco in the fall of '52, but my family had no car and the train was too expensive for a family of four living on missionary salaries.
I can't remember the guy's name, or even much about him, just that he was heading west from Portland and was willing to share the ride with family of four. Must have been some kind of hero.
I remember it was a Plymouth. It was also black. It certainly was the shape of the '47 - '49 model, but when I look at the pictures of the 4 door it looks too long. Funny, you would think that I would remember crawling past the front seat of a 2 door. What I remember is that Len and I had about 1/3 of that back seat to share. He was smaller, so he was smooshed against the stuff that filled the other 2/3's of the seat while I was smooshed against the side of the car.
Neither the Mass Pike or the NY Thruway were finished in 1952, so we took Route 20 through western Massachusetts and upstate New York. I remember when we moved here to the Buffalo area that Route 20 through Geneva, Batavia and Pembroke had a kind of eerie familiarity to me 26 years later. I still drive on Route 20, especially when I am out with my camera and it still looks familiar.
I don't remember Buffalo, but I do remember that it was a long trip and we made slow time, when it came time to stop to sleep we would find some "cabins" and for a few dollars we would spend the night. Mom was in charge of food, so we had a lot of bologna sandwiches!
To Chicago and west another time.
"What kind of car did you drive across country in?"
"'49 Plymouth (or was it a '47?), black." "Which way?"
"Both."
"Chevy, '50 Chevy (or was it a '52?), green."
"Were they 2 door or 4 door?"
"4 Door."
But wait, the Plymouth may have been 2 door, the Chevy was definitely 4 door, green and it was a '50. The Plymouth was definitely black, I didn't think they made any other color, although subsequent research shows that they apparently did.
Memories. That was a long time ago, and I became so distrusting of my memory that I called my children's mother to check to make sure that I had correctly remembered another fact, unconnected to the above.
Later, in the evening my nephew Peter sent me some "This is Your Life" links to the cars my parents owned during my youth. I say youth, because the first car Mom and Dad bought (Mom would not drive until years later) was that '50 Chevy, green." More about that later.
So, I have been thinking about those memories for the last 24 plus hours.
An aside. Its snowing here in Tonawanda, NY. Coming down pretty well right now, though they tell me it is to get worse. Nothing else to do until the Bills game is on, so I find myself remembering and writing. Up here in Buffalo when they talk about snow they talk about the blizzard of '77. I moved here after that storm, so when I think of a blizzard, I think of the blizzard of '52. We were living above the Sunday School building of The First Baptist Church in Portland, Maine. Portland got so snowed in that they had to borrow plows from Scarborough. Congress Street was piled high with snow. My Dad and I walked miles through the storm to make sure Aunt Ruth and Uncle Clarence were OK. They lived off of Back Bay. To get there you had to pass the B&M Bean plant, which always smelled great to me.
So, here's the story:
The blizzard comes into play because it was 1952. Most of the family belongings were shipped in crates and barrels through New York, the Panama Canal and then to the Philippines by ship.
Our ship was to leave from San Francisco in the fall of '52, but my family had no car and the train was too expensive for a family of four living on missionary salaries.
I can't remember the guy's name, or even much about him, just that he was heading west from Portland and was willing to share the ride with family of four. Must have been some kind of hero.
I remember it was a Plymouth. It was also black. It certainly was the shape of the '47 - '49 model, but when I look at the pictures of the 4 door it looks too long. Funny, you would think that I would remember crawling past the front seat of a 2 door. What I remember is that Len and I had about 1/3 of that back seat to share. He was smaller, so he was smooshed against the stuff that filled the other 2/3's of the seat while I was smooshed against the side of the car.
Neither the Mass Pike or the NY Thruway were finished in 1952, so we took Route 20 through western Massachusetts and upstate New York. I remember when we moved here to the Buffalo area that Route 20 through Geneva, Batavia and Pembroke had a kind of eerie familiarity to me 26 years later. I still drive on Route 20, especially when I am out with my camera and it still looks familiar.
I don't remember Buffalo, but I do remember that it was a long trip and we made slow time, when it came time to stop to sleep we would find some "cabins" and for a few dollars we would spend the night. Mom was in charge of food, so we had a lot of bologna sandwiches!
To Chicago and west another time.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Since 1979
After a year of visiting Hamburg High School's computer lab, I brought home an Apple II,
First the lab. Not exactly what you would expect today with rows of computers facing front and wired into a network. With a smart board or a projector or large monitors so that the students can follow the instructor as she demonstrates how to write a macro.
None of that, it was maybe six Apples on the edges of what may have once been a large closet or storage room. There were usually two or three geeks to a computer. The great thing is that the teachers were self appointed and interested in this new phenomenon called a personal computer. The IBM or what we now know as a PC (can you say Windows?) was a year or two away. So, since I visited the school in my role as a youth worker, I also stopped in to see the lab where Bob, a teacher and church member hung out with the students after school hours.
Bob beat me to buying one, but I was not far behind. I brought it home so that I could use it for my dissertation, kind of a glorified word processor, at least that was the excuse. Really I was fascinated by this new technology.
Sure, I wrote my dissertation on software called Magic Window. At first it only had 40 columns, something like half a page, then you had to toggle to the other half. But, my Masters thesis had six drafts, all typed on a Smith Corona (I hope that is in Wikipedia for those who have no idea), all typed by my wife. The last time she touched the Smith Corona was probably when she typed the dissertation proposal on it. I took over from there using the Apple. My dissertation had ten drafts. Of course, the spell checker was pretty bad. It did not know how to spell sex. Don't ask me why I used that as the test, but I hired a proof reader after I found that out.
But the Apple II was more than a word processor. I will never forget when my son and I opened the case and put a memory card in. We now had one meg of memory! We thought we had died and gone to heaven. You no longer had to swap disks (that's another post, those big disks) when you were using AppleWorks. That had become our word processor by that time.
We had fun with that computer playing games like Choplifter (that is in Wikipedia). Not exactly graphics as we now know them, kind of dotted lines moving across the screen. I played with BASIC; wrote a grading program that I used for several semesters in my teaching.
My son got into it a bit more. I had to kick my nine year old off the computer around ten at night so I could work on my teaching or on my dissertation. It gave him a foundation that launched a career (http://www.heynorton.org/).
Why these musings today? We got some new computers at work. My boss and I desperately needed upgrades and I spent most of the day working on the change over. I gave him frequent blow by blow reports and he said, "You really enjoy this stuff don't you?"
I do.
First the lab. Not exactly what you would expect today with rows of computers facing front and wired into a network. With a smart board or a projector or large monitors so that the students can follow the instructor as she demonstrates how to write a macro.
None of that, it was maybe six Apples on the edges of what may have once been a large closet or storage room. There were usually two or three geeks to a computer. The great thing is that the teachers were self appointed and interested in this new phenomenon called a personal computer. The IBM or what we now know as a PC (can you say Windows?) was a year or two away. So, since I visited the school in my role as a youth worker, I also stopped in to see the lab where Bob, a teacher and church member hung out with the students after school hours.
Bob beat me to buying one, but I was not far behind. I brought it home so that I could use it for my dissertation, kind of a glorified word processor, at least that was the excuse. Really I was fascinated by this new technology.
Sure, I wrote my dissertation on software called Magic Window. At first it only had 40 columns, something like half a page, then you had to toggle to the other half. But, my Masters thesis had six drafts, all typed on a Smith Corona (I hope that is in Wikipedia for those who have no idea), all typed by my wife. The last time she touched the Smith Corona was probably when she typed the dissertation proposal on it. I took over from there using the Apple. My dissertation had ten drafts. Of course, the spell checker was pretty bad. It did not know how to spell sex. Don't ask me why I used that as the test, but I hired a proof reader after I found that out.
But the Apple II was more than a word processor. I will never forget when my son and I opened the case and put a memory card in. We now had one meg of memory! We thought we had died and gone to heaven. You no longer had to swap disks (that's another post, those big disks) when you were using AppleWorks. That had become our word processor by that time.
We had fun with that computer playing games like Choplifter (that is in Wikipedia). Not exactly graphics as we now know them, kind of dotted lines moving across the screen. I played with BASIC; wrote a grading program that I used for several semesters in my teaching.
My son got into it a bit more. I had to kick my nine year old off the computer around ten at night so I could work on my teaching or on my dissertation. It gave him a foundation that launched a career (http://www.heynorton.org/).
Why these musings today? We got some new computers at work. My boss and I desperately needed upgrades and I spent most of the day working on the change over. I gave him frequent blow by blow reports and he said, "You really enjoy this stuff don't you?"
I do.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
2 Outs? No Problem!
The Red Sox have won the World Series!
A championship team peaks at the right time. Before the All Star break, the Red Sox were clearly the best team in baseball. Then the team seemed to slow down; a slow down that could not entirely be blamed on injuries.
But, after letting the Indians back into the ALCS, the Sox hit their peak, with players who had mediocre years such as J.D. Drew stepping up.
One of the best indicators of their fight up and down the lineup was their tendency to score after there were 2 outs. I got so that I yelled at the TV, "There are two outs, let's go!"
They won without a lot of home runs (3 I think) and they won with smart baseball, stringing singles and doubles together to keep the pressure on their opponent. They also had good pitching when they needed it.
As a member of the Red Sox Nation I see a young team with potential to be great for several years. You never know what The Boss, his sons and son-in-law will do to make the Yankees competitive, but the Sox should hold their own for the near future.
Another thing strikes me. Prior to 2004 the Sox had not won a Series since 1918. Dad was 2 years old that year. He certainly did not remember it. He did not live to see another championship for the Red Sox. He always followed baseball, and since he lived near Philadelphia, he enjoyed the Mike Schmidt years, including a championship.
But, I have lived to see 2 Red Sox championships, twice what he enjoyed.
Go Sox!
A championship team peaks at the right time. Before the All Star break, the Red Sox were clearly the best team in baseball. Then the team seemed to slow down; a slow down that could not entirely be blamed on injuries.
But, after letting the Indians back into the ALCS, the Sox hit their peak, with players who had mediocre years such as J.D. Drew stepping up.
One of the best indicators of their fight up and down the lineup was their tendency to score after there were 2 outs. I got so that I yelled at the TV, "There are two outs, let's go!"
They won without a lot of home runs (3 I think) and they won with smart baseball, stringing singles and doubles together to keep the pressure on their opponent. They also had good pitching when they needed it.
As a member of the Red Sox Nation I see a young team with potential to be great for several years. You never know what The Boss, his sons and son-in-law will do to make the Yankees competitive, but the Sox should hold their own for the near future.
Another thing strikes me. Prior to 2004 the Sox had not won a Series since 1918. Dad was 2 years old that year. He certainly did not remember it. He did not live to see another championship for the Red Sox. He always followed baseball, and since he lived near Philadelphia, he enjoyed the Mike Schmidt years, including a championship.
But, I have lived to see 2 Red Sox championships, twice what he enjoyed.
Go Sox!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
