Today Irene has asked me, “What was your first big trip”.
When my mother’s father died, I was probably around 4 years old. I accompanied her from Dallas to Detroit for the funeral and then back to Dallas. Just my Mom and I went. I was too young to leave at home. I primarily recall being on the train with her for many long hours. It was boring but I found distraction walking up and down the aisle, to my mother’s consternation. I think we probably changed trains at St. Louis and Chicago, and I was very interested in the type of train we boarded. Some were sleek modern diesels and some were older coal fired locomotives belching black smoke. I liked the diesels. I called them “clean trains” and the older ones, “dirty trains”.
But my memories of that trip are very vague and I don’t really count that as my “first” big trip. I designate my “first big trip” as occurring when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It was a motor trip that I took with my two older brothers, Don and Jerry, and my mother. I date it around 1950-51 because the Korean War had recently broken out. My parent’s curtain cleaning company, which went by the grand name of National Curtain Laundry, had begun to contract from a busily going concern to a small side-line business that my mother was largely able to run alone. To meet expenses, my father had taken a job in a defense plant in Dallas, that manufactured artillery shells for the army. The job had sent him off for some specialized 6 weeks training at the arsenal in Rock Island, Illinois, so he was away during this time.
My brother Jerry was 21 years old and Don was 16. It was summer and Jerry had a new car, I think it was a Nash Rambler (no longer made). Jerry had a friend who was getting married in Corpus Christi, Texas. Perhaps all of us were invited to the wedding, I’m not really sure. I’m not even sure if they were friends with the bride or the groom. I am sure it didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now. The wedding was just the excuse to go and I was excited for reasons that had nothing to do with the wedding.
I was excited because Jerry told me that our route to Corpus Christi was going to take us through San Antonio and we would stop there briefly to see the Alamo. The Alamo! You have to understand that I was growing up in Texas. Even though I was in the second or third grade — and I’m sure we did not have a television at home — I was nonetheless steeped in the history and the lore of Texas. Growing up in Texas was special. With every breath we took, we were aware of something uncommon about living in Texas. Very early on, we learned about the unique history of Texas. I knew about our War of Independence from Mexico. I knew how General Santa Anna had wiped out the heroic defenders of the Alamo, only to suffer ignominious defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto. Remember the Alamo! And I was actually going to see that glorious monument.
Sure enough, we found the Alamo in downtown San Antonio, parking a few blocks away. Such was my excitement, I could hardly wait to walk the couple blocks it took to get there. There were cannons outside and my brothers took a picture of me sitting on one. And then we went inside.
I looked around and tried to feel the awe, the wonder of the Alamo. But I just saw old stone walls and people milling about. There were glass cases with various objects and labels, but overall I felt a sense of disappointment. Everything struck me as dusty and worn. I expected that; I knew that the battle took place 115 years earlier; but I expected something else. I didn’t know what that something else was; I only knew I wasn’t finding it. We probably only stayed an hour before continuing our trip on to Corpus Christi.
Before we left, I bought a souvenir. I chose a rabbits foot, because it was good luck and the metal part had “The Alamo” etched on it. I hung that rabbit’s foot on the belt of my jeans for a long time, but like all mementos of childhood, it got lost along the way. Recently I came across a picture of me with 2 aunts and 5 cousins. I can still make out that rabbit’s foot hanging from my belt loop.
I am pretty sure we drove directly from Dallas to Corpus Christi (with the brief stop at the Alamo) in one day, a distance of about 400 miles. My brothers were in the front seat and shared the driving. South Texas was uniformly boring. Just endless miles of flat desert-like scrub land, stunted mesquite trees and cactus. I had read about cactus, but never seen it growing in open. It was exciting to see it from the car window… For about 5 minutes.
I sat with my mother in the back seat. She had a bag of grapefruit and she would peel the grapefruit like an orange, passing out sections of grapefruit to us all. The membranes were thick and tough, but I learned the trick of nibbling away the center part and then turning it inside out to get to the juicy pulp inside. I hated South Texas but I loved the grapefruit.
I have no memories of the wedding itself other than it was at a little tiny shul. My memory of Corpus Christi concerns a second great event, almost as monumental as seeing the Alamo. That event was going down to the Gulf of Mexico and seeing an ocean and tasting salt water! I had grown up near lakes and we spent practically every Sunday during the summer at White Rock Lake, which to me and my cousins was like going to Disneyland. But outside of Corpus was Padre Island, more sand than I had ever seen and real waves and surf. I think this was the first time any of us had seen the ocean. I frolicked on the beach and my brothers took a picture of me and my mother sitting side by side and laughing while a wave washed over us.
Then we drove along the coast to Galveston. I don’t remember that at all. Maybe it was at night and I was sleeping. At Galveston we hired a motor boat to take us out to sea, past the breakers. The skipper let me put on his hat, and I stood there with my hands on the wheel while my brothers took a picture. This was exciting. I was never before out on the ocean, feeling the pitch and swells of the waves under the boat. And then we drove back to Dallas.
My brother Jerry mounted those pictures in an album or maybe they were developed and packaged as a booklet. Periodically I would go through them, until they, like most everything else got lost. Now I’m not sure if I remember the trip as much as the pictures. I suspect it’s both. But that’s my first big trip, a long circular motor trip — probably a thousand miles over a weekend — seeing the Alamo, then down to the Texas coast, tasting the salty Gulf at Padre Island, and feeling the rolling ocean outside Galveston. It was plenty fun and excitement for this little kid.