The only long trip I took with my parents and remember well
was a visit back to Missouri in 1951. I was nine years old. My parents each took three weeks off from work in the summer. We drove both ways in our 1948 Chevrolet. It was a large and comfortable car. Trellis did most, if not all, of the driving. O.J. never liked to drive. He usually kept his driver’s license current, but he just didn’t like driving.

Our route was pretty standard: Bay Area to Isma and Tim’s in Taft, California. Then we picked up Route 66 in Barstow, California, and stayed on Route 66 until, probably, Joplin or Rolla, Missouri. The drive to Missouri took 5 or 6 days. Route 66 was very famous and there were points of interest all along the way. There were ever-present vendors of local items: Native Americans in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma . We didn’t dilly-dally too much because of the time limitation we had, but there were some stops and some sight-seeing. Trellis had a fondness for the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest in Arizona. On our way back we drove a bit north of Route 66 to visit Boulder Dam in Nevada. (My parents never called it Hoover Dam.) Route 66 was also commonly referred to as the “southern route”. While Route 66 avoided the Rocky Mountains, most of the drive was very hot in the summer. Cars did not have air conditioning, and each morning we would buy a block of ice for our water cooler, which sat on the floor of the back seat of the car. We drove with the windows open, and hung wet towels from the windows if things got too hot. And there was always ice cold water to drink.

Once in southeastern Missouri, we visited relatives from both sides of the family. I don’t remember many names, because I only met most of these relatives that one time. This was the only time O.J. returned to Missouri. When I asked him about this, much later in life, he said he had never had any desire to go back, ever. On the other hand, Trellis was always ready to go back to Missouri to visit, though she only managed a second trip in her sixties via airplane.

When we were in Dexter and Cape Girardeau, the Mississippi River was flooding. It was strange to see that much water and also to experience the noisy thunderstorms and torrential (to me) rains every few days. The relatives we stayed with had storm cellars, of course, and I remember going down into them several times. I also remember playing in the drainage ditches after the storms; the water was a couple of feet deep and warm and muddy.

The big event of the trip was a large family picnic. It was mostly my father’s side of the family, but my mother’s sisters were there, too. During this trip I met two cousins who were close to my age. They were the daughters of my father’s half-sister, Grace. Grace and her husband Thurman, were both school teachers. Their daughters were Sarah Lou, who was a little bit older than me, and Cora Sue, who was a little bit younger than me. We got along very well, and I corresponded with them for a time after this visit. At this gathering we had practiced some girl scout songs we all knew, and we are singing in the photo. (I’m in the center, Sarah Lou is on the right, in the photo, and Cora Sue is on the left.)

July 28, 2021