We need a vacation! After all, it’s June. The weather is warm, the days are long, the mind turns to thoughts of getting away from it all. This month, D.Z. and Janet recall past vacations that live on in memories.
The Big Aqua and White Nash Rambler
D. Z. Church
When I was eight, my family took a road trip in our massive aqua and white Nash Rambler to Florida. The one with the Nash seat, the front seats dropped all the way down, making the inside of the car into a king-size bed. It was a wonderful beast. To this day, I think of it and grin until it hurts. Dad designed a rooftop carrier the size of an aircraft carrier. It was thin plywood on the sides and metal over the top and built like the wing of a plane.
Traveling arrangements in the car were well established. Mom and Dad occupied the front seat. My sister, Lynn, owned the right side of the car. I owned the left. If my folks were driving through, the non-driver lowered the passenger seat and slept. Lynn stretched across the back seat, and I crawled in under the clothes with my pillow on the transmission hump and clothes dancing overhead, it was dark and wonderful. If I slept at all. Mostly I helped Dad, who drove at night. I’m not sure he saw it that way, but I would push the clothes a bit toward the middle and lean on the back left side of his seat, in case he needed me.
We started out very early from Kalamazoo, Michigan, on our way to Largo, Florida, to visit Dad’s twin brother. We made Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the first night, and pulled into the Smoky Mountain National Park late. Though it is about a 600-mile drive, my mother had a lead foot, shortening any trip by hours.
Since we arrived after dark, we dropped the seats, spread out our sleeping bags and climbed into the car, leaving the windows open an inch or so. The night was cool in the mountains, and though bears were about, Dad didn’t seem worried that our food was overhead in his magnificent wing.
The next day, we pitched the tent and went exploring. I still remember the lush green, the leaf-strewn paths, the soft breezes, and a mossy natural bridge. I cherish a photo of me sitting near the edge of the bridge in my favorite shorts. That night, we went to downtown Gatlinburg. White lights were strung across the main street, and geegaws were hung on the strands, including stuffed black bears. Dad bought us each a bear from a man who took them down with a hook. I had mine for years!
Once on our way, we drove through Atlanta, Georgia, and discovered Colonel Sanders Fried Chicken. It was very, very late when we got back on the road. Mom lowered the seat, Lynn curled up, and I assumed my position. The streets were empty, leaving me with the vivid memory of a streetlight swaying in the breeze of a brief squall.
We arrived at the campground on the Suwanee River around midnight. So, down went the seat. Come morning, my sister, a notoriously robust sleeper, was still sleeping, and Mom was wrestling with the coffee pot, when Dad held up the Frisbee and motioned for me to follow him to an open field.
Dad sent soft passes my way until a Great Horned Owl swooped out of the early morning mist, grabbed the hair on the top of my head, and tried to fly away with me. Dad threw the Frisbee at the owl. The owl flapped its wide wings and flew off with a hank of hair in its talons. That memory of how scared, fascinated, and small I felt was available when I needed to describe the owl attacks in Unbecoming a Lady, the first book in the Wanee Mystery series.
Later that morning, I took a photo with my very own black and white camera of my folks and sister, posed by a picnic table. After another day at the park, we headed on to Largo.
Were there more adventures in the Nash, you betcha. Do I pull these moments from my back pocket when I’m writing, you betcha! I never know what tidbit from the past will move a story forward, assist in a description, or add a bit of fun.
Camping With Vinegar, Bear and Elephant
Janet Dawson
I do not have the camping gene. My preference for lodging is to make reservations at a nice hotel.
However, as a kid I didn’t have much say-so in the matter. Camping was an inexpensive way for a family of four to travel. So was traveling from relative to relative, since family could be counted on to provide us with beds for the night.
I recall several camping trips in my youth. One involved going to a reservoir in Wyoming. The place was nearly devoid of trees, at least in the area where we camped. My cousin and I got seriously sunburned. When we got back to civilization, my father insisted that the only thing that would alleviate the resulting pain was for us to douse ourselves in vinegar. It didn’t help the sunburn, but I smelled like a pickle for days.
The trip I remember the most occurred during the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. It wasn’t a tent camping trip. We traveled with a camping trailer, the kind that was hitched to the back of the car and had wings that folded out. Overnight stays with relatives and friends also figured into the journey. We set out from the Denver area, heading through Colorado to Mesa Verde in the southwest corner of the state, then into Arizona to the Grand Canyon. That’s where the tent camper figured in.
From there it was on to Southern California, where we stayed with relatives in San Bernardino County, making forays to greater Los Angeles. Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Movieland Wax Museum. Then up the spine of California on Highway 99 to Sacramento, where a college friend of Mom’s lived in one of the suburbs. We spent several days with them, heading into San Francisco, where we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and Golden Gate Park. Then home again, on Interstate 80, spending a very cold night in a campground in Lovelock, Nevada. We stopped in Salt Lake City and had another cold night in a campground in Rock Springs, Wyoming. I don’t like cold nights. I want to be warm and comfortable. I was glad to get home, though I enjoyed seeing so many places for the first time.
Fast forward to adult years, when I was persuaded to try camping again by a friend who loves camping. We had fun on several trips, though I must say I do not enjoy that early-morning, flashlight-in-hand walk down the path to the bathroom. Most memorable recent camping memory—having made an early-morning daylight trek to the bathroom at Yosemite’s Curry Village, I came outside to find a very large bear ambling toward me on the path between the tent cabins. I went back into the bathroom and waited a while. When I came outside, the bear was gone, but a park ranger was sprinting down the same path, talking into her radio.
That leads me to a story Mom told me about driving from Oklahoma to Kentucky in 1928, to visit relatives. She was four years old at the time and recalls that they passed a circus on the road. An elephant stuck its trunk in through the window.
I can’t top an elephant.
This month, Janet is thinking about her historical novel—and outlaws. What do you call such a fellow? I poked around the Internet and discovered that the term “gunslinger” gained popularity in the 1920s, used by Western writers such as Zane Grey. Author Glendon Swarthout took issue with this, saying that “gunslinger” and “gunfighter” are modern terms. He claimed the more accurate terms would have been been “gunman”, “pistoleer”, “shootist”, or “bad man” (sometimes written as “badman”). Indeed, Swarthout titled his 1976 novel The Shootist, a term supposedly originated by notorious gunman Clay Allison. However, it appears the term “gunfighter” was used in the latter part of the nineteenth century, at times by Bat Masterson, and Bat was something of a gun hand himself.
I leave you with a favorite piece of dialog from the 1969 movie version of “True Grit,” based on the delightful novel by Charles Portis. In the scene I’m talking about, John Wayne, as Marshall Rooster Cogburn, faces outlaw Lucky Ned Pepper, played by Robert Duval. Rooster tells Ned he means to kill him, or capture him and see him hanged. Ned says, “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.” Rooster’s reply: “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch.”
Fill your hand indeed, defined as drawing a firearm into one’s hand, as in preparation for a gunfight.
And what a glorious movie-magic gunfight it is!
