When I was young, in the weeks preceding Labor Day weekend, Mom would give me a nudge, a gentle reminder to start thinking about one of the first class assignments for the new school year: “What I did on my Summer Vacation.”
We always started school the Tuesday after Labor Day. I’d begin the school year wearing new duds and still-pristine and unscuffed Mary Janes or penny loafers.
This was me on my first day of kindergarten, September 5, 1961.
In those days we didn’t need a backpack, just a scribbler, or a fresh ream of looseleaf paper, a three-ring binder and a pencil case. We carried our schoolbooks in the crook of our arm and toted a brown bag lunch.
To be honest, by Labor Day, I was ready to get back to the routine as I loved school, despite enjoying countless hours playing outside with friends and blissful evening nights sitting on the front porch with my parents while catching fireflies in a Mason jar.
So anyway, I would be thinking about my story and what I would write about the vacation memories, whether local or afar, as to our family’s annual respite from everyday life in the ‘60s. Vacation time for us was always the beginning of July, coinciding with two weeks of plant shutdown.
Wherever we went, there were always photos taken to memorialize the trip. Unlike today, when traveler’s photos may number in the hundreds, even thousands, thanks to digital cameras/phones, I remember usually only one roll of vacation film being mailed off for processing and it might have included Christmas images as well. It took up to a month before the pictures were returned and we’d gather around, oohing and aahing over them.
I’m changing things up a bit this year ….
Every year around Labor Day I blog about beginning my walking regimen over the 2011 long holiday weekend. Then I tell you how I am progressing toward my year-end walking miles goal.
But today, instead of writing about how I roll on my stroll, I’m going to take another stroll down Memory Lane, specifically as our family rolled along Route 66 in 1962 and 1965 respectively.
This post was prompted by fellow blogger Diane’s ongoing series of posts every Wednesday about a trip taken out west with her husband Terry earlier this year. Diane has regaled her readers with pictures of tourist attractions and unique stops along Route 66. Their travels took them via U.S. Highway 66, a/k/a the iconic Route 66, which roadway goes from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. Route 66’s main moniker is “The Mother Road” and was once known as “America’s most-famous road” and covers a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km). Did you know it is also known as “Will Rogers Highway” – well now you do.
So, do you think that construction and all those orange cones were going on from Spring through Fall back in the day like it is now – if so, UGH!
I was six when I first got my kicks on Route 66.
My father had a job interview in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1962 and another interview in Redwood City, California in 1965. He didn’t get either job, but applied to transfer from Ford Motor Company’s Oakville, Ontario plant to their Woodhaven, Michigan plant and got that job – we moved to the States in July 1966.
Just an Oakville miss and Tilda Jane, her favorite dolly …
… traveling to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, an adventure in a VW Beetle with no A/C. One by one, every Summer, each of my gang of playmates disappeared for a week or two for vacation with their respective families. We’d say “see ya later alligator” and they’d reply “in a while crocodile!” This time it was my turn.
This trip was tainted by a bad camping experience the first night.
The backstory on that ordeal was my father thought it would be fun to camp along the way back and forth to Oklahoma and near any tourist attractions we visited. Mom was not keen on that idea and of course, I had no say in that decision. Dad was gung ho on buying the tent, sleeping bags/air mattresses and miscellaneous and sundry camping paraphernalia, but Mom suggested nicely that before spending a lot of money on camping equipment, perhaps we could rent the tent, buy our own sleeping bags and air mattresses and try out camping that way.
The first night, right after the tent was pitched, it poured raining. The tent leaked like a sieve and tempers flared as we huddled inside and watched pools of water everywhere. Mom said “we’re not doing this the entire trip – we’re staying in a motel!” We kept the Coleman cooler and camp stove (never to be used again); the rest of our camping gear was left at the campground dump. The wet tent had to be returned to the sporting goods store, so a new tarp was bought, the tent rolled into it and that bundle occupied the back seat next to me for the next two weeks as Dad didn’t want to put it in the car trunk.
In between the interview, stops for gas and food, we did fit in some sightseeing, tailored mostly to little ol’ me.
In preparing this post, I scoured the internet to see if I could figure out what tourist attraction featured a bucking bronco (pictured in the header image and below) to no avail. Was this place now one of the many ghost towns along Route 66? It was a hoot dressing in chaps, donning my cowgirl hat and posing on my horse for both of these photos.
City girl meets a few farm animals.
I also remember going to this place where they had some farm animals …
… and a chicken that fascinated me as it strutted along the bars of a huge xylophone and used its beak to peck out musical tunes. What no picture?
There was a graveyard with these two headstones …
… which I thought a search of Google images might enlighten me where this was – no luck, but there are a lot of fake headstones like this that I found. Away from the graveyard was a door and my father managed to get part of Mom, me and the antlers in the picture with this nondescript door.
Sometimes it was just nice to sit on a rock by the water …
… but where was this sunhat so you didn’t get sunburned near the water?
For miles and miles, we saw nothing but oil derricks.
As we traveled through Missouri, I remember we stopped at the famous Meramec Caverns. I’m sure there are no photos since it was too dark inside. I learned that Missouri has the largest portion of Route 66, some 400 miles through that state.
We always looked for the Sinclair gas stations whenever we needed to “gas up” which appealed to the six-year-old me as I was a big fan of the TV show “The Flintstones” and “Dino” the family’s pet dinosaur.
Well, we made it home safely – on today’s map it looks like it would have been about 2,500 miles/4,000 km roundtrip, though I wouldn’t know how many side trip miles were expended along the way.
Road Trip! California, here I, er … WE come!
In the Summer of 1965, we traveled to Redwood City, California for another job interview. Gone was the VW Beetle, replaced with a bigger car, a Ford Meteor. Thankfully there was a larger trunk, so suitcases and other travel paraphernalia could be stored there, leaving the entire back seat for my nine-year-old self to lounge on while we made that 6,000-mile/10,000 km round trip. Again, we made side trips so who knows how many extra miles we racked up in the space of two weeks’ time.
So, did I dare ask my folks “are we there yet?”
If I did so, it was because of the awful plastic seat covers that Dad insisted on using to preserve the car seats. You can see them on the Meteor’s front seat in this photo.
Believe me, they were in the back seat too, but I had a wool blanket stretched out on the seat, to keep my legs from sticking to the plastic, but, as the temps got hotter and hotter, I was not sure which was the most annoying, sweltering from the wool blanket or sticking to the seat.
With regard to sweltering in the heat, as we made our way along Route 66 to California, Dad was the sole driver and he drove with his left elbow resting on the window well, his arm clad in short sleeves, fully exposed to the sun. The blistering heat as we crossed through New Mexico and Arizona caused sun poisoning and a huge blister formed, the size of a saucer, thus necessitating an emergency trip to the E.R. to have that blister taken care of.
Mom was the map reader like before. It seemed the map was unfurled several times during the day, for gas fill-ups, food or snacks and wherever we would spend the night. Did Mom get tripped up while scrutinizing our routes if there was construction along the way? I know arguments often ensued and I recall Mom poring over the map in the motel room as well. Unfortunately, 60 years ago there was no GPS to tell you what areas to avoid due to construction.
Mom got a break from cooking, which pleased her; me … well, I was just excited for the breakfast buffet that usually came with each motel stay. How fun to have pancakes for breakfast every day, or have a single-serving box of sugary cereal, the latter not allowed at home as “it’ll rot your teeth!”
We also visited the Hoover Dam …
… which was quite a sight to see. Mom’s Baby Brownie camera got these photos.
There were a few color photos as well in this album taken with Dad’s Leica 35mm camera, like me in my “awning top” looking ever so cute (NOT) in front of the Snow White Grotto at Disneyland, in Anaheim, California.
Mom got pickpocketed with her wallet “lifted” while we were walking through the throngs of people at Disneyland, despite holding her handbag close to her side.
I’m not sure where this picture was taken, but I’m glad I ditched the cat-eye glasses and headband for this shot. 🙂
We also visited Marineland of the Pacific …
… then all too soon, it was time to retrace our steps and head home – another 3,000 miles/4,800 km or more.
I’m glad Mom sat down with me when I compiled this trip album with photos from years ago. I would not have known about the trip’s particulars had she not identified pictures and given me a backstory on the good, the bad and the ugly as we rolled along Route 66.
If you’re still with me, thank you. I am joining Terri’s Challenge this week: “Things under Construction”.
All photos are my own, except the Route 66 images and Sinclair Gas logo which I purchased on Etsy.
Linda Schaub
WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 
I enjoyed reading about your trips. I hope you enjoyed reliving them.
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Thank you Anne! It was fun compiling this long post about those trips and I did enjoy that stroll down Memory Lane while doing so!
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How times have changed. Today somebody doing the same trip would take thousands of shots and dozens of videos!
Back then, we took pictures sparingly. Taking fewer shots seemed like more compared to todays abilities.
That bronco was pretty real like! Looks almost like a stuffed real horse?
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I know Wayne – it is amazing how few pictures we took back in the day because the film was expensive and processing it was as well. I remember we sent away the film roll(s) for processing and then worried that the film might get lost, or even worried the pictures would be lost getting returned to us. I was surprised my father had his 35mm camera – there were only a few color shots here, the rest were my mom’s Baby Brownie which she gave to me when I was old enough to use it.
Do you remember a post I did about our neighbors? They had a Kodak Instamatic camera and they had four kids, their ages about one year apart and each year they took one photo at Christmastime of the four kids by the Christmas tree plus a few other special occasions. They never developed the film and after they both died, the grown children (in their 30s) were cleaning out the house to sell it and found the camera in a dresser drawer and they had it developed. I guess that would be 12 exposures for a roll of Instamatic film? Up til then, they had never seen pictures of themselves when they were growing up. I always thought they should have shared that story with Kodak.
I thought the bronco looked like a real horse too! My parents bought three poses of me on the bronco and the odd thing was in my collection of family photos, I found two of them were sepia-toned prints and the third was a black-and-white print … odd. They didn’t take the photos and I didn’t alter the color of the photos. I didn’t use the third pose, which was similar and it seemed too odd to me that it was B&W.
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I’m amazed the film wasn’t “fogged”? Film once shot needs to be kept in a cool place to help minimize the fogging.
That must have been a stupendous find for them!
Those altered shots were most likely done by the guy who shot the pictures I bet.
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No, the pictures were okay and they just took them to a local pharmacy (where we can go to get photo processing done in an hour or so) – they did not go a camera store. Now, I would have taken the CAMERA to a camera store and asked them to open and process the film because I would be worried when the camera was opened, light might hit the film cartridge somehow and the film might be ruined. They just opened the case and took out the roll of film. I wonder if they were not as mindful of the precious memories stored in there as we would have been Wayne. I know the story because I was talking to one of the sons when they were clearing out the house to sell it. He said they were very excited as they never saw pictures of themselves growing up – so I assume their grandparents or aunts/uncles didn’t take photos either.
That could be the reason = maybe the photographer thought they’d like a plain old B & W shot as well. I like the sepia-toned prints better also as they looked more believable from a vintage era since the scene looked vintage. I put the two images on Google Images to see where it might have been – lots of people had similar photos but different horses.
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You are very blessed to have been able to travel with your parents across the US, Linda! You are so adorable! I doubt that road construction was the major thing it is now-days, with millions more cars and trucks on the road.
I had to giggle about your camping trip! We got rained out on a tent camping trip in Yosemite when I was a teen. Which meant we had to leave a few days early back to San Diego. I refuse to camp in a tent. but our RV is FINE! Motels work too!
Love the Route 66 sign and Sinclair Gas–we have Sinclair gas all through the west, especially in Idaho and Utah. BTW, you might be able to add those types of pics from the drop down in the media files under Pexels. Or make an AI version, LOL!
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Thank you Terri! We went on some small trips when I was young too, like Niagara Falls, or a friend of the family’s cottage in Georgian Bay, but not too many photos were taken and I don’t remember them like these two trips (especially in the VW next to the wet tent)! I would be fine with RV travel, as the idea of sleeping on the ground with spiders, snakes, or other critters would not appeal to me at all. I’d be sleeping in the car I think. 🙂 As to being adorable … well maybe at six years old, but by nine years old, it was the beginning of a real gawky stage for me and I shot up – (remember us discussing being tall) and was downright homely! I hated the eyeglasses which I got on my seventh birthday.
As to the pictures, I don’t think Pexels would have had what I wanted to pair with the trips and I could have tried WP AI which I’ve used for fun posts before but I was looking for specific items, like postcards and the Sinclair gas station logo. I have grabbed an image from Pinterest in the past and attributed to the person that posted it, but everything I saw was linked back to a website with a charge for the image, so I just went to Etsy, which is fun and supports small businesses and well known enough that I don’t worry about licensing issues. As to Sinclair gas, I didn’t realize they still had Sinclair gasoline – I have not seen it here in many years. I think a fill-up came with a green dinosaur, but can’t be certain after all these decades! 🙂
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Thanks for sharing your trip down memory lane, Linda! Travelling along Route 66 must have been quite the adventure for you. And you were such a cutie, too. 😀 Hoover Dam certainly looks impressive. I love the vintage postcards and the Dino gas sign! That soggy tent must have been awful. I’m glad your dad didn’t insist you keep using it.
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Thank you Debbie! I’m glad you enjoyed the post. I had a lot of fun putting it together. After Diane did her vacation series of stops at touristy spots along Route 66, I thought it would be fun to recreate my trips for the Construction Challenge. I am glad my mom helped me organize the vacation photos and I used a Dynamo Labelmaker for all my vacation photos, even the ones I took when I was older, as I knew I’d never remember all the places we went, even with the itinerary to use as a guide. I do think I’d recognize the Hoover Dam though – it was impressive! I might have been cute as a six-year old, but nine years old was the beginning of my gawky period that got worse as a preteen! I had enough personal pictures, but decided it would be fun to get some vintage shots to go with the post and I was happy to find some tailored to both the Oklahoma and California trips. I remember that Sinclair gas station logo as that was the only gas station where we used to gas up during both trips. I don’t know how I felt about creepy crawlies, snakes and possible wild animals as a six-year old, but given the fact that I am scared of creepy crawlies and snakes now, I would not make a good camper.
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Yes, the vintage Route 66 and gas station images added great atmosphere to your post. 👌 I only ever went camping once, as a child, and hated it. Spoiled! 😉
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I guess we both were spoiled then – I never went camping again, soured on that first experience and my dislike of creepy crawlies!
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I liked all the photos today and enjoyed seeing the scrapbook page at the end with the labels adding date and info – and it was great that your mother was able to give you info about the trips.
I remember from a different post how you shared about the plastic on the seats – and I could see some of it on that Ford’s front seat.
Also, I did not know Route 66 was known as “Will Rogers Highway” – and we have been on many parts of it a few times – but not all of it.
Oh and I have been enjoying Diane’s trip photos too.
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Thank you Yvette – I think I had enough personal photos to use in the post, but decided it would be fun to find some vintage artwork about Route 66 to pair with the post and I liked what I found at Etsy. I am glad my mom sat down with me with all the albums, the albums of her family from long ago, so I knew who was who and then when I took the envelopes of photos from over the years to place them into vacation albums, she helped there which was great, although she did not remember the names of small towns/attractions from our 1962 trip, which was understandable as it didn’t really interest my parents as they only stopped for my sake.
I didn’t know about it being “Will Rogers Highway” either. Diane’s posts have been fun and I enjoyed the national parks as well as the quaint tourist towns along Route 66.
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well linda, I think your post here has something very special with the old photos. In today’s world, we are saturated with travel images because so many people have good cameras; however, there were less photos taken in 60s and 70s – and 80s 90s, etc) and so as I enjoyed the post, I could also feel the value they bring the world through the originality and time capsule vibe. For example, I am not a huge car person, but when i saw the Ford Meteor, I was soaking it up. I never saw that model and then seeing the plastic covered seats – and your comments about this and that – well it really has a lot of culture layers with that time period. And even the tent getting soaked – reminded me of when we’d camp in early 80s – with the heavy duty “canvas” one – and those camping items were sure different from today’s lightweight and water resistant ones. My husband’s tarvel tent is not only ultra light – but he has small rain tarps that can be used to combat rainy nights.
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Yvette, I am fortunate that my parents took a lot of photos (mostly of me) through the years. I have a treasure trove of memories, not only in my head, but in black-and-white and color images too. Most vacations when I was younger were to Niagara Falls or a family friend’s cottage, but this was a big thing for me back then. And two cameras – my father had his 35mm that he brought over from Germany and my mom had her Baby Brownie that she had used for years and was passed on to me when I was old enough to use a camera. The camping episode was a fiasco and I often wondered if everything had worked out that first night and the rest of the trip, would that have led to more camping adventures in later years? The tents today are lightweight and you put them together so easily – this was the old canvas tent with the poles and stakes and liner for the grass beneath the tent. My father had never been camping, never put up a tent – all new stuff for him. I don’t recall if he practiced putting the tent up in the backyard or not. Here we were with the cookstove, big cooler and our Scotch plaid jug as well as sleeping bags/air mattresses, all ready to rough it and that didn’t happen. Back then, in the 60s, small things counted for fun, maybe just because it was my age, or a novel experience, but I wonder if the “wow factor” would hold for kids the same age as me today?
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Hi Linda, I also wonder about how the wow factor has changed for the kids of today!
Oh and I thought of you earlier this summer when we watched a few reruns of Storage Wars (we used to watch it when the children were younger and it was a fun show) anyhow, not sure if you hear dof the show, but abandoned storgae lcokers are auctioned off to buyers who bid on them. And one of the units had a brownie camera – and I was like “hey, Linda wrote about that kind of camera!”
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Hi Yvette – I have heard of the show, but I don’t have cable as I cancelled it in 2010. My TV is from the 1990s, so I stream news and any shows I watch on my laptop. I used that camera after my mom gave it to me for years until I got a Kodak Instamatic. I think it’s fair to say that Mom’s Baby Brownie got me interested in photography. It was popular back in its heyday!
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well do you have Roku?
If not – you should check it out because they have so many amazing channels that stream 24/7. Including art programs – like a Bob Ross channel.
https://support.roku.com/contactus
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Thank you for this information Yvette. No, I don’t have Roku, nor a Roku TV, but it appears you can just download the app and stream it on a web browser. I have never looked into Roku before. I do have Peacock which comes free with my ISP since I am a longtime subscriber (otherwise, it is $10.99 with ads). I rarely watch it, however, today I did watch a new series called “The Paper” which is similar to “The Office” which I never watched. I only wanted to see this story about a newspaper staff for a faltering newspaper as I did enjoy working on the staff of my college newspaper back in the 70s. It’s different, I’ll say that, but it’s only on for ten episodes and they’ve renewed it for 2026 and the entire 10 episodes are streaming back-to-back (or singly when you want to watch them), so I gave it a look.
I will try out Roku and a fellow blogger’s late mother started painting in her 80s because she was watching the Bob Ross channel on TV and decided to try it out. She even ended up having a little gallery showing.
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Hi Linda – oh my goodness did we see so many ads for “the paper” because it seems they have been over promoting it – especially during a footbacll game the other day – anyhow, I am curious to see if you like it – and I know we cannot judge a book by its cover or judeg a show from the ads – but it seemed kind of like they were trying too hard to be like The Office and had other red flags for us – so please let me know what you think about it.
xxxx
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Hi Yvette – so I did watch the pilot episode and it was a little out there, to be honest. It is just a half-hour show, so I watched the second episode to give it the benefit of the doubt. There was one very annoying, loud woman named Esmeralda, who has a heavy Italian accent, mispronounced words/expressions and was scantily clad in high heels. I think if the show eliminated her character I might have stuck with it longer. But that said, maybe others thought she was an integral part of the show. I didn’t watch “The Office” in its heyday and I tried it once on Peacock and couldn’t get into it. Maybe it’s me? If you decide to watch it, let me know what you think, okay?
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From the many many ads we saw, it looks like they have a main character that is trans – and not that I have any problems with that (and I likely do not notice many of the actors that are trans – ha) but int he commercials it seemed like there was an agenda – and not sure if that is the Esmeralda character – but from the ads, I already know we likely will not watch it – BUT – If I do check it out – I will follow up with you,
Another reason I think there might be problems with the show – is they are relying too heavily on the two creators of The Office – the problem with that is those two creators were modeling their show after the UK version of the office – and so I am not sure how much they “created” – further, the original The Office had a large writing team – and it is the wiring that makes a show – and constantly dropping the fact that the “creators”:of the office are giving us “the paper” does not mean much to me.
hmmmm
I guess we will see – but my advice is to not skimp on the writing –
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Yvette, I was surprised they renewed “The Paper” for a second season before the debut of the first season and only relying on the reviews of those who get advance views. Hmm – not sure which character that would be, but they are quite a rag tag bunch to be honest, all a little quirky, except maybe for Mare, the only character who is a legitimate writer, (with the exception of the editor … he’s a bit strange at times). The editor, Ned Sampson, is played by an actor who is actually of Irish descent – no trace of an accent at all (unless of course he grew up here). Well, if you hear any great reviews, I can always pick up the series again for the remaining eight episodes. I did hear it referred to as a spin-off of “The Office” by one review I read earlier – another review claimed otherwise.
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well now I am going check it out for sure – because I need to see at least one episode
😀 ❤
I will keep you posted and thanks again for sharing this about the show
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Okay – you’re welcome and I’ll be curious what you think about it Yvette – please do share your thoughts!
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I do not know what season it was and tried to look it up and think it was S16:
“The specific Brownie camera featured on the television show Storage Wars was a Brownie Target Six-20. This model, produced between 1946 and 1952, used 620 film and was known for its distinctive design and the ability to take 20 exposures.”
anyhow, here is a snippet of the bidders today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lOJfKuxiEA
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That was interesting watching that clip Yvette. It took great pictures, very cute little box shape and a handle. I have a photo of me holding onto it in my family photo albums. Thank you for sharing this – I enjoyed reading about it!
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💚🍃🙂🍃💚
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This was fun 🙂
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Thank you Anne – I’m glad you liked it. It is always fun to take a stroll down Memory Lane!
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Those were the old time vacations for sure. My family never camped. If they had, I’m sure it would ended up the same way.
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Yes, those trips were a lot different from a road trip today. I was in the backseat with puzzles and books to occupy my mind or I slept. That first night of camping was a fiasco and the subject of camping never came up again.
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I love that first picture of you on the horse! You look so triumphant! So nice to have a picture of that fun memory. The picture of you and your mom is so sweet.
I do remember carrying schoolbooks in the crooks of our arms, and how heavy the load got by the time we got to high school. And I had to keep holding them on the school bus or the books would slide all over the place. And having to wait forever for pictures to get developed and how few of them we could take because film was expensive and not to be wasted. A no air conditioning in the car. Things were so different!
You’re lucky to have all these great pictures to remember these vacations with. You were an adorable little kid and it was fun picturing you putting up with sharing the back seat of the car with the tarp/tent bundle, and enjoying your pancakes and boxed cereals. And your growing love of critters can be seen in the pictures of you feeding the farm animals. Thanks for sharing your childhood summer vacations!
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Thank you Barbara – I’m glad you liked this post! It was fun to create and relive the memories. Posing on the realistic wild bronco was the highlight of the Oklahoma trip! My parents bought prints of three poses, but these two were my favorites, especially doffing my hat. 🙂
You’re right about being excited about the animals at that little farm we visited. It was fun interacting with those animals as well.
I don’t have very many photos of my mom and me where 100% of us is actually in the photo, but this was nice as she was holding onto me. Nice memories.
We have it so easy nowadays compared to decades ago. Waiting forever for our prints to be processed, worrying if the prints, or the film, would get lost and they were expensive on top of it. We’re spoiled with A/C in the car and house too. We never got central air at the house until 1975 and having no A/C in a car in early July was tough in those hottest states out West. I’m glad my parents took a lot of photos and my mom helped identify all the photos and locations, though she was a bit sketchy on the 1962 trip and Google was not helpful for that. I guess the musical chicken and bronco are long gone six decades later. It is funny what you remember from childhood vacations, but I remember those breakfasts as pancakes were only an occasional Sunday morning treat, as mostly we had eggs at home and those little boxes of cereal appealed to me as I always had oatmeal or Cream of Wheat for breakfast at home – something fun to eat!
We always carried our books in the crook of our arm and yes, the pile grew bigger as we advanced the grades – we were made of sturdy stuff!
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The house I grew up in still doesn’t have central air conditioning! My aunt gave my father an air conditioner to put in the window after my mother died in 1991. Tim used to help him put it in every summer and take it out every fall.
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Well, we are spoiled now, aren’t we? My grandmother’s house never had it either and was an old house, so likely A/C was not doable. My father offered to bring a window air conditioner and put it in her bedroom window, but she didn’t want it, preferring her tabletop oscillating fan instead. We had a small window air conditioner in the den/TV room and in the Summertime my father slept downstairs on the couch as he worked in a plant with no A/C and said he needed a break from the heat.
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Wow what a trip down memory lane! Loved everything about it, the pictures and the story. You were lucky to get two long family vacations like that. I only remember one family vacation trip to Niagara Falls and the Muskoka region, for 5 days, as my dad had the dairy cattle and it was too hard to get away. We stayed in motels and did not camp, my only camping was in a tent in the back yard with my cousin. Lots of nice memories there Linda! And such stylish clothes!
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PS. So I always found it difficult to write something for that traditional back to school assignment, which assumed everyone took a vacation? Weekly trips to the beach and an annual trip to Detroit to visit my relatives hardly seemed worth writing about.
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I can understand that Joni. One year, my parents decided I should go to day camp. It was not like going away from home, so there was no trauma there, but I had my little group of playmates, all from the neighborhood and we played together every day all Summer long and on weekends. So, I know it would be like going away on vacation, but still I would be “out of the loop” by going away five days a week and I wasn’t keen on going. It was two weeks long and a bus picked me up at the house and dropped me off at night. We did have fun and had campfires (even though it was daytime), toasting marshmallows and we did crafts and singalongs as well.
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Nobody I knew when to camp, except maybe Girl Guide camp for a weekend. Now parents have their kids in day camps all summer long…..I wonder that the kids don’t get any unstructured down time at all?
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I was in Brownies in Canada, but we never had any campouts and over here I couldn’t get into Girl Scouts (the U.S. equivalent of Girl Guides) as they were not accepting new members. I joined Pioneer Girls with a neighbor – it was at her church. Kind of the same structure, but religious. We never camped out either. I agree with you – the infatuation with day camp for all Summer would wear out quickly. We had organized activities, but I was ready for the weekend so I could play with my friends, instead of strangers.
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PS. Every kid’s dream in the 60’s was to visit Disneyland. I was jealous that my cousin got to go to the one in Florida when we were 10.
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I remember that about Disneyland because I never missed the Sunday night show “Wonderful World of Disney” with Disney movies and animal stories. It was a large place and I remember my mom walked through part of it, but it was too much walking for her and she sat down on a bench for a long time while my father and I went on some of the rides and a pirate ship trip, within the park. I went to California in 1980 on a California coastline excursion by bus and the last day we had Disneyland on the itinerary … it had changed a lot in 15 years.
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I finally went to Disneyland the summer after I graduated from university with my university roommate. I was 22, it was very hot, as in the ocean was like bath water, and we booked a week in Daytona, with a day bus trip to Disney. I was 22 and at that age I was a bit disappointed plus long lineups. I did like the Haunted Mansion though I couldn’t do Space Mountain as I don’t like heights. All those Universal studio/speciality theme parks weren’t there then, so there is probably more to see now.
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I think to get the full Disney experience, you had to have more than one day … we only had the one day in 1965 and then on the California trip in 1980, the same thing. We got the choice of going to Knott’s Berry Farm or Disneyland and the bus would drop us at the gate of whatever we chose – that was not an organized tour, but part of our itinerary. There’s a lot to see and I know they have hotels right on the grounds which they didn’t have then and I’m sure the cost would have been ridiculous then anyway. I remember in 1965 taking a trip to the Matterhorn Mountain, maybe by rail car and you went inside the mountain, the pirate ship mini cruise down a body of water with pirates everywhere and the Mad Hatters Tea Party which was fun, a ride where you sat on a seat in a teacup and it spun around. It was very crowded in 1965. We went in October in 1980, so less people and nicer to walk around but I only took one photo of the front of Disneyland with the big gardens.
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Thanks Joni – it was a fun post to create and relive all the memories! Diane’s Route 66 posts made me think it would be fun to write about our two trips. It was a lot of driving, especially the California trip, which was 6,000+ miles in two weeks’ time. My mom did not drive. I’m glad my mom could fill in some memories for me for the 1962 trip, although I do remember the rainy night and the leaking tent and some of the touristy places we visited. As to camping, I was secretly relieved we would not be camping the rest of the trip. We did some vacations when I was younger and older too, that were not as far, like Niagara Falls and friends of the family had a cottage in Collingwood which we visited, plus a couple of trips to Florida, one in 1967 and one in 1972. I can see why it would be difficult to get away if you’re a farmer – you can’t impose on neighbors, so that makes sense. My father was a tool-and-diemaker at Ford and it was mandatory plant shutdown for everyone the first two weeks of July for Ford every year. They don’t do that now for the Big Three, like in the past. It is more on a plant-by-plant basis for the shutdown for the line, which would not be great for vacation planning a long time in advance. Maybe I was a little bit cute as a six-year old, but at age nine, I was entering my gawky phase which got worse as a preteen. I had to write “my awning top” as that is what I called it – it looked like an awning and was heavyweight material that felt like canvas to me. 🙂
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You had stylish clothes!
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Thank you Joni! When I got a little older and shot up fast, I started making my own clothes as they didn’t have tall-sized clothing then and the pants were always too short and sleeves didn’t come down to my wrists. I made my own clothes for several years, until catalogs started having clothing for tall women. My parents were very short and had the opposite problem!
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What a lovely read and such fab pics. I love all the trips…so vivid and evocative
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Thank you Michael! It was fun rolling along that famous Route 66 route and I had a lot of fun recreating the trip and reminiscing about it for this post. I’m glad my mom sat down with me and filled in any blanks I had on the 1962 trip so that helped, along with all the photos.
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That’s great you have as many photos as you do, since they were taken sparingly back in the days of film. That bronco sure looks real, but the pose being identical in multiple pictures gives it away. However, I can’t see any support and those back legs in the air… a mystery.
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I am lucky to have all these photos Eilene because I was an only child and my grandmother passed all her family photos on to my mom who kept them in several albums. My parents did take a lot of photos, mostly of me and usually just a roll on our family vacations. Mom used her Baby Brownie and he used his 35mm camera. The photographer took three shots, but these two were my favorites. Considering this was 63 years ago, they did a great job making the bronco look realistic! I’m guessing that the front legs of the bronco have supports inside them, but I wonder if they had a weight limit for “riding” since only two legs are supporting the horse?
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Lots of fun memories, Linda. Those childhood photos are priceless. It’s great that you were able to go to so many wonderful places. I think it would be fun to drive on the old Route 66.
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Rebecca, this was a fun post to put together as I had so many pictures from those two trips. I am also glad my parents took lots of pictures on this trip. Usually my parents and I just went to local attractions in Ontario and once to Niagara Falls, or at a family friend’s cottage, but these two trips were the longest I had taken to date. It was memorable and fun and I wish I would have been even older while I traveled the old Route 66 as I would remembered more details.
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This is my favorite post of you! What a cutie you are and I loved my penny loafers too.What great memories of your Rt 66 trip, too bad dad didn’t get the job. I couldn’t sit on the plastic seats either! Good idea with the blanket, didn’t it pick you? I never cared for wool anything.
Thank you for the link to my website!
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I’m glad you liked this post Diane and, as you read, (and you know from my comments), I really enjoyed your travels along Route 66 (and beyond) and when I went back to look at my pictures from those two trips, I knew I had enough for a post. Just think I could have grown up in Oklahoma or California instead of the Mitten State. We always had plastic seat covers and I hated them, as did my mom – as you can see they were in the front seat as well. I think the seats were red so how much damage could occur on a red seat? I had a soft wool blanket – I called it my “Indian Blanket” because it had an Indian motif on it and yes it was still uncomfortable, despite being soft. It was hot in the car, so wearing long pants and no A/C wasn’t a great option. You’re welcome for the link to your site and I wanted to surprise you. 🙂
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I loved this! The funny thing is that I traveled with my family along Rte 66 to California in the summer of 1965. Wouldn’t it be funny if we had passed one another somewhere along the way. We had no air in the car either, and dark green vinyl seats that got plenty hot. My father had been in California on business, so the plan was for Mom and Grandma to drive out. Grandma had relatives there and she took a train home, while Dad and Mom drove the car back. It’s funny how I remember the trip out quite well, but have almost no memory of the trip back.
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That is funny JP – what a coincidence! And yes, we might have waved at one another along Route 66! Or perhaps you also played that kid’s game where you ticked off license plates from all the states – I’d have pointed at your family’s car and said “I’ve got an Indiana plate!” You’d have pointed at our family’s car and said “that’s a Ford Meteor – they don’t have them here in the U.S., only in Canada!” I think our car’s interior was red and the car was black, so it was very warm in the car.
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Great post Linda the 1st photo just love it.
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Thank you Andy! I like taking a stroll down Memory Lane every so often – it was fun to put it together. I love that photo too. It was nice since they had a photographer taking pictures of the kids sitting on the bronco and you got three poses and the photograph was tinted sepia like that – I didn’t alter it. I wish I knew where it was taken and I used Google Images with that first photo and lots of different places with broncos in the same position with kids on them popped up, but a different colored tail on the horse and different scenery, so no go there.
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Such a fun post, Linda. You were so cute. It brought back memories of the one vacation we took as a family. It was the fall of 1982, and I had just started my senior year of high school, but my parents took my two younger sisters and I out of school for the two-week vacation. We traveled to Page Arizona to visit friends – 5 of us in a Dodge Mirada. We stayed in motels mostly, but spent one night in Columbus, Nebraska with the family of my best friend who had moved there a coupe years before. My dad did all the driving and my mom read the map. They had mapped out the route before we left. I don’t think we spent any time on Route 66. It was mostly expressway until we got into AZ.
Your tent story reminded me of a trip I took my girls on when they were young. We went camping in Tennessee with a friend from work and her daughter another friend who had moved to North Carolina was meeting us at the campground. We got to the campground and began setting up our tents. One of the tent poles for my friends tent broke so she had to find a local Walmart so she could exchange the tent. While she was gone my girls and I got our tent set up and it started to rain. By the time she returned water was starting to leak into our tent. By the time she returned it was raining so hard she couldn’t even get her tent set up. We decided to find a motel for the night. My friend called our other friend and told her where to meet us.
Thankfully the rest of the weekend was hot and sunny. We spent the next morning using all the beach and shower towels we had brought soaking up the water from our tent them opened it up to air out. The campground had a laundry mat, so we were able to wash and dry all the towels. My girls still have fond memories of that trip.
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I’m glad you liked the post Ruth and I had a lot of fun compiling it. It triggered some nice memories for me and for you as well and at least your camping fiasco was not as bad as ours (in the end anyway). What a time for Mother Nature to not cooperate and rain is bad, but heavy rain to boot at least you got your tent dried out eventually. I seem to recall my father taking the tent into the hotel every night, because if it was stolen overnight, we’d have to pay for the tent. I’m wondering if we rolled it out in the hotel room to help dry it out. Maybe my parents figured we had a “lemon” tent, so the sporting goods store would get it back wet. In the end, we were none the worse for the experience, same as you and look how your girls have fond memories over the experience. I probably didn’t think at the time that I’d want to write about it years later.
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I can enjoyed your interesting & lovely your childhood Trip & shistory. So Sweet & Pretty looking Black and white photos & Some colours photos. You are so smart 😀 looking sitting on the horse 🐎. Nice you sharing about labour Day past & present.
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Thank you Raj – it is always fun to look back on our childhood memories and having pictures from back then even makes it a sweeter memory. My parents took a lot of photos through the years, so I am lucky for that.
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Most welcome ! You are so lucky. Your parents take lot of photos. You are so smart. God bless you ❣️
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I think 1961 was probably the year I went to kindergarten too. I was born in April of 56. I don’t remember anything about it, other than I had to walk alone and it was over a mile away and I had to cross two busy streets and mom was terrified. But she had 3 more kids at home and we only had one car that dad took to get to work. I also remember the smell of the classroom floor when we got our mats out and took a ‘nap.’ I don’t remember napping at all. I remember even less of 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade. We moved to a different town when I was in 4th grade, and so I lost track of the people and teachers at my old school. And I got to ride a bus to school at the new place.
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Well we share April 1956 birth dates Dawn. My elementary school was not as far away, maybe 1/3 of a mile and I was lucky as I had several same-age friends on the street, so we all held hands and walked to school and we did have one busy street to cross – no stoplights back then. In those days, in our neighborhood anyway, the man of the house took the car to work and most women didn’t drive anyway. I remember the sleep mats and having to take a nap on the floor for kindergarten only. We moved to Michigan right after I finished 5th grade, but about ten years ago, I was on Facebook and decided to see if my elementary school had a Facebook site and they did. So I discovered a woman, who was a classmate, sat next to me in our kindergarten class picture and we spent a few hours reminiscing over school, trying to remember everyone’s name in the photo and catching up on what we’d done since then. She had taken art classes as a hobby at a local university and painted and she shared her art site with me and with her permission I used a few of her paintings in my posts. She decided to leave Facebook as she got hacked and had privacy concerns, so we lost track of one another.
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I loved this post! Cute photos of you. Takes me back in time, I think we had the same glasses lol I follow Diane’s blog and I have been enjoying her travels on Route 66 and her other posts of course. My Mom put plastic covers on all our furniture, it was horribly uncomfortable. None in the car though, thankfully! We traveled a lot in Canada and we would stay in motels. I have my Mom’s travel diary and remember reading a part where she said this motel wanted $12 a night, that’s ridiculous, we’ll keep driving to get one a dollar or two cheaper. I still have the memories return whenever I smell a Coleman stove. We always ate on the side of the road using the stove and she would cook up beans or whatever and we ate a lot of Spam!
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Thank you Susan! It was a lot of fun to put together. I didn’t know you followed Diane too. I was inspired by Diane’s posts and kept hoping that she would go to the place with the bronco so I knew where it was. 🙂 Google did not help, but there were lots of old sepia-toned pictures like mine of kids on a bronco, but a different horse and not the same scenery. We stayed in some little motels, that were like separate cabins, or small motels too. I hated those plastic car seat covers and while we didn’t have seat covers on the furniture, our family never sat in the living room as my parents wanted to keep it nice and not lived-in looking so they made one room into a TV room/den with a couch and easy chair and the TV … the living room furniture was nice, but not inviting to sit in anyway and only used when we took pictures. I think we used the Coleman camp stove the morning after as we had food in the cooler to cook and my parents had coffee, but I don’t think we used it afterward. Did you have one of those Scotch plaid big thermoses too? I remember we went to Georgian Bay a couple of times as friends of the family had a cottage in Collingwood and also Niagara Falls and Upper Canada Village. I have a few pictures from there, but not as many as on these two Route 66 trips.
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We used to go to those places too. My parents are both from the Niagara area so we spent a lot of time there. We also did some trips out West. It would be funny if our families had somehow passed each other on one of those trips ! I think we did have a bit plaid thermos and also a metal Coleman cooler.
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We might have waved to one another along the highway! 🙂 We brought the green metal cooler, stove and plaid cooler home, put it in a storage bin in the basement and then a few years later, we had a flooded basement due to a sewer pipe break. My father and I were in Germany for three weeks and my grandfather had died a few months before, so my grandmother was spending the Summer with us … they had a huge mess cleaning up all the water and scrubbing down the basement wall (painted then and later paneled).
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The first photo is wonderful, and I envy the fact you have all these photos from your childhood. Mine may still be out there too but I’d have to go through a lot of boxes to find them. Like you, Labor Day always signaled the start of the school year (which is so different from today’s mid-August and year-round schedules). And my favorite memory-tickler of all here is the “labelmaker” labels on the last few photos. I forgot about that clever handheld device!
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I also really like that first photo Dave. The photographer took three sepia-toned photos that day, but I like the one doffing my cowgirl hat the best. I will say that in going through the family travel album, that these two trips were the longest and so they had the most pictures. There were some small vacations that there were two, three photos tops. You should think of gathering all your photos to send them to Legacy Box. They will digitize all the photos and put them on a share site so your entire family has access to all the photos and they return the originals.
The start of school here in Michigan is controversial because so many people have cottages in northern Michigan, close enough to have a weekend getaway every weekend, so when the schools start early, it puts a cramp in that last long weekend getaway for sure. Many schools here start early as they claim it is because snow or bitter cold weather will cause schools to close, so they then have to make up time. I’m glad you liked the Dynamo labels too – what a great device this was! I used it for my travel albums through the years as I would not be able to remember each place visited. When I was younger, I was very organized … Dynamo labels for everything in a box and everything in its place – what happened?
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