July 12, 2005 Planning this trip has me thinking of traveling in general and then I had a dream last night. In the dream I spent considerable, frustrating time trying find and get into this mysterious attic. In my dream I was unsuccessful and when I woke up I wondered "what" attic I had been trying to find....I finally realized it was the "attic" in my father's store. So, for some reason, all this has segued into my thinking this morning about how I came to live in California and my dad became the owner of the Western Auto in a little town in Northern California.. It's a long story as to why, so I won't go into that, but my folks packed up and left Ohio with a long trailer behind the family sedan and with, of course, the four of us kids. I was 3 or 4, my sister about 12 and my two brothers 14 & 15. I wish I could say I remember the trip, but alas, except for a few wisps and tendrils, most of it is lost.

We didn't go directly to California, it took us over a year to arrive at our final destination, we went via Texas - Port Isabel, to be exact. That's down in that little curve at the southern tip of the state. My mom's sister owned a motel there and we stayed for awhile. I know the older kids went to school there until summer. I do have memories of Port Isabel and the beach and playing fall dead in the sand with my little friends and cutting my hand badly on a coffee lid - I still have the scar.

When summer came we headed for California, my folks almost bought a place in San Diego, but headed on up the Coast, staying for awhile with my great aunt Jennie in Berkeley, and then finally arriving in Crescent City, California in time for the school year to start again. I celebrated my 5th birthday in a trailer park in CC, I do remember that. By the way, they pulled that trailer from San Diego all the way to Crescent City on Route 1 - in those days you could drive all the way on the Coast road, today you can only go to Fort Bragg and then have to cut over to the 101 to finish the trip.

My mom always said the movie "The Long Long Trailer" with Lucille Ball and Ricky Arnez reminded her of their trip. I know, from experience, that driving the Coast road in a regular car can be intimidating, let alone pulling anything!!



What is amazing about this trip is that they put the 4 of us in that trailer and headed out.....with absolutely no clear picture as to what they would do to support themselves when they got to their destination. They had a little money, not much - and, things were a lot cheaper in the late 1940's...there, now you know how old I am. I wonder as I think back, if this is the root of my wanderlust, because I would gladly just keep on rolling down the road.

My five siblings, there were two more brothers born in California, have not moved far from the nest, but I have lived in Chicago, in New Jersey, Southern California, SF Bay Area and now in Arizona.

All this is just background noise that explains a little about why I am excited about the prospect of getting into a vehicle and traveling all these miles, using Clay Aiken concerts as my excuse!!!