PLACES I REMEMBER - 3

“Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey , and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.” (Romans 15:24)

In the Apostle Paul’s day, taking a journey to Spain at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea meant a long journey and was a “big deal”. In my past two “Places I Remember” posts I’ve mentioned trips I’ve taken within the past ten years. This time I’m going to write about a trip I went on when I was a 10-year-old in the summer of 1965. That year, my Dad took 3 weeks in a row off (I think that was the longest vacation he’d ever had at that point in his career) and we drove to visit our relatives in Miami, Florida. Have you seen those Chevy Chase “Vacation” movies? Well, it wasn’t quite THAT extreme, but it was probably about halfway there! I’m going to try to mention a few highlights. This may sound like it’s going to be like watching somebody’s home movies, but I really don’t think you’ll be bored!

It’s GOTTA be easier to drive to Florida today than it was forty-five years ago!
At that time, much of Interstate 95 in the Carolinas was still under construction. Most cars (including our 1963 Dodge Dart) did NOT have air conditioning. It was a different world.

Probably the most dramatic thing that happened on that trip is that we were victims of a flash flood in Columbia, South Carolina. We had just eaten supper at a fast food place, and it started raining really hard. Driving along a main road, our car was suddenly overwhelmed with rushing water on the street and pushed (or maybe PULLED) off the road and into a drainage ditch. We suddenly realized our feet and legs were WET and that water was rapidly coming into the car! I will never forget all of us dragging ourselves out of the car and SLOSHING our way up a parking lot and into a service station. The gas station attendant was like something out of a redneck comedy, only worse. He made Goober of The Andy Griffith Show seem like a mature, professional gentleman. My father told him the car HAD to be pulled out of that drainage ditch. The attendant fumbled around repeating over and over in a deep southern drawl, “Now, WHERE’D I put that there tow chain?!” This went on for awhile. My father was pretty perturbed.

Dad went outside, got a flashlight out of the car, and managed to flag down a Columbia, SC police cruiser. This was one time that being a fellow law enforcement officer really paid off. He showed the cops his badge and explained he was an officer of the Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles on vacation with his family and that he needed to get that car out of the ditch. The Columbia Police Dept. went into action. It wasn’t long before they had a wrecker on the scene and the car taken to a local garage. A police Captain came and picked us up and took us to a nice hotel. As far as I recall, the City of Columbia, SC paid our repair bill and our hotel bill. I know Howie Carr makes fun of public employees, but the men in blue really DO help out one another in a crisis.

I remember that for about a week, the car’s horn sounded really funny...LOW and waterlogged! I also remember that the interior of one of the rear doors was always a little “buckled” after than incident and never looked quite right. When we got home, my father pulled all the seats out and personally undercoated the bottom of the car...fearful that rusting may have begun due to the flooding. We had that car for over ten more years and junked it in 1975.

That MORNING (the MORNING of the day we were in the flood) had started off in Wilson, North Carolina. We actually went to a tobacco auction and the auctioneer let my father record him. Have you ever heard a tobacco auctioneer doing his thing? It’s absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to decipher! Another thing that surprised me about the South at THAT time is that even though the Civil Rights Act had been passed a year earlier, segregation was still the practice. At gas stations there were 3 rest rooms marked: MEN, WOMEN, COLORED. We saw some run down motels with signs “COLORED” outside. We drove by shacks in the Carolinas with no electricity and black kids outside eating watermelon. This stuff looked like something out of the slavery era. My Dad would blow the horn and all the little black kids would wave.

In Florida we visited Silver Springs. At that time, IT was segregated. The blacks all rode in older, junkier boats, and the whites had the nice new ones. Even so, our DRIVER was a black man. It seemed weird that white people did not want to sit next to black people on the boat ride, but did not mind if a black guy was piloting the boat.

I had never been to New York City until 1965. Going through that area driving down and driving back were stressful and confusing parts of the trip. My parents did not always make a trip easy. My father tended to get agitated and my mother was very nervous...put the two together, and sometimes that could be an interesting combination. To my father, if he took a wrong turn, it was a fate almost worse than death...or spilling milk at the supper table! But we managed to find our way through the New York City area, and everywhere else, for that matter!

We were just outside Cape Kennedy (name since changed back to Cape Canaveral), Florida at the time of the launch of Gemini 5. We were a few miles away, but we listened to the countdown on the radio, and heard the sonic booms and saw the huge vapor trail overhead. It was pretty cool. We also spent a day driving around Washington, DC on the way down. That was when you could still drive right up to the White House lawn. My father took a picture of us standing at the fence with the lawn and White House in the background. I look TERRIBLE in the photo because I had run in front of a car just before it was taken and had been yelled at by my father!

We had a great week in Miami. My Uncle, Aunt, and cousins had no air conditioning but we didn’t care. It WAS very hot there, and there was a thunderstorm EVERY afternoon. I remember visiting the Miami Seaquarium and seeing “Flipper” from the T.V. show. It was NOT advertised that this was Flipper, but locals, including my cousin Marilyn, knew it was Flipper’s tank (Flipper was a female- real name “Susie”.)

I remember a lot more about the trip such as the motel room in Jesup, Georgia that was FULL of earwigs! We also stopped by a base in Camden, South Carolina where my father had been stationed for a year or so during World War 2. During our week in Miami, we drove out to Key Biscayne and went to the beach there several times. Years later, President Nixon often spent time on Key Biscayne, and I could picture it with fond memories. In Miami, we often had breakfast at a cute little breakfast place called the “Huddle House”. I DO think it was part of a chain, as I have seen a few “Huddle House” restaurants in the midwest as an adult. My brother Eddie wore a certain baseball hat ALL the time that year. It was very special to him...almost like Linus’ blanket. On our way home, we drove from Miami up to Lake Okeechobee and into central Florida. About an hour and half away from Miami, Eddie began crying hysterically. He’d left his hat at the Huddle House! It was one of those moments with children like you’d see in “The Family Circus” cartoon. Unfortunately, Eddie had to accept the hard reality that his had was gone.

In the final leg of the trip home, my father actually blew right through a toll booth without stopping! You’d think we’d have gotten some ticket in the mail or some threatening letter or something- but we never did. Sure, it’s nice to fly, but if you can make the time and have the patience, an old fashioned American road trip is quite an educational experience!