What follows is something a little different from what I usually contribute and much longer.  Most of my posts I try to make of interest to everyone, and I have steered away from the purely autobiographical.  This selection is definitely autobiographical.  I have been putting together of lot of this stuff, and have close to 200 pages written up so far.  This is one of my favorite chapters.  I hope everyone will enjoy it.  It is called ....

Road Trips

We did not often leave San Antonio or even Texas, but each and every summer we made a road trip back to the childhood home of my mother in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri.  It was a great chance to get away, and it was cheap.  The only real costs were gasoline and what little food we bought on the road.  Hotels were not necessary since my grandfather’s farm house was fairly large and could accommodate all of us and it was a one day drive, albeit a long one.  My grandparents owned 40 acres of property in southwestern Missouri, with a spring fed creek and a farm house dating back to the civil war.

Road trips were becoming a tradition for many.  In the post war prosperity, everyone now had a car.  Gasoline was cheap and plentiful, and roadside parks were built everywhere for travelers to stop and rest.  President Eisenhauer was beefing up the national highway system into an infrastructure that was one of the best in the world.  The roads were there, and the cars to travel them.  So off we went.

Missouri was more than just a convenient place to get away.  It was a frame of mind.  My mother loved and never stopped longing for her childhood home and passed on that excitement to us.  For weeks before our big trip, we would dance with excitement!  MISSOURI was only two weeks away!  MISSOURI was only one week away!  MISSOURI was tomorrow!!!  The night before we left was often a sleepless one.

My parents were clever travelers.  When we were very small, they left about 7:00 in the evening and drove all night up through Dallas and Oklahoma, and into Arkansas and finally, Missouri.  Our national highway system was still developing, and we were forced to drive through the middle of every town, including Dallas.  Those early trips took about 18 hours.  They packed food and made few stops.  We slept through at least half the trip, but at the crack of dawn we came awake.

How many hours until we get there?

How many minutes to the next town?  What is the next town?  How many minutes until the town after that?

When we were older, we made more frequent stops at roadside establishments.  We especially liked the Stuckey’s stores, which featured not only hamburgers and fries, but magazines, toys and activities and other ways to get road weary parents to spend their money on their children.  Each gas station was an opportunity to have a soda, which floated in ice water in an outside bin. You fished out the flavor you wanted with your bare hand.  Sodas were served in reuseable glass bottles and if you took the bottle with you in the car, you had to pay a deposit.  My father was not fond of paying that deposit, so we always had to chug it.  That could be challenging if your soda was carbonated, so we often selected Delaware punch, which came non-carbonated and we could drink it quickly.

Even in later years, the Missouri trip never took less than ten hours.  When we were older we often rose at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and got on the road.  It was still close to suppertime before we got there. 

 Most of the route was rural and on two lane highways, especially once we left Texas.  It was not uncommon to get stuck in a long line behind an Oklahoma or Arkansas local, who insisted on hugging that center line and driving about 20-30 mph under the speed limit.  Each car would have to wait its turn to come up behind the dawdler, watch for a clear highway and then speed quickly around him, trying to make up time before getting stuck behind the next one.  There were often trains of cars ten to twelve deep waiting to get around.  My father was usually livid.

In that last mile before we reached our grandfather’s farm, my mother would twist around in the front seat and comb our hair.  We went down three huge dips (our stomachs already in knots with anticipation) to the bottom of a valley and turned onto the dirt road and pull up by the rock retaining wall, across from the spring fed creek.  The house sat up the hill about 20 yards.  Before the car had even stopped, my grandfather and grandmother were spilling down the porch stairs, with my aunt and our cousins right behind them.  They were all sitting there waiting for us, as my mother’s homecoming was a big event.  After many hugs in the front yard, we settled into the house, but not for long for the children.  We noticed yet again the high ceilings, the huge old kitchen with a wood burning stove, and the storm porch full of my grandmother’s African violets.  Shortly, all of us cousins would make their way up the winding, steep staircase to the second floor which was mainly used for storage.  Our parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles were too busy talking to even notice.   It was a grand play area for children.  Soon we would race back down the stairs and slam out the back door to chase my grandmother’s chickens, returning to the house with our feathery, disgruntled  prizes tucked under our arms.

The main part of the farm house was over 100 years old, with high vaulted ceilings and plenty of tall windows to catch the breezes.  The original house was a salt box with living quarters downstairs, and sleeping quarters upstairs.  The stairway was steep and dangerous, but we respected  it and never tumbled down.  At some point a huge kitchen wing had been added onto the back of the house.  It was bigger than the original living room.  Here, a wood burning stove stood even into my childhood, when it served as the backup to an electrical range.  Off of the kitchen was the storm porch where as a girl, my mother had watched basketball sized orbs of electricity float through the air whenever there was a particularly bad thunderstorm.  Missouri, part of Tornado Alley, could produce whoppers of thunderstorms where lightning would run into houses and knock electrical clocks off the wall as well as burn out expensive electrical appliances.

Directly in front of the house, and across the dirt road, ran Greasy Creek, with a natural spring bubbling up about every 100 yards.  Spring water was clear, cool and entirely safe to drink.  It had served the farm house inhabitants for drinking water until a private well had been dug.  In my grandfather’s milking days, his spring was the perfect place to keep his tall cans of fresh milk cool until it was picked up for market.  Greasy Creek was surrounded by a rock wall which had been built by the CCC.  The workmen had conveniently left hand hewn stone steps leading down into the creek.  There, we waded, turned over rocks and examined water beetles skittering across the water surface.  There were also tiny crawdads to be captured.  They would pinch us fiercely, but their pincers were too small and soft to really hurt us.   

Phone service and electrical service were recent newcomers to the farm.  As of the early 50s, there was still no indoor plumbing and everyone used the outhouse or slop jar, which was kept upstairs for nightly relief.  No one wanted to trek to the outhouse in the middle of the night.  My mother had been in high school before electrical service came to the Ozarks.   When the phones arrived, there was only one line which ran for miles down Greasy Creek road.  Everyone had to share it.  Whenever the phone rang, no one knew who was getting the call, so everyone on the line picked up and listened anxiously, hungry for the new technology.   Then they wouldn’t hang up and listened in, even if the call was not for them. 

After a much needed night’s sleep at the side of one of our grandparents, we were up at dawn to live the farm life for the next five days.  The first big event of the day was the milking of the cows and the release of the hens from the chicken house.  The hens would emerge at a run in search of unfortunate insects still out in the open.  We could help our grandmother feed her cats.  There were upwards of 30 of them at times, depending on how many litters of kittens were born.  Most of the cats were semi-feral but there were always a few who were glad for our attentions.  Barn cats were a vital part of the farm ecosystem.  My grandfather kept  grain and shelled corn for his stock, which attracted rats.  Barn cats were kept to dispatch them.  Almost every rural Missouri farmer kept barn cats.  If one farmer had too many litters of kittens one spring, another farmer could usually be found to pick them all up and install them in his barn.  Most of my grandmother’s barn cats headed for the hills when our car pulled up and we spilled out of it.  They were not seen again until we disappeared a week later.  But there were always a few who were friendly, and we could depend on some kittens to play with and watch as they rolled around on their shoulders in the front yard and stalked one another.  When my grandmother found a new litter, she would try to handle and gentle them for us so we could enjoy them.

At least once a day, a trip would be made to the corn crib to gather a can full of shelled field corn for the hens.  Using my grandfather’s hand cranked corn sheller, we shelled as many ears as we needed and collected the kernels in a can.  As we scattered the kernels, the hens would come running.  There was a white magnificent rooster we could never catch, though we tried.  We coveted his beautiful, curling tail feathers.  When we finally tired of chasing him, he would strut and crow his victory, just out of our reach.

After a breakfast of fresh farm eggs, we were off to try to catch grasshoppers in the pasture or enormous, green slick bullfrogs in the stock tanks, or ponds.  The bullfrogs, about the size of a kitten,  would squat in the mud by the side of the little ponds, seemingly totally unaware of us.  We would inch closer and closer, certain that we would soon have a fine fat bullfrog in our grasp.  At the very last second, the frogs would catapult themselves almost two feet off into the pond with a huge and angry croak.  They knew we were there all the time.   Soon, only their heads and eyes would emerge from the green water as they stared balefully at us.  We promised them we would be back.  My grandfather had thrown small perch into the stock tanks for us to fish out with our bamboo poles, so we would take up another hour or so at that.   Up the hill was the haybarn, stacked to the rafters with fresh bales of hay.  My grandfather had built a shed attached to the haybarn for cattle to gather in case of bad weather.  Often, we rounded the corner to the shed and came face to face with a startled heifer who beat a quick retreat from these troublesome children.  Inside the bar, we leaped from corner to corner, falling in the straw and never getting hurt.  Then there was the jenny, my grandfather’s ancient plow mule, to be chased down and ridden, usually two at a time.  Then back into the kitchen for a lunch of beans and potatoes, my grandfather’s favorite meal.  It was served for both lunch and dinner, every day.  Many days we would follow my grandmother in her bonnet out to her huge garden for vegetables to supplement the beans.  Or we might help our grandfather pitchfork new potatoes right out of the ground.  By the end of the day, it was time to milk the cows again and gather the eggs.  Often there was a clever black snake who stole eggs before we could reach them.  Laying hens often squawk loudly when they have produced their daily egg.  The black snake knew to respond to the sound, but so did we.  Sometimes we beat him to the laying box and collected the still warm egg.  But sometimes he beat us.  A hen would trumpet her accomplishment, but we never got the egg.

Up at the very top of the hill and at the edge of the property was a cemetery with graves over one hundred years old.  If we were feeling brave, we would hop the fence and walk around reading the names and dates.  The cemetery property technically belonged to my grandfather, but he had deeded it over to the county for that purpose.    

If we got up early enough we could help my grandfather milk his cows.  He always promised me he would wait for me and I would help him.  But I had no understanding of farm ways.  Cows must be milked at dawn, not when city children finally wake up.  When I did wake up, I rushed to the upstairs window and looked out, hoping to find him on his way up to the barn, walking in his slow, loping way.  But he was already finished and apologetic.  But, we would try again for the next morning.  We did manage to join him for the late afternoon milking.  Milking barns are full of the distinct clean but animal smell of the heifers and the raw milk and the feed grain my grandfather pour into stanchions to encourage his girls to get on in the milk barn for their business.  They lined up outside the door and even pushed trying to get in and rush to the first available stanchion.  Out came the electric milking machines which churned and hummed until the udder was almost empty.  The best part followed when my grandfather grabbed his little milking stool and stripped the rest of the milk by hand into a bucket.  The farm dog Laddie was always standing by, knowing what to expect.  Expertly, grandpa would take careful aim with the teat and, in mid air, fill Laddie’s open mouth with fresh milk.  After milking, my grandfather would pour out a ration for the household, including the cats, and pour the rest in tall steel cans to be picked up by the milk truck.  My grandparents never bought milk at the grocery.  They drank it fresh, after my grandmother had pasteurized it of course.  For Wes and I, the fresh milk tasted far too gamey and we refused to drink it. 

About 20 miles on into the mountains was Blue Bend, a true paradise of a swimming hole.  It was on private property, but it was such a destination that the property owners had no problem with everyone using it.  Full respect was shown to the property and it was never trashed or abused.   We came, swam, and left, giddy and blue from the cold water.  There were so many of us cousins that we had to ride up and down the hills in the back of my grandfather’s pickup truck.  Blue Bend was over 20 feet wide in some places and up to ten feet deep.  It was a rock and gravel lined creek and not the most comfortable for wading on tender city feet.  We cared little, plunging and paddling into the icy depths.  And it was cold, extremely cold.  Missouri’s climate was not warm like Texas and bodies of water never got over 80 degrees, even in high summer.  There were snakes in Blue Bend, but we cared not a twit.  They swam at the bottom and we swam at the top, and never came near each other.

After such a day, we fell into an exhausted sleep with a grandparent, only to wake up the next morning and do it all again until the day we had to leave.

We cried buckets on the morning we had to go, and then piled into the car for the long trip back to Texas.  We were glad to be home, and as we settled back into our house, Missouri was like a dream, and a pleasant one, that we would soon be having again.

We had only one Missouri trip which was unpleasant.  Wes and I had talked our parents into letting us stay on by ourselves with our grandmother for a couple of weeks.  We brought a lot of extra things with us, including a desk, a Vespa motor scooter and the family cat and Skippy, the dog.  Upon arrival, Skippy fought non-stop with Hector, the farm dog.  Later, Skippy escaped from the barn where we had attempted to confine him for the night.  We looked out the window and saw him energetically exploring the barn yard by moonlight.  He was having quite the grand time. 

What were we thinking?  My parents departed for Texas, then after a couple of weeks, they returned for us.  The troubles began in New Braunfels, Texas, where the family car broke down with radiator problems.  My parents limped back to San Antonio and got in the reserve car, which was a VW beetle, with no air conditioning.  The month was July.  Even with the late start, they headed North.  In Arkansas, the VW broke down with fuel pump problems.  Fortunately, they were able to find a mechanic to fix it on the road.  After this final delay, they pulled into Washburn about 9:00 p.m., totally exhausted.

We rose the next morning at 6:00 to return to Texas.  Four people loaded into the beetle with a cat and dog.  We were pulling a U-haul filled with the Vespa and desk.  About 60 miles into the trip, the family cat forgot himself and urinated all over a pillow in my mother’s lap, where he had been relaxing.  We threw the pillow into the nearest trash can, but it had soaked through to her lap.   We had to feed her lunch in the car.  She smelled too bad to leave it.  We drove the next 500 plus miles with cat urine permeating everything.  The higher the sun rose, the worst the smell became. 

By 3:00 p.m., we had made it to Dallas.  We were hot, exhausted and enclosed in a small car which reeked of cat urine.  We never drove straight through Dallas because of the traffic.  We always took Loop 12 which circled the city.  But on this trip of trips, my father missed the Loop 12 exit, even with my mother shouting at him to not miss it!  My mother lost it and a yelling match ensued as she attempted to back-seat drive and my father dug his heels in and resisted.  We went round and round a Dallas cloverleaf, not knowing where we were going or how to get out of it, with parents shouting every yard of the way.

Somehow we found our way through and made it on in the San Antonio in the dark.  It was a trip never to be forgotten.

Other smaller day trips were made out to the Uvalde region, where two of my father’s sisters lived.  Aunt Zeni lived right outside of Knippa, Texas, on some mesquite covered acreage.  She was pretty grouchy and ill-tempered so we had a tendency to get out the back door quickly and avoid the house.  Knippa was no Missouri.  It was hot, dry and nothing but dirt and dead-looking trees in every direction.  But then Wes and I were ever skillful at finding activities to entertain ourselves.  Outside the house, we could find and follow huge snakes and overturn most anything and find a huge rat colony and watch them scatter in panic.  Often, we would hear the whistle of a freight train.  The I-10 corridor and railroad tracks ran less than 30 feet from my aunt’s house (and bedroom …), and we would rush to the side of the road and count how many railroad cars were in the train.  The highlight was the caboose.  They always waved at us.  If we tired of that, there was always Gaucho, my uncle’s pinto stock horse, and a vicious beast.  We were too smart to try to ride him.  He had already come close to killing me as a younger child by running out of control down Highway 90 while I clung in desperation to his back.  That evil horse knew exactly what he was doing.  Of course that didn’t stop us from entering his pasture, where he would charge us.  He made straight for us through the mesquite and brush at full gallop, always turning off at the latest minute.  He could have easily killed us.  If we made our way on through Gaucho’s territory, there was an old and dilapidated house in the back of my aunt’s acreage.  It had belonged to her prosperous in-laws, long gone.  They had lost everything in the Knippa bank failure in 1929.  It had been a sizeable two-story house, but had deteriorated into grey and weathered clapboard.  We never went inside, certain that it was haunted.  Then it was usually back in my aunt’s house to read the funny papers until time to return home after a good lunch.  Aunt Zeni was a good cook, and the meals never lasted very long (mercifully).  We were of course on our top behavior, in fear of her wrath, or my father’s if we dared to offend his sister. 

On the Knippa trips, we often went on into Uvalde to see my father’s other sister, Aunt Lorene.  Aunt Lorene was nothing like Aunt Zeni.  Aunt Zeni had married well into the Knippa family, hard working and prosperous Germans who had established Knippa, Texas.  Every time we visited Aunt Lorene, she was living in a different run-down house.  But we loved this, a new place to see and explore.  She had had two husbands, both of whom had split, but had left behind a whole bunch of little cousins for us to play with.  At her home, the atmosphere was chaotic, relaxed and carefree.  The whole family was just good natured.  Lorene, despite her sad and challenging life, was always smiling and good company.  She worked as a waitress and never made enough to support her five children.  She passed on her cheerful attitude to her kids.  They lived on the edge of financial desperation but it never seemed to bother them.  They moved from house to house, dodging rent collectors.  My father sometimes had to lend her grocery money for her children.  But those trips came to a sad end when Lorene was murdered by her son-in-law who had lost his mind.  Lorene was the black sheep of the family, but of all my father’s sister, she was the one my mother cared for the most.  After her death, the family banded together and provided for her children until they could get back on their feet.

The other major road trip we made was to Deming, New Mexico, via El Paso, Texas.  Grandmother Ella had become a widow before my parents ever met, and had remarried and settled in Deming.  Aunt Faye Doll, my father’s youngest sister, was married and living nearby in El Paso.  If my father, or “Son,” as she called him, was the apple of his mother’s eye, Faye Doll ran a close second.  She was spoilt, and willful.

My mother never cared for Faye Doll, or for her mother in law.  Being a no nonsense Midwesterner, she had no sympathy for anyone who put their children on pedestals.  Ella returned the scorn.  Sonny Boy had definitely chosen the wrong heifer, but he was stuck, especially now that there were two calves at her side.

As children, we immediately picked up on the tension.  There was little warmth between us.  Grandmother Gertie made us peanut butter sandwiches and attempted to spoil us.  She made up part of our beloved Missouri.

Grandmother Ella called Wes “fat boy” and called me “mama’s girl.”  We had a name for her as well:  the grandma with the black spit, and there was a reason for that.  Like many women of her generation, she had started dipping snuff, the female version of chewing tobacco.  She had the ghastly habit of leaning over and spitting it out of her mouth into a coffee can.  It was a long drop.  Both horrified and fascinated, we would watch its slow and thick travel out of the side of her mouth down to the can in slow motion.  We ran when she tried to kiss us, which did not happen very often.  Could we be blamed?  But it only made her dislike us even more.

As with Aunt Zeni, we beat it out of her house as quickly as possible or stayed to ourselves in the living room for most of our visit.  Grandmother Ella lived on a sheep station just outside of Deming.  She did have a respectable collection of old 40s big band records which we would play incessantly, while lip synching or singing along.

Later on, the sheep station got sold and Ella moved into town.  At least there, when we visited, there were two friendly little boys next door:  Tommy and Ricky.  They willingly played with us in the loft of our step-grandfather’s garage (where we accidentally sat in some shellac), and told us tales of the wild mustangs which lived nearby Deming.  Again, we stayed outside of the house most of the time.  Time had not improved our relationship with Grandmother Ella. 

My mother would get us out of the Deming house for brief day trips.  We crossed the border (within 20 minutes) and entered a dismal little town in Mexico.  In a store buying sodas, we saw Superman comics in Spanish.  Outside were Mexican urchins who accosted us.  Have you a penny?  Have you chiclets?  Assimilating other cultures was not in our repertoire, and we were happy to leave.  Juarez would probably have been a lot more entertaining.

There were also tourist attractions close by which we always visited:  the City of Rocks.  This was a set of large boulders in the middle of the desert, probably left by a glacier.  It was a great climbing area for energetic children.  If you fell, you didn’t fall far. 

Also close by was White Sands missile range, and Carlsbad Caverns which we also visited.

At some point during the west Texas trip, we stopped and stayed with Faye Doll, who we liked a lot better than our grandmother.  She provided us with three cousins, a little older and on the mean side, but definitely great fun.  Faye Doll and her family lived in a miserable part of town, almost within walking distance of the Rio Grande.  We never witnessed it, but it was not unusual for illegal immigrants from Mexico to come running through her yard, with the Border Patrol in hot pursuit.  El Paso must surely be one of the most hideous cities in the United States, but it was still a road trip and we were always ready to go.