I can’t
remember when Dad bought our 1948 Chevrolet, but I remember that it had about
9,000 miles on it when we took a 5,400-mile junket in June of 1948.
We had taken at least two trips to
the West in our old 1939 Chevy and Dad was eager to take his new car on a trip.
He got only two weeks’ vacation in those days, having hired in at American
Airlines a scant 3 years before.
I am embarrassed to admit how many new
cars I have had, so I can only imagine how thrilled dad was to have his first
new car. Even today, I drive new cars. So do my three children. Must be
something in the DNA.
Dad seemed old to me when I was 12,
but now, at the age of 78, I realize that he was but a very young man of 33.
A lot of planning went into that
trip. Continental Oil Co. provided travel planning and Dad had a forerunner of
the credit card. We were, as he often said, “in business!”
Actually,
there was no credit card involved. Credit was established and the customer
could sign for fuel and other supplies at Continental filling stations. I think
there was a reciprocal agreement with Shell Oil Co.
I presume the originals were
mailed to company headquarters and statements were sent out to the customer.
Dad was the chief planner but I
was a consultant. Poor mom probably sat back and let her boys dream and plan.
The travel packet arrived. I
remember it to this day. It was a bound legal size packet, complete with maps
of every stage of the trip. Accompanying the maps (on which the route was
marked in purple) were bits of history and monuments and other landmarks.
We
set out at about 4 a.m., bound for Denver, the first stop on our tour.
Dad was Chevy Chase of the Stone
Age. His plan was to see as much country as possible, even if from a Chevy
whizzing along at 75 miles an hour.
We made Denver in one day.
Interstates were thing of the future, so as I remember, it was 750 miles from
Tulsa to Denver. Most highways were two lanes, so it was a constant battle to
avoid getting stuck behind slow-moving trucks.
From Denver, we headed for
Yellowstone National Park, where we all had heard of Old Faithful.
We marveled at the desolation of
Wyoming. I recall that our map showed a couple of routes across Wyoming, but I
forget which one we chose. We stayed at Jackson Hole the second night. I
remember we stayed in a brand new log cabin, heated by an oil-burning stove. We
needed it. It was cold.
On our earlier trips, Dad had
insisted on holding the ’39 Chevy to 50 miles an hour. I know now that the old Chevy
had probably 80,000 miles on it and Dad was bit worried about a breakdown. A
confession: We really didn’t know exactly how many miles it had on it because
during the war, everybody, including my dad, ran the speedometers back.
But now we had a new Chevy that ran
like a sewing machine. So we drove 75 where we could on two-lane roads. There
were no seat belts, no padded dash, no breakaway steering column and brakes
that were greatly inferior to today’s autos.
Highways were much more dangerous
then than now, but of course there were far fewer cars on the road.
An observation on road
safety: About 10 years later when I was a reporter for the Tulsa World, we did
a nightly story and wrap up on traffic deaths. If I remember correctly, traffic
deaths on Oklahoma roads topped 600 annually.
We breezed through Yellowstone,
watching Old Faithful erupt and marveling at the boiling water and mud. In a
recent visit to Yellowstone with my son, I realized I had seen but a small part
of Yellowstone on my 1948 visit. It was uppermost in my dad’s mind to “make
time” on the road.
We headed west from Yellowstone
through Montana. I remember Butte, Montana was a barren mining town. From there
we crossed the upper part of Idaho and reached Spokane, Washington. I don’t
remember where we stayed. We were in Lewis and Clark country, but we didn’t
know it.
I remember a lot of wheat around
Spokane. It surprised me that it resembled Enid, Oklahoma.
