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Our Trip Across America Part 7

22 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 The next morning we headed West again, this time on I-8 across the desert, thru Yuma and El Centro.  It was so hot, even with the car A/C on full blast, we still had to continually suck on ice cubes to try to stay cool, and we were still hot.   I kept expecting the engine to overheat, but luckily it didn’t, and we finally came out of that desert heat into the cool of San Diego, California.  Wow, what a relief that was after several days of blistering heat!

 

 

 

 

DiVoran and I were married there while I was in the Navy, and we lived our first eight months there before I was shipped out to Japan for a six month cruise of the Far East.

We visited DiVoran’s brother David and his family who lived in Bonita, which was just south of San Diego, almost on the Mexican border.  He had a Mexican housekeeper named Angelica who hadn’t been in the U.S. very long.   She had come from a rich family in Mexico and didn’t know the first thing about house cleaning, but boy could she cook!  She made the best Chili Rellanos I ever ate.  David’s house was so close to the border that he said he could sometimes see the Mexican illegals walking thru his back yard on their way to town to look for work.

 

                    

Our next stop was up the coast about 125 miles to the city of Inglewood, where I went to college and to show our kids the hospital where they were born.  And, of course, the donut shop where I had my breakfast most mornings during my college years.

 

 

          

 

We also looked for the three houses in town that we lived in during the 8 years we were there, but could only find two still standing.  Boy, had that area changed!  Somewhere in the Los Angeles area, our A/C fan belt broke and I was so glad it hadn’t happened while were crossing the desert.  Here again, things worked out, as the spare fan belts were in the tool box and I was able to change it myself without too much delay.

 

 

From there we went out to Diamond Bar, a suburb of Los Angeles, to visit Terry and Mary, some of our friends from Titusville.  I had worked with Terry, and our kids had grown up together.  They took us to one of their favorite restaurants called Pinnacle Pete’s, where we were treated to wonderful Mesquite grilled steaks in a very relaxed atmosphere.  When we walked into the dining area, we were surprised to see the ceiling covered with ties.  I asked “what’s with all the ties?” and was told that it was a tradition to bring unsuspecting friends there for dinner, after which the waitress would bring your check and a big pair of scissors and cut the tie off of anyone wearing one.  It would then be stapled wherever there was an open space.  What a hoot that was!

 

        

 

 

—To Be Continued—

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Our Trip Across America – Part 6

14 Nov


A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

                                   

        

We stayed on US-285 North thru Roswell till we were able to picked up I-40 (Old Route 66) West into Albuquerque.  The visit with my family and friends in Albuquerque was great. It was a restful time in familiar surroundings with my mother, aunt and grandmother who were thrilled to see us and our kids.  I was able to show the kids the houses where my DiVoran and I grew up and the schools we attended.

 

 

We took them to “Old Town” and had dinner in one of the restaurants on the original 250+ year old town square.  After dinner, we walked around the square, checking out the sidewalk Indian jewelry displays and visiting many of the shops that carried beautiful handmade Indian jewelry, crafts and artwork.

I was able to have short visits with two of my childhood friends who still lived in Albuquerque and catch up on how the years had been treating them.

 

 

 

 

 

We replenished our food and water supplies before heading West on I-40 (Old Route 66) thru Grants, over the Continental Divide, and thru Gallup into the Arizona desert.  We stopped in the Petrified Forest National Park long enough to get a good look at those age old wonders.

 Then it was on West into the Arizona mountains thru Holbrook and Winslow toward Flagstaff to visit high school friends.  It was the slow going in the mountains on the way to Flagstaff that the station wagon engine got so hot the transmission oil boiled over.  The oil ran down on the exhaust system and when I saw this huge cloud of white smoke in my rear view mirror, thought “oh no, we’ve burned up the engine, out here in the middle of nowhere.  What are we going to do now?”

 As it turned out, we were just coming up on a rest stop, and were able to pull in to let the engine cool off.  This is where that extra transmission fluid I had brought along came in handy.  After the engine and transmission had cooled, I was able to replenish the missing fluid and we were on our way again.

When we finally got to Flagstaff, we had a wonderful time reminiscing with our friends about our high school days, Charlene and DiVoran’s time in beauty school together, Jim and my chance meeting in Japan while in the Navy, and  how fast our kids were growing up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, the next morning, after that great visit, I discovered we had a flat on our station wagon.  It was Sunday and there were no tire repair places open.  So, the repair entailed disconnecting the camper, and unloading everything in the rear of the station wagon to get at the spare tire and jack.  This was not in my plans for the day’s travel and got us off to a late start toward our next destination.

Our friends had told up about this wonderful Sonora Desert Museum that was a must see, so we headed South on I-17 to Tucson.  They were right!

It was a very unusual museum in that many of the exhibits were cutaway underground burrows showing how the desert animals survived the harsh environment they normally lived in.  There was an interesting temperature farm that showed air temp, surface temp, and the temperature every 6” underground.  It is amazing how fast the temperature drops the further under the surface of the desert you go.  The day we were there it was 120 degrees F in the shade with 140 degree F surface temp.

I can’t imagine how hot the asphalt walkways between the underground exhibits were, but it almost melted our tennis shoes.  We literally had to run between the underground exhibits, and then take our shoes off to let our feet cool.

   When we got back to the campground that afternoon, it was still so hot that we jumped in the pool and were enjoying ourselves, when all of a sudden the wind came up so strong we were afraid it would blow the camper over.

That was the most miserable night of our whole trip, trying to sleep in all that heat.

  

 

—–to Be Continued—–

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Our Trip Across America-Part 5

8 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

                               

 

 

Now we headed West on I-20 for our next stop in Dallas, Texas to show the kids where I was born and grew up as well as where I was taken to my first church service (the nursery) at the age of two weeks old.

 

 

 

 

 

We made our way through the big “D” to Gilley’s Palladium with it’s famous mechanical bull “El Toro” of movie fame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was on over for a quick visit to the historic Fort Worth Stockyards where we got a good idea of what a huge operation that had been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also got to meet some modern cowboys and some of the bulls they had tamed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We continued West on I-20 thru Abilene, Midland and Odessa, then at Pecos we headed North on US-285 to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  It was on this stretch of US-285 that we had our first camper tire blowout.  I thought “oh-no, what a place to have to change a tire!”   Did I mention it was the middle of the day, in the middle of July, in the middle of the desert?  Well, anyway, I had checked all three camper tires before leaving Florida and they looked good with lots of tread.  But, it never dawned on me that they could have been the original tires that came with the camper when it was new.  And that was how many years ago?  I had no idea.  I guess the weather had gotten to them, even though they didn’t have many miles on them.  Well, I don’t know what the actual temperature was, but it was hot.  Funny thing though, as I worked away changing that tire, I never seemed to break a sweat.  There was a light breeze and I guess with less that 10% humidity it all evaporated before I even noticed I was sweating.  What a surprise!  I would have been dripping wet if this had been at home in Florida.

 

 

We took the tour of Carlsbad Caverns and were awestruck by the beauty and wonders of those huge caverns that extended deep underground.  In fact, we were told that Carlsbad Caverns are the deepest caverns in the U.S. at 1594 feet.  They even had mallets hooked up electrically to an organ and played beautiful music by devices striking the stalactites and stalagmites with the mallets.  What a wonderful audio/visual sensation that was.  We stayed around until dusk that evening to watch the nightly flight of the bats from the caverns on their way to look for food.  There were so many that they blotted out the sky at one point as they emerged from the caverns.

 

–To Be Continued–

 

Our Trip Across America Part 4

31 Oct

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

We took I-49 North toward Shreveport to my dad’s family home site near the small town of Many, LA.  We had a wonderful visit there with several of my uncles and aunts, remembering the good times my sister and I had during the many summer visits there when we were young

there was always the “ole swimming hole” where we spent a lot of time swimming, fished and chasing the crayfish.  On the way out of town we stopped at the old country store where my cousins and I used to spend our nickels and dimes on candy and lots of firecrackers.  One of my uncles ran the store back then but, by this time, the old lever handle gas pumps were gone and the store was closed.

From there, we continued north to Shreveport, to visit another of my uncles and his wife.  He was a typewriter repair mechanic and had a wonderful shop full of all kinds of tools and equipment that he used in his typewriter repair business.  It smelled of cleaning fluid and printer’s ink.

This is when he related the “watermelon nest” story to us.  Seems as how he had this watermelon vine that had somehow attached itself to and grown up a tree in his backyard.  Now I had never heard of a watermelon plant growing up a tree but my uncle wasn’t a man to fib.  So, when a melon started growing high up in the tree, my uncle climbed up there and built a platform for the melon to rest on.

Well, would you believe it, when that melon matured to full size he climbed back up there, brought it down and he and his wife enjoyed it together.  I asked him if that was the same tree, I fell out of and broke my wrist when my family was visiting him on one of our summer trips to Louisiana, and he said it probably was.  My aunt had a fine dress shop out in the country away from everything. She often went on buying trips to the big cities, brought the latest styles in ladies dresses back to her shop, and sold most everything to the local ladies near and far.

To be continued……

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Our Trip Across America-Part 3

24 Oct

Last week Bill and his family were getting all packed up to begin their trip across America. This week they begin their journey. Bill’s wife, DiVoran will be sharing  memories of her first trip to  the South.-ONISHA

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill

We headed North on I-95 to Jacksonville and then I-10 West through Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile and Biloxi to New Orleans.  We didn’t stop there on this trip, but told our kids all about our visit there when they were just 3 years and 18 months old.  How we cruised Bourbon Street and how we enjoyed the party atmosphere during our quick stop there.

DiVoran

Bill and I remember different things, so he asked me to put some things I recall into his stories.  He’s speaking of my first trip down south.  Being from the Southwest, where we had mountains and deserts, it was like a wonderland, especially all the trees, rivers, and lakes.  I’d never seen Spanish moss or Pathos vines with leaves bigger than a man’s head covering the trunks of many of the big trees.

Of course, this was the mid 60’s, in the south, which was a time of race riots, sit-ins, and bathrooms and drinking fountains that said, “Whites Only.” Even though it didn’t affect me personally, it was a bit unsettling.

We had been living in LA at the time of the Watts riots, but I was unaware of the way the everyday African-American was treated in public and in the homes of their employers.

One other thing that was so different, I hardly knew what to think, was when we asked about going down to the French Quarter to hear some music that night.  Our hostess, in the very large house where we were staying, told us if we’d put our eighteen month old and three-year old to bed before we went she’d see that they were taken care of. Then she asked kindly if it would scare them if they woke up and saw a black face leaning over them to tend them.

Of course, that would be one of her maids, who had probably tended her children when they were small. “Oh, no, I’m sure not”, I said.  I believed then, and I know now, that our kids are “color blind.”   However, it didn’t come to a trial so all was well, and we absolutely loved the Dixieland band we were privileged to hear that night.

To be continued……..

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Our Trip Across America-Part 2

17 Oct

Last week BIll began a series, Our Trip Across America. He picks up this week with his transition from tent camping to a pop up trailer. Onisha

A Slice of Life

  Bill Lites

The camper was an older 6’x10’ unit I bought from a friend at work.  He told me it was in good shape, but had been sitting in his driveway for a long time.  This was a very basic house shaped square box camper with gas for a stove but no electricity. We had to use Coleman lanterns for lighting and we took a small three burner Coleman stove in case we had a gas stove problem or needed to cook outside for some reason. The camper had a small fresh water tank, but the water had to be pumped into the sink with a hand pump.

Everything had to fit within the camper footprint as the tent portion opened straight up to a peak running fore and aft.  The small gas stove, sink and counter top were on one side, with an office size “ice box” (remember, no electricity) under the counter.  On the other side was a small fold down table with bench seats for four people.   My wife slept on the twin bed that ran across the front with storage under it, and I slept in the other twin bed that ran across the rear with more storage underneath.  A swing-away bunk bed was pinned into each of the fore and aft upright tent supports and that was where the kids slept.  It was a very compact arrangement.  When folded down, everything was flush with the top sides of the camper and a canvas cover over the top, was secured in place with ropes.  This did not allow anything to be carried on top of the camper, so all our clothes and personal items needed for the trip had to fit inside the camper.

I spent many hours on maintenance on the camper and on our 1968 Ford 10-passenger station wagon to make sure all went well during our trip.  Knowing we would be traveling over some mountainous roads, I had installed a transmission cooler for the engine. I had packed tools, spare oil, transmission fluid, and fan belts for the car, and extra jacks and spare wheel bearings for the camper in case we had any emergencies.  The two seats in what we called “the back-back” of the station wagon faced each other, so I built a small wooden table to fit in that space where the kids could sit and read or play games when they got bored with the scenery.

 

 

 

 

 

My wife loaded the camper with all the creature comforts we could think of, including our fresh water tank filled with the best drinking water anywhere.  Finally, all was ready, so we arranged for a neighbor boy to take care of our dog and off we went.

 

 

 

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Our trip across America-Part 1

10 Oct

A Slice of Life

   Bill Lites

                              

In 1974, I was between jobs and decided it would be a good time to take the cross-country family camping trip I had always wanted to do, to show my family the wonders of America while visiting friends and relatives along the way.  The planned route was from Florida through the Southern states visiting relatives in Louisiana and New Mexico.  Then it would be on to Southern California to show the kids where they were born, visit my wife’s brother and some friends. We would then head up the California coast to Fort Bragg about halfway to the Oregon border, to visit my wife’s folks.  We planned to come back across the middle of the U.S. visiting relatives in Colorado and see the wonders of America’s heartland.

As a little background, we had started our Florida camping experiences years before with friends at the Alexander Springs Campground using two-man pup tents.  As you may know, most pup tents have no floors, and only a drawstring to close the entry flaps.  It didn’t take us long to discover that mosquito netting over our sleeping bags was not the answer to keep from being eaten up by all those many pesky insects.

Then we tried using the 9’x9’ canvas tent and equipment my family had used, to go hunting in New Mexico. (That was when I was a teenager, and in a desert climate where things seem to last forever).  My folks had not used the tent or camping equipment for years and had shipped them to us for our use.

 

Well, after our first camping trip with that equipment, I guess the humidity got to everything, because all the tent stitching rotted, the tent fell apart, and the stove and lantern rusted beyond repair.

So we upgraded to a newer 9’x12’ tent that worked for a while, until after one cold rainy night in the North Carolina mountains, we woke up with the whole tent floor was covered in about 2” of water.  We were up off the ground and dry in our not so comfortable army cots, but nothing else was.  It was not long after that trip, that we decided to buy our first tent camper.

 

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My First Real Cruise

3 Oct

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

 

After joining the NROTC in Albuquerque, NM at age 17, I spent the first six months going to weekly indoctrination/training  meetings, getting medical checks, shots of all kinds, and generally being bored with the whole thing.

When it came time for what the Navy called an annual Summer Cruise, my first “Cruise” was two weeks of Boot Camp (Basic Training) at the San Diego Naval Training Station.    

We learned many cool things, like rescue swimming, fire fighting and gas mask training, but it was mostly two weeks of long days and hard work.

In those days, when you signed up for any branch of the military, you were in for “The Duration”.  None of this, “Oh I made a mistake and want out” stuff went on then.  Well, it seems, I had gone to Boot Camp during the Navy’s 1956 fiscal year, and now that year had ended and we were into the 1957 fiscal year. So, I asked my Company Commander if I could take my 1957 Summer Cruise now instead of waiting till next summer.  He was agreeable to that idea and cut me a set of orders for my first “real” Summer Cruise on the USS Gurke (DD 783) out of San Diego.

I was thrilled and amazed when I first went aboard that ship, to find that there were other reservists like me on board.  At first glance, there didn’t seem to be room to do anything, as every available inch seemed to be packed with essential equipment.  Of course, I found out real quick how much empty space there really was, once a mop or a paintbrush was put in my hands.

 

 

 

 

I discovered in the Navy, the smaller the ship the better the food because there are fewer men to cook for.  The food was great on the Gurke, and I looked forward to every meal.  However, that wasn’t the case with some.  I thought we were lucky during this cruise, because the areas of the ocean we did our maneuvers in was very calm most of the time, so I got my sea legs quickly.  But, there were others who were sea sick from the moment we left the dock, and never did get over it.  That was really bad for them, because we stayed out at sea for week at a time and only came back to San Diego for the weekends.

 

I had never thought I would enjoy sea duty, but the two weeks we were at sea ended up being a fun trip for me.  As it turned out, I spent almost two years at sea going around the world on ships and never did get seasick.  That included crossing the North Atlantic in a huge storm, which had waves coming up over the bow of the aircraft carrier I was on.

 

But I did almost get “seasick” after the second week at sea on the Gurke. When I walked down the streets of San Diego the whole city seemed to be rocking back and forth.  That along with the sights and smells of a tattoo parlor I went into with a friend, nearly cost me my dinner that first night on liberty.

 

Scripture:  Psalm 107:29 (English Standard Version)

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He Will Order His Angels

26 Sep

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

Do you remember where you were when terror struck the United States on 9/11/2001?  I’m sure you do.  I was having breakfast with my family at the DeLeon Springs State Park in Florida when the terrible news came across the airwaves. I remember how deathly quiet it was as all airplanes in this country were grounded.   You might remember how, everything seemed to be on hold, as if the world held its breath to see what would happen next.  It wasn’t until we got home later that day that we were able to see the news reports and only then begin to understand the impact of what had happened and how it was going to change the lives of all Americans.

  

As it happened, six months earlier, my wife and I had signed up for a trip to Spain, to begin on 9/18/2001.  We had been looking forward to that trip with anticipation for the past six months.  Now what were we going to do?  All the airlines were shut down, and who knew for how long!  Would our trip be cancelled?  Would we be able to go?  Should we go?  We decided that If the airlines started flying again, and If we were allowed to go, and If we could get seats, we wouldn’t let this event ruin our plans.

By some miracle, things began to calm down, the airlines started flying again, and since many people were “Never going to fly again!” we had no problem confirming our itinerary on the scheduled date.  The atmosphere in the airports in New York, Paris, Malaga, and on the planes was very tense, but most everyone forced a smile and was very courteous to us.  When we arrived in Malaga, Spain our luggage went on to Istanbul, Turkey and it was two days before it got back to us.  Hey, No surprise there, right.

At our base hotel in Torremolinos, and on the bus tours to the Alhambra and a Spanish olive factory, everything was conducted pretty much as if nothing had happened.  It was on our ferry trip from Gibraltar to Morocco that we got our first glimpse of how 9/11/2001 had affected many of the peoples of the world.  A Muslim family came up to us and said, “We are very sorry about what happened in America.”

Then again in Tangier, as we were shopping at one of the shops in the Kasbah, the owner said, “Please come back, we need you.”  That evening at the hotel, after our dinner, a professor from the local collage came and talked to us about his modernized family, and how most of the Muslim world are not extremists and only want to live a trouble free life, as we do

Overall, we had a very wonderful vacation trip.  We were able to visit with the people first hand, in and around the beautiful Costa del Sol region of southern Spain, as well as in Tangier, Morocco and see how differently they lived just across the water from one another.

If it hadn’t been for DiVoran getting sick and missing some of the tours, we could have called it a perfect trip.  Now who would ever have guessed after 9/11/2001 that we would have been able to say that on 9/28/2001?

Scripture: Luke 4:10b (New Living Translation) …”He will order His angels to protect and guard you.”

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Let’s Go Fishing

19 Sep

A Slice of Life

      Bill Lites

My father-in-law loved to fish. It really didn’t matter what kind of fish it was, he just loved the challenge.  To get away from the Summer heat he and his wife would select a relatively cool location, known for its good fishing reputation, and set up their semi-permanent base camp (usually a 30’ travel trailer) there.  Sometimes he would rent a travel trailer at a campground or sometimes he would buy a used travel trailer, haul it to the location, use it for the season, and then sell it when it was time to head home.

One year he called us and said, “The Silver Salmon are going to be running up the Columbia River and you should bring your family out and go on a fishing vacation with us.  Well, I’m not much of a fisherman, but we tried to make it to California once each year so the grandparents could see our kids (4 & 5 years old at the time) and we thought this would make everyone happy.

 

The plan was to fly from Orlando to San Francisco where Ivan would pick us up and take us to Livermore where they lived.  We prepared the truck, boat and crab traps for the trip to Garibaldi, Oregon where Ivan had made arrangements for us to stay together in a motel.  By leaving at 4 am, we made good time for the first 200 – 300 miles, when a wheel bearing went out on the boat trailer.  The repair took the better part of the day before we could continue our journey.  We finally made it to Garibaldi, had dinner somewhere, got checked into our motel and crashed for the night.

The next morning Ivan and I headed out early to get the boat in the water and set the crab traps on the way out to the “best fishing spot” as defined by the locals Ivan had pumped for information at the boat ramp.  That first day we were encouraged by the number and size of the fish being caught all around us.  The picture below gives you an idea of what some of the other people were catching.  This was what we were expecting to catch too.

Funny thing though, we didn’t catch a single fish that day.  Ivan was pretty upset about that, but his attitude improved somewhat as we came back in that afternoon, stopping to check the crab traps, and discovered we had a great catch of dungeness crabs

Of course, the kids were a little squeamish when they first saw the load of crabs we brought home!

Our family had not been introduced to what fine eating dungeness crabs could be, but after the initial shock of seeing how they were cooked, and getting over how they seemed to stare up at you from the plate as you were tearing off their legs, we enjoyed a wonderful, all-we-could-eat, crab meal.

As it turned out, each day after that was a repeat of that first day.  We never caught a single Silver Salmon, but Man-Oh-Man did we gorge on dungeness crabs!

On a rainy day, we took a tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  That was a informative adventure seeing how all the different types of cheeses are made, wrapped, cured and packaged for shipment.

Ivan never did get over not catching any Silver Salmon, but the family had a good time and enjoyed seeing the local sights including the cheese factory.  The return trip to Livermore was uneventfull, but we all enjoyed the beautiful Oregon and Northern California scenery and a wonderful time together.

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:6 (NIV)

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