I remember very vividly a time in the mid-50s - a time calm and unrushed by our standards today, a period of general innocense and naivete, of sunshine and youth. World War II had ended less than 10 years earlier, and there was something in the air that was palpable - something smelling of newness, creativity, something very much alive and fresh. I grew up in a little farming community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. We were farmers, raising freestone peaches, Thompson grapes, and almonds, the latter pronounced like salmon, as farmers are wont to say. The story about the pronounciation goes something like this: farmers say amonds because when they harvest them they knock the "L" out of them...! Sorry about that, but I've always thought it was a cute story. Whenever we went into town, we drove the nearly two miles along a narrow country road, crossing three canals along the way, and into a sleepy little town of just over 5,000 residents. The population rose a bit due to the military personnel out at Castle Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command base that at the time housed the formidable B-29s. For school we walked a mile to catch the school bus - on most days we skated that mile, and left our clamp-on skates in the neighbor's wooden mailbox affixed to the side of the house. I still have one of those skate keys we needed to re-attach skates to our shoes. This was small-town America, and you knew who most people were, and more to the point, they knew who you were. While I was strictly a straight-arrow type, always sitting on my shoulder was that watchful voice telling me that if I ever got into trouble word would reach home before I did, and there'd be hell to pay. Needless to say, I was always on the right side of the law of families, and kept my nose clean. This is not to say I didn't have fun - it was just fun with an eye over the shoulder.
Driving on country roads with the windows down, the air blowing through the car, was a common experience, and one exhilirating to a young farm boy. Soon to be common was driving a half-ton converted troop carrier of WWII vintage along the country roads. After the War, when we returned to our family farm, Dad bought an army surplus truck and had the rear deck removed, and a fifth wheel and a semi-trailer added. Since it had no enclosed cab, and you could fold down the front windshield, the wind often whistled around you like an open cockpit biplane. In summer this was open-air conditioning, and in the winter you bundled up tight. Because the truck had 4-wheel drive, we used it to haul fruit and nuts directly out of the orchards during harvest time, and with various and sundry other tasks associated with a farm of 60 acres. I started driving this tractor-trailer rig from a very young age - maybe around 8 or 9. My feet couldn't even reach the pedals, and I couldn't shift through the stiff gears, so I sat on my Dad's lap and steered while he operated the other controls.
Driving was a rush, to put it mildly, and powerful. Eventually, as I grew into the tractor-trailer I drove the rig into the fields and orchards during the hot summers. We distributed shipping boxes to the laborers, and hauled the loaded crates out and to the fruit exchange in town. Top speed generally for cars along country roads was a blistering 50 miles per hour, and that was risky, and most people stayed under 40 as the pace of living was slower and there was little need for hurrying. With the tractor-trailer rig it was more like 30 miles per hour. There weren't any patrol cars around to govern speeding, but driving a heavy lumbering rig of the era on those lumpy macadam roads was harrowing to say the least, and few but the witless drove at speeds any faster.
Highways were just that back then, highways. Freeways were yet to come. Driving to Los Angeles from Atwater to visit relatives was an arduous day-long journey, one that took you around Athlone Corner outside of Chowchilla, the deadliest and most notorious stretch of mid-California highway 99, and through every town and hamlet to the south end of the San Joaquin valley. We planned the start of our trips to put us into Bakersfield around mid-day for a meal and a brief rest, before tackling the grade at the Grapevine. Driving in a 1952 Ford with a family of six at 60 mph down highway 99 has pleasant memories - a trip we repeated numerous times over the next decade as we maintained contacts with extended family in the southern reaches, though our traveling numbers slowly diminished as we children got older...
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