What A Summer!

When I was 17 and in my senior year of high school I worked slinging hamburgers at an upscale burger joint in Sacramento, CA.   The place was called the Hamburger Hut and was located on Broadway near my home and I continued to work there for a few months after I graduated.  One day, on a whim, and seeing no future in the hamburger business, I decided to take a trip to England to see my grandparents for the first time since I left there as a baby in 1946.  At the time, there was an older man working at the Hamburger Hut named Noble and I asked if he wanted to buy my car.  When he accepted, I was committed and started making plans.

Within a day or two of selling my car, a grey 1957 Pontiac, I applied for and received my first passport.  I scraped together all the money I had, which was only about $1,500 after paying for the cost of the round trip tickets on the seagoing vessels of the Cunard lines; the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.  To save money I chose to hitchhike to my point of departure in New York City and to make my adventure more memorable I would begin my trek at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco so that, upon my return, I could claim to have hitchhiked from “coast to coast.”  I packed a full size Samsonite suitcase with everything I thought I would need, painted “New York or Bust” on the side and headed out.

ME, SHORTLY BEFORE I LEFT SAN FRANCISCO

I stayed for a day or so with Uncle George in San Francisco and then took the cable car out to Fisherman’s Wharf to begin my journey.  It took an hour or so to get my first “ride,” which only took me to the entry ramp of the Oakland/Bay Bridge.  It was already two P.M. and I wasn’t even out of the city yet!  In a short time my second “ride” came along and I soon found myself passing through my hometown of Sacramento and travelling on highway 50 to Placerville, CA in the Sierra foothills; that’s as far as my second “ride” was going.  It was late by the time we got to Placerville and there wasn’t much traffic on the road.  Normally, truckers are a good source of transportation when you’re hitchhiking but most of them avoided the older highway 50 that took you through the congested South Shore of Lake Tahoe for the newer and faster route around the North end of the lake and into Reno, Nevada.

It was very cold in Placerville that night so I was forced to spend the first of my meager funds for a room in a local motel.  The next morning, at breakfast in the diner, it was easy to find a “ride” headed in my direction.  My benefactor was a local trucker who had just delivered a load of goods from Reno to Placerville and he was headed back to Reno; I was in luck!  My “ride” dropped me off in Reno and it was only a few minutes before I was picked up by an “Artist” (oil on canvas) who had just left San Francisco the day before, just as I had, and was on his way home to Omaha, Nebraska.  What luck, I had found a guy who was looking for someone to help with the driving and we were both headed the same direction!

He was driving a 1956 blue and white Ford “stationwagon” but there was barely enough room for the two of us.  The remaining space in the vehicle was taken up by frames of canvass on which he had apparently spent some time painting scenes of San Francisco.

During one of my driving stints I happened to hear an unusual noise that sounded like rubber slapping the road.  I pulled over, got out, and checked the tires only to discover that the tread was separating from the right, rear, tire.  When my benefactor awoke and realized that we had stopped, he got out to see what I was up to.  When he saw the tire he was beside himself praising me for being so alert.  “You saved my life!” he said.  We were standing there on the side of the highway on the Nebraska prairie and this lunatic was going on and on about what a “godsend” I was.  “Ok, ok, I said, “it’s cold out here let’s get to some place where we can get the tire changed and keep warm at the same time.”  It was when we stopped at the next “service” station that I discovered that my benefactor was broke!  He didn’t have the money to purchase a new or used tire!  I was almost at the point of offering some help when he began bartering with the station attendant to trade some of his precious oil paintings for a tire.  He ended up trading two of his works of art for a used tire.  It was a bad deal for him but it got us back on the road.

I continued driving after we got the tire changed and my benefactor climbed into the small space between his canvasses and the roof of the car to stretch out and get some rest.  A few miles later as I was approaching a curve in the road he asked me to hand him a blanket that had fallen to the floor on the passenger side.  I reached down and got it and turned my head a little to hand it to him.  When I turned back I was dumbfounded to discover that I was headed directly toward the first of many steel posts that had been erected alongside the road to prevent vehicles from careening over the side of the embankment.  I jerked the steering wheel to the left just in time to avert frontal contact with the post but then realized that the overloaded rear end was swinging into the post!  I cut back to the right and that caused the rear end to swing back to the left, thereby avoiding the post but, to my dismay, after this deft maneuver, I was headed for the next post!  I avoided the next post using the same strategy but I was slowly losing the battle and made rear end contact with the third post.  It was a very slight contact that left a scratch and a small dent in the rear fender on the passenger side.  My benefactor didn’t hear it but I did.  I pulled over to see what damage I had done and, once again, my benefactor got out to see what I was doing.  I was caught off guard by his reaction.  His first comment was “oh my God, what’s my mother going to say”?  He then started to blubber like a baby with large tears streaming down his face and accused me of ruining his life.  Only hours before, I was being praised for saving his life and now I had ruined it!  Anyway, I stood there for a few minutes trying to be consoling until the cold air got the best of me.  I asked him several times to get back in the car so we could get warm and continue our journey but he was inconsolable.  Finally, I told him to get in the car or I was going to take it and he could pick it up in the next town; he got in.  We rode in silence the remaining distance to Omaha where I got out, thanked him for the ride, and went my own way.

It wasn’t long before a young couple and their 4 year old son picked me up for an uneventful ride to Ames, Iowa.  They dropped me off at a remote truck stop in the middle of nowhere.  I had visions of being marooned there but in a short while a trucker gave me a ride and dropped me off near an industrial area just south of Minneapolis and I was on foot again.  It was cold and rainy and I was getting behind schedule, but I was soon picked up by a gentleman driving a Rolls Royce.  I remember driving into Minneapolis that cold rainy day in a Rolls Royce with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” blaring on the radio.  It’s a memory that remains clearly etched in my mind.  I had originally planned to spend some time with friends in Minnesota but I was behind schedule and couldn’t take a chance on missing my sailing date so I continued on to Chicago with another family.  The husband told me about a company in Chicago that paid people to deliver automobiles to other cities and I opted to check it out as soon as we got there.  It was late in the day when they dropped me off at the automobile delivery business and I went right in and asked if they had anything that needed to be delivered to New York.  “We sure do” he said.  I was elated and feeling good when I filled out the forms, thinking I no longer had to worry about missing the boat; then he asked me for my driver’s license.  When he discovered that I was only 17 years old, the whole scheme fell apart; they couldn’t insure me.

Back on foot again, I caught the first trolley car headed toward the east end of Chicago and a connection to interstate 90.  I rode the trolley to the end of the line and found myself in the worst area of Chicago.  Chicago’s east end is comparable to the Watts area of Los Angeles.  I hesitated to get off the trolley, thinking I would rather ride it back into the city than get off in that neighborhood but then the conductor told me I was on the last train for the day and they would not be returning to the city!  There I was, suitcase in hand, walking through the ugliest area of Chicago.  I suffered a few derisive remarks but was otherwise left unscathed by the experience.  I sure was happy when I reached the highway and connected with my first “ride” after only a few minutes.  I think my benefactor realized what a predicament I was in and picked me up to save me from a premature death.  The remainder of the trip to New York was accomplished by multiple “rides” but I got there with two days to spare.  I got a room at the YMCA closest to the docks and awaited my departure time.  Little did I know that the YMCA I had chosen doubled as a “halfway” house for Juvenile delinquents!  I passed the time shooting pool with a bunch of thugs and actually got to walk through Central Park to experience it’s dangers.

On the day of departure I boarded the Queen Elizabeth and was assigned a berth in the lower bowels of the ship.  Being in “steerage” didn’t matter much since I spent most of the trip in the passenger lounge drinking myself into a stupor on “lager & Limes” with the rest of the younger crowd.  Being on the open ocean was a new experience for me and it was exhilarating.  I Inspected the ship from Bow to Stern and managed to find a pathway to the “First Class” section to see what that was all about; it didn’t seem much different.  To this day, I have never been on a “cruise ship” but I imagine it to be much like my experience on the Queen Elizabeth;  Excellent food and free flowing booze were the order of the day.  There always seemed to be some kind of activity going on.  One day, a shuffleboard contest, then a “guess how far we traveled today” quiz, or a “Theme” dance that required one to wear an article of clothing suggesting a musical theme; the passengers were always kept busy.

Before I knew it I was disembarking at Southampton, the hometown of many of my ancestors and near the place where the Mayflower set sail in 1620.  I found my way to the train depot and caught the first train headed for London.  I arrived at Waterloo station in London and had to find my way across town to St. Pancras station and the train that would take me to Burton-On-Trent, the hometown of my mother and grandparents.  I boarded the train early and was lucky to find an unoccupied cubicle where I settled in and was soon fast asleep.  A short time later I was awakened by a cold chill in the air.  It seems that another person had entered my cubicle and opened all the windows.  I noticed that he was wearing a heavy winter coat so I got up and closed the windows, suggesting that it might be better if he removed some of his winter clothing.  The interloper got up to open the windows again and I suggested that he might be more comfortable in another cubicle.  He sat back down and started to tell me how he had just been released from an asylum and was undergoing rehabilitation.  I wasn’t intimidated and the windows stayed closed.

I arrived in Burton-On-Trent early in the morning and caught a bus from the depot to the district of Stapenhill, where I would find Blackthorn Road and unit 36, the home of my grandparents.  I had not told my grandparents that I was coming and as I walked by their apartment my grandmother happened to be looking out the window and recognized the suitcase I was carrying!  My mother had made the trip a few years before and had used the same suitcase.  Grandmother came out and we had a glorious reunion right there on her front lawn.  What a magic moment.

I was only at my grandparent’s home for a couple of days before I was invited to stay with my Aunt Doff (Dorothy) and her family which included Uncle Len and Cousins Ken and Pam.  Pam was very young at the time but Ken was only a year or two older than me and he invited me to go everywhere with him.  Ken was a member of the local “rowing” club and that’s where I got my chance to row a single man scull for the first time.

ME AND KEN AT THE CLUB

The cross section of a scull is shaped like a half round and the only way to stay upright is by allowing the oars to gently touch the surface of the water.  If the oars were not on the surface of the water the scull would roll over like a beach ball.  I think Ken and all his chums were amazed when I managed to row a distance downstream, turn around, and make it back without rolling over; I was proud of my achievement.

RON IN A SINGLE MAN SCULL

I spent the summer with Ken and his pals, attending many racing regattas and other rowing events.

ME AND RON PLAYING AROUND AT THE REGATTA

The final event of the year was the famous Henley Royal Regatta and I was privileged to attend as a spectator.  The Henley Regatta is often attended by the Royal Family but I didn’t see any Royalty on this trip.

 ROYAL REGATTA AT HENLEY

We traveled to Henley by way of the many rivers and canals that connect most of the population centers of England.  We all chipped in to rent an eight berth cabin cruiser and embarked on a river cruise that turned out to be one of the highlights of my vacation.  Passing through locks, waiting for drawbridges, and stopping along the river banks to buy mushrooms, fresh eggs, butter, and other supplies from the local farmers was a pleasant experience for this “City Boy” and one that I will never forget.

All too soon, the summer passed and it was time for me to make it back to Southampton where I would board the Queen Mary for the trip back to New York City.

QUEEN MARY

It was a wild ride on the return trip.  The ship brushed the edge of an unusual North Atlantic hurricane and I can remember laying in my bunk watching ceiling move, first away from me and then toward me as the huge ship rode up one side of a wave only to come crashing down on the other side.  Each such episode was followed by a rumbling boom that reverberated from bow to stern and I wondered how long this behemoth of a ship could withstand the constant pounding before it fell apart!  In due time, we passed the Statue of Liberty and were delivered safely to New York Harbor.

From the harbor, I caught a bus to LaGuardia airport and boarded a Lockheed Super Constellation for the trip back to San Francisco and a Greyhound bus that delivered me to my hometown of Sacramento.  I was home; what a summer!