. . . ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die. . . . .
—Tennyson, “Ulysses” 

In the autumn of their lives—he was 65, she 60—my grandparents set off on an epic journey. 

They had weathered two world wars, one Great Depression, and the daily trials of work and family in pre-electronic, not-yet-airconditioned America. They had lost their Pierce-Arrow touring car in the Depression; they had lost two of four sons in the Second World War. In that era, when men and women often seemed worn out at 50, Grandma and Grandpa Sommers had lived to an age when a slowdown was in order.

Instead, they plunged into the adventure that six decades of hard living had denied them. 

They drove their Hudson sedan, a bulbous gray beast with dusty velour upholstery. It must have been about a 1946 model. I don’t know that for sure; but it had 36,410 miles on its odometer when they left their little house in the village of Knoxville, Illinois, at 7:30 am on Friday, October 7, 1949.

They were bound for California. Before coming home seven months later, they would add 8,232 miles to the Hudson’s clock.

“Is this Trip Really Necessary?”

What possessed them? Why undertake an odyssey at that stage of their life? 

For one thing, Grandpa didn’t have a job to worry about any more. When Dad got off the telephone and told Mom, “Pop’s been fired,” I cried. My four-year-old mind saw Grandpa blackened to a cinder from the flames. They had to do quite a bit of explaining before I understood that Grandpa’s boss had merely sent him home from work and told him not to come back.

Grandpa—William P. Sommers—was a piece of work. Trained as a young man in telegraphy and telephony, he had worked as a rural phone company manager for a few years, then as a railroad telegrapher and station agent many years, before settling down in Sinclair Oil’s pipeline company as a telegrapher and pumping station agent. His technical training and certain unfortunate family traits gave him a lifelong impression that he was the smartest guy in the room, and everyone else was a fool. And obviously, it was his plain duty to inform them all of that. It’s easy to imagine that he simply told his supervisor where to get off, and his supervisor in turn told him where to get off. 

Grandpa was too old to go back to work—and there was a whole world out there. During the Great War, the Chicago and Alton Railroad had sent him by rail to the Pacific Northwest. The rocky terrain he traveled through made a deep impression. I guess he had always itched to go back and see it again.

Grandma had never been anywhere outside of central Illinois. She was stolid, unromantic, matter-of-fact; whereas Grandpa was fiery, flighty, and mercurial. He must have said, “Millie, let’s go! You’ve got to see the West.” 

Test Run

A year before, in September 1948, they had made a swift dash across Iowa and Nebraska, traversed the high plains of Colorado, and ended up in the Front Range of Colorado. They had returned via Wyoming and the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota. They returned home on the eighth day after they started, having logged 2,513 miles. 

Grandpa, the towering figure in any group, was living confirmation of the Napoleon hypothesis, for he stood only about five feet tall. He wore size six shoes as an adult.  I can still see him driving that huge, high-riding Hudson sedan, peering out over the high dashboard from under the upper rim of the steering wheel! I can’t really remember how he managed to get his feet all the way to the pedals, but he must have.

That earlier trip perhaps gave them the confidence for the longer jaunt they now embarked on. It seems their plan from the beginning was to drive to California and stay a good, long while with their only daughter, Mabel, her husband Robert Hiler, and their little boy, Dickie. And also, if possible, get to Seattle and spend some time with their eldest son, Edward, and his family. Whether they knew when they set out how long they would stay, I really don’t know.

All There in the Book

Fortunately for me, Grandma kept a careful log in a wire-bound stenographer’s book, and my father left that book to me. She recorded dates, odometer readings, and expenses. But when they encountered something she thought was remarkable, she remarked. 

They drove to Peoria and followed Route 66 southwest, with some deviations. They visited relatives and friends in Springfield and Gillespie, Illinois, and in the state-named town of California, Missouri. They visited the nearby Bagnell Dam—a modern wonder built eighteen years earlier to impound the Osage River and form the Lake of the Ozarks, thus gaining both hydroelectric and recreational benefits. (Wikipedia claims it’s still there.)

They drove through Joplin, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. That night, near Sapulpa, they stayed at the Wild Horse Cabins. Ah, the romance of the West! To lifelong residents of Illinois—where the horses are all tame—what could better hint of high plains adventure? The word “cabins” may suggest a certain rusticity, and that may have been the case. But in those days, “cabins” was simply a word for inexpensive roadside lodgings, which could be quite sketchy for creature comforts. The modern motel had not been invented—neither the word nor the item itself.

Petroleum Fever

As they drifted west, Grandma frequently noted oil derricks, drilling rigs, pumps, and refineries. That’s because Grandpa had a definite interest in oil. I suppose he figured his great natural intelligence (which was an actual fact), combined with his technical mastery of telegraphy and telephony, qualified him in the oil business. In later years, he acquired  an idée fixe that by poring over geologic maps of the western states, he could pick winners in the great wildcat game and make a fortune. He invested what must have been only small amounts of money in dozens of oil-drilling partnerships to open wells in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. My mother, who was never intimidated by the old man, used to laugh at this obsessive hobby of his. But the old man had the last laugh: His complex portfolio of oil royalties continues even now, more than sixty years later, to trickle dollars into our family’s coffers.

Rugged Travel Days

Grandma and Grandpa crossed into Arizona and she noted that they “slept in car 1st time” before driving on the next morning. Probably there was no convenient overnight  cabin near the Arizona border. Bear in mind, Dear Reader, that a long motor trip was still a big adventure in 1949. The best roads were two-lane, two-way ribbons of concrete. Other roads were more iffy. Hotels, tourist cabins, restaurants, and gas stations were strewn haphazardly about the landscape. You might find one, you might not. I’ll bet Grandpa had stowed a five-gallon can of gasoline in the trunk—just in case.

On Friday morning, October 14—one full week into their journey—they drove by the “Immense Munition Depot” at Holbrook, Arizona, but stopped to see the Arizona Meteor Crater and its museum near Winslow. That afternoon they drove out of Williams, Arizona, at 3:00 pm, and Grandma added a plaintive note: “Decide not to visit Canyon as too late in afternoon & no good place to stay overnite, so head for Boulder Dam.” What a letdown, having traveled so far, to forgo a once-in-a-lifetime view of the Grand Canyon! But Grandma’s notes contain no hint of disappointment; just the matter-of-fact account of a decision made. Maybe the Grand Canyon was not a high priority, since it contained no oil wells.

The next day they did spend about three hours seeing the Boulder Dam, the name of which had been changed to “Hoover Dam” not too long before. “Took in free movie showing building of dam,” Grandma noted. 

Eventually, they rolled through Las Vegas, Nevada (“wonderful city”) and entered California over the Clark Mountain Pass. By the time they crossed the desert and reached  Los Angeles, they had fulfilled Bobby Troups’s 1946 hit song—having visited Kingman, Barstow, and San Bernardino. The Hudson came down with a flat tire at San Berdoo. I wish I could have seen Grandpa make change that huge tire. The little Bantam rooster must have made short work of it, by might and main, with no expletives deleted. 

They arrived in the City of Angels, where they stayed with an “Aunt Annie” for three days and also visited some cousins in Compton. On their way out of town they bought a new tire; evidently the flattened one was beyond repair.

“Open Up That Golden Gate”

They drove up the coast to San Francisco—or actually, San Bruno, a southern suburb, where Mabel and Bob Hiler lived—arriving on Thursday, October 20, the fourteenth day of their trip. They visited the Hudson Motor Company, where they got a lube job for $1.50, tires rotated for $1.00, five quarts of new oil installed for $2.25, and 6.8 gallons of gas for $1.82. All this by way of putting the car right after its long trek.

Their outward journey encompassed 2,871 miles and used 150.4 gallons of gas, an average of 19 miles per gallon. They spent $55.44 on “gas oil etc.,” $23.10 for “meals etc.,” $23.00 for “Cabins,” $24.92 for “other incidentals,” and $16.65 for the new tire. 

A harbinger of things to come: $31.71 of the automotive total was bought on a credit card, which must have been a newfangled thing. Grandma’s notes do not say which credit card it was, but this was more than eight years before the 1958 launch of BankAmericard, the first general-purpose credit card. It must have been an oil company card. It may even have been an embossed metal “Charga-Plate,” which some merchants issued to favored customers and which enabled easy recording of transactions.

Once at San Bruno, Grandma and Grandpa stayed put for several months, with Mabel and Bob Hiler and their little son, Dickie. Grandma recorded nothing about that stay—but it was not without events. 

In those days, you stayed with family. For Grandma and Grandpa to rent a hotel room, or even a “cabin,” in a town where family lived, would have been unprecedented. Still, months of their constant presence may have been trying to Mabel and Bob. And equally trying to Grandma and Grandpa. 

If my read on Grandpa’s mind is accurate, he would hardly have minded imposing on his daughter and her family. It would have been a welcome change from going to work every day, to take orders from the know-nothing young popinjay who gave him his walking papers. Mabel’s house in San Bruno was, by contrast, an adventure. It was the West.

NEXT WEEK: More adventures in the West.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author 

 

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

(History is not what you thought!)