While we were still living on Orchard, mom arranged a vacation for us to visit Uncle Lloyd, Aunt Norma Jean and cousin Doug in San Leandro, CA. We had not seen any of them since the Santa Ana visit, Easter of 1953, eleven years earlier, when we all were a lot younger. We took the bus north. Uncle Robert met us in Santa Maria for dinner; unfortunately, we stored our suitcases in the bus depot there, not realizing that the manager would shut the station down for the night before the last bus left, the one we were taking for San Francisco after dinner. Robert was able to reach the manager and he returned in time to unlock the door and let us retrieve our suitcases from the storage lockers just before our bus got there.
Doug would graduate from high school in June since he was three years older than I. He had a 1958 Chevy converted from a stick shift on the steering column to one on the floor. He would still have that car when I visited three years later, so I will provide a picture of it then. It was he who drove over to the San Francisco bus depot to pick us up that morning after we arrived.
The two pictures above were taken on the observation deck at the Oakland International Airport, not too far from San Leandro. The coat I am wearing, I forget to take with us when we left at the end of the week. They still had it in their front closet when I visited again in 1967, but by then it was much too small for me. I am not sure why nobody thought to box it up and mail it to me. You can easily see that Doug's trousers were too short on him then, but guys did tend to wear high-water pants to one degree or another back then.
I spent most of the week hanging out with my older cousin. He and his girlfriend took Ann and me to a drive-in double bill one night: The Pink Panther and Mouse on the Moon. He and his girlfriend Pat sat in the back seat and made out while Ann and I sat a bit uncomfortably in the front, watching the two movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment