While going through my parent's old slides, I came across
some images of the trailer that my folks bought the year before
I was born to get away from the Los Angeles area basin on vacations. They
paid $2000 for it with options at a trailer show at the LA
County fairgrounds. As they were teachers, every summer and
every school vacation we hit
the
road for
the next
17 years
all over
the
Western
US.
- click on images to enlarge -
Yep, that's me on the right
in 1957
Trailer is pretty new - note
the hubcaps
are still shiny. Remember all those WPA rock stoves
in the national campgrounds?
The curtains were barkcloth with a
tree pattern. Walls were birch veneer. Table was Formica
laminate, and the dinette seats rough vinyl over a spring coil
frame. My
1st birthday in the trailer- 1958. That's
my only present, a ball. Compare that to what kids get
now for their first birthday...
Only other interior shot I have. Sink
area and a better shot of the Formica laminates and the cabinet
back by the full size bed. The shower is to the left
of me, and the bathroom aft of that. Who needed a bathtub...
Somewhere in the eastern Sierras. We
always were going down some old mining road, farm path, logging
road, and in many of the mountain & farming areas, a gravel
road was the typical road. The tow car is a 1959 Ford Fairlane
Galaxie 500.
We did a lot of unimproved campsite
camping. The Dalton was not self-contained, as it only
had a 110v/ice Marvel reefer, no holding tanks at all, and
no 12v lights except for one small one.
Yosemite when you could camp down on
the valley floor.
Easter vacation was always good for
snow, and even sometimes June. The Ford Fairlane gets replaced
by a 1962 Chevy 10 Custom Cab pickup with a small 282 V-8 and
4 speed.
Us kids rode in back in chaise chairs. I
rigged up a intercom using old telephones. Here we are
in Humbolt County (Eureka). I sure was fascinated by
that MGB GT.
On a month long visit to Wisconsin and
Illinois in 1969.
Where it was normally kept after
moving to a farm in the Sacramento Valley in 1963. The
taillights were Bargmann 99's.
1974 in a 100 year snowstorm. All
the side windows were Jalousies, the rear window a lever operated
Hehr.
My folks sold the trailer in 1985 to
some Basque sheep-herders in Modoc County, CA, where it probably
still resides today out on some lonely desolate plain in western
Nevada...
My
grandparent's small 16 foot unknown canned ham. I
love the magazine my grandfather is reading in the "barber
chair"...
