Highlights of the trip at 8 years old
In the 20s, Dad and Mother would take trips and go tent camping, imagine a Model-T type car and those 1920s roads. When they had a baby after 1930 (me) it was sort of restrictive because he was with GMAC and did a lot of driving to collect bills. So in 1938 he started driving around again. It was 1938 when we started taking road trips as a family. That’s how I started with all of my road trips.
In the summer of 1938, we started from home in Charleston WV. The roads were not that great. The car would have been a pretty nice one because dad worked for GMAC and got a discount. He tended to buy Buicks. In 1938 we would have been in a nice new car. (Aside: We had all of these nice cars up until the war. Then he bought a 1938 Chevrolet with a stick shift on the floor. This was the car I had to learn to drive with. An old used car instead of one of the nice ones we had before the war. )
In 1938 the roads were not that great. Some of them were nice enough, but some were just back-roads with one strip of concrete in the middle with gravel on each side, so you’d drive in the center on the pavement until another car came and you’d each ride on the gravel until you passed each other.
We went to Gauley Bridge, up the New River, up in the mountains, to New River Gorge (now a National Park) and looked down into the gorge, it was really spectacular.
From Beckley, we went over the mountains and went up Skyline Drive (what was open to the public at the time). We might have gone to the Greenbriar, because Dad had gone there for conferences before, but I don’t specifically remember.
Dad always assiduously avoided cities.
The next thing I remember, though not quite as clearly. I seems that we went to Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. I know I’ve been to Gettysburg, and I don’t know when I would have done it if it wasn’t this trip.
The next thing I remember is being at a Howard Johnson’s in Connecticut. That was the big, quality hotel chain that we always aimed to stay at. Mom and dad decided that I could order my own lunch. I don’t know that I could read the menu that well, but I decided that I wanted a hotdog and sassafras tea.
The next thing I remember distinctly was going to Provincetown, Cape Cod and standing there and looking down at Plymouth Rock. I think it has carved 1620 into it.
We went to Boston and the North Church and Bunker Hill. After that, we went up into New Hampshire and saw the Old Man on the Mountain.
We may have gone to Saratoga Springs because Mother liked horses and would like to bet on them at the races.
We went from there across to Niagra Falls. I bought 2 necklaces that were made from the rock under the falls. The stones were pastel pink and about the size of my pinky nail. (One I gave one to Lauren and I don’t know where the other one went.
When we went from Niagra Falls we went though Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River, back home to Charleston WV.