Category: California

5/21/1963 - the end of the story

05/21/2011

The story is over with this last post. It took five days to drive across Canada in the late spring of 1962, then down through Idaho and Nevada to Lake Tahoe California. We disappointed everyone by not going home to Ohio and Colorado. But we only had eyes on the future at that point and that seemed to be California. While we went our separate ways from then on, we stayed in close touch throughout the years, often retelling stories of the trip and laughing at what daredevils we were. Sadly, Pat died last year of lung cancer and it is her diary and her postcards to her mother that told most of this story.

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A daily diary of a journey in 1962. Please post comments about where you were then on the Background page.

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

In the face of all of this, Pat, Judy and I blithely took off for Europe with the intention of traveling through Europe and North Africa until our money ran out. We had a travel guide and a book titled Europe on $5.00 a Day. Since we had all read The Ugly American in preparation for the trip, we thought we were very smart to buy a used Volkswagen with Dutch license plates. We dubbed the car "Louie" since a cute guy from Switzerland named Louie had helped us acquire it.

There was no such thing as a cell phone, a computer, Twitter or Facebook. Our parents didn't hear from us for weeks on end. We wrote regularly, but letters took forever to deliver and we only vaguely knew where we would be next. It was a very cold winter and we followed the sun.

5/21/1963 - the end of the story

1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

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