Thinking about shifting gears ...

I still have my '67 Camaro in first gear. It's maroon in color and has a 350, 4 barrel, with a Hurst 4 speed on the floor. We will just snap it into second. That feels better, RPM's dropped and we are starting to pick up speed. We just might need to start getting into some real serious conversations or maybe not.

Thinking about wanderlust ...

I guess you could say wanderlust is in my blood, or my genes to be more precise. I'm the grandson of German immigrants. My grandfather left his little village and went on the trek of a  lifetime and never looked back. He became a railroad man in Buffalo, New York. Never got to know him, he passed before I was born. What I know of him came from my father. Like his father, my father also had restless feet. He would relate stories of how he and his family would travel by rail across the United States. About seeing real Indians and the Superstitious Mountains in Arizona. Seeing the Sierra Nevada and the crashing surf of the Pacific.

My father loved everything Western. I'm sure if he would have been around in the 1860's, he would have definitely been a cowboy. But he was born too late, and being married with a large family, all he could do was to dream. Not to say he didn't try many times to move the family to the West. He was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the early 40's. But the Second World War ended that for him.

He tried again in 1949,  and we ended up in San Bernardino, Calif. Those were my first memories of the West. Going rock hunting with my dad and going to Van De Kamp Bakery. My dad had a sweet tooth, so we visited the bakery quite often. Then came the Santa Ana Winds and the wildfires. To me it was all exciting, winds strong enough to knock you off your feet and seeing the hills behind our house lit up with fire dancing across the valleys and gullies, sparked something primal in me. Later in life,  I became a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service, but that's another story.

Well, the winds and fire were too much for my mother. She decided it was time to pack up and head back South. Problem is, she choose late November to make the move. Like the Donner party of old , we started our journey back too late in the season. Everything went well until we got to Texas. Texas is definitely a different animal. It's almost impossible to get around Texas. Again, I would encounter Texas later in life. But that too is another story.

As we started our trek though Texas on that wintery November, we were hit by the worst ice storm in the history of Texas. Everything was frozen in place. Birds on a telephone wire, frozen in place. Dogs left out by their owners, frozen were they sat. Apparently, no one had warning of the ice storm. Remember, no TV , no NOAA, no weather channel existed. You had your radio. Texas in the late 40's was still untamed.

How we found a place to stay, God only knows. I remember my father  unintentionally ice skating across a highway to get to a filling station. I think we stayed with the folks that owned the station. It's good we found plenty of food to eat at that filling station in Texas.

Thinking of the past ...

I once lived by Route 66. Now that was one wild highway. If you wanted to go from the East to the Golden State, you had to take Route 66. But of course they dammed that old highway. They chopped it up, blocked it up and where I lived they just bypassed it with a freeway. What a shame. But we still have Alligator Alley. It's still wild and untamed. I think we need to take a trip across this slippery alligator's back.

Thinking about today ...

Friday is a good day. A lite rain is falling on my forty year old palm tree outside my window. It's peaceful. I hope everything was peaceful for you today.  The alley looks clear today, but you never know what may be beyond the next curve.