The Road To Tucson - Part 1 of 2 by KimB

"All roads may lead to Rome" but for us, "All roads led to Grandmother and Grandfather". Well not "all" but a "lot".

My Grandparents liked to sample different parts of the US and lived in many parts of the country. They moved and moved often. When Grandmother decided it was time to check the grass on the other side of the fence, they would bundle up their belongings and head that-a-way.

Mom inherited that gene too, and we traveled just about anywhere she could get the old Corvair van to go and primarily in the direction of Grandmother and Grandfather. We took side trips here and there but Grandma's was The Destination of choice.

While we were living in Los Angeles, Grandmother and Grandfather had moved to Tucson, Arizona and opened the Saguaro Corners cafe there. So, it was no surprise that we should travel to visit them there and we traveled the road from LA to Tucson as often as Mom could field the money for gasoline.

Gas in those days was about 12 cents a gallon. That's right: TWELVE CENTS. I remember Mom doing a U-Turn to go to a different gas station when the one she drove into was charging 13 cents. Sounds a dream, but in those days, minimum wage was really low and $300/month salary was a pretty good deal.

The first roads we traveled to Tucson were not the Big Interstate Highways that there are now but small 2 or 3 lane roads heading east out of LA into the vast desert that lay between the LA basin and the Cafe.

The high speed was 50 mph though we were lucky to get to 45 in our car. It took a long time to travel the distance between LA and Tucson. If Mom could stay awake we might do it in less than 3 days, but it was hard driving. There wasn't any power steering so you really had to “hold the wheel to hold the road”. Some of the cars had clutches and manual shifts on the steering wheel. The clutch on one car was “touchy” and Mom had to double-clutch it to change gears. The cars supposedly had shock absorbers but most were just hard-ridin'. Every bump, rut and pot hole was a source of terror and fun: fun for the bounce, terror that you might break something and be stuck.

There were no cell phones or wayside call boxes. If you broke down or had a flat, you had to hope a passing motorist would stop and give you a hand or take a message to the next town's gas station/repair shop to come and get you. Sometimes folks would stop to help you change a tire or donate some water for an overheated radiator. We met lots of really nice people along the way.

Truckers were known for their courtesy and willingness to stop and help out whoever was stranded.

Need a ride to the next town? Hop in!
Would you like me to change that tire for you? No charge!
The road ahead is not good, take the detour at this junction!

Truckers were the gods of the highway and bestowed blessings on everyone as they made their way from here-to-there.

Cars rarely had mechanical air conditioning and ours had the standard 450AC System – 4 windows down at 50 miles per hour. There wasn't any tinted windows or polarized sunglasses either and facing the rising sun as it came up over the flat desert horizon meant everyone in the car had to help watch for obstructions as the driver could not see all that well until the sun had risen a bit higher.

Every traveler carried extra water for when the radiator overheated in the baking sun. And those that could, had an evaporation water bag draped over their radiator caps or dangling from the hood ornaments of their cars in front so that the cooler air would flow over the radiator in hopes that it wouldn't overheat.

Tires blew out regularly and inner tubes had to be patched and repaired often. Finding a tire repair shop open and willing to do business at all hours of the day and night was an adventure in its self. Patching inner tubes was an art form and good patches lasted a long time. The red patch would be glued to the surface of the inner tube and then the tube stuffed back into the tire. If it held air you were good to go. A good patch would hold until the next nail forced a stop at another tire repair spot. Bad patches meant you didn't get far before starting the hunt over. If you had a bad patch and were lucky, you didn't even get out of the driveway before the patch failed and they would have to re-do the patch for you. Sometimes it cost as much as $3.00 to get the tire patched – a ransom!

You had to carry your own vitals and supplies because you might travel for hours and hours and never see anything other than the slowly changing landscape. If you wanted a sandwich, you had to make it yourself because no one stopped. If you stopped, the 450AC would stop too, so you had to make your meals on-the-move and we carried our most popular items in a grocery bag on the front seat where the shot-gun-seat rider could make the sandwiches to-order and hand them to whoever was hungry. Peanut butter, English muffins and a Coca-Cola was the standard fare.

The Coca-Cola came in glass bottles that had a refundable cash deposit so no one threw them away or out the window. The empties would be placed in another grocery bag and turned in at any grocery store to help fund the purchase of the next 6-pack. It was guaranteed money and just tossing them in the trash was unheard of.

[Editor's note: This story was written by KimB and is part 1 of a 2 part series.]

Glass Coca-Cola Bottles