1958 Trip, Part 4: Final Thoughts

Bad title: these aren't final thoughts, but probably the last post during this 50th-anniversary-of-the-1958-trip sequence. I believe we probably returned to Joplin on July 19, two weeks after departure, so yesterday (I'm writing after midnight) would mark that date. If you just got here the whole sequence on the 1958 trip can be accessed by clicking on this page. I've already covered the itinerary, In this post I want to reflect on how different the travel world was, for Sarah and others of her generation (or the one in between) who never knew the pre-fast-food world.

As I've noted several times I've recently been reading a book on the subject, but it has reinforced my own sense that in 1958 there just wasn't a national food source network, and in fact fast food as we knew it hadn't yet come into being. The only chain that was available pretty much across the western United States in those days that I can think of was Dairy Queen, and they were just an ice cream place then: none of the food they've added since in some of their outlets. Howard Johnson's apparently existed, but from the book I gather they were limited to the eastern states. I think the first Howard Johnson's I ever saw were on the Oklahoma turnpikes, and sometime later.

This meant you never knew where you were going to eat or what was going to be available. Haviing seen McDonalds everywhere from the Champs Elysee to Changsha, Hunan, to Golani Junction in Galilee, it's hard to imagine a time when McDonald's didn't saturate the United States, but we'd never heard of it in 1958. Ray Kroc may have had a couple in California by then, but nowhere else.

As a result, though as 10 year old boys Steve and I loved hot dogs, my mother had a rule: no hot dogs because you couldn't count on what kind of meat they were made from in strange places. Hamburgers were okay. But at times we were in restaurants where there was no kid's menu (not common in those days I don't think). I remember having Salisbury steak for the first time on our first day out in Kansas (Arkansas City for lunch or Dodge City for dinner, I think) because there were no hamburgers on the menu and it was the closest we could come. I'd never heard of Salisbury steak before. Hamburger steak, or just hamburger meat, for those who may have forgotten what it is/was.

I don't remember any real food adventures: no tacos even in New Mexico, though I can't swear we didn't try some: certainly when we went to Arizona two years later we had a lot of Mexican food.

I've commented earlier in this series on the fact that the Interstate Highway system was just coming into its own, and only a few stretches were finished, so mostly we drove on the old two-lane (or a few four-lane) blue highways with stoplights and towns along the road. I still prefer it: unless we're headed somewhere distant, I prefer to drive the old roads, because that's where the fun stuff is, the old Dinosaur Lands and Reptile Farms and drive-ins and diners.

I don't remember much TV in the motels. One problem was that in the pre-cable age, lots of smaller towns could barely get reception from the distant cities, and sometimes we stayed in smaller towns. Another, which Sarah will never comprehend, is the fact that there were only three channels, and that was in the BIG cities, so the choice wasn't great. It was all black and white, and lots of motels weren't even offering it automatically (phone in the room was still a big deal, as was a/c).

It's pointless of course after 50 years to talk about inflation. I had saved up my money to buy souvenirs and such on the trip. I took $34 with me, if I recall correctly (and for some reason that number still sticks in my head). I don't think I spent all of it. Don't know what I spent it on, either. A few souvenirs -- British flag from Canada, some photos I took with I think my own film -- survive.

I'm also, being used to moving three people around in a Kia Sedona van with snack packs, drinks, a portable DVD player, usually a computer in the back to log on the Internet at night, etc., trying to figure out how five people, three adults and two 10 year olds, managed to move about the country in a 1958 Oldsmobile. I guess it seemed big at the time. It wasn't a station wagon (and vans had not been invented, unless the Volkswagen Microbus was already on the road), but somehow we did it. Of course, this was normal in those days: just as we somehow lived without computers, Wi-Fi, the Internet, or even cable TV, we didn't know what we were missing.

I suspect, just as we didn't know we couldn't live without Wi-fi and E-mail, we didn't know we couldn't live without vans, Interstates, McDonald's, and chain motels.

I know that the Best Western chain existed because we stayed at several according to my scrapbook, but Best Western was more a network of affiliated independent motels, not something like Hampton Inn, Comfort Inn, Ramada, etc. that all basically follow the same pattern and the same layout. No two were exactly alike.

And you always knew where you were. Sure, the mountains or desert are still a clue, but often tonight's hotel looks so much like last night's or last week's that you have to stop and think (or look at the room info) to figure out where you are. That wasn't the case in 1958.

Why am I being so nostalgic here? My Dad probably earned about $9000 a year at that time, if that. Segregation was still common; there were three TV channels, and many towns only had one or two. Most people couldn't afford to fly (well, OK, that's true again now with high fuel prices, but wasn't true for most of the last half century), and making a phone call from one state to another was an adventure. But to me, 1958 for all its problems, was the eve of a sea change: the last moment before fast food joints, Interstate highways, and chain motels homogeonized the world. My daughter will never know that world, just as I'll never know the pre-World War II, depression era world my parents talked about so often. They didn't miss it, mind you, but they wanted me to understand that it had existed. I feel the same way about 1958: I don't miss the downsides, the segregation and the bigotry and the poor communications and how strangely insular we all were; but I do want Sarah to understand that travel was different then, and to a ten year old boy it was a wondrous, miraculous discovery of the Rocky Mountains, the great deserts, the mysteries of alien Canada. I can never go back to that level of naivete and discovery, but I can remember what it was like.


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