Places and times I've been to...
The sixties
I was mostly in Southern California where I grew up in Anaheim, yet did do a bunch of traveling.
Mostly throughout California like flying to Sacramento. Greyhound trip to Fresno and taxi to visit Hearst castle. Greyhound to San Diego to Sea world. Bus to LA where my father and a friend stayed at the Biltmore hotel. A trip to Catalina island on the original S.S Catalina and a visit to the Queen Mary to see the ghosts I never actually saw.
Greyhound and taxi to the San Jacinto mountain range, where we hiked from Idlewild to the tram station and down to Palm Springs and Greyhound back home again. The deserts like Victorville near where I was born or to the house mom owned and rented to others in the desert. And of course my father and I hiked the near by Saddleback mountains and a fishing trip near Mtn Wilson. Often my father and I hiked at Griffith park or visit the observatory on Mount Wilson.
Yet I did take one long train trip to the east side of Iowa where my half sister lived with her kids. We visited Chicago and the worlds fair and other little trips around the area like the Gateway Arch over the Missouri river. As well as a trip to Mexico city in Mexico, where mom drove. Interesting trip because mom nearly got arrested for prostitution. 😅
All throughout grade school I pretty much had free range of Anaheim itself. And often went to school on my bike from gradeschool through or even to neighboring cities like Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Fullerton, La Brea, Norwalk. And yes even the beaches in Newport Beach or Little corona, where I learned to scuba dive.
In junior high I often traveled with school groups like for band we went to Seal beach where our school band won sweaptakes over other highschools or Glendora to march through horse manure streets. All over Orange county I went, especially for sports like soccer or wrestling where I took second place in the county.
Some would likely say I was a wild child. Yet my father was very strict on other things. Just not strict on where I went. Actually think he encouraged me making such little trips on my own.
The Seventies
The early seventies was pretty much the same with a bit of expansion. A few more trips to Iowa. The second time flew there, the third time the whole family by camper truck throughout the Rockies. As well as a trip to Phoenix Arizona in a motorhome.
Must say I also learned to drive on my half brother's lap on that trip through the Rockies.
The mid seventies I took a flight to Frankfort Germany by myself then on a train. First from the airport in Frankfurt to the Frankfort am Main and onto to visit relatives in Fürte near Nürnberg. Then the wild taxi drive only to be misunderstood. When mom finally arrived we both visited other cities in Southern Germany like Nürnberg and Ludwigsburg,
This trip was a huge learning experience to say the least. I really didn't speak German very well having only one year of junior high classes, yet that encouraged me to take German language classes throughout both junior high and highschool.
In highschool my brother and I actually put together a CZ motorcycle, and that expanded my range much further because all of southern California because my home range. Even made a trip with mom to where I was born in the desert as well as through the Big Bear mountains in her car with her best friend. And yes I not only drove yet also got my first speeding ticket.
My own motorcycle accident put a quick halt to those motorcycle travels on my own though my half brother and I did ride through the San Jacinto mountains on his motorcycle much later.
In my senior year in highschool the school itself sponsored a three day field trip to Anza Borrego desert. The whole class slept on the ground in sleeping bags. Shortly later my half brother and I took a trip to that same dessert. The silence was amazing. We could hear each other breath.
That last highschool year I began to hitch hike up and down the San Diego coast. And why I became so familiar with Blacks beach.
The late seventies I went on my own and that was the beginning of the whole United states being my backyard.
In 1978 I went into the Air force. At that time everyone in the Air force had basic training at Lackland Air force base in San Antonio Texas.
My trip to LA to be sworn in, LAX and the fight to San Antonio itself was really uneventful. It wasn't my first time on a plane, to say the least. Not even my first time alone on a plane in LA.
Lackland itself was an experience I will never forget. As well as the afternoon passes into San Antonio. That wasn't the only experience I had with San Antonio. After basic training I went to further training to camp Bullis near San Antonio. And of course had many other experiences in San Antonio.
Even that was just the first of such experiences there for many decades later I lived in San Antonio again and for three years.
Even the further training must come to an end so I went back home to Anaheim to visit my parents via Greyhound again, then widely separated yet both still in Southern California. Then on my way to Cheyenne Wyoming.
The DC 10 flight I took out of Ontario I really wasn't prepared. The Rockies are known for huge upward and downward air drafts. And that was just a start. For when I landed in Denver it was on to Lowry by someone who picked me up that I never even knew his name, at night. Then a night flight on a helicopter in those same up and down drafts which the helicopter being smaller in size made it worse.
It wasn't my first helicopter trip because my father once took me on a short trip around Disneyland on one many years before. Yet it probably was the worst aircraft trip I ever was on.
That probably was the first time I ever got near to being Air sick. No roller coaster ride I had ever been on was like that trip. It lasted nearly an hour on my way to Cheyenne Wyoming and at night.
See my Vedauwoo story.
https://similarworlds.com/3021312-I-Love-Rock-Climbing/3448800-TL-DR-Lots-of-images-and-two-vids-Vedauwoo
The above vedauwoo story has a lot about me.
The eighties.
As I mentioned in my story above, I was in Wyoming and based in Cheyenne in the military.
I was stationed there for the remaining three years of my Air Force career, as well as for two years afterwards. During that time I had bought a motorcycle, as well as two different cars. And of course I traveled. First the surrounding areas around Cheyenne, then to Laramie, Greeley, Forte Collins, Estes park as well as the surrounding cities around Denver. All of that on my motorcycle. Then later again in my cars.
This is not to mention all the trips I made because of the Air force. All throughout Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and even once to South Dakota. All of them over night stays to up to a week in a camper units.
The first really long trip I took by myself during that time was to visit my half sister in Iowa. Of course that was in my car, a Datsun b110. Probably the best used car I ever had. The motorcycle I ran it to death! 😆
I doubt many Yamaha 175 motorcycles ever traveled as far as I did on it. It's s hundred miles just to Denver Colorado from Cheyenne.
During my stay in Cheyenne just after I got out of the Air force I took another very long trip to California to visit all my relatives there in that Datson b110. After my stay there I had made arrangements to pick up the sister of a friend who lived in Barstow. This actually was to be quite an experience for not only did she live with me when we got back, yet I also lived with her a year later and we had took many little trips around Cheyenne.
One such trip was to the Vedauwoo area lake where I had to rescue her. She wanted to go swimming in a near frozen lake! 🤣
This only shows that she was only from a desert area in California.
However even my stay in Wyoming had to come to an end. I did make two other very long trips with a religious group. One trip was to Seattle Washington in a ford van with five other people all sleeping in the same van.
The second trip I was to leave Cheyenne and Wyoming altogether with that religious group.
So on to New Knoxville Ohio we left. Must say I had thought they would have treated me better, for when we got there I was strictly on my own never to see those particular people again, though we all were to part separately afterwards.
At New Knoxville I was basically broke. No money, no food, not even a tent as all the others had. Might as well as been homeless in Wyoming, as I once had been, yet without any friends. Yet the purpose of going there was to meet and join other people, then go on to other places throughout the country.
So eventually that misery did end after a couple of long drawn out delays without no real food. I lived off of blueberries and honey. Yet that should have told me what the new group would be like.
Once I was assigned to the new group of four, myself included, things went rather quickly. We were all rush off the property in New Knoxville into vans and so I traveled to New Port News Virginia. In Virginia all four of us had to move quickly. Find a permanent place to stay as well as all of us to find jobs.
I was back up on my luck again to actually be one of the first to find a job, and at a four star restaurant as a bus boy, then all around goffer, then eventually as a prep cook. Must say that that restaurant really must have trusted me a whole lot. They entrusted me with the daily money as a goffer.
That job unfortunately was only sessional after New Years that was the end of it. And so it was the end of the group. All four of us lost our jobs and we were all at each other's throats.
Eventually I was forced to ask my father for help and to move back in and help him. You see my father also had a bad injury being burn badly with an oil frier accident.
So Greyhound bus I went! All through every southern state that I had previously never been in. Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana. All of them! 😆
The nineties
The nineties I didn't travel a lot. My father had just passed away and I was attempting to start a business of sorts. That didn't last long though. I did manage to travel within California a lot, even a few times to Las Vegas. Broke down outside of there as well yet was fortunate to get a cheap tow. With a cheap stay in a prostitute motel in San Bernardino. No I wasn't interested, just could never get to sleep because of the racket. 😆
Trips to San Diego's blacks beach had to be my biggest thrill then. I really should have moved there. At least around my senior year highschool area. Would have actually been great for my specialized programming business. Yet the depression over my father's passing blinded me. And so I basically lost everything. And was forced to live on a near by Indian reservation.
When I was there I actually did manage to find a job that traveled a bit, building and repairing bleachers. It most certainly was a physical job having to not only make the parts yet as well as assemble them in a monkey like fashion. Ever thought how you might repair a bleacher that was two stores high? 😆
So I made the parts using machinery. Band saws, lathes, hole punches and all. And in the process I hurt my back which wasn't all that great to begin with, having spent years behind a computer screen, with days never leaving the terminal. That's how depressed I was over my father's passing. Yet thinking a physical job would help with my back, a long with traveling a bit, would help it. I could have never been so wrong. The monkey tricks on the second story just didn't help, nor was long hours in utility truck hauling those very parts I made.
Yet travel I did. From Southern California to Carson City Nevada, then onto Redding where my back just said no more. Called my boss and told him. He asked if I could make into Medford Oregon. And I unfortunately agreed with an overnight stay in Redding.
Must say even with my back problems, the most beautiful area I ever traveled through must have been those redwood forests from Carson city to Redding.
Once I reached Medford though, I was crawling in pain. My boss thought I could make it still onto Seattle Washington for our exhibit. Must say my back did get a little bit better not having to drive, yet the monkey tricks once in Seattle did the worst damage. He was forced to fly me home and let me go.
Actually one of the best bosses I had. He didn't fire me, rather just let me go with a flight home.
So I flew from Seattle to San Jose and then onto Ontario with a greyhound bus as well as regular busses to my home on the reservation.
That was about the end of my stay at the reservation. The indians there had enough of me after a year, which is actually quite long. Most never last more than a month.
So in my Van I stayed near moms place because she like my father was getting worse. Pickup another job repairing computers. At least it wasn't sitting intensive.
Then mom had a stroke and I was forced to drive her into Anaheim of all places, none in the family would do it. And I wasn't even the one who found her. I was still living in my van.
Everyone in the family all cross the US requested I take care of her. I suspect none realized what I went through with my father. Not even my half brother who had actually found mom had any idea how I took his passing, he wasn't their father.
I did so anyway. For three years I took care of her. Not going anywhere at all, because she required daily help with everything. Her legs develop sores, my half brother wouldn't help, so I cleaned them daily. My older middle half sister visited and saw those legs, yet wouldn't help. My oldest half sister didn't even come.
When the end was near, everyone finally gathered. Of course I was to receive the blame from my oldest half sister. And mom went into a nursing home for the last couple of weeks despite not only my own objections, yet the pleading of our own mother herself. She wanted to be at home for Christmas.
At 82 years old, on December 23rd 2001, mom passed away.
911 wasn't even close to a tragedy for me. Mom certainly didn't think so on 911 either.
The two thousands.
After the loss of mom, I must say I went insane. I went back to San Antonio which wasn't the San Antonio that I knew in the late seventies. And mostly because of a couple I knew only online.
The trip there I actually drove in my "almost" new 2000 Toyota Echo nearly 1,300 miles. It still was at least under warranty.
Once in Texas the couple I stayed with had serious problems I knew little about. Oh I did mention to him what he should do was to be honest, yet that wasn't taken as solid advice.
We traveled a number of places in Texas. Once as far east as Cistern almost to Houston, as well as New Braunfels, San Marcos, Austin as well as west like Bandera. To the North like Beorne and Kerrville.
They eventually asked me to leave after three months. I stayed all over central Texas. Canyon lake, New Braunfels, Austin, and yes all over San Antonio for a total of three years. Permanent work was impossible to get. One day job after the next for three years. A major note here. My oldest sister lived in Plano Texas. She only two hundred miles away yet never even called. The other two did call at least.
Finally, after three years, I was able to make it back home. Yes in that 2000 Toyota Echo! Somehow I managed to keep it even after many tickets for not being registered in Texas. No birth certificate, no drivers license. No drivers license no registration. And you have to go back to California to get your birth certificate in Texas.
Back in California I was still basically homeless. Yet my half brother said I could stay in a unfinished conversion school bus.
There I lived for another year until I finally found permanent work. Not much traveling then. Yes a few times down to San Diego, a few times into San Bernardino, LA and Orange counties as well. 😁
A further note. My permanent job?... A twelve year rover/heavy equipment/hazmat tech/transfer station attendant for two major waste companies in the San Jacinto mountain range. One buying out the other.
I don't believe my roving is over quite yet. Just don't know where my next wayfare station will be.
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Hope you enjoyed this! I really don't expect many to read all of it. Yet it does tie up a few loose ends.
61-69, M
