A Forty-niner Travels to California - Part 2

The caravan turned south into Wyoming and the next stop was Yellowstone, Old Faithful, panhandling bears and a night of camping out. We had a tent but had not considered bringing enough blankets - after all it was summer. I remember shivering in the cold all night. Mom spent an uncomfortable time in the Pontiac and I didn’t think anyone else had a pleasant campout. I didn’t see the tent the rest of the trip.

The Rocky Mountains came next. I was excited when we first spied them on the western horizon, but they seemed to go on forever. The road slowly climbed up one slope, inching its way around the side of one mountain, only to reveal another. I kept thinking there could not possibly be another mountain, but there was another, and another, and yet another. I started to get frustrated. They were never going to end. Once, traffic stopped us on a slope and a big truck in front started to roll back onto us. I don’t think it went very far but Mom was screaming for Dad to do something. Whitey, who was right behind, called out to Dad that his Studebaker could hold both cars - something about his clutch , and that we should roll on back - but the truck stopped and we were saved from participating in that experiment.

Somewhere about that time we rolled into Reno, Nevada. It seemed that every commercial establishment had at least one slot machine. I remember being in a small café, sitting at the counter, and Don had a dime that was burning a hole in his pocket so he asked Grandma Frank if she would put it in the slot machine. He hit the jack pot, four bars, but nothing came out. We thought the proprietor would give him the winning amount, but all he did was give Don his dime back. Whitey and Idabell sat at the counter and ribbed the guy the rest of the time we were in the joint. They were talking to each other, like they were carrying on a private conversation, but their voices were loud enough that the guy could hear every word, and they were not all that kind.

We entered northern California not long after leaving Reno. I vaguely remember Donner Pass as the drive over it was our most likely route. We crossed a few more mountains and found ourselves in the Sacramental Valley. Dad’s brother, George had moved to California in the early thirties and was living in Oroville. Marysville lay about 30 miles south and I understand he moved there some years later. George and his wife Violet had two sons and two daughters, all with red hair and older than Don and I. Since they were older, their toys were more sophisticated than ours, so we had no one to play with. I remember playing in the yard and marveling at the giant spiders that dwarfed the Indiana specimens that I had seen. Mom wanted to pan for gold so Uncle George took us to the nearby river. She knelt by the river sluicing away, but quickly learned that panning is hard work. Uncle George kindly credited her with finding a little “color”, and since she had stuck it rich on the first try she didn’t feel it necessary to toil over another pan.

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