On the Way Back East

I was 14 when we began our trip back east.  It's funny, looking back, what a strange perspective you have at that age.  It was a grand trip, life changing, actually, but the things that stand out in my memory are certainly not what I would remember if I went on that trip now.

For example, the water.  That is one of the first things I commented on in the scrap book I made about the trip.  The water was disgusting everywhere we went; at least compared to the water I was used to at home.

We left Arizona early Monday morning, after spending Sunday at a camp-ground in the eastern part of the state.  We got on I-40, which took us all the way back east, just like Route 66 used to do back in the old days. 

It didn't take too long to get to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we stopped to look around a little bit.  We toured an old Catholic Church there, which I'm sure must have been famous for some good reason, but again, the things that kids remember are not often the most important details.  I was fascinated, and disgusted, by the mummified saint they kept on display.  He was tiny, and really gross.

Then we drove, and drove and drove and drove.  Across New Mexico, the pan handle of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee.  The first real interesting thing we saw, besides desert, wheat fields, flat land, and lots and lots of bill boards advertising the delicious pie at Stuckey’s Truck Stops (which mom and dad would never let us sample although we begged and begged and begged) was the Hermitage, 12 miles east of Nashville, Tennessee.  This was the home of Andrew Jackson, and it was absolutely beautiful glimpsed through gigantic old trees, but that was all we got to see of it.  By the time we got there it had already closed and we weren't able to go inside.  I bought a post card, though, which I still have.  Man, was I disappointed!  One of my really great desires at this time of my life was to live in a mansion, so being that close and not getting to go inside was really tough.

I had checked "Gone With The Wind" out of the library before our trip started so I would have something to read as we traveled.  Boy, that was a big book!  It was fascinating, and certainly helped pass the time as we drove across the country, but it also fueled my desire to see a real old fashioned southern mansion, which the Hermitage certainly was.  Oh well.