Sunday Drives
My dad really liked his Sunday drives. It meant quiet for him. More
quiet for him than being at home with all of us. My mom would stop
talking after about half an hour. My brother would sleep most of the day,
and I would read. And my dad just loved to drive.
Before my brother was born I would stand behind my dad holding on
to the front seat of the '49 Ford. After my brother was born my mom rode
in the backseat of the station wagon with Mario, and I'd ride in the front
or in the way back. When my brother was 4, in the Alpha Romeo, we
both started riding in the backseat my dad had made for the two seat car.
On those Sunday drives we would sometimes visit relatives in
Bakersfield or Fontana, or my tia Rosa in Norwalk.
There were longer trips, sometimes overnight. We went to Tijuana,
and Ensenada. His father, and his estranged extended family lived in
Ensenada. I think my father wished he would casually run into his half
brother, but that never happened. Sometimes to avoid the long weekend
Tijuana border lines we would drive inland to Tecate, eat, and cross there.
My dad also liked driving out to a restaurant at the San Gorgonio Inn,
which was near Cabazon, where the Morongo Casino is today. Also in
Cabazon was Hadley’s, the date shake capital of the world, and we would
get nuts, dried fruit, cinnamon bread, puffed millet, cashew and peanut
brittle, dates, and so many other goodies. We could have gone to Indio
and Palm Springs or to see the concrete dinosaurs, but we rarely did. We
sometimes went to pick cherries or apples in Yucaipa.
We would go to Balboa Peninsula to the “Eat Lots of Fish" restaurant, The Crab Cooker. Or smorgasbord in Cucamonga. He had a favorite clam chowder restaurant in Pismo Beach.
Quite a few times we would spend a couple of days in San Francisco. Almost all we did was eat. I would get a day or two off school. We always stayed at the same dingy motel on Lombard Street.
Sarah and I stayed there once, and it was indeed very dingy.
An early memory of a Sunday ride was going out to San Bernardino
or Montclair and stopping at the very first McDonald’s, where they sold
burgers for $.15.
Of course, we often went out to see if our desert was still there near
Barstow, in Newberry Springs. I often managed to get a trip to see
Calico Ghost Town, which was very underdeveloped at the time and a
lot of fun, for me.
More about Newberry.
As we drove, we would listen to the radio. We listened to old radio
shows, The Swinging Years, the Boston Pops, opera, and when we drove
into the nighttime, there was the search for distant stations.
Read about me and the radio.
They were good times. My dad was happy, we saw cool things, we
ate, my brother slept, my mom was quiet, and I often would read a whole
book because we’d be gone a whole day. I stopped going with them
regularly when I was about 14. I would have the house to myself. I
cherished and needed that time alone, and without them.
But now, I remember those Sunday rides fondly.