Among my shoebox souvenirs

I closed my eyes and reached into the shoebox. I pulled out a picture of a smiling little girl in a cotton dress and sunbonnet standing in front of a 1947 Chevrolet. Our daughter Lois.  She was not yet two but she had survived her first trip with Dad and his obsession with cars, mostly old cars. Dad turned out to be handy with fixer-uppers and our cars were to last for years and years and years; a great driver and mechanic and an exciting navigator. It was a thrill a minute. But these facts had not yet been revealed to us. It all came with time.

Now about the first car. We were living in Edmonton in an apartment with two kids and no car. Life was pretty good—lots of walks. Babies in prams, fresh air and exercise. Lois had a placid baby brother called Bobby. One fateful morning, we didn’t hear the alarm and woke up in a panic. We were slated to fly from Edmonton to Winnipeg. Those kids were quickly bundled, we called a taxi and off we went. Then we bought a car and made the return journey.  Do you remember the ad—see the USA in your Chevrolet? No USA for us right then but a lot of prairie. We rolled into North Battleford—no room at the inn. The circus was in town. The baby must have perked up his ears. Maybe, this was why he later became a carny. We had no choice but to keep on driving. I was fascinated by Saskatchewan at night—huge sky with millions of stars. Sometimes a light glimmered from far away; farmhouses were so far apart. My connection with the universe and the big sky was sadly disturbed about four o’clock in the morning when a dark shape loomed in front of the car. My hero made this brilliant comment:

            “ Hey, I think that was a horse!”

We parked in the ditch and slept fitfully for maybe three hours. We were close to Saskatoon and we rolled in early in the morning. We went to see his aunt; she served us coffee and cookies. Maybe Lois got cereal and fresh milk for Baby Bobby—I don’t remember. It was all couth and polite. After all, it was the Fifties!  Why did I not demand a bath and a hearty breakfast—I was sadly in need of both and so were my kids. But we pressed on towards Edmonton. This was 1951 and the Trans Canada Highway was under construction. It was a wet summer—it took us three hours to travel forty miles sloshing along a muddy road. We sang a lot to keep us awake and we rolled into Edmonton late at night. There had been a dust storm and our apartment windows did not fit well.  Dust on the window sills and in the bath tub. I thought about bathing my kids. But they were zonked out, exhausted from their first car trip with Daddy. The first of many adventures; I repeat that this man was,fated to keep us in suspense. We treasure his memory and his sense of adventure.