A not-so-Grand summer vacation

BY TEDDY ALLEN

Each of us has a childhood summer vacation story.

That Time dad got a speeding ticket.

That Time little brother broke his arm.

That Time big sis ran off with the tatted-up volleyball player at the beach.

Good times.

It was the early 1960s when my friend’s dad decided to take his family from Shreveport to Disneyland in Anaheim. Ambitious, it was. There was an Orlando then but no Disneyworld, so if you wanted Disney and you were in the Central Time Zone, there was plenty of “want to” involved. About 1600-plus miles’ worth.

The dad rented a station wagon, all the rage then, the kind with make-believe wood paneling on the side. We called them woodies or beavers, and they were everywhere. If you saw one and yelled “Beaver!” before the other kid in the car saw it, you got to hit the dude — or in my case, one of my sisters — in the arm. (That passed for “fun” back then.) A bonus whack if the spotted Beaver had a luggage rack.

Few station wagons are made today — hello Mr. SUV and Mrs. Minivan! — and those that are look nothing like the ones that defined middle-aged parents on vacation with four or five kiddos a half-century ago in this great land.

It was a simpler time.

Most of the memory of that trip to Disneyland is lost to my buddy now, but what he does remember is tragic.

He was only 5 or 6 then, and since they were headed Out West, his dad had bought him a pair of six-shooter cap pistols, belt and holsters and everything. And a cowboy hat, crucial to the look and most importantly to the feel of the young 1960s cowpoke. Cowboying when you’ve got no horse and are stuck in back of a station wagon with two weeks’ luggage roped to the roof is all about attitude.

Of course, they stopped for some sights along the way, like the occasional Esso station and Six Flags, which was only Three Or So Flags back then.

Also, if you’ll grab your atlas or GoogleMaps, you’ll see that the Grand Canyon is only an hour out of the way off Route 66 so … they stopped. It’s what people in station wagons did back then, as the Wagon Trains had done before them. “Hey, Ethel,” some gold rusher would have said to his napping wife back in the day, “wake up. You ain’t gonna believe this but … this is the biggest dang hole I ever DID see! We’re gonna have to find a way around this sucker. Ain’t no going through …” The Grand Canyon. Where dreams go to die …

For no sooner had our young Roy Rogers exited the back seat of the rented station wagon and walked almost to the edge of the canyon that is by any calculation grand, a gust of Arizona wind took his brand new cowboy right off his head and out into the sky, where it fluttered to and fro, kite-like, above the depths of one of our most famous National Parks. And as gravity would have it, soon it began its descent, its long and fatal fall, all within view but far out of reach of our young hero’s pining arms.

As far as we know, the hat, kidnapped by a stiff and uncaring breeze, is still there today, cowboyless, on the floor of the Grand Canyon.

Life’s like that sometimes. It’s grand, just like the canyon. But it giveth and, even if we have our cap pistols loaded and are quick on the draw and Disneyland is only a day’s drive away, it can taketh away.

Traveling this summer? Sure you are. Have fun. Have double fun. Make as many memories as you can. But hold on to your hat.