Remembered Journey for an Arizona Christmas

At Christmas time many people travel to visit loved ones and friends. Some make the same Christmas journey every year. Others only travel occasionally. Today most people who travel any great distance do so by plane, but that hasn’t always been true. When I was a kid, flying was still somewhat of a novelty and certainly considered expensive. If we went anywhere, we traveled by car.

At one time my mom’s parents moved to Glendale, Arizona outside of Phoenix to manage a mobile home park. During the time they were there, our family journeyed down from Oregon twice for Christmas. On one occasion it was just my family of five. On another occasion we joined up with other families for the Christmas journey. This is mostly the story of that trip.

My mom was the oldest of three children. She had two younger brothers. The older one lived in Seattle and the younger in Salem, Oregon. We lived in Medford, Oregon. For this trip my dad was not able to get the time off work to travel with us. The plan was for the two brothers and their families to come down and get our family as we caravanned together.

That did not happen as easily as it sounded. Weather became a major factor during this trip and flooding was the first challenge. It was pouring rain on the day we were to leave, and we were getting reports on the news of roads being closed. My two uncles had some challenges getting through in places so they arrived later than planned. This was in the early 60s so there were no cell phones for communication. We really didn’t know all that was going on while they were traveling.

When they finally arrived, the adults had a conference. It turns out that the news was reporting the roads closed due to flooding on the route they had planned to take. They conferred and finally came up with an alternative plan. The detour caused us to lose time, and we saw some flooding. However, as we drove south, we finally got beyond the rain and flooding, and everyone sighed with relief.

To get to Arizona we had to travel through Nevada. We stopped in Reno for gas and a stretch. One of my aunts announced that she wanted to see what a casino was like. She had never seen one, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to check one out. My brother, who is a year older than me, and I overheard her plan. We asked if we could go with her. After all we had never been into a casino either. So we walked toward the casino with my aunt leading the way. She marched in looking around to see what she could see as we trailed behind her looking at all the glitter and glamor around us.

We didn’t get very far. A worker for the casino came over immediately and informed my aunt that children were not permitted in the casino, and that was that. She turned around and marched out. We were disappointed as we really hadn’t gotten very far inside to see much. However, it made for a good story as I could tell people I had been kicked out of a casino.

As we journeyed on the weather again came into play. This time it was in the form of high winds through the desert region. The strong winds buffeted the cars around, blowing them nearly off the road. They also blew sand on the cars. It was occasionally scary, and we were glad when we were finally able to get beyond the winds.

We finally reached our destination in Arizona. To be truthful I don’t remember much about our time in Arizona other than there were family members there from my mom’s side of the family whom I didn’t know. It was also warm, which was nice considering the rain and wind we had braved on the way down.

I want to take a side step for a moment and share an incident that happened when it was just my family that went down for Christmas. While we were there, my parents decided they wanted to go down to Nogales, Arizona on the Mexican border. I think they knew someone there. However, for some reason they didn’t drive our car down. They borrowed a car from another family member, I think my mom’s uncle.

Dad must have been speeding because somewhere along the way a policeman pulled him over. He came to the window and asked for the usual license and registration. My dad pulled out his license and began to explain that this was a borrowed car. In the meantime my mom had opened the glove box to see if she could find the registration for the car. What she saw instead was a gun. Sitting in the back seat, we could see the gun, but before we could say anything, Mom shushed us up. She very carefully looked for the registration making sure the gun was not visible to the officer. No luck. She couldn’t find the registration.

My parents then had to identify the owner of the car. The officer want back to his car radio and phoned in the information to headquarters about the car. He then waited for them to contact the relative to verify that, yes, indeed, he had allowed my parents to borrow the car.

There was definitely tension in the car while we waited for the police to conduct their investigation. My parents were obviously concerned that they would be accused of stealing the car, and the gun in the glove box would only seem to validate that possibility. I have to say we kids were pretty subdued while we waited. We were aware of the seriousness of what was going on. Finally the officer came back and said they had made contact, and we were good to go. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we continued on our way to Nogales.

Returning to the larger family trip, we began our journey back home after Christmas. Unfortunately our trip home was probably the worst part of our journey. It went fine until the last leg of the journey. We were going over the Siskiyou Mountains in northern California, and we hit a blizzard. This was not just a snow storm, it really was a blizzard. Visibility was extremely poor. We could barely see more than a few feet in front of us.

I was in a car with my aunt driving. She was following behind a car to help keep her on track. Unfortunately that car went off the road at one point. I’m not sure how my aunt realized it, but she managed to stay on the road. It was becoming an increasingly dangerous situation.

We finally reached a town, I think it was Yreka, and we stopped. There was a motel there so my uncle went in to see if there was room. Miracle of miracles there was one large room which had a couple of bedrooms. It was perfect for our motley crew. There was even a kitchen area so we were able to get some food from a grocery store and have something to eat. There were challenges, though. Mom was concerned about our car. She didn’t know if there was enough antifreeze in it so my uncle had to drain the radiator. We also did some slipping and sliding around. Nevertheless, we were thankful to be off the road and in a safe and warm place.

The next morning dawned with snow piled everywhere, but it was no longer snowing and we could see. It did take us a while to leave, however. It was a Sunday, and it was important to my uncle that he not miss Sunday School. He and his family found a church to attend that morning while we waited around.

Finally we were on our way. The drive over the snowy mountains was beautiful. Our family was the first one home, of course, and it was good to see our dad who had been worried about us. This trip became one of those trips that we remembered and talked about over the years. My wife is tired of hearing about it, rolling her eyes if I mention it. But it’s not just me; at my uncle’s recent funeral my cousin and sister were remembering it and laughing over some of the events. It’s memories like this that give a family history. That’s one of the good things that comes from travel.

If you are traveling this Christmas, I hope your travels are safe without too many challenges. We’ll be home. We’ll do more traveling when the holidays are over. If you have your own Christmas journey to share, feel free to share it in the comment section below. It’s stories that connect us, and I’d love to hear yours.