January 23, 1968: Tanks, trains & automobiles

Letter postmarked January 24, 1968 (Part 2):

This is Part 2 of the letter postmarked January 24, 1968. This part covers Sunday, January 21.

Sunday morning we decided to go to the Calico Ghost Town. This place is owned by the same people that own Knott's Berry Farm and it is not as commercialized - everything there is old and just like it was when it was a mining town. The only trouble with the place is that it's so far away - it took about three hours of driving to get there.

[Calico Ghost Town is in Yermo, CA, which is about two and a half hours northeast of Los Angeles. Calico was a mining town during the California silver rush of the 1880s, then became a ghost town after silver lost its value in the mid-1890s. Walter Knott purchased Calico in the 1950s.]

[Mom doesn't mention it, but just before we got to Calico we must have stopped in Barstow and taken some pictures at a park. Barstow is home to a Marine Corps Logistics Base and Fort Irwin Army Base. Surplus military equipment must be a common sight in that area because Mom's caption for this first photo indicates that we found this old tank in a park.]

[Note that Mom is six months pregnant in that picture. I don't know what was going on with me at the time, but if you zoom in on my face it looks like I wasn't very happy. Maybe that bare metal tank was burning my butt through my britches.]

[The next photo is me and Mom inside the tank. I look much happier there in the shade.]

We took a picnic lunch. (Dave's really pinching pennies so he can get me that washing machine quickly!) David Wayne wore his guns, holster, and cowboy hat and we got some really cute pictures. He took a donkey ride, all of us took a train ride, went through a museum, and we walked through an old mine. We had a good time and really it didn't cost us much as admission and parking were free and we didn't have to eat out.

[Here are various photos of our day at Calico. Let me begin by saying I didn't include all of the pictures from Calico Ghost Town, not even all the pictures of me.]

[First up is me (with my awesome red cowboy hat) in an antique wagon. The front of the wagon says:

Lanes
General Merchandise
Free Delivery

[Next is me (with my awesome red cowboy hat, holster, and gun) and Dad in front of a sign that says "1881 Calico Lives Again." Behind that sign you can see "CALICO" in gigantic letters near the top of the mountain. You will note that this picture is a little blurry, much like a previous picture of me where the blurriness was blamed on me doing the pee dance. I doubt Dad and I both needed to go while Mom was taking this picture.]

[Next is me riding a donkey. If I don't look like a real cowboy there with my red hat, blue jeans, and tennis shoes, then nobody does.]

[Next is me sitting in a very large cast iron kettle with this lettering on the front:

Chinese bath tub
Back Scrub 5 cents
Full Scrub 10 cents
(Try it for size)

[That's all the pictures I'll be showing from Calico Ghost Town, but it should come as no surprise that Mom saved some items from our visit, much like she did for almost every other place we visited. Since I doubt we'll be back here before we move back to Texas, given how far Calico is from Los Angeles, I won't be able to spread these out over several posts. Therefore, you now get to experience the Calico Ghost Town Ephemera Extravaganza!]

[First up is a nice tri-fold brochure giving the history of Calico and the current layout. Fully unfolded it's 11" x 17" so it required four full-page scans to get it all. You're welcome. If you read closely you'll see two mentions of the Walter Knott connection to the original Calico mining town.]

[Next is a scan that includes each of the different tickets Mom saved from Calico, not including duplicates. These have a similar look to the tickets from Knott's Berry Farm, but they don't have as much clever writing.]

We left Calico at 5 o'clock but we didn't get home until after 9! The traffic was terrible. First, we ran into the cars coming in from Las Vegas and also there was a truck that had lost control and blocked all but one lane. For two hours we just creeped along, stopping and starting a little at a time - it was horrible. Only our sense of humor kept us from going batty. We ate supper in the car on the freeway - I told Dave it was a good thing we had our leftover picnic food with us or we could starve to death on an L. A. freeway. Then Dave really got me tickled by saying, "I'm glad I'm not taking you to the hospital to have the baby." Then we tried to guess how many babies were born on freeways each year in L. A. Poor Dave was so tried when we finally arrived home - he had a headache, his back and neck were stiff and sore, and he just fell in the bed. He wasn't much better this morning and I felt really sorry for him having to go to work.

[We will conclude Part 2 of this letter here.]

December 11, 1967: Tree Train

Letter postmarked December 11, 1967 (Part 2):

This is Part 2 of the letter that previously covered Tuesday through Friday. This part of the letter will cover the weekend.

Saturday was another BIG day. First, Dave took David Wayne Christmas shopping to get a present for me. This was a big thing for David Wayne as he got to go somewhere with just Daddy - and it was a very brave thing for daddy to do, I thought. They both got back in one piece which made me breathe easier. In fact, I think Dave even enjoyed it. Then we all went to get our Christmas tree. Can you believe it? - Dave paid $10 for our tree! It was the cheapest one we could find. When we put it in the car David Wayne was concerned about it dying before we got home - I told him if it did, we'd hold a wake for it. That remark just about broke up the salesman. When we put it in our living room, David Wayne stood back, looked at it, and said, "I can't believe that tree cost $10, and I can't believe Daddy paid it!" Neither could Dave and he was numb the rest of the day.

We are having a lot of fun decorating the tree as we are making all our ornaments. We did buy two strings of lights and a package of icicles, but otherwise we are just making them. After spending $10 on a tree, who could afford decorations?

[I remember stringing popcorn to hang on the Christmas tree, and I also remember making chains from gluing together rings cut out of colored construction paper. There were apparently some homemade ornaments as well, as you can see in this picture.]

[You can also see the Santa pinata in the background in that picture. Since light switches back then were typically a little higher than they are now, you can tell Santa had some height on him. On the tree there are some ornaments that are not homemade, but the bulk of them do appear to be homemade. The homemade ornaments include a paper star that has been colored (likely by me) to look like Santa, some sort of circular ornament made out of colored toothpicks all pointing toward the center, and several ornaments that appear to be baking cups (like used for cupcakes) semi-flattened with some colorful decoration glued in the middle. You may also be able to tell that I'm missing one of my lower middle front teeth.]

Sunday we took Barbara Hansen to the train depot - she was going to Utah for Christmas and her husband is going later, also he doesn't drive so that's why we took her. It was great fun. Dave nor I could remember the last time we had been in a railroad depot and David Wayne had never been in one. We showed him the redcaps and explained their jobs to him and then we showed him about getting tickets and checking in luggage.

[Redcaps are the porters in railway stations, similar to bellhops in hotels and skycaps in airports.]

[Fun Fact: The redcap tradition began on Labor Day of 1890 when a porter in Grand Central Terminal in New York City tied a red ribbon around his cap so he would stand out from the crowd.]

All this was interesting to him, but it didn't compare to the fun he had going through the train. Barbara showed him her roomette and how the chair made into a bed, where her commode and lavatory were, etc. Then the porter took him to the dining car and the lounge. These cars were two-decked and, of course, he had great fun looking out from the all-glass upper deck. Now I'll tell you about our "most embarrassing moment." After the tour of the lounge and dining car, the porter surprised us by showing David Wayne the kitchen and all the helpers. The porter said, "Young man, do you know what this place is?" David Wayne looked around, eyeing all the white jackets and said, "Oh yes, this is where they mix the drinks." As Dave and I turned slightly scarlet, the laughter got louder. One old man, wiping tears from his eyes said, "Young man, I wish you were going with us on this trip. I bet we could have a lot more fun."

[That's two good one-liners from me in the same letter. Impressive. I'm surprised I don't remember this incident on the train based on the reaction. I had never even heard that story before reading this letter.]

I have gone on and on about what we've done and I haven't even commented on your last letters. But I'll do that in the next letter. Now, David Wayne is bugging me to pop some popcorn to string on the tree. I do want to say that emphatically yes you are welcome to come here for Christmas. I started to ask Dave to give me for Christmas a trip for you out here, but then I thought twice how that might make the Jennings feel. We would love to have you and Mike. So do come if at all possible.

Love,

Linda

P. S. HELP! Send me instructions on how to fix dressing (I think I can figure the turkey out, but I'm stumped on the dressing.)