During WWII my father managed to be awarded extra gasoline coupons because of my mother being an 'invalid' ( a word she detested) so Sunday drives were our one escape from the neighborhood. Each year father would save up enough coupons to take our family on a week's summer vacation. He would drive us in our old Hudson, from Pomona Valley, past oil fields, watermelon patches, strawberry and Boysenberry farms with stops at every little town along the way. Mother would've packed her potato salad, weiners and a box of Ritz crackers, lemonade and father's trusty coffee pot. Father packed a tent, folding cots, her wheelchair along with everything needed to survive the camp out. Mother spent her time under the sun umbrella while father enjoyed body surfing and I played in the surf sun burning my feet.
No one "with any good sense" lived on the beach back then because everything rusted or smelled like dead fish." It was necessary to avail oneself of the beach office, small store and the outhouse up on the hillside. I was old enough to go there by myself, but not too happy about it. The second morning I ran out of that smelly place yelling: "There's a dead man in the toilet!" In no time at all police, father and the beach manager searched the women's outhouse only to find it had only been my wild imagination. From then on, father stood at the door for my protection. I can still remember what it felt like wearing sox in the surf and the scratchiness of the sheet over my sunburned feet at night. Of course, by the next summer I was ready to do it all again.
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