There was a Time

Amazing what memories a song lyric can set loose

In her song “If Heaven”, American singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters imagines what heaven may be like. One stanza sends my mind reeling:

If heaven was a town,

It would be my town on a summer day in 1965.

Everything I wanted was out there waiting,

And everyone I loved was still alive.

That sounds like my town, too. I was 10 in 1965 and I could see my life stretched out like an endless highway before me, full of promise and possibilities. I couldn’t wait to race down it.

1965 was also the year I was invited to go on a road trip to Los Angeles from Windsor, Ontario. Most of the trip would be on the illustrious Route 66, one of America’s original highways, running from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. As a special treat, I’d be going with some of my favorite people, an aunt and uncle and a cousin I was very close to.

My Uncle Ray was a mustachioed, mirthful man, always quick with a one-liner to make us laugh. He had a reputation that he could fix anything. As a matter of fact, that was his job. He worked at a Chrysler Assembly Plant. If a vehicle came off the assembly line and didn’t pass the final quality control check, it would be wheeled into Uncle Ray’s work stall, and he would make it right. No matter if it was simply a piece of misaligned trim or an engine running roughly, he could fix it.

He married later in life to a bundle of energy, a francophone woman we called Aunt Joan. More properly, her name was Jeanne D’Arc “Joan of Arc”. She hailed from Montreal, which was at that time the largest and most exciting city in Canada. Aunt Joan dressed with flamboyant flare and exuded a bubbly joie de vivre. I recall her favorite expression was “OOO-LA-LA!”. It was a general-purpose phrase she could use to express either excitement or disappointment, just by changing her tone of voice.

I knew I was being brought along to keep Armand entertained. I was often invited to their place to hang out with Armand, as he was an only child and just a year younger than me. I didn’t mind, and it was never a hardship. I was age-surrounded by four sisters, so Armand became like a brother and true childhood friend to me. Besides, he always had way better and many more toys than me.

For an impressionable 10-year-old, the trip was the adventure of a lifetime. As we traversed the vastness and varied topography of America, we slept in the trailer we pulled behind us. We ate many of our meals at roadside picnic tables, with the sound of cars whooshing past us.

Some nights we camped in areas so dark and remote that the sky seemed to cover us like an enormous black hood with a million pinpricks of light. I had never seen the sky so crowded with stars.

All through the 60’s, seatbelts were either ignored or not there at all. That allowed Armand and me to rumble and roam free in the backseat. I like to believe we got away with it because the Laws of Physics were not yet firmly established. It was commonly accepted that in a sudden stop, a parent using a stiff outstretched arm could keep a child from flying off the seat and slamming into the dashboard. Others thought in a crash it was better to be thrown clear of the vehicle (albeit through the windshield) than to get caught in the folds of the collapsing metal or in an ensuing fire. Lots of magical thinking occurred back then.

We weren’t thinking of any of that. With all kinds of games and role playing, Armand and I amused ourselves cascading around the backseat over the many hours on the road and we survived to talk about it today.

I can recall many anecdotes from that trip, but one that best reflects a ten-year-old boy’s state of mind occurred at the Grand Canyon. Uncle Ray had barely stopped the car when Armand and I popped out of the backseat doors and raced each other to the edge of the canyon. We were running so fast we would have toppled into the abyss if there had not been a railing to restrain us.

Neither of us had seen such vastness, such colors in the striations, or could take in the size and splendor of it all. At first, we were speechless. Then our boyhood rivalry ignited.

Armand pointed into the deep pit in front of us. “You see that ditch down there? I betcha I could jump over it.”

To top him, I said, “Yeah, so could I, but I betcha I could do it even without a running start!”

After I said that, we heard a chuckle behind us and then a chorus of guffaws. We turned and towering above us was a National Park Ranger, in uniform and wearing the ‘Smokey the Bear’ brown Stetson hat. And behind him, a small crowd had been gathering because the ranger was about to give his orientation talk.

“Boys,” he said to us in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “that “ditch” you are looking at is the Colorado River. At some points, it’s a mile wide. It just looks narrow because it’s so far away. I don’t think either of you will be jumping over it today or tomorrow.”

To which, the crowd roared with laughter.

I felt burned and embarrassed and tried to deliver a formidable comeback. I muttered under my breath, “Mister, you’ve never seen us jump.”

Ah, the imagination of a 10-year-old.

Unlike in 1965, my life today doesn’t much look like an “endless highway stretched out before me, full of promise and possibilities”. No, the road looks much shorter now, and my eyes have grown too dim to see all that’s out there. Nowadays, my travel speed is tempered by a melancholy mood and I’m ever watchful as sadness and wistfulness rise and ebb.

Some downcast souls grimly describe life as merely a series of death notices that increase in frequency the older you get and the last one you never get to read. I have not become that disheartened, but I will admit this is what I liked best about 1965:

“Everyone I loved was still alive.”