My father had been wistfully talking about moving back to Kansas for some time and, during the winter of 1947-1948, he had an opportunity to sell the farm for several times more than he had paid for it. That was all the incentive he needed to scratch his itchy feet. I don’t recall what my mother’s feelings were, but I feel certain that all of her memories of California included deprivation, hardship, extremely hard work, and occasional ridicule as an “Okie.”

 So, in the early spring of 1948, the farm, the cattle, the farm machinery and most of our household goods were sold. Mom kept her Singer sewing machine, various keepsakes, and Dad kept a few tools, but everything else – except our personal things – were disposed of. As part of the land transaction Dad took in trade a near-new 1947 Jeep Station Wagon. He and my mother drove back to Kansas in it to get “the lay of the land,” and find a farm to buy. In the meantime, I stayed with Raymond and Alma until they returned. 

Dad wanted to sell my Model A, but I put up such a fuss that he soon gave up on the idea. He decided, albeit reluctantly, that we could convoy back to Kansas. 

We left Madera in June after my freshman year of high school was concluded. We followed U.S. Highway 99 to Bakersfield, then Route 58 through Tehachapi and Mojave to Barstow, where we connected to U.S. Highway 66. We then followed U.S. 66 through Needles, Kingman, Williams, Flagstaff, Gallup, Albuquerque and Santa Fe to Tucumcari, and there switched to U.S. 54 to Wichita. On this trip, in contrast to 1936, we stayed in a “tourist cabin” each night.

U.S. Highway 66 in 1948, was a two-lane road that tended to follow the route of the Santa Fe Railroad’s trans-continental route, which in turn generally meandered along the old pioneer route to southern California. It was then about fifteen hundred miles from Madera to Wichita. It would be shorter now, but in 1948, the Interstate highways had not yet been built. 

The national speed limit during WW2 had been thirty-five miles-per-hour, but as soon as the war ended it was raised to sixty-five on most major highways. But in some areas of the country – primarily in the wide-open stretches of desert and prairie – there was no speed limit at all.

There were many areas of the old main continental routes where passing was not allowed. It is the same today on secondary routes where there are steep up- or down-grades, curves, or other blind spots that make it extremely dangerous to do so. 

Even though it was my father’s habit to drive on the shoulder of the roadway to allow people to pass, in many instances it was just too dangerous for anyone to do so. Most of our fellow motorists were thus frustrated by having to poke along behind us. They were anxious to “get on down the road.” When they could finally safely pass many would go by with their horns blaring, but it never seemed to faze my father. It was frustrating for me as well to have to stay behind Dad’s Jeep all the way. My Model A could cruise at about forty, and I wanted to GO. Nevertheless, the trip was a great adventure for me. I felt very adult, driving my own car all the way to Kansas. 

It was exciting when we went through the Indian reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. I had been exposed to Native Americans in California, but those individuals had been, for the most part, integrated into the white majority. This was the first time that I had seen real Indians, and I half expected a war party to come whooping out from behind a hill or cluster of Joshua trees. We crossed the Continental Divide about thirty miles east of Gallup, New Mexico, and passed by the Grand Canyon Caverns at Peach Tree. It would have been fun to take the tour, but Dad announced that we didn’t have the time or money for such foolishness. 

Interstate 40 now bypasses Santa Fe, but we passed through it on our way to Kansas in 1948. An avid reader, I had read all of Zane Grey’s books, and Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail were often the subjects of his writings. My lingering memories of Grey’s storytelling, combined with the early Spanish architecture of the many buildings and homes, allowed me to fantasize that I had just arrived in a wagon train from St. Louis on the Santa Fe Trail (even though I was traveling east in a Model A Ford). I specifically recall the old Spanish mission. 

Ruth and I visited Santa Fe and the mission in the late 1970s, but it was not the same. Perhaps it was the commercialization, or perhaps it was because the Indian street vendors were using electric cash registers, or maybe it was just that I couldn’t conjure up the image of Zane Grey’s Santa Fe. Whatever the reason, the former mystique was gone. 

The trip from Madera to Wichita in 1948 took five days. I was fifteen years old.