I believe it must have been about 1953 when my father announced that we were taking a summer vacation in the American West. I was probably around seven or eight years old and a real old west cowboy fan. The thought of actually visiting the old west was enough to make me estatic with anticipation.
I am not exactly sure when we left for our month long excursion, but I do know it was summer and it was warm. We packed up the, if I remember correctly, 1952 Pontiac and started down the road.
Although I had been on a vacation before, I scarsely remember any of the details. This trip however was different, I was older and very excited about the voyage to cowboy heaven.
The first stop on our trip that remains most vivid, I suppose because of the fact that I thought it to be 'only a drug store' before arrival, was Wall Drug, in Wall, South Dakota, a place that turned out to be a place of marvel and awe. They seemed to have everything that I could imagine a western store could have, right down to the wood plank floors, cowboy boots, hats the whole speil.
My father gave me some of my allowance, as I had to buy something there and although I cannot remember to this day what it was that I purchased, I do remember getting my change in silver dollars, and I later remember my father getting the biggest kick out of me trying to keep my pants up, and the sound of the jingle, gangle, jingle of my, not suprs, but coins in my pockets.
My father purchased a levis jacket with a western cut and silver studs which I proudly wore and felt it to be the cats meow. Unfortunately, at one point on the trip I left it hanging in a resturant and didn't remember it until we were about a hundred miles away. My father would not go back one hundred miles for a jacket and I therefore cried for the following hundred miles. My father was upset that I would leave the jacket while my mother remained calm and came through by writing a letter to the resturant that evening and having the jacket mailed to our home in Ohio.
This month long trip encompassed sights from the Black Hills, Devils Tower, Yellowstone National Park, The Grand Tetons, Rock Mountain National Park, and a multitude of beautiful lodges, sites, and excitement that I shall carry with me until my dying day. I still remember the signs warning not to leave any town without a water bottle on the front of the car. I was also ingrossed with the lack of speed limits and the fact that you could drive for a hundred miles without seeing another car or human.
When the trip was over and we arrived home, my western levis jacket was there and I was fulfilled having seen the sights, getting the jacket, and meeting all the nice honest people, people that sent my jacket back to me prepaid.
Wall Drug is no longer the store it was, but even greater than ever. Don't forget to visit the Wounded Knee Museum in Wall. The old west is much more comercialized and towns not so far apart and personally I feel has lost something with the new highways and time passed. Although, that's just me and the way I see it.