By Faith Ellestad

The summer I turned nine, my parents seized the opportunity to buy a great big old house at an amazing bargain price.  The catch was it had to be moved to a different lot, a process that was likely to take several weeks.  Realizing four kids running around in a construction site all summer would make for some frayed nerves, Mom and Dad decided to take us on a month long trip from our home in the Chicago suburbs to San Diego, to visit Mom’s relatives and introduce us to the Pacific Ocean.

One warm humid day in late June, all six of us piled in to the old green Ford station wagon (no seat belts, no air conditioning), dropped our dog off with some friends, and with Dad at the wheel, set off briskly on our journey west. Brisk was Dad’s middle name.  We kids were well acquainted with his favorite phrases including “time’s a wasting”, “Hit the deck” and the dreaded “The Clock is Ticking!” Apparently so was the speedometer as we whizzed past cornfield after cornfields with an occasional soybean field breaking the monotony.  Sooner than you might think, we reached the Black Hills, where we paused for at least 20 minutes, to take in the grandeur of the natural formations and snap a few commemorative pictures, then set briskly off for Yellowstone National Park.

Unfortunately, between the two landmarks, my 5-year-old brother Thomas had spied a giant statue of a brontosaurus on a hill above the highway and he really, really wanted Dad to stop the car so he could examine it, but my already frazzled parents decided we needed to press on. Request denied. This did not sit well with my little brother, who began to sob, “But I wanted to see the diii-no- sooooar” and continued howling non-stop all the way to Yellowstone.

Luckily for the rest of us, just moments after we entered the park, grizzly bears appeared on the road, diverting Tom’s attention, and the brontosaurus tragedy evaporated along with his tears. He wasn’t the only one transfixed by the bears, though. My mother, ignoring the prominent warning signs, rolled her window down several inches and began waving a Kleenex at the bears, hoping to get a close-up snapshot. Fumbling for the camera, she dropped her Kleenex onto the road, and reflexively started opening her door to retrieve it.  Perhaps it was the last Kleenex we owned, but after a loud, startled “Charlotte! Don’t!” from Dad, Mom decided it was best to let the bears have it.

We may have spent an hour at Yellowstone inciting the bears, viewing Old Faithful, which in my 9 year-old opinion, took an awfully long time between shows, admiring Morning Glory pool, and stopping at the visitor center for a quick bathroom break. Tour complete, we exited the park. Next on the agenda was a brief field trip to Obsidian Cliff.  Mom and Dad wanted us to experience this giant black-glass-like rock formation up close, so we all scrambled out of the car to view it and gather a few obsidian samples, taking perhaps as long as ten full minutes.  Then we were back on our way.

 As a treat for our relatively benign behavior, we were promised a sit-down dinner in a hamburger place. Having long since devoured the bananas, pretzels and after-dinner mints we had packed at the start of the trip, we were hungry and excited.  Arriving at the restaurant, Dad parked the car and got out to change into his good loafers. He scuffled around under the seat for a minute.

 “Has anyone seen my other shoe?” he asked, and when no one answered, he repeated his question more sharply.

“Has anyone seen my other shoe?”

The small nervous voice of my older brother floated up from the back seat.

“Daddy, um, I think it fell out at Obsidian Rock”. The rest of us nodded in solemn agreement.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?’ he actually shouted. 

“ Now Jim…” my mother tried to calm him.

 “Why didn’t anyone say anything?” he asked with some irritation.

“Well, Dad,” my older sister ventured, being brave, “you were in a hurry and we thought you might get mad.” 

Dad was a pretty mellow guy, generally, but this was clearly his last straw. He got back into the car without a word, cranked the steering wheel around, and drove the thirty miles back to Obsidian Cliff in total silence.  There was his shoe, right where it had landed. Mom got out, retrieved it, handed it wordlessly to Dad, and we returned, in uneasy silence, to the restaurant.

 I, the child who despised long car trips, had rashly assumed the worst was over, but then we reached Death Valley.  Since Dad was renown for his marathon drives, stopping only for the most urgent bathroom breaks, brisk viewings of natural wonders, and quick take-out meals, the trip through Death Valley would likely be non-stop.

 It was hot, hot, hot that day. The four of us kids were sticky and cranky. We began to whine about the heat, then to fight with each other, and finally to beg Dad to stop. We were so thirsty. We were dying. We couldn’t swallow. There wasn’t much he could do about it on that desolate stretch of desert highway, until miraculously, well into Death Valley, Mom spotted a sign advertising gas and cold drinks ahead.  Dad promised to stop there and get us each a soda, a rare treat indeed.

 At long last, we arrived at the advertised oasis.  In the desert heat, Mom’s skirt had become one with the seat cover, and she had to literally peel it off the backs of her legs. Dad’s shirt was soaked with sweat from collar to waist. We kids unstuck ourselves from the back seats, leaped out of the car and raced into the gas station, desperate for our sodas.

While Mom paid the attendant, Dad selected six glass bottles from the cooler.

 “Well, we were lucky to get here when we did,” he announced,” they were almost out!”

 He handed each of us a dripping cold bottle of grape NEHI. Whoops of delight surrounded me. The other kids immediately began slurping their beverages and trying to out-burp each other.  But I suddenly wasn’t feeling well. I handed mine back.

 This had to be a joke. Everyone knew I hated grape. Grape juice, grape jelly, grape jellybeans, grape gum, I couldn’t stand them. Even the smell made me queasy.

This perceived flaw delighted my siblings, who loved to torture me by ramming grape gum into their mouths, chewing furiously, and breathing grape fumes at me to make me cry or tattle. I usually did both. Had Dad forgotten? Maybe he was teasing.

“Is that all they have? Grape?”  I asked hesitantly,

“Yes, that’s all they have. It’s nice and cold. Try it.”  No, he wasn’t kidding.

I could smell the grapeness effervescing from the open bottles. My stomach lurched and I shook my head. There was no way I could drink it, and I was so thirsty, tears began to roll down my cheeks. Finally, Dad recognized my real distress, and left to consult with the attendant. A few minutes later, he returned with a paper cup containing water of unknown purity and some rust-flecked ice that they had chipped off the inside of the beverage cooler. He handed me the cup with an apologetic little squeeze of my shoulder.  One sip of that water was better than any soda. Cold, tasteless, except for a slight, delicious tang of rust, and best of all, no awful grape smell.  Good to the last drop.

Happily refreshed, we returned to the car and Mom forbade the other kids to breathe on me. Dad, now attired in a fresh, dry shirt, completed the drive through Death Valley and reached San Diego in record time. At long last, settled into our cottage on Mission Beach, we could relax and enjoy our time playing on the beach and splashing in the ocean while our new house was readied for our return. 

The trauma of the Death Valley Incident has diminished over time, but my dislike of things grape remains strong. I still can’t stand that grape-y flavor or smell, with one exception. Wine. Don’t ask. I don’t know. Cheers, though.

© 2024 Faith Ellestad

Faith has been writing to amuse her family since she was old enough to print letters to her grandparents. Now retired, she has the opportunity to share some personal stories, and in the process, discover more about herself. Faith and her husband live in Madison, Wisconsin. They are the parents of two great sons and a loving daughter-in-law.