Today's title comes to me indirectly from a book that I read forty something years ago. It was Siegfried Sassoon's “Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man,” the first installment of his recollections of WWI. I have also read his George Sherston books including Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. While I won't go into detail about the books and Sassoon, over the past week or so I thought about the books and it has proved a sort of catalyst for me regarding why I love the open road and the sense of adventure that it brings.
My father Bob, yes we always called him Bob, and he would get very mad if you called him Dad or father, or anything else. Most of my friends growing up, have told me that my parent's were the first of their friend's parents that they called by name. Bob was not interested in sports in any way shape or form. I never hit a baseball with him, never shot hoops, and it was even a neighbor who taught he how to ride a bicycle . It was only swimming that he ever did with me or my sister's and although there was a family rite of passage, whereby it was a test to see when you could swim two lengths of our swimming pool faster than Bob, with his fins on, I never saw him swim without them. This was really the only physical thing he did with us. He would horseplay a little bit in the pool, and I can remember at least at a pretty young age, of hanging on to him, but he was not usually a very physical parent. Because of this, I never really got interested in any sport, I was probably the last round pick on a kids baseball team, and although I got the uniform, that was the year, 1958 that we went to Mexico for the whole summer and I never tried out again for any kind of team till high school swimming and most of my teammates had been swimming in competition for years. Bob would on occasion chase us around the house in a scary voice, that at normal sounded like rubbing something over gravel. To this day, I am almost completely ignorant of the rules, positions or the point of baseball, football or basketball. My daughter and I suspect most of my nieces know a lot more about organized sports that I do. The Only subject I know less about than sports is the Bible.
So that I could spend as much one on one time with Bob as possible as a young child, my mother got the idea of Bob taking me on errands. So I went on errands with Bob from the time I was probably four or five. It isn't so much the errands that we went on, as the fact that I had Bob to myself, and didn't need to compete with my three older and two younger sister's for his attention. One of the things that Bob did with me, that I repeated with Caitlin, is that Bob would pretend he didn't know the way home, that he had forgotten and that he would rely on me to get us home. Because of this I developed a good sense of direction and an always open to the adventure of what may be down the next block or half way across the continent. Bob made even routine errands to Ketchum's Builders Supply or to Granite Meat or anywhere else seem fun. My late sister Cynthia at times of stress or consternation or even boredom, would sometimes say, “Think of it as an adventure,” and I think this sprang a little from Bob as well. Some times on the spur of the moment we would come home with some strange animal. A bunch of ducks or rabbits and Louise would try and not act surprised or concerned. Many years later on a lark he bought my sister Michele a horse.
During the 1950's we spent a lot of weekends and longer trips piled into a station wagon going all over the State's of Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Colorado. Although at this time it had been ten years or so since the end of WWII, southern Utah still seemed to be a product of and kind of stuck, in mostly a good way, the forties. Bob built the first power line over Boulder Mountain and he maintained that the people in that region did not even know that there had been a depression. Although much has remained the same at Bryce, Zions and Capitol, Reef, when it was a National Monument, not a Park and the town of Fruita still remained, we use to stay at the Green Motel, not far from the iconic Barn that you see in the pictures of Capitol Reef. The thing that has changed so much, is the crowds of people, you didn't see the vast number of tourists that you see now, and I am grateful for that. On some of these trips I got to sit at least part of the time between Bob and Louise in the front seat and I would watch Bob's hands as he drove for hours, or at least until the next rest or gas stop, when it was someone else's turn to sit up front.
On my long solitary bike trips, I always try to imagine as I head down a desert highway, what would interest Bob in the surroundings.I also try and imagine his hands under the gloves on the handlebars. I have told some people that I see Louise's world though Bob's eyes or vice versa. I have been thinking about both Bob and Louise a lot lately, but I think about them on a regular basis anyway. I am now almost a half a decade older than Bob was when he died. His 95th. Birthday will be this week and on June 1st of this year it will have been 30 years since Louise died. Caitlin has been a part of my life longer than Bob was.
So this now brings me to my riding plans for this year. My goal is to go on shorter rides around the State of Utah. Two day trips to Monument Valley, Moon Lake and several other places I am still thinking about. At least one weekend a month thru October. While I don't think this will me my last time visiting these places, a part of me wants to try, at least one more time, to have a sort of Proustian recapture of the past. To imagine the sense of childish wonder at Monument Valley, Bryce, or wherever I may end up going. I also plan on updating this blog more frequently and sharing it. I haven't been to an organized BMW rally since 2009 but may try and go to the 49er Rally over this Memorial Day weekend in Mariposa California and my almost yearly ride through Tioga pass and Yosemite and my beloved highway 6 in Nevada.
As far as reading this very mild winter, I have been reading a lot of Dickens. I have my maternal Grandfather's set of Dickens and have re-read Great Expectations, Bleak House for the second time, Old Curiosity Shop and am now reading Our Mutual Friend. In non-fiction or history, in anticipation of this coming October's 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I have been re-reading several books about it including Michael Beschloss' “The Crisis Years” Robert Kennedy's “17 Days” and Michael Dobbs “One Minute to Midnight”. I am thinking about writing something about the Cuban Missile Crisis from how a 12 year old viewed this. This week will also bring my copy of the last installment of Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson, with the last volume, “The Passage of Power.”
