Category: Gypsy life

After my first solo adventure from Illinois to California and back I was sure I should move to California, the land of golden opportunity.  So I traded in the Vega for a 1968 Chevy camper conversion van to live in and moved west.

My van was navy blue and no colored wheels but had the popup and looked like a VW bus camper inside

I was conveniently laid off from my job and collected unemployment for the first time.   Wasn’t so easy back then and I had to actually knock on doors to ask for a job, fill out paperwork that was signed by the employer who didn’t need me, then mailed in along with a weekly phone call.

My plan was to travel westward during late summer on the northern I90 route but my departure date was put off until October.

Badlands was bitter cold wind.  Mount Rushmore was fogged in.  Then it snowed overnight and I woke up afraid to crawl out of my gifted Alaskan issue down mummy bag.  Time to turn south.  Yet the under-powered 6 cylinder Chevy could barely climb the Rocky Mountains.  A mechanic in Durango adjusted the carburetor to get more air than was needed in the low lands of Illinois.  Still, there were times I could have walked faster.

I vaguely remember turning west at Albuquerque and I think I drove through Petrified Forest and maybe even Joshua Tree.  I was very sick with bronchitis on the verge of pneumonia by the time I arrived at relatives’ home in La Canada just east of Los Angeles.

After visiting a free clinic for meds and convalescing for several weeks I started to look for a job.  Figuring I had experience as an office clerk at a seed company that’s the direction I took.  I was familiar with several seed companies in western California so I started applying and headed north along the coast.  Sure would have been nice to have a cell phone instead of saving coin and calling from payphones along the way.

I finally took a temporary job south of San Francisco in Mountain View at Ferry-Morse Seed Company in their seed lab.  Rented a room in a house for a couple months before getting an apartment with a lady I met through a mutual friend.  Within a year I’d moved from the Credit Department, to accounting and finally Lawn Seed.

I did own this shirt, pretty sure in another color

The clutch went wonky on the van so I rode my bike a lot until getting it fixed.  Was an expensive place to live and I struggled working two jobs.  Secretary by day and pizza maker at night.  I’d go out on a weekend night drinking with a friend at the St James Infirmary Bar where the beer was .39 a mug and mixed drinks were .89 each.  I could go with change, get others to fill my mug from their pitcher, and go home with a happy buzz.  Come to find out, the bar burned in 1997.  A real shame.  Inside was heavily decorated with props from Hollywood back lots, so the story goes.

Sometimes I would charge a tank of gas, buy a six-pack, and drive over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the free beach on days off.  I was rather lonely and wasn’t meeting people.  There was an attitude of many displaced people about not getting to close as you, or I, might move away.  I met one native Californian.  Everyone else were transplants like me.

After a year I finally figured I couldn’t afford to live there.  So, with tail between legs returned to Illinois on Mom’s Shell Oil credit card in the same ole van—clutch fixed—along the southern route.

That took me through Texas, which is huge to cross, and no Shell Oil fuel stations.  I did finally make it to southern Illinois where I lived with an old beau in Carbondale for about a year.  Then finally back north to the Chicago suburbs, took a job as a waitress, hostess, and eventually night manager and met my future husband of 15 years.  And although we raised a family we also moved across country and traveled to Mexico.  The gypsy life is in my blood.

Sadly, all photos from this time of my life were destroyed in a flood in my parents Illinois’ basement.