Childhood dreams of travel

I have wanted to travel for as long as I can remember. Perhaps this desire was intensified by the very little of it that my family did when I was a kid. The three places we went before my late teen years were: Oklahoma, St. Louis, and Chicago. Below is the photographic evidence.


Here I am at three, with my brother Jim on a trike and my cousins Jim, Missy, and twins Mike and Mark, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We rode the train from Chillicothe. I remember eating baby applesauce, and being beyond excited for this trip.



As Cardinal fans, my family had a preference for St. Louis. From left to right, me, Theresa, mom, Joe, Mike, and Jim.



With our French exchange student Sophie, on the lakefront in Chicago. If we couldn't go to the world, we would bring the world to us.

So that was it. Like so many families, we didn't have the money to go on big vacations every year. I came tantalizingly close to going along with a couple of families on their spring break trips to Florida. As a rock collector, I dreamed of expanding my repertoire to seashells.

But the place that had the real hold on my imagination was California. Disneyland, an aunt and uncle, who was a Hollywood actor and had a swimming pool in their backyard, and year round summer. It was heaven in the United States. I would have to fly on a plane to get there, another longtime dream.

I wound up going to college in Los Angeles--USC. I've only been back a few times since then. California is such a big state--almost like another country--and there are lots of places I haven't seen--the redwoods, the Hearst Mansion, Hwy 1. When I decided I needed to get away for awhile, I chose to return to the land of my childhood dreams.

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