Early in 1977 things were not going well. My business barely kept afloat. We weren't happy with our situation. Our daughter's school teachers were below sub-par. The idea was floated that we go back to San Diego. Joyce wanted better schools and more opportunity for our daughter and I knew I could mage some decent money with all the electronic companies in San Diego. What little money we had was in our home and we needed to sell it, but while it was on the market, it was not selling. I sold my business inventory, my van and we went on a month long garage sale in early spring to sell most everything else we owned. Once we ran out of things to sell we called a moving company to ship a few essentials that wouldn't fit into our station wagon. The driver told us we needed to be in San Diego and have an address to deliver to or they would unload our things into storage and then we would have to pay extra for them to reload and deliver it. We were already low on funds, so we packed the station wagon (the picture shown above is a duplicate of the 73 Gran Torino wagon we left Missouri in) and we left town in a panic.
We had very little money in our checking account. I got a cashier's check from our bank to cover the expected moving van charges. After saying our goodbyes to family we were already late leaving town. We only got as far as Tulsa by midnight. It turned out there was a huge religious convention in town and after stopping at 2 motels with no rooms available, the 3rd motel only had a 2 bedroom, living room suite. We had to pay double because it was a suite. 6 hours later we were on the road again. We got half way through the Texas panhandle when a radiator hose split and I pulled into a gas station with steam and smoke under the hood. I didn't have any tools so we were at the mercy of the station owner.I don't remember the cost, but we had lost hours of road time and the repair bill along with the extra money for the motel the night before were steadily draining what we had left. We got as far as Las Cruses, New Mexico that night. The next morning I started the car and the alternator light was on. I stopped at a gas station there and the mechanic said he could fix it, but he would have to have someone go out of town and back for the part. Things were not looking well for us. I decided to press on for Arizona. We left Las Cruses and drove through the day with no radio or air-conditioning, running just on what the battery had stored. We pulled into Tucson at dusk and shut the car off.
The next morning things got worse. I'll continue in part 2 tomorrow.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
We had very little money in our checking account. I got a cashier's check from our bank to cover the expected moving van charges. After saying our goodbyes to family we were already late leaving town. We only got as far as Tulsa by midnight. It turned out there was a huge religious convention in town and after stopping at 2 motels with no rooms available, the 3rd motel only had a 2 bedroom, living room suite. We had to pay double because it was a suite. 6 hours later we were on the road again. We got half way through the Texas panhandle when a radiator hose split and I pulled into a gas station with steam and smoke under the hood. I didn't have any tools so we were at the mercy of the station owner.I don't remember the cost, but we had lost hours of road time and the repair bill along with the extra money for the motel the night before were steadily draining what we had left. We got as far as Las Cruses, New Mexico that night. The next morning I started the car and the alternator light was on. I stopped at a gas station there and the mechanic said he could fix it, but he would have to have someone go out of town and back for the part. Things were not looking well for us. I decided to press on for Arizona. We left Las Cruses and drove through the day with no radio or air-conditioning, running just on what the battery had stored. We pulled into Tucson at dusk and shut the car off.
The next morning things got worse. I'll continue in part 2 tomorrow.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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