No Excuses. J. Larry Simpson I
was raised by Mississippi farmers, some of whom were sharecroppers. They were fun-lovin’ people and strong individualist.
Dad and Mom together were a good team. They taught us to be thankful, show respect, say “Yes, sir” or “No, ma’am,” and to pray.
God blessed us with outgoing personalities, strong views of ourselves, honesty, and some athleticism.
We made friends wherever we went.
People seemed to “take to us,” and we them.
We learned many things on the road.
The highway was our schoolmaster.
In Monroe, Louisiana, in a new trailer park, I was outside playing in the dirt. My eyes startled, blinked two or three times, and I said to Jeanie softly, “Look.”
Jeanie looked. We looked back at each other and whispered, “A bald-headed girl?”
Yes, a bald-headed girl. We became fast friends. Shirley wanted to be accepted as normal. We accepted her. Sixty-six years later, I don’t know what caused it, but I knew it wasn’t good.
We learned people are different and that we should accept them that way.
Uncounted memories flood my mind.
Now living in Kaplan, Louisiana, in 1952, Dad took me out on the job with him. He was keeping the “Euks,” as we called the Euclid earth movers that hauled dirt and kept road graders going.
“Son, do you want to ride?”
I beat him up on that huge earthmover, and away we went. Black diesel smoke rolling, the engine growling, and Walker (Dad) steering it and shifting gears like a race car driver.
I’ll never forget it.
On the road meant good times.
Back when there was only two-lane roads and we weren’t worried about danger like today, we would stop on the side of the road, set up a folding table, chairs, and eat on the “road.” Baloney, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese with sweet tea on ice. We loved each other and the open road.
By 1952–1953, a long, long trailer, “The Liberty” was introduced. It was fifty feet long and eight feet wide. Dad bought one of the very first ones. There were three bedrooms.
Our car could not pull such a vehicle, so we bought a 1953 Ford F-350, and Dad made a dually out of it eventually. That green fifty-three ford Dad kept until 1972. Wonder what stories it has to tell?
Years later, 2007, I drove up in the driveway of my best high school buddy’s drive in a 2006 Ford F-350 dually!
Harry later said, “Like father like son, now you’ve got a dually.”
Thank you, my good friend!
Being Thankful
Our living had been meager. Six people but two beds, this must have been a little trying to me because I cannot remember how we slept—I guess, I wiped it out of my mind.
What I do know is that when Dad pulled that trailer into a trailer park, we were happy to tears. Three beds now and the envy of everybody.
Being thankful for what seems to be normal is a great life experience and builder. Thankful for a bed for two brothers, two sisters, Mom, and Dad.
Life on the road and its freedoms would now be better. There’s no excuse.
The greatest glory of a freeborn people is to transmit that Freedom to their children.
—William Howard,
Regis a Tragedy, act 4, scene 4
Story 2
The Inyokern Picnic
First Peter 5:5
Pulling out of Bakersfield early that Tuesday morning, we had already told my Uncle Travis and family goodbye. We headed up the Greenhorn Mountains on Highway 178 to what would be our next adventure. The terrain told us we were in rugged country, and the 1953 Ford F-350 pulled hard. Dad was pulling the trailer alone that day as I was sitting in the front seat of the fifty-three Buick Roadmaster with Mom. Jeanie, David, and Susan sat craning their necks in the back seat.
Trixie and Tony, our good dogs, stood on Dad’s handmade toolbox just panting with excitement. As hard as the wind blew while driving, I never knew why their jaws didn’t flop off onto the highway or blind another car with the slobber flying fifty miles per hour backward.
After about two and a half or three hours of driving, we stopped and ate lunch. Mom fixed the best sandwiches from a baked ham on the bone with mayonnaise, tomatoes, and lettuce that a growing thirteen-year-old could ever taste. Homemade tea, which is cooked tea, with lots of sugar on ice was just right for the road.
Pulling a trailer was fun and challenging. Dad was a great driver and especially of big equipment being a diesel mechanic and having to drive Euclids, caterpillar, cranes, and the likes.
So we pulled off the side of the road at the top of the mountain and had a picnic.
My brother David would say one sweet day as we traveled, Sandy, myself, David, and his wife, Connie, that he thought that those stops were just a picnic and that’s just what life was. David has lived life like a picnic, “Everything was all right.”
So once having eaten, we pulled back out onto old, ragged 178.
In a little while, as we descended the eastern slope of that rugged mountain, we could start to see the desert, the Mojave Desert, brown, rolling on forever, vast. It stretched out endlessly before us.
Dad got to the stop sign first and pointed five or six times downward, turned left, and there we saw it, Inyokern, down below. Our new town.
Lying at the foot of the mountains with Ridgecrest in the distance, Mother started crying. “Surely, this is not where Walker brought us! Surely, we’re not going to live here!” And she cried, almost broken. The sign with an arrow on it had thick black letters.
We four children kept quiet.
She turned left. We followed the fifty-foot-long turquoise-and-white trailer, a half mile behind.
Turning right down toward the little town, we came to a welcome sign with the population on the bottom, 356 it read. It came to my tricky mind that we would be the largest growth spurt Inyokern would ever have.
“Now the population, Mom, will be 362!” “this will be the largest growth they’ve ever had”
Mom started laughing.
Now that was Mom, and we knew we were going to have an Inyokern picnic.
Dad had already been to Inyokern and found a trailer park for us to move into. We parked in the first spot directly behind the owners’ house and dog lot.
After the weeks trip to California, two weeks in Bakersfield, here, it is August, and we are settling in once again.
Dad was miserable. Jobs were not as plentiful as he had been led to believe. He took a job in a rock quarry as the company mechanic. Crushed rock dust flew everywhere, covering up anything in its path for about two hundred feet, less pay, and Dad’s skills were greater than the job.
Dad was miserable, less pay, and not full use of his skills. Disappointment was all over him. Living in the desert, so different from our green tree covered country in Tennessee and almost broke.
Dad was miserable. While passing through New Mexico to California, the state patrol stopped us on the outskirts of Tucumcari on Highway 66. Dad was ticketed for being two feet over the maximum length for trailers.
“That will cost you $500,”