VIII

back again with further ruminations, not necessarily in any actual chronology of my childhood with my parents…so we have told the stories of the Shetland Pony Christmas and the DisneyLand/Rose Bowl Christmas…oddly enough, I do have photographs of our DisneyLand outing which I will attach to this narrative when I figure out how to do that…( as you can see, I just did)

Anywhoo, Mom and Dad knew that we had to be in Pasadena, California on January 1, 1959 for the Rose Bowl. Working backwards from that date, we still had to drive down to Anaheim, California to spend a few days at DisneyLand and then to the Rose Bowl. This meant we had to leave Lake Oswego, Oregon and drive to Southern California in plenty of time to be there on January 1st, 1959.

I do not remember if we left the day after Christmas or what but Mom and Dad had it all figured out. The road trip in Dad’s Chevrolet Impala was uneventful. Due to Dad’s position at Crown-Zellerbach, he was given a company car which was the model year that had great fins, laid down over the taillights giving it that swoopy look from the rear (if I get a moment, I will search out a photograph of that model and post it here as an illustration of what I am trying to describe).

We arrived in Anaheim, checked into our rooms and then we made our plans on how much fun we were going have at Disneyland since it was a reality, now and not just some fevered dreams of it, as a kid, thinking this experience was out of reach and one that I would never get to experience. DisneyLand was real and just down the block from us at the motel. It existed. Holy Moly!
I had seen it as we drove by it on the way to the motel and I had seen it on TV but I never, ever thought I would get to go there except in my dreams or fantasies of this magical place: “WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE” which was the motto attached to this place by Walt Disney and I wholeheartedly believed that as only a kid could imagine or believe. All this was made possible by my parents who conceived this Christmas present for us kids and for Mom and Dad who got to see University of Iowa play in the Rose Bowl. So this trip was significant of dreams coming true for Mom and Dad and us, together, all in one trip for all of us. In retrospect, how cool was that!

And just another illustration of how cool were my parents!

The actual days we spent at DisneyLand were and are, to this day, a blur of excitement and discovery of all the lands encompassed by Disney LANDs. We rode rides over and again, explored all the different lands of Walt Disney’s imagination that he had given us, the kids.
As cool as DisneyLand was to us as kids, the Rose Bowl was a completely different experience. You have to remember that the Rose Bowl, back then, could host roughly 90,000 raving fans. The place was a pandemonium and kaleidoscope of California fans and Iowa fans, all decked out in each particular school’s colors. The game was exciting and exhilarating to me. I knew football and how the game was played so I was carried away by the game being played in front of me as opposed to watching it on TV. And to top off their dreams, Iowa won that day, making Mom and Dad very happy campers.
What a way to end this magical trip for all of us.