October 24th celebrated my 8th month of retirement, and it was a good month for me if you don’t count that I turned a year older on the 7th. I guess even that was good because I now qualify for Social Security.
I celebrated my birthday with a trip to Anaheim, to do 2 hours on a 737 flight simulator and spend a few days at Disneyland, and then on to San Diego to spend a few days with my sister Carol and my brother-in-law Alan. I drove for this trip, probably the last time I do that long of a drive, and the drive triggered in me a wave of nostalgia for what Highway 99 used to be when I was a kid.
What really brought this home to me was looking at the GPS as I drove. When I was a kid, 99 was one long, straight highway, passing through towns big and small along the way, encountering more than a few stop lights and even stop signs, passing motel after motel, and restaurant after restaurant. There were few, if any, fast food chains in those days, but one of them was Big Orange, with a building in the shape of an orange. I found this picture online. They’re all gone now I think.
Then 99 became a freeway, bypassing towns one by one. Here is what you see on the GPS now.
You can see where the highway used to go right through the town, and how 99 now goes around them, abandoning those motels and family-owned restaurants, some to become sleazy dives and others to disappear completely. Likewise, the little gas stations where you could fill up, get a cold soda, and have a man in a uniform check under the hood and clean your windshield have become shells of their old selves, two wobbly posts holding up an awning over gas pumps long ago removed.
I miss the simplicity of those days. Yeah, maybe the drive took a couple hours longer. Maybe you couldn’t be sure your car wouldn’t overheat going up the Grapevine. But it was more fun, for a kid anyway.
Gone now, but remembered on your GPS.
(This last picture shows what happens every time 99 needs to go over a main road that crosses it. Since the train tracks parallel 99, the freeway has to veer right or left enough to include on-ramps and off-ramps. You see it again and again when traveling along 99 in the valley.)
