Travels with Family – Part 1, The Early Days

Thinking back to my childhood days, I know my grandfather and father had those rounded style cars of the late forties and early fifties. But my clearest memory from childhood is of our 1956, two-tone gray DeSoto Fireflite. It was a four-door sedan with fins that made it look like it could easily take flight and a smooth-riding automatic transmission. That model sold for around $3,000.

Until 1957, our family included mom, dad and my older sister (by two-and-a-half years), Raylea (Ray for short). The four of us (later on it would be five with younger sister, Jody) would take periodic trips to New York City to visit my father’s sister, our Aunt Ida, who lived and worked in Manhattan. Those visits marked my first introduction to Broadway shows, whose montage of music, lyrics, dance and acting were both fascinating and memorable. Among them were Li’l Abner, Annie Get Your Gun and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

After a long day of travel, Ray and I would soon fall asleep in the back seat as we headed home to Hartford, CT, about a three-hour drive. The back seat came equipped with two plaid wool blankets – one tan, the other dark blue (easy to remember since I think I still have them tucked away somewhere after they survived decades preserved in the family’s cedar-lined, yellow vinyl trunk). When I couldn’t fall asleep right away, I recall listening to the nighttime radio shows of the ’50s – The Lone Ranger, Amos and Andy and Fibber Mcgee and Molly. At a young, impressionable age, we were already being indoctrinated by sponsors, such as Pepsodent, Campbell’s Soup, Bond Bread and Cheerios, to name just a few.

But it must have been at least a couple of years before we owned the DeSoto that I remember, huddling under one of the blankets, mesmerized by the spooky voice that narrated “The Shadow.” Fun fact: The introduction from that radio program, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!,” spoken by actor Frank Readick, earned its place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh. Picture a shy, eight-year-old cuddled up in the back seat of a car “late” at night, listening to that introduction, accompanied by equally dramatic music. It’s a wonder that I could fall asleep. And on those occasions when I was able to stay awake until the end, I’d hear the dramatic moral of each episode: “Crime doesn’t pay.”