Wyoming Adventure - 1946

This is not one of Rita's adventures but one Woody had as a small child. 

The trip I am about to describe was taken in the summer of 1946 with my Dad, Mom, and older brother, David.  David and I both agree that this trip probably opened up new worlds to us and whetted our appetite for travel from then on.  I have very little documentation to go on and both our parents have passed away.  Most of this is based on few memories, re-enforced memories from stories repeated over and over, and a few facts gathered from photos and using the Internet for research. 

First a little background.  On V-J Day, September 2, 1945, World War II had come to an end and my father began working for Dr. Evert Willem Karel Andrau who in later documents was called William Evert Andrau.  I’m not sure if his doctorate was honorary but most likely earned academically.  He was a WW II veteran of the Army Air Corps, was born to Dutch parents in Sumatra, Indonesia and his parents immigrated to California prior to the Japanese capture of Indonesia.  He joined Shell Oil Company as a geologist and moved to Houston after WW II.  His main businesses were the petroleum industry, rice farming and aviation pioneer.  By standards of that time, he was a wealthy man.

It is hard to visualize today but in 1946 as you traveled west from Houston on highway 1093, or Westheimer Road as it is called today, from about Voss Road west to Highway 6, there was not much but rice paddies extending from Westheimer south to about present day Bissonnet Street where the little town of Alief was located.  These belonged to Dr. Andrau and this is where we lived in a little two bedroom shack up on blocks beside a canal.  I was too young for school but my brother attended school in Alief and was one of the few, if not the only, non-Hispanic kids in his class.  My main memories of that house were that my Mom hated it, mainly because there were many snakes in the water canal that ran right by our house.  I remember that a railroad ran from Houston to Victoria and every day we could see the steam locomotive always on time stopping in Alief to pick up or discharge passengers.  It was a long way away but a clear sight across the rice paddies. 

At any rate, sometime in the summer of 1946 Dr. Andrau asked my Dad to deliver his truck and a mobile home trailer to his ranch in Lander, Wyoming.  Mom once told me that Dr. Andrau suggested that only the two of them go on the trip and leave the kids (David and me) with friends or relatives but Mom refused.  So sometime in the summer of 1946 we departed for Wyoming.  Exact dates or even the exact month are lost but from photos it appears to have been in summertime.  My Dad was 35 years old, my Mom was 27, David was 8, and I was 3 years old going on 4.

After extensive research on the Internet, using the only photo I have of the truck and trailer, I have determined that the truck was a 1941 Ford 1-ton Express pickup.  I don’t know what size engine but specifications say that the truck came with a 4, 6, or 8 cylinder engine.  I suspect that this truck had to have 6 or 8 cylinders in order to pull our load over the mountain passes.  Both the 6 and 8 cylinder engines were rated at 90 horse power.  The four of us usually sat cramped on the only bench seat in the truck although David thinks we may have ridden in the mobile home some of the time.  I don’t remember that but was told that the trailer was also filled with several of Dr. Andrau’s hunting trophies.  The trailer is more difficult to pin down but it looks very similar to one I found on the Internet called the Travelo Defense Housing Unit produced in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1942 especially for military personnel and their families.

I remember some talk of the route we took so using those memories plus a 1956 pre-Interstate highway map I’m fairly certain we took highway 75 from Houston to Dallas, highway 80 due west to Ft. Worth where we took highway 287 through Wichita Falls to Amarillo.  From Amarillo we drove due north to Dumas where we took highway 87 northwesterly through Dalhart into New Mexico and the Raton mountain pass at 7,834 feet – the first test for that Ford pickup truck.  We took highway 87 north through Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming and then highway 30 west through Laramie to Rawlins where we took highway 287 to Lander.  Today much of that route is converted to Interstate highways.  From Houston to Lander is about 1,400 miles.

Neither David nor I remember stopping to stay at a motel along the way.  I suspect we slept in the mobile home and that Dad just pulled over at a convenient wide spot at the end of a day.  I don’t know how long the entire trip took but probably around three weeks.  We were amazed by the geography as these were the first mountains we ever saw. 

There is one photo of David and me standing on a small patch of snow – our first sighting of the white stuff.  I guess we had an old Kodak Brownie camera that we used on the trip.  We stopped alongside rock outcroppings and have photos of both Mom and Dad who had climbed up high for the photo. 

We were impressed with antelopes in the fields but they don’t show up in the photos.  As we entered Wyoming we were doubly impressed with the American Indians at gasoline stations and along the road selling their handicrafts.  Unfortunately we have no photos of any of the Indians – Mom and Dad were probably too intimidated to photograph them.  I remember (or the memory was impressed upon me) an Indian medicine man decked out in quite a full regalia.  I also remember my Mom saying that some of the Indians called our mobile home a “teepee on wheels”.

Somewhere during the trip, David thinks it was in Colorado, we drove into a fierce sand storm.  We remember another driver pulling a mobile home, passing around us as Dad was probably driving slowly not being used to sand storms.  Further up the road we came across that same mobile home on its side and torn open when the trailer hit a structure on the side of the road.  His contents were strewn out along the highway.  Later that day as we stopped for the night we discovered sand all throughout our mobile home and even the butter in a covered butter dish in a closed cupboard had so much sand in it we couldn’t eat it. 

We eventually arrived at the ranch owned by Dr. Andrau on the outskirts of Lander.  Unfortunately, we can’t remember the ranch manager’s name or his wife’s name.  At one time I seemed to remember that their last name was Frank or maybe his first name was Frank.  And if the ranch had a name it is lost to us.  We did stay there for a few nights and had a bedroom for the four of us.  I remember that the nights were quite cool and the manager’s wife had an incubator in the kitchen full of baby chicks that fascinated me.  Dad went away for a night or two with the ranch manager leaving the three of us with the manager’s wife.  David thinks that the men went fishing but I don’t remember where or why they left for a few days.  I do remember hearing a mountain lion roaring at night and the manager’s wife getting her shotgun and checking on the horses and other animals in the corrals.  It was exciting times.

It was soon time to return home and I suppose the ranch manager took us to Denver somehow.  I have vivid memories of seeing and riding street cars in Denver for the first time.  Street cars were discontinued in Houston in 1940 so I never rode or saw one there.  Street cars were used in Denver up to 1950.  I remember being held by my Dad and looking down a long declining street with street cars along the way.  David says we rode the street cars to Capitol Hill.

At any rate we caught a train from Denver back to Houston.  It was probably the Santa Fe but that is not definite.  The train was full of soldiers and sailors from the Pacific who were going home after WW II.  One story told over and over was that Mom and Dad were approached by a soldier who said he had a son about my age that he hadn’t seen yet and could he take me walking around the train to get used to a young boy.  Supposedly he took me to the dining car and bought me a milk shake or some such treat.

After returning to Houston we moved to a nicer house on Brogden Street between Katy Highway and Beinhorn Road.  Today that is an exclusive area but in 1946 it was still rural.  I believe that house belonged to Dr. Andrau as well.  The last three photos were taken at Brogden Street where David believes we had a cow – or Dr. Andrau had a cow.  I don’t remember any cow but I do remember churning cream in the kitchen and adding yellow food coloring to make butter so maybe we did.  The 1940 Chevrolet coupe in the photo with my Mom is one car we owned for several years and the one where David and I sat on a wooden bench just behind the front bench seat.  It was crowded.

Thus ended our odyssey in the days when cars, trucks and highways were much simpler than today.  Heck, everything was much simpler.  When you pulled into a gasoline station, men came out to clean your windshield, check the air in your tires and check your oil level.  Gasoline cost about 25 cents per gallon.  There was no TV much less computers, cell phones, or iPads.  There were no Interstate highways.  There were no Whataburgers, Dairy Queens, or McDonalds along the highways – no fast food chains at all.  But the dinosaurs didn’t really roam the earth either. 

This wasn’t my first big trip but the first one I remembered.  My first big trip, to Mexico, when I was a very small baby, is another story.