Autobiography - Road Trip 1974

My final college semester was in the spring of 1974.  Priscilla had graduated from Boston College the year before.  It was four weeks from the end of the semester until graduation.  My friends Jay Ferriter, Barry Palmer and I had an epiphany.  I didn’t have a job offer and Jay and Barry’s jobs did not start for a few months so hanging around a month doing nothing waiting for graduation did not seem like good use of time.  After planning and developing a rough itinerary we decided to skip graduation and jump into Jay’s car and drive across the USA. After all, when would we have 8 weeks vacation to make an epic journey like this?  The answer was now, or in 42 years.  Priscilla and I were engaged to be married on September 6.  She encouraged me to go on this once in a life time adventure.  

We packed up Jay’s 1972 Plymouth Scamp, put a roof rack on it and hit the road.  We officially started our trip from Barry’s home in Greenfield, MA. We knew that between the three of us we had enough friends and relatives to visit and stay overnight plus eat them out of house and home to keep our expenses low.  Everyplace we stayed they fed us and often gave us food to take on our trip. Our first stop was New Jersey to visit a college friend Howie Schwartz. We met Howie during one of our weekend jaunts to Cape Cod and remained friends. He grew up in Trumbull, CT, and, after graduating from UConn, was living in Belleville, NJ, while attending Rutgers for his MBA. 

We all had long hair from college and decided to get a haircut. The barber in Jersey City thought his prayers had been answered when three college kids got a haircut on one day.  The next day we drove to Perkasie, PA to visit the Bill Simons family and my cousins Scott and Kathy.  They had a swimming pool that we enjoyed.  My uncle Bill was a foreman for Sylvan Pools.  

The next night we spent at a campground in a cornfield in Ohio. Along the way we stopped at Penn State University and purchased T-shirts.  The three of us had never visited other colleges so we were curious.  Then we had another epiphany.  We asked ourselves if we wanted to go to graduate school.  If so, we would need to take the ATGSB aptitude test for the graduate school of business.  We went to the registrar’s office and asked how we could apply for the ATGSB.  They said that we just had to pay $15.00 and select a location to take the test.  We were on the third day of a cross country trip and we had to determine where we would be in six weeks.  We threw a dart at a map and selected the University of Montana in Missoula, MT.  We filled out the forms, included a check for $15.00 and indicated our mailing address was “General Delivery, Missoula, MT.  Jumping ahead six weeks we arrived in Missoula on the Friday afternoon before the Saturday test date.  We went to the Missoula post office about 30 minutes before closing time.  We asked the clerk if he had any general delivery mail.  He said “no, we did not get any general delivery mail.” Our hearts sank.  By some miracle, another employee in the back of the post office heard us talking. He walked up front and said, We did get some general delivery mail a month or so ago and I put them on top of this file cabinet.”  He reached up and produced three dusty letters with our grad board entry tickets.  Eureka!  The next day we arrived on time at UM and took the ATGSBs.  We all three passed and we all three had not studied for one second during the six weeks prior to the test.  Our rationale was we had just graduated from college and were as smart as we would we ever be.  Jay attended NU for his MBA and Barry went to Boston College law school.  I graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a Masters degree in Business Administration which was my ticket to be promoted to the Rust-Oleum corporate office.   

Back to the story of our trip, after spending the night in our tent in a cornfield in Ohio we visited the University of Notre Dame and bought T-shirts again. Next on our itinerary was Priscilla’s uncle Stuart Smith’s house in Northbrook, IL.  Uncle Stuart was one of Priscilla’s father Don Smith’s brothers.  Stuart had three daughters and a son.  One of his daughters Beverly, was graduating from high school the weekend we arrived.  He had a motor home in his driveway.  The three of us stayed in the motor home for two nights. We visited one our NU college friends, Jim Meaghan in Chicago one night.  The next day we were off to Colorado.  On the way we stayed a night in Norfolk, Nebraska with one of Barry’s former FDIC friends. (Barry had worked with FDIC during a co-op term.) Also, just a note that Norfolk is the childhood home of Johnny Carson. The University of Nebraska is in Lincoln, Nebraska, and while their teams are known as Cornhuskers, fans call them Big Red. Before leaving Lincoln, we tried a red beer (beer with tomato juice). We arrived at our next destination, Westminster, CO, just north of Denver and stayed a few days with Jay’s Aunt Leora Adkins (his father’s sister). We stayed on the floor of her finished basement. We went with Jay to visit another aunt (Josephine Ferriter, first wife of Jay’s uncle Walt) in Denver, who served us very spicy hot chili. Besides visiting the Denver Mint, we toured the Coors Brewery in Golden, plus continued up into the mountains to Central City and saw the face on the barroom floor.  We also went horseback riding in the mountains and visited an old ghost town called Silver City.  After leaving Denver, our next destination was Four Corners, which is the only location in the US that four states(Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico), meet and where it is possible to stand in all four states at one time.  On the way to this location we crossed the continental divide while driving over Wolf Creek Pass, then we camped out near Mesa Verde National Park and explored the Indian cliff dwellings.  The next location on our list was to Las Vegas, where we camped next to Lake Meade and toured Boulder Dam.  Of course we went to Las Vegas for a little gambling and good deals on all you can eat buffets. The temperature at the campground was oppressively hot so pitched our tent in the bushes to get some shade.

Continuing west, our next destination was San Diego.  We wanted to camp out on the beach on the Pacific Ocean, so we stayed at Cardiff-by-the-Sea.  This was the first time any of the three of us had seen the Pacific Ocean. At our campground had a bon fire and we met some of the locals.  When they found out we were recent college graduates they were surprised as they thought we were jar heads because we all had short hair.  Jar head is reference to US Marines.  In WWII the Navy gave the marines that name because when the marines wore their dress blues their collars were so high their heads looked they were sticking out of mason jar.  

The next day were crossed the border into Tijuana, Mexico.  It was a fun day of buying leather goods, blankets and tequila with worms in the bottle.  

It was now time start heading north.  We drove up to Huntington Beach, near Los Angeles, and stayed with Ollie and Moe Prelle, friends of Jay’s parents. In addition to the beach, we visited Disneyland in Anaheim. Next on our list was San Francisco, where we stayed with my uncle Ed Gaynor and aunt Loraine in Cupertino, California, just south of San Francisco.  As part of this visit, we went to Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, rode some trolley cars, and went horseback riding along the beach in San Francisco. My cousin Nancy was not yet estranged from her parents, so she visited with us.  Their son Chris was a hippie living in the hills, so he did not visit. In addition to the three of us, Jay met up with a friend, Susan from Stockton, who was the niece of a former boss. Susan joined our trip for several days.

My aunt and uncle had a nice swimming pool in their backyard, which we were so happy to enjoy.  Ed brought out a beer and four glasses.  He poured us 3 ounces of beer each.  We chugged it.  He went back in the house and brought one more beer and poured it out.  We chugged it.  He made a grunt of amazement that anyone could drink beer that fast.  He went back in the house and brought three beers and gave each of us a full beer. Victory.  Cousin Nancy married an Asian American Dave Liu. Her parents were not supportive. They died never having met their grandchildren.

The highlight of our stop in San Francisco was Priscilla flying out to join us.  She and I were two months away from our wedding day.  Now the five of us continued the adventure and drove to Yosemite National Park. We camped along a river and saw Bison and Old Faithful which were the highlights.  The next stop was Lake Tahoe, where we observed fireworks for our nation’s birthday. After leaving Lake Tahoe, we stayed at Susan’s home in Stockton, before heading to the Redwood National Forest. This is where we drove through the tunnel cut into the base of a giant red wood tree.  Stops along the rugged Oregon coast were dramatic with sandy beaches strewn with huge trees and crashing waves.  

In Portland, Oregon we stayed with a High School friend Margo Tollefson.  I went to Sunday School at the Hull Methodist Church with her since kindergarten.  She was living on food stamps and food from a food pantry.  Our dinner was rice, beans and cherries. We tried to not eat too much, and after sleeping on the living room floor, we departed the next morning.  One memory of Portland was walking down Main Street and picking cherries off the cherry trees.  By chance, it was in Portland that we connected with two friends from Northeastern. After graduation, Kevin Miller and Peter Robinson decided to hitchhike their way across the country.  They travelled with us to Washington state and Montana. Before camping outside of Spokane, WA, we visited the Olympia Brewing Company, in Olympia, just south of Seattle. In 1974, Expo ‘74 was in Spokane, Washington, where we spent two days attending environmental exhibits, and saw the first IMAX movie theatre (9stories high and 6 stories wide).

From Spokane, the six of us travelled east towards Missoula and saw people using a rope tow to ski in the Idaho. The same day after taking the afore mentioned ATGSB exam, Priscilla and I flew to Chicago from Missoula, while Peter decided to hitchhike back to Boston, as he missed his future ex-wife Kathleen Moore. 

Jay, Barry and Kevin continued on their journey to see the country by visiting: Yellowstone National Park;  Jay’s uncle Walt and his then wife Mary in Story, Wyoming including a trip to a mountain strip mining operation and another horseback ride around Story, the Badlands and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota; back to Barry’s friend’s place in Norfolk, Nebraska for a night or two; and then a stop in Chicago with Jim Meaghan before heading home.

Entertainment on the trip was the car cassette player, plus a portable cassette player that blasted out Beach Boys songs day after day after day.  At night we played whist.  Priscilla and I had a chemistry that allowed us to win almost every time.  After weeks of losing every night we were accused of cheating.  Not true, we were really a good team and still are a good team.  

There was some drama in my life.  I was going to be married in less than two months and I didn’t have a job.  My fiancé was traveling with me to help insure I arrived home in time.  Our wedding day was on September 6.  In addition, Jay, Barry and I had to get to Missoula, MT to take our ATGSB test.  As for work, I had been keeping in touch with Rust-Oleum, they indicated I could be hired for a full-time job after my good performance on my co-op job.  I was told to come to Chicago for an interview at the Corporate headquarters in Evanston, Illinois.  It occurred to me that they would have flown me round trip from Boston so perhaps they would fly me from Missoula, MT to Chicago and then to Boston.  Priscilla’s mother Jean worked for Delta Airlines so Priscilla could fly free on standby.  We both flew home for free. Priscilla flew to Boston to finalize our wedding plans.  I arrived in Chicago and had my job interview with the Vice President of Sales.  He liked me enough to offer me a job as a junior salesman. My territory would be northern New Jersey, Manhattan, Long Island and southern New York.

Here is the location of the Four Corners.

John and Priscilla at Yellowstone.

John, Priscilla and Barry at Lake Tahoe. Jay is the photographer. We watched the July 4th fireworks across the lake.

Priscilla and John horseback riding in California. Priscilla is wearing a NU yacht club sailing team T-shirt.