Much like the Griswolds in National Lampoon’s Family Vacation, my family climbed into a station wagon and headed out for summer adventure. Our target destination was a double wide trailer in the Mojave, but we took our time getting there, sleeping in a tent at KOAs and stopping at the usual tourist destinations—the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert—as well as any place that made my dad say, “Doesn’t that sound neat?!” So we saw a meteor crater, the fort where they filmed F-Troop, something with two heads that should only have had one. We also stopped at every Stuckey’s between Missouri and California, which I didn’t mind one bit because I love-love-loved their pecan log rolls. I read a book called Indian Chiefs that I bought with my own money in the Grand Canyon gift shop.
Eventually we got to the desert and settled in with our hosts, my godparents, Dean and Frances Bell and their kids. It was the first time I saw my mother on a motorcycle, my first paddle boat ride, my first hayride. I wore knee-high moccasins and saw sidewinders speeding across the sand. And never in my whole life have I seen as many stars as I did in the desert that summer.
Another first: golfing. My dad took me with him while he played a round by himself. I was only 10 years old, and I went along not thinking I was going golfing but just to hang out with Dad. But once we were on the course, he handed me a 3 wood and told me to hit the ball he had just tees up. I imagine we only played nine holes; I remember my score was about 100.
I never wanted to be a golfer, but I did often think I’d like to be the caricature artist at a theme park, cartooning for money and making people happy. Remembering my dad on the second anniversary of his passing, I’m sharing these cartoons we had drawn of us at Universal Studios theme park while on vacation in California in 1975. It took the artist about twenty seconds to find out that we had just been golfing a day or two before, and away he went.
theotherjeffrogers.com 