Norman Family Histroy

I thought I would start this blog so we could help each other write our personal histories. I am going to try and write a story once a week about some memory I have of growing up. You all are invited to do the same. Then post it on this blog. Everyone then can then decide if they want to add to the post or use some or all of it in there personal histories. The following is my first post:

Summer 1959:

One of my earliest memories of my father happened in the summer of 1959. I would have been 7 years old. I remember being awakened from a good night’s sleep by my father kneeling over me in my parent’s bed in the upstairs bedroom to the right of the stairs in the Murray house on Atwood Blvd. (4853 South I think) This is the house that my father built himself. He said to me “Do you want to go to Disneyland today?” He had a big grin on his face and he made me feel like he was as excited to go as I was. This was an interesting trip, Gar was on his mission, Tad was home from his first year at the Naval Academy, Tad had a girl friend named Tove, check her out in the pictures she was hot, no wonder that I use to kiss her when she would visit the house and watch TV in the knotty pine room. Well Tove went along on the trip; I think Tad would not have come if she had not been able to go with us. So the 7 of us packed up our old Pontiac Chieftain, 4 door sedan and set off for California. This was before the interstate highway system was complete. Dad had rented a cooler that hung on the side of the car near the top of the back window. It was like a swamp cooler, you poured water into it and then air would come in the front end and would be cooled by the water soaked filter and then come into the car. The only problem was if you turned a sharp corner it would spill water on whoever was next to the window and you would have to stop often to fill it with water. So we had a canvas bag full of water fixed to the front bumper of the car. The car had a big back window and I spent a lot of time lying in the back window, sometimes I would sleep there. I don’t have a lot of memories of the trip. While writing this I asked a few questions of my siblings and Tad was the only one that filled in some of the blank spots along with the pictures. As you can see we visited Hoover Dam, the beach and Disneyland. On the trip we talked dad into renting a room in Vegas so we could go swimming, we didn’t spend the night we just wanted to use the swimming pool. He thought it was a big waste of money. We stayed with Aunt Doris and Uncle Bill and their adopted children Mary and John Priggie. John looks a lot like me and we have on the same shirt in one of the pictures.