An Ordinary Adventure: My Mother on the Mother Road

Imagine you’re leaving the small town in Michigan where you’ve grown up. It’s the middle of the Great Depression and you are about to set off on a journey of over 2800 miles to California on Route 66 which isn’t even fully paved yet! The only car your family owns is a Ford Model A - boasting all of four cylinders and 40 horsepower. This was the trip that my mother and grandfather set off on that fateful October day. The time was 9:50 am and the car’s odometer read 49901. How do I know this? Because Mom kept a notebook where she carefully kept track of everything they did and saw. And I still had that notebook. When I mentioned the idea of following in their tire tracks to my husband, Gerald, his fateful words were, “But it’s not authentic unless we do it in a Model A!” So we did! Join us as we retrace Mom and Grandpa’s 1934 trip from Grandville, Michigan to Rialto, California on Route 66 – in a Model A!