Sunday Drive: Spearfish, South Dakota - 1953

The caption on this slide in Dad's handwriting reads "at Florence's Spearfish S.Dak. 53" so have all the information we need.

[From my personal collection]

Florence Christine Weisman (1900-1985) married Mother's older brother Gilbert Grenfell (1901-1928) in 1924 and the couple had a son Milton (1925-2003) and a daughter Joyce who died as an infant in 1926.

[From my personal collection]

Gilbert was killed in 1928 when the tractor he was driving overturned.

Florence became the wife of Ralph B. Courtney (1903-1956) in 1932 becoming the stepmother to his two children by his first wife.

She's buried in Little Dane Cemetery, Saint Onge, Lawrence County, South Dakota along with both of her husbands, her son and his wife, and her stepson.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Atascadero Lake Park - Summer 1955

After all their years of camping around the West, Mother and Dad had a mental list of a succession of free places to stay up and down the length of California. The oak-shaded parking lot of the Atascadero Lake Park was a favorite.

[From my personal collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Identifying a Trailer: 1 + 1 = Halsco

Nearly three years ago I wrote about the Curreys' first trailer but didn't recognize the brand.

Then yesterday I posted another later picture of the trailer taken up close and it was clear who the manufacturer was.

And of course that reminded me this blog recently featured pictures of several vintage trailers including a Halsco Land Yacht. So now we have a clue about what the interior of Travel Trailer #1 looked like.

[All photos from my personal collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Summer Vacation - 1939/40?

Besides being a champion swimmer, crack chess player and a classical musician who played cello and French horn, Harold D. Currey Jr. was also an amateur photographer who developed and printed his own pictures in a darkroom built into his father's backyard shop.

These three photographs are some of his work which document a summer trip the family took just before World War II.*

And here's what they brought back to Encanto.

[All from my personal collection]

*The only clue I have for the year of this trip is the fact the the Dodge truck pictures is a later model than the one shown in pictures taken when they acquired the trailer in 1938.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Vintage Trailers

In September of 2003 Bonnie and I drove up to Sylmar, California, to see some vintage trailers that were part of a special show on the grounds of the Nethercutt Collection.* I just came across some photos of several of those trailers:

Perhaps the most amazing one was this 1935 Bowlus Road Chief:**

There was 1936 Halsco Land Yacht:***

And there was the 1936 Trav-L-Coach with its black exterior and funky interior:****

[All photos from my personal collection]

Of course the show featured more trailers than these three, but these are the only images that have survived.


*You can read what a Staff Writer for the Los Angeles Times wrote about the show here.
**This link will take you to a history of Hawley Bowlus and his trailers, including some more interior shots.
***It seems that actress Ida Lupino bought her own Halsco in 1937 (scroll down for the photo).
****You can read about these trailers here.





© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Borrego Springs, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park - 1936

The Curreys went camping in the desert--the date is a guess on my part because there were no captions on these photos.

[Mother and Dad Currey--that's probably Junior's shoe in the foreground.

Too bad about the damage to the image of the waterfall.]

[Someone was tired after the hike! All photo from my personal collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive on Monday: Baja California, 1938

During the summer of 1938 the Curreys took their new trailer down south of the border. Here are six photos from their album.*

[From my personal collection]

Somehow I managed to forget what day it was when it came time for yesterday's post so this week my Monday topic was added on Sunday and I'm making up for it now.


Note: I have no idea who Bill is.


*I tried to scan all six pictures are the same time but my scanner screen wasn't large enough to do that.





© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Tharold Conner (1903 - 1970)

I've noticed some interest in one of my earlier posts that included members of the Conner family so here's a page from Dad's photo album with pictures he took before his family left Oregon a year or two before 1920.

[From my personal collection]

Here's the Conner family in the 1920 U.S. Census, residents of the house located on Kentuck Slough across the bay from Marshfield (now Coos Bay). It appears that Tharold was a year or two younger than Dad.

[Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]

[Detail of Plate CXXVII. Coos Bay Quadrangle, Oregon, Land Classification and Density of Standing Timber. Twenty-first Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior. 1899-1900. Government Printing Office.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

I don't think I ever met Tharold who was living in Fresno, California, by 1930 but we visited the Conner family every year so the house was familiar to me. They still had dairy cows--I helped make butter in their kitchen one year.

[Curreys' truck and trailer in front of the Conner's house - 1948]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Christmas at Agua Caliente - 1952

When the trailer was new...

[From my personal collection]

I don't remember this awning at all--by next year it had been replaced with a red one.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Agua Caliente Regional Park - Christmas, 1955

Dad Currey wrote that he took this photo from the picnic area at the park. We spent every Christmas and Easter vacation there until the Curreys acquired the property in Ocotillo.

[From my personal collection]

I've added the yellow outline to our rig to make it easy for you to locate.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Near Silverton, Oregon - 1948

This 1948 photo of me peeking out of the Currey's trailer gives us an opportunity to get a glimpse of its interior. I just wish we could see more of that trailer in the background.

[From my personal collection]

Silverton is in Marion County and I'm not sure what we were doing there. (Naturally since I was about 16 months old I have no recollection of this.)




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Doheny State Park - 1948

The caption of this color slide reads: "1948 Doheny SP on way home"

[From my personal collection]

As usual Dad had me posed facing into the sun so my eyes are closed as usual. I'm not sure if I was waving or trying to shield my face from the sunlight.




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Trailer Camping, Indio - 1949

We've seen the Curreys' rig in this location before but here's a broader view of the scene. We were on our way to South Dakota.

[From my personal collection]

The other red truck is parked next to an interesting trailer but unfortunately I can't see enough of it to guess what it is.





© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Henry W Lunt Roadside Park, Utah - 1949

Until I began sorting through all the family color slides I hadn't realized that our travels in 1949 included a trip to visit Grandpa Grenfell in South Dakota.

[From my personal collection]

In this photo the truck and trailer are parked in the Henry W. Lunt Roadside Park, the first of its kind of Utah. Now known as Lunt Park Rest Area, it looks a bit different now and has both north and south bound parking areas.

[Southbound Rest Stop from Google Street View via Utah Birding Spots]

You can read about Henry W. Lunt here.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive (and Laundry): Yachats, Oregon - September, 1948

Obviously this was taken on a bright sunny day near the Oregon Coast. I was 17 months old. 

The truck is a 1948 Dodge which has appeared in this blog before.

[From my personal collection.]

Dad's note on the slide holder says it was taken at Yachats Forest Camp which either no longer exists or is called by another name. I think it's most likely the Cape Perpetua Campground in the Siuslaw National Forest.

[Hammond's New World Atlas. Illustrated Gazetteer of the United States and Territories. Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. Garden City, N.Y., U.S.A. 1948. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Road Camp - 1951

Somewhere on our way to South Dakota...

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

A Coming Attraction: Trip to Oregon 1954

While I was digging through storage boxes in search of some art books last week I came upon this note book that's a trip diary with entries written by Mother and Dad Currey. Every summer they kept one of these but this is probably the only one to survive--I'm sure the others were in the desert house and were destroyed after his death in 1981.

[From my personal collection]

Since I have all the color slides of this 1954 trip, I'm planning to use the diary to provide a commentary on the photos someday soon.




© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Stone Lagoon, 1958

We must have stopped here to have lunch as I don't recall that we ever camped at Stone Lagoon overnight.

[From my personal collection]

[Detail from Shell Highway Map of California (northern portion), 1956. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Queen Creek Tunnel, Pinal County, Arizona

This 1953 color slide was shot during our trip to South Dakota that summer. The internet tells us that the tunnel, located on U.S. 60 east of Superior, Arizona, was completed in 1952 which explains why the rock surrounding the entrance look freshly exposed to the elements.

[From my personal collection]

[Shell Highway Map of Arizona. 6-DD-1956-1. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

It was serendipity that a car and trailer was just emerging from the tunnel at the moment Dad snapped this picture.*

You can see postcards of the tunnel here.

*Our rig was a red Dodge truck and Boles Aero trailer, seen here in South Dakota.



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.