A Trip Before My Time
It's not easy to write this memory of an event I didn't experience, a trip I didn't take. It was September 1934. The car was a very early Ford. The driver was Robert Fulton Johnson, my paternal grandfather. In the car were his wife, Jessie Ross Johnson; his bachelor son John T; his other son's wife, Eileen Rahilly Johnson; and his two-month-old grandson, Robert Vincent Johnson, familiarly known as Dinty or, to his father, "The Squidge".
This oddly assorted group was setting off on a long and difficult pilgrimage, driving from central Indiana (Carroll County) to Tularosa, New Mexico. There were (or so I surmise) two reasons for the trip. First, Jessie. She had survived breast cancer a few years before, but it had now metastacized to the bone. Earlier her left leg had been taken off above the knee in a (vain) attempt to cure, heal, or slow the progress of that metastatic bone cancer.
Someone—and don't ask me who because it would be another two years before I would even be born—but someone had decided that a spell of relaxation in the Southwestern sun would be a healing experience for Jessie. The parents of the daughter-in-law lived in Tularosa, NM, so arrangements were made for Jessie to spend a month there, staying with those relative strangers. To make the stay more friendly and less strange, Eileen would make the trip as well—with, of course, the new baby, which was surely the second reason for the trip: to introduce the first grandchild to his maternal grandparents. I'm trying to imagine the awkward dynamics of that temporary household. Awkward would be the operative word here, but I say that only from my own limited knowledge of the people involved. No one ever spoke a word to me of this trip.
But before we get mired in the possible weirdness of Eileen back in her parents' house, given her own less than ideal relationship with her mother—before anything else let's imagine the trip.
How big was the car? Did Jessie—pretty much dependent on others for mobility—sit in the front seat beside her husband? I'm assuming John T and his father alternated driving. Eileen rode in the back seat with the baby. Was he a good baby?
Today, with super-highways and a traveling speed of 65 to 70 mph, it's still a long trip, and one I would not like to undertake with a wounded mother-in-law and a two-month-old baby. But just imagine the country roads. Potholes. Frequent flat tires. Top speeds of 40 to 45 mph. A long, long, uncomfortable trip.
No matter how therapeutic the month in New Mexico might be for Jessie, would it be worth the four or five days of bouncing along in a crowded car? And then at the end of the month, they'd have to make the journey all over again.
I can just about justify Eileen's presence with the baby, because this would have been the earliest opportunity to introduce her parents to their first grandchild—a momentous occasion. But again—worth the trip? Worth driving with a two-month-old for four or five days and then doing it all over again in a few weeks? And was Dinty a good baby? Maybe this was a defining moment in his little life, a traumatic period when he forcibly learned that peace and comfort weren't necessarily going to be his for the asking.
I see the little group load up the luggage (diapers for all those travel days?). I imagine the logistics of finding roadside cafes or inns where they could sleep. But no matter how hard I work my imagination, I can get no further than the meager facts derived from a little clutch of letters written by the lonesome husband and new father left on his own for a month.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ann Tudor
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