Leaving Immokalee

At the end of the school year we would be on the road again,
leaving our Wild West town of Immokalee,
This, for the most part, had been a fun time for us.


…. Comes the long ride north…

We were going north for summer work, with
much uncertainty of what was ahead…
And such a long way to go!

We traveled with bedding and essentials on a small trailer,
pulled behind the old Plymouth Daddy drove!

My sister and I played games along the way…
counting the cars we saw..
dividing them into color categories...
trying to spot the highest number
of our chosen color!

…And we thrilled to the billboards along the way,
of the famous singer, Bing Crosby…
…and had fun reading the Burma Shave signs! :)

We would sing songs ... and Mama would tell us stories of her young years,
or recite poems for us!

We would See places we had never seen before...Big cities! Until that time we
had not been further north than Alabama. We were heading for Michigan and Indiana.

We slept in our car, in places Daddy and Mama felt were safe. One night we found
a park, with swings and slides...

Our meals were sandwiches of packaged lunch meat from stores,
or peanut butter and jelly...little packaged cakes...bananas...
Somehow, Mama was able to give those sparse meals an air of a picnic!

We were all together, so all was ok!


Remembering…
Nov.2003