I MUST BE IN LEUCADIA -- HEY, I AM!

1954 Cadillac

Yesterday something happened to me that refuses to go away.  I was traveling up Interstate highway 5, the one that follows the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Canada when all of a sudden I saw something that brought me back to 1955.
1955 was the first time that I had ever set foot in California. Back then there was no interstate highway system, but it was in the throes of being born.  It was being constructed not too far east of where state route 101 lay.  Now 101 is a famous road.  ["Shoot the Juice to me, Bruce"] Perhaps not of equal stature with Route 66, [Cole Porter] but famous nonetheless.  It still exists today, but does suffer some interruptions that did not exists some 45+ years ago.
The people with whom I was visiting were not driving around in 1954 Cadillacs, believe me.  We were driving around in early post-war Studebakers, Hudsons and one Packard that I can remember.  Not a single Ford in the bunch.  My cousin (she of fond and undying memory) was driving an old Studebaker that could not climb the hill from the beach to the main road in first gear.  So, with five people in the car, Elna put the car in reverse and backed up the hill.  And we think that the young people of today do some silly things!  Young people have an infinite capacity to invent new ways of coming at life.  In the days when I was first in California, my first cousins lived in a small seaside town named Leucadia.  They were in a rented house that sat at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean.  It was a small house, left over from the pre-war times, I guess.  A few years after 1955, the developers moved in to Leucadia, everything was bought up at obscene prices and so my cousins moved on and the family moved into Encinitas, about one-half mile east of the beach.

I did a lot of things during that 8 days vacation.  I flew out of La Guardia airport in New York on a DC 6.  Four hours to Chicago.  Eight hours to Los Angeles.  Los Angeles hosted my first trip on a DC 3 (C 47).  [There would be many more of these.  Different story.]  It was 30 minutes to San Diego, flying just off the beach to the West until turning in a bit to land in Lindbergh field.  They dropped us off on the tarmac and we walked into the one-room terminal from there.  No, I am not exaggerating!
At the time most of the Dion side of the family had moved from Massachusetts to Southern California.  They were school teachers and tool and die makers and lathe operators.  All skills that were being imported to California for higher wages than could be made in New England.  I had one uncle who was really a beach guy who was living in Imperial Beach at the time.  He would dress in the faddish styles of the time, fitted Caribbean pants with the Caribbean shirt with no buttons that would be tied at the bottom around the waist with a simple knot.
Wild stuff.
It was at this time too that I learned to water ski, drink beer and visit a foreign country -- Mexico.
Now all of this came to mind when I saw the 1954 Cadillac Coupe de Ville on the I- 5 yesterday, within the city limits of Leucadia, California.  Too bad Elna is no longer around to enjoy the story.
I'll be back at you later this evening when I return from attending my first real, honest to goodness, Pow-Wow.  With pictures, of course.