In September of 1966, I went home. IBM had a policy that when you got married, you automatically got a week or 2 off for vacation. I don’t remember which, but I must have been gone at least 2 weeks. I went back to Battle Creek where we loaded up my mother’s car and we headed west to get married in the Salt Lake Temple. There were five of us going, Karen, my mother, Martin, Laura and me. We drove out I-80 from east to west. The trip should have taken 2 days. It took a lot longer than that.
I hope I’m not confusing this trip with another one we took west at another time, but I think this was the time when Karen got a speeding ticket in Nebraska. I-80 was not complete for the whole distance, so in the panhandle of Nebraska, we had to switch over to a 2-lane road. After traveling so fast on the interstate, it was difficult to slow down. Karen was driving and soon, we got pulled over by a Nebraska patrolman. He told us to follow him into Suno, NB where we met a judge and payed the fine. We got to joke with Karen a lot over that.
We would have made it to Salt Lake City on time if we hadn’t decided to take a little detour. Coming out of Laramie, WY there’s a little turn which takes you up over the Snowy Range Road. This road goes up over the mountain and then goes through a little town called Saratoga, WY and then re-connects with I-80. We thought it would be a good detour and allow us to see some of the high country in Wyoming. The road ran to something like 13,000 feet and I’ll have to admit, it was cool. This was September and there was snow at the higher elevations. There was a beautiful lake that we stopped and took pictures of.
We were doing fine until we peaked and started the downward drive into Saratoga. We had to stop for a stop sign at an intersection and the car died. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it started. Some big logger-looking guys come by and looked at it and said we had bad engine trouble. I think that by putting the car in neutral and pushing it a little, we got it to roll down the backside of the mountain and into the first gas station we saw in Saratoga. I don’t remember being pushed or towed or anything. Maybe Karen remembers it differently.
We spent almost 24 hours in the little town of Saratoga. We had to wait while the mechanic called over to Rawlings to have parts delivered. It seems that the car had over-heated in the high altitude of Snowy Range and the head gasket had literally melted away. This lets oil into the gas mixture and the engine can’t run that way. So, it wasn’t an expensive repair, just a time-consuming one. So we waited.
Tomorrow: We finally get married.
Dad
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