50 for 50: 1973

YEAR: 1973

AGE: Turned 3 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Chicago, New England and Irving Park, then Wood Street in Bucktown

BULLS' RECORD: 51-31

Road trip!

When I was 2 1/2 and Julie wasn't quite 1, our family and Aunt Nancy and Uncle Howard (my godmother and her husband, and my parents' best friends for years) drove to St. Louis. We went to the Gateway Arch and to Six Flags. And amazingly, I remember a smidge of it.

I can recall this encounter with the goat and my apprehension at the time. Also, I  remember, albeit vaguely, looking out the Gateway Arch -- and there aren't any pictures of that anywhere.

The only other travel adventure I recollect (barely) from pre-1976 was Honey Bear Farm, a kind of resort/series of gift shops in southern Wisconsin sort of near Lake Geneva. Other than that, the longest trip we'd attempt was to Carpentersville to see relatives. (Now, Carpentersville is just another Chicago suburb ...)

I don't want to get much more into what I remember or don't remember from these early days -- next year's post will touch upon that much more -- but the thing I learned as a parent myself is that younger kids' memories aren't so important as experiences. We took the boys to Disneyland, LegoLand, the San Diego Zoo, and SeaWorld when they were little, and I'm sure they recall little, if any, of it. But they sure had fun ... and Lori and I did, too. 

The other story/little joke from this trip was that Julie cried all the way back to Chicago, five hours, and that my godparents decided to wait on kids after enduring that. I'm sure that's not true, but I must say, parents four decades ago were brave, with no DVDs, no games, no electronics, and probably no kids' music to entertain their children during travel. 

I wonder what I did and what I saw all the time driving to St. Louis and back. With Julie wailing, I'm sure I didn't nap ...

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