Planes, Trains and Automobiles

During the Holiday seasons, we think about traveling. I’m trying today to remember the trips I’ve made and the mode of transportation for each.
My earliest trips were made in automobiles. I was born too late for horse-drawn vehicles to be a practical means of moving from one location to another. Oh, there were still some around as I grew up, especially in my earliest years. But they were few and far between, and mostly used for business, like the ice man and the fellow who collected salvage items.
I suppose my earliest encounters with public transportation were the streetcars in Houston. That would have been in the 1930’s, mostly from the corner of Jensen and Quitman to downtown Houston and back. With my grandfather. Later it was the bus. The buses took the place of the street cars. As I recall, Houston didn’t try the electric buses, utilizing the overhead cables the streetcars left behind. No, I think they just went straight to gasoline-powered engines.
Very, very rarely we may have ridden in a taxi, but so infrequently I have only feelings about it, not actual memories.
I rode a train from Houston to Galveston and back several times, so my cousin, Clinton, and I could spend the day at the beach. Once I rode a special train filled with high schoolers to Beaumont for a football game. It rained so hard the entire game that it must have been a tropical depression, maybe a tropical storm. We couldn’t even see the field, but we had fun in the rain. Later I joined Maurice Smith on a train to Fort Worth and back for another football game. We stayed overnight in a hotel there. I think we were Seniors in high school.
Several times I rode buses and trains in my travels around the state, going to school, visiting friends, and commuting to and from my church field.
My first airliner trip was on Braniff Airways from Love Field to Hobby Airport in 1957. I have flown many times since. It’s like magic. Sit down, read some, maybe watch a movie, listen to some music, and presto, you’re in another part of the world. In the past, you ate a meal; I ate a full meal one time between San Antonio and Corpus Christ! You should have seen the flight attendants–boy, did they ever move fast as they asked us to eat as quickly as we could. How much time was there? About 20 minutes, I think.
For the most part nowadays I stay at home. When I go somewhere, it usually is in the car. But I don’t go far and I don’t stay long. I always heard that’s the way old people are, so I’m getting ready to be old someday.