"The Indio Story"

Our family's version of the "Big Fish Story"

Many families have at least one story that gets told at every gathering for decades — the “big fish story” where the finally ensnared fish nemesis seems to grow to epic proportions upon every retelling.

“Disneyland Road: Indio to Blythe 1967”  Watercolor & Ink © 2023 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

Ours was named “The Indio Story”.  It should really be told in my Dad’s voice, with self-resounding laughter at his own story, for it would get better with every telling.  He would be the first to tell you so. Not that we cared, since we all laughed with him every single time he told the tale, even knowing the story word for word ourselves by then. 

The tale begins with one of my childhood annual vacation memories of leaving late in the night, to drive all night to Parker, Arizona.  Dad had a retired electrician coworker living there, an old wiry and weathered guy of indeterminate age, whom we all called “Uncle Joe”.  They would all go dove hunting, something I abhorred then, but I didn’t have to do it because I was just a kid. I did enjoy riding in the dune buggies, hunting for copper and turquoise in the nearby mines, and boating on the Colorado River though.  

During our childhood, we owned an old Chevy Carryall, which was the precursor to the Chevy Suburban, I suppose would be accurate to say.  Her name was “Old Nellie,” and she backfired something fierce.  Like Dad, like truck.  We’d nicknamed him “Farting Dog” one year as well—when we were a little older and braver! Dad, being the original resourceful and ingenious “McGyver” did his own conversion of Old Nellie by mounting a winch on the front and a 1 ½ inch thick iron skid plate under the back end, which was so overkill in its over-building that I am surprised now that the truck was able to move at all!  He also discarded the back bench seats and built a queen-sized bed over the wheel wells, using inch-thick plywood, which was much stronger and cheaper in those days, mounted on 2x4’s spaced throughout the truck bed and bolted into the frame. The area underneath served as storage for the camping supplies and no small amount of hunting guns and ammo. Writing this much later now, while living in Utah, doesn’t seem that outlandish, but we were animal-loving, tree-hugging Californians at the time.  Well, as dad had always proclaimed, “I wear my hair long to hide my red neck.”  In any event, I was a kid and didn’t know any better.

On this trip, like every other, Mom awoke us kids up in the middle of the night, maybe 12 or 1 am, and herded all of us in our jammies to the back of the truck with our pillows.  We climbed up and repositioned ourselves, four-across on the mattress and fell quickly back to sleep under our Coleman™ sleeping bags, lined in flannel with the pattern of mallards. Our folks had already loaded all of the gear into the truck under us.  The rowboat, that Dad had painted in camouflage style earlier that year, was tied onto the equally overkill heavy rack welded to the top of the Carryall.  Yes, Old Nellie was strong enough to survive a bridge falling on it in an earthquake—an important feature in California he justified.  (Or end up a turtle flipped on its back in a high wind, more likely.) Dad backed out of our driveway in Silverlake in the dark of night, when all was quiet, and drove through the night towards Palm Springs for the first leg of the trip. He and Mom took turns driving to give the other a rest break.  Here is where his story begins.  I will attempt to put it in Dad’s words in the manner he'd regale us with the story throughout the years.

“We’d been driving quite awhile, and finally I got tired, so we stopped on the side of the road, and I crawled into the back to sleep a bit next to all you kids while your mom took over driving. Sometime later she stopped for gas.  Old Nellie sure was a gas guzzler.  I think she got eight miles to the gallon, but gas was only 29¢ a gallon then.  It just meant you had to stop a lot more,” he’d always clarify for us, to which we always chimed in, finishing his sentence since we’d heard it so many times.  He’d laugh a bellyful then resumed his story,

“Yeah, so she must’a pulled into a gas station in Indio in the middle of the night and after pumping the gas, she went to the bathroom around back of the station. At that time, I decided I had to go too, so I hopped out and went to the other bathroom while she was gone. When I was done, I walked back to the truck and stopped in my tracks. I looked around and didn’t see the truck anywhere.  I had quickly realized that she didn’t know I had gotten out too, and because we had those curtains on bungee cords all around the back end of the truck, she couldn’t see the mattress and had no idea I wasn’t there.  She’d driven off and left me in the middle of the desert where no one was up!

It was the 60’s.  We didn’t have cell phones then and the pay phone at the gas station was broken. Then I saw a highway patrol car across the street and two guys sitting inside drinking coffee and eating donuts.  I walked across the street to talk to them. They narrowed their eyes a little suspiciously when they saw me.  I think they were a little wary when they saw my long hair, but when I told them the story, they glanced at each other with smiles, tossed their coffees out the side windows and immediately offered to help, telling me to hop in the back seat.  I didn’t mind the bars.  I’d been in the back seat of a cruiser before.  We set out on the road to Blythe, trying to catch her. 

A few minutes later, with no sight of her yet, the driver asked me, ‘So how long ago did you say your wife left?’ Oh, no more than 15 minutes ago,’ I assured him. They were pretty excited to drive at fast speeds, especially on that 100 mile road to Blythe, because it was hilly for miles and miles.  (We already knew this.  It was our favorite road, and we’d named it the “Disneyland Road” for its miles of small hills and roller-coaster feel at 80 mph.  Yeah, Mom drove fast.  We knew that too.)

The patrol car must’ve been going about 90 mph, quite a feat in those days. About 20 minutes later, the other guy looks back at me and says, “How fast did you say she was driving?”  I told them ‘oh the speed limit, sir.  She always drives the speed limit.’ Those two cops glanced at each other and grinned again. I was stickin’ to my story though.  On went the lights but no siren, and the driver pushed the pedal to the metal. We were screaming over the hills now, nearly bottoming out on the down side of each one of them. I think they were having the time of their lives! I had to hang on for dear life myself! Finally, about an hour later, we spotted tiny taillights ahead. After catching her, they signaled her over, but they parked way back with their lights on. They were laughing and joking with me about her driving the speed limit, and told me to stay back by the patrol car while they give her a hard time.  The second cop and I leaned against the front of the patrol car, shielded by the headlights pointing her direction, so she wasn’t able to see us, but we could hear them.

“Ma’am, do you know how fast you were going?”

“Sorry, officer, I know I was going a little over the speed limit, but there was no one on the road at this time of night.”

“Step out of the car, Ma’am. Slowly. What do you have hidden in the back there?”

“The Indio Story” Watercolor & Ink. © 2023. Linnie Aikens Lindsay

“Oh, just my husband and kids sleeping, Officer.”  The officer walked around the car, making a big show of trying to peer in into the darkened car. 

“You sure ma’am?  You sure that’s all you got back there? Why’s it so curtained?” The officer grilled her with questions, which clearly unnerved her by the sound of her voice.  “You running drugs?  Guns?” She shook her head vigorously. “Open up the back, Ma’am, and keep your hands up where I can see them”.

Shakily, she did so.  Her voice shook just as much. “Really, it’s just my husband and kids…See, it’s just my husband and kids.” She still didn’t notice I was missing.  He made her

take out some things from under you kids, making her unzip the hunting rifle cases and opening the ice chest.  She explained that we were on our way to Parker to go dove hunting, which is why we had all the guns.  The officer raised an eyebrow, pretending that he wasn’t sure if he could believe her, I’m sure, since I’d already told them on our ride about our trip plans.

“So you said your husband is with you? How many kids do you have?” The officer grilled her some more. “I only see 4 kids here, ma’am.” She quickly peered back into the truck.

By this time we couldn’t hold it in any longer and we started busting up back by the patrol car. Your mother looked back our way and doggone it, she must’ve recognized my laugh, because she put her hands on her hips and met me half way, me still laughing, her looking angrier than a hornet’s nest full of irritated hornets.  The cops; well they were laughing so hard they could barely breathe. Finally, when they caught a breath, they thanked us for the most fun they’d had in weeks and tipped their hats, laughingly reminding your Mario Andretti mother to watch the speed limit.

At the end of the story-telling, Mom would always roll her eyes and groan, saying, “I swear that story grows bigger and more dramatic every time you tell it, Ron.”  The whole family always laughed heartedly as if it were the first time they’d heard the story.  It’s stories like these that keep us laughing together and remind us of the joys of being part of a family full of shared history and events.  Knowing my mom as an adult now too, I doubt very much that she was shaking in her boots as Dad’s story paints!

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The paintings done for this vignette are firstly inspired by the story, but also by the feelings I always had driving through the desert at night, later of course, when I was older. I’ve driven through the deserts of California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico many times in my life. The night sky always felt like it consumed the space, all the way down to the ground with its midnight blue silent immensity.  Like I do when I am at the ocean listening to the waves, the desert night sky always drew my thoughts to the presence of God.  The expanse of darkest dark lightens just a bit the longer you stare into a spot, then recedes to the absence of all color again. One imagines a million desert nocturnal animal eyes trained on you, although you actually see nary a one. The faintest glow highlights the horizon of distant sandstone monoliths rising up out of the otherwise flat landscape. I also always drive through the desert at night with the window open because your senses are heightened.  The hoot of an owl is magnified in the quiet night as it searches for food, and you are carried away by the aroma of sage, saguaro, ocatillo, carrizo bush and joshua tree.  You learn to distinguish the sounds and smells of each when you are not distracted by the light of day. The desert, which may feel lonely to us, is really a bustling and predatory place for nightlife once the scorching heat and light of the sun departs.  A dangerous and beautiful place at once. Often the most impactful and worthwhile moments in life can be described as such, I am thinking now.

            While the I-60 “Disneyland road” from Indio to Blythe, CA still exists, this “single-slabbed” highway, built over rolling sand dunes, was replaced by I-10 nearby, and now is a mostly sand-covered frontage road.  My dad laughed about that road when I read him this vignette from my memoir and commented on how “the new I-10, when it came in during the early 70’s was sure faster, and it got you to Blythe physically intact; not like that old road to Blythe that “took a good poundin’ on the ole body.” He grinned and went on, “Of course, we probably brought it on ourselves. Who could resist driving it at high speeds?!”  For us kids, it was sure fun back in the day, and it sounds like for all the ‘poundin’, Dad had felt the same.  You didn’t need to pay a $150 for a Disneyland ticket either!

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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".