Chronicles Part X - the 1990's (6)

1998 was the year of 50th birthdays for a couple of my football pals - Colin Kilgour and Jack Simpson - so they decided to hold a joint party at Crathes Hall, with a Back to the 60's/Hippy theme. Of course, despite having fairly recently worn one of my old tank tops from the 60's at one of our Headbangs, all of my outfits from those days had long since met their makers, so I had no choice but to go and hire something. Not so, Jo - she had still hung on to her old Kaftan, so, with a few accessories, she was good to go.

Well, it brightened up a winter evening. Another football friend, Gary Grant's band - Urban Myths - were playing that evening, and, in accordance with tradition, we gave each of the birthday boys a football shirt with his name and age on the back. For Colin, it was simple - "Kilgour 50" on the back of a Partick Thistle strip - but Jack got a Scotland Rugby shirt with "Mad Jack 50", referring to his preferred sport and the way he tackled when playing football.

That wasn't the only dance we went to that winter - there was also at least one Ceilidh at the Town Hall, at the first of which the excellent Desperate Danz Band were playing:

We so enjoyed ourselves that we even bought their record:

The title, of course, refers to the old way of passing messages on by word of mouth, including, in wartime "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance", which, after passing through several hands could easily morph into "Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance". (For the benefit of younger readers, three and fourpence in pre-decimalisation Sterling was just short of 17p.)

We remembered when we first left Lucy behind in USA the previous summer, Jo and I were in tears as our plane took off and I think it may have been that memory that prompted us not to leave it for a full year until we saw her again, so in 1998 we planned to try an Easter holiday trip over the pond.

We found a timeshare in northern Arizona for our first week and we flew in to Phoenix and picked up a hire car and drove up to the White Mountains. It was a pretty tiring drive after a transatlantic flight and we were climbing all the way. Soon we spotted some white stuff by the side of the road - yes, we were high enough to be in ski-ing country. At least there weren't as many dead animals on the road as we had experienced the previous year in Arkansas. You know what it's like when you're driving and you spot some roadkill? It took me a little time to focus properly, but the multitude of large dead beasts on the road turned out to be Armadillos - I couldn't believe my eyes at first.

Anyway, back to Easter, 1998 - my memories of that holiday include a drive across the Painted Desert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Desert_(Arizona)) and a visit to the Meteor Crater (aka Barringer Crater), which looks like this from above, but seems like an amphitheatre when you're in it:

The outstanding memory of that week, however, is our trip to the southern tip of the Grand Canyon. This had to be carefully planned - first of all a drive across the high country to the town of Williams where we stayed overnight. We passed through Flagstaff, which the famous Route 66 passes through, bringing back memories to me of that first Rolling Stones album from 1964 (referred to in my 6th blog posting made on 14-07-11). The very first track just hit a nerve for a young me then:

If you ever plan to motor west:

Travel my way, the highway that's the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66!

It winds from Chicago to L.A.,

More than 2,000 miles all the way,

Get your kicks on Route 66 !

Now you go thru St. Looey...Joplin, Missouri!

And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty.

You'll see Amarillo...Gallup, New Mexico.

Flagstaff, Arizona: don't forget Winona,

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

Won't you..get hip to this timely tip:

when you..make that California trip.

Get your kicks on Route 66!

That's pretty much how it was originally written by Bobby Troup back in 1946, but, as a 15 year old back in 1964, I'd never heard it before and I couldn't make out what a young Mick Jagger was singing, particularly the Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino line. Listening to it now, I realise I was not alone - Mick Jagger didn't know the words either and was just bumbling phonetically through what he thought would sound OK! No matter, it still sounds great.

We found a record store in Flagstaff and bought a CD of the Stones' first album and played it as we drove along Route 66 - how cool! Track 1 was on interminable replay as we tried to work out what the lyrics were - even by 1998, I still didn't know what the correct words were. It was only by subsequent internet searches that we found out what Mick should have been singing. Ross and I enjoyed trying to work it out at the time, but I think we tested Jo's patience a little on this one.

It had been a winter affected by  El Niño - the first time I had ever heard that phrase. The snow had been the worst for many years, and the icicles hanging from the buildings were pretty spectacular:

We eventually made it to Williams and had a peaceful night before our trip on the steam train to the Grand Canyon:

It was a fun trip up to the South Rim, enlivened by a staged cowboy hold-up half way there. The Rim is 7,000 feet above sea level so the top layer was white at that time of year - the Canyon looked like a multi-layered cake with icing on the top. One incident I recall from our Canyon visit was me crawling ever so gingerly towards the edge and finally sitting there with my legs dangling over the rim watching the Colorado River flow well over a mile below me. Jo was beside herself with fear.

We also went to beautiful Sedona - an "other-worldly" kind of place, largely inhabited by ex-hippies and other space cadets, it seemed. It's in the heart of Red Rock country - it brought back many memories of Cowboy and Indians' films that we grew up with at Saturday morning kids' shows at our local cinemas. The rocks are all weird shapes and are given names accordingly, thus Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock etc. Here's a couple of typical Arizona views from that holiday:

The top one is at the Canyon and the bottom one near Sedona.

Our drive back to our time-share was pretty eventful - we reached the highway just as a snow storm hit. In fact, we were the last car on the road before they closed the snow gates. Pretty scary drive back, but we made it safely OK.

At the end of our week in Northern Arizona we drove back down to the lower ground round Phoenix for our flight to SFO. What a difference it was down there - warm and sunny, with the whole of the outlying countryside dominated by those large Saguaro cactus plants in the Sonoran Desert:

We stayed in upmarket Scottsdale, just outside Phoenix, a place where many rich professional golfers chose to call home. The rest of the holiday - through San Francisco and up to Redding - was relatively unremarkable, other than the fact that we got to spend some time with Lucy again.

Another big event in 1998 was Mum and Dad's Golden Wedding Anniversary, which was held at the Pond Hotel - a nice informal meal, after which I had to say a few words welcoming everyone and announcing a toast to "Rennie & Jessie - 50 Golden Years":

Sadly, of those whose faces are visible in the above photo, I'm the only one still around. From the left, it's Dad, then me, Mum, Aunt Helen (Dad's wee sister), Aunt Bunty (Uncle Willie's wife), Uncle Willie and Uncle Alex (Dad's 2 elder brothers).

By now, I was in my 50th year, Jo's 2 years younger, Lucy is 25, Gary 23, Kelly's in her 20th year and Ross - the only one still at home at this stage - his 16th. Time is marching on.