Our 1957 Chev.....including the invoice...and the Calgary Stampede

In April, 1957, mother and father bought a brand new car!  We had a 1954 Meteor (I think it was a meteor) panel kind of van - only trouble was, it had no windows or seats in the back.  I think we sat on benches or something......I'm sure my siblings remember what it was like inside so they can update me, maybe.  Anyway, it wasn't very suitable for a family of 6 so trading it seemed like a good idea.

That summer we went to the Calgary Stampede!  Only 3 of us kids went, though.  Danny, the eldest, was working already.  What a trip it was......we had a big white tent and this trip we all had air mattresses and sleeping bags, I think.  (I'll write about our 1952 holiday another time)  I don't remember which route we took or if we went to Trail to visit our cousins before heading to Calgary but I do remember that we camped in Banff on our way and we were up at the crack of dawn, absolutely freezing!  We must have arrived in Calgary really early as I don't think we even ate breakfast before leaving - too cold out.  In Calgary we camped in a great big field - north of the city - it's all subdivisions now.

I remember mother getting out of the car and she had red all over her shorts (why did she have shorts on if it was so cold when we left Banff?........maybe this memory isn't of us arriving but of her getting out of the car another time while we were camped in Calgary) and I said to her 'oh, mom - your shorts are all red - I think you must have sat on a tomato!'  I was nearly 12 years old and didn't have the sense to realize she'd started her period!

The big star of the Calgary Stampede that year was Lash Larue - I got a signed picture of him - signed with purple ink, I think.  Kept it for years and have no idea what happened to it.  They had acts where women hung by their necks from helicopters - mother had to look at her feet - she had a terrible fear of heights.  They also had the most amazing fire works - I remember one that was in the shape of a royal carriage.....not sure how they did that as I've never seen anything like that since.  We went to all the chuck wagon races.........or many of them, anyway.

From Calgary we went to Minot, North Dakota, via Saskatoon.  I remember Saskatoon because I got to buy a new dress there - it was white with big, dark pink roses on it and I just loved it.

In Minot we stayed with my father's uncle and aunt.  Bill and Rosie Alger.  They had two teenage sons, I think, and we also went to someone's ranch or farm and my sister got to ride a horse - I think it was old and we had to push it to get it to go........

And that's all I remember about that trip - I think we were gone 5 weeks or something like that.  Imagine, mother had to cook all our meals and where she did laundry etc. I have no idea.  Can't imagine going somewhere for that long, doing all that work for 5 people and calling it a vacation!  She said she enjoyed it, though.  Oh, right - I remember stopping in Montana at the Great Divide - and the 'longest bar' and mother and father went in and had a beer and we three kids sat outside in the car and waited!  We also spent one night in a motel in Kalispell, Montana and there was a really neat convertible car parked at one of the units and someone took a picture of it.  That picture is still around somewhere.

Here is the invoice for our 1957 Chev.  I wonder if the car is still in operation somewhere?

 

Cheerio,