Many years ago, my father decided to uproot his young family and move from sunny Los Angeles to Portsmouth, Virginia. His reason:  He said there was too much traffic in LA.

The year was 1954.

In my opinion, the move was a grievous mistake. My father was a native of California and Mom had moved there when she was six years old. They left behind brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and Aunts and Uncles and all the delightful bonuses that go with living near family.

In short, the move put 3,000 miles between them and their families.

He came to Virginia to take a job with Skippy Peanut Butter, then located on High Street in Portsmouth, Virginia. He could have landed a similar job on the West Coast. I don’t know why he made the choices he made. He had good parents, as did my beloved Mom. I do know that she missed her family and friends every day for the rest of her life.

I grew up knowing virtually nothing about my extended family, and to this day, I still feel pea-green with envy when I hear people talk about their special relationship with their grandmother or grandfather. I have never known what that’s like, but it sounds glorious.

In 1969, I saw my paternal grandparents for the second time in my life when they made the arduous 3,000-mile trip in their 1966 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. My maternal grandparents died before I was born. (I first met my paternal grandparents in 1966 when our family of six piled into Dad’s 1957 Cadillac and drove to California, sans seat belts of course.)

In this picture, Mom is boarding a DC-4 for a cross-continental flight to the West Coast. Throughout her life, she missed her beloved sister Engie (”Dearie”) and as often as possible, she traveled back to California to visit her. I don’t remember Mom flying anywhere else but to California.

This photo was snapped in 1955 at Norfolk Airport and it’s one of my favorite photos. It’s a great snapshot of the early years of aviation. The “gates” that we’re all familiar with in modern airports started life as a real gates, made with chain-link fencing. There was no airport security. People put on their best clothes and their finest hats and then drove to the airport and checked in at the counter and got a paper ticket and then walked outside to board their planes.

The halcyon days of the happy skies and easy boarding and carefree flying. It’s an era that’s now securely ensconced in the past.

Mother prepares to board the DC-4 at Norfolk Airport.

Mom (far right) with her beloved sister, a brother (Harry) and their father (1955).