My Father's 1958 Chevy Biscayne

Chicago to Toronto

In August 1961, my father Clayton drove my older brother and me to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was was the city of his birth and where most of our relatives on his side of the family lived including my grandfather Clarence. We also stopped in Hamilton, Ontario to see other relatives and later in Niagara Falls. During this time, my older sister remained in Chicago near my mother. My younger brother was a few years away from being born.

Prior to the trip, my father had visited Toronto more than once with my mother and Henrietta, my maternal grandmother. It was where he lived until he was about sixteen years old, when his mother Loretta, my fraternal grandmother, brought him to Chicago.

I had been to Toronto before, when I was just five years old. I became very sick with tonsilitis, an illness I had a few times. I got a penicillin shot in my little butt, which is where doctors gave antibiotics in those days.

During my second visit to Toronto, in 1961, I was only eight years old. I would get car sick a lot in the Chevy Biscayne and I had to take pills to combat my nausea.

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my father's 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne

possibly during a driving trip back from Canada or elsewhere

September 1961

A New York Connection

On our return trip to Chicago, some time after we left Niagara Falls, I saw a sign that said "New York State Thruway". I was a good, quiet, respectful kid, who almost never asked for anything, which was a positive that minimized any possibility of my father ever being annoyed with me. But seeing the sign got a rare reaction out of me. It prompted me to (daringly) ask my father if we could go to New York City. He quickly said no. I was silently very disappointed although I knew not to question him further about it.

Still, it was yet another predictor of my destiny. I had been reading over and over again about New York City in the Encyclopedia Britannica that my mother had purchased for me in those years. I wanted to see and experience the country's largest city, which contained so much. I was already attracted to a place that would one day be where I would live the overwhelming majority of my life.

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my mother next to my father's 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne

probably in the parking lot of the Garfield Park Conservatory

West Side, Chicago

June 1964

my father's 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne

Chicago

September 1964

After my mother and father divorced for the second time (a unique story of its own), my father moved back to Toronto in 1969 when I was about 16 years old. Nevertheless, I saw Toronto again as an independent young man in my twenties, and I visited the city more times after my father passed away there in 2013, three months shy of his 90th birthday.