The Way We Were Wednesday : Tin Can Tourists

My mother's parents were some of the original trailer tourists, or they were sometimes called tin can tourists.  They bought some of the earliest travel trailers. This photo was taken in the 1940's, that was not their first travel trailer.  I think my grandfather would have been happy camping in a tent, but my grandmother wanted a bed, and a kitchen - tiny and basic as they could be.  

My mother finished high school during World War II, and around that time, her parents shuttered the farm one winter and spent a couple of months touring the US, they went to California, as far south as Mexico (the only time my mother was ever in Mexico.) That experience shaped my mother's life.  She understood the diversity and grandeur of the people and landscape. She had a respect for immigrants based on people she met who were oh so different from the people she was surrounded by as a child.  She stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine hoping to be discovered.