Friday Book Review: Pioneer Go Home

 This is going down memory lane.

It was Labor Day weekend, 1961. My grandparents owned a cabin in Beulah, CO. We lived in Pueblo the cabin was only forty miles west. We drove up on Friday night and planned to go fishing at Lake Isabel for two days before heading back.

Saturday morning Mom got up and tried to start a fire in the wood burning stove. She got smoke in the cabin. Dad got up and asked her what she's doing. She told him to look outside. He opened the door to six inches of snow. He got the stove working and we were trapped in the cabin.

We brought up plenty of food, that wasn't a problem, the problem was behind the cabin was an outhouse. It was coooollllldddd getting there and back.

The cabin was wall to wall National Geographics and books. Grandpa liked to relax at the cabin by reading.

Dad chose this book: Pioneer Go Home, by Richard Powell. We all cuddled up to the stove, my brother, Mom, Dad and me. Dad started reading and after an hour, Mom took over, and then Dad, so on and so forth.

It's about a misfit family in an old jalopy that drove onto a new turnpike in Florida. They run out of gas and camp out on the beach. Government of officials come by and order them to leave. Grandpa in the story has taken some stray children, the oldest is just out of the army on disability, a teen-age girl and twin brothers ten years old. 

The thing about Grandpa is he won't take orders, especially from the government. He claims squatter's rights.

The plot doesn't convey how funny the writer makes this out. The boys are always up to mischief, the girl has a crush on the ex-soldier son, and he only sees her a still a child.

Grandpa completely flabbergasted the government officials, and they leave to plot how to get rid of them.

By afternoon and about 3/4s of the way through we ran out of wood. While it was still light, we gave up and headed home. Once out of the mountains the road cleared up. Mom kept reading on the drive and we finished that night.

It is a pleasant read and I still remember most of it.

Flash forward to 1970. After the 10:00 o'clock news they showed movies. It was an Elvis movie Follow That Dream. The first ten minutes and we all said, "Pioneer Go Home."

The book is a lot funnier.