Mike’s Cab Service

Mike’s Cab Service

“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.”

Winnie the Pooh

This photo means a lot to me, and not just because I am related to nearly everyone in the picture. Most of these kids are my cousins, and that’s me in the front seat next to the “Cabby,” my cousin Mike. The unique thing about this photo is that nearly every kid in the picture learned to drive on that 1929 Model A pickup truck, including me. And we have all been in love with Model A’s ever since. My Aunt Janice took the photo. She and Uncle Gordon had a log cabin on Incline Lake in Nevada, in which they lived year-round and where I spent some of the best days of my childhood.

Each summer, our family and friends made the sojourn from Los Angeles “up to the cabin” during the last days of August. Surrounded on three sides by national forest, the cabin and everything about it was heaven on earth to me.

As kids, we spent hours in the back of that Model A, traversing the unmarked dirt roads near the lake. The fragrance of pine trees filled our noses and senses, while a cloud of dust and memories of daily life at home drifted behind.

I can still hear the sound of the Swiss cowbell out front that rang us to lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a paper towel, with one Oreo cookie and a Dixie cup filled with ice-cold milk. We hand-cranked homemade ice cream out on the front steps, after barbeques on the patio with my parents, aunts and uncles and all of my cousins, in an eternal summer that seemed as though it would never end. And in my heart and mind, it lives on.