Today I am featuring a photograph of my father that I took on top of Lookout Mountain, just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, back in August of 1963. My father Nelson, mother Mary, grandmother Louise (my mother's mother),and I were driving from Chicago to Pompano Beach, Florida to spend a week at the Sun Castle Hotel, right on the ocean and quite a bargain at $8.00 a day per person, including breakfast and dinner. On the way, we drove up to the top of Lookout Mountain to see the Civil War Battlefield Park. At the time I was a spry 10 year old and headed down the side of the mountain at breakneck speed. My father called me back, telling me he was too old to climb back up a mountain. I accepted that at the time (I thought my father was really ancient), but now I realize he was only 54 years old at the time. He was either lying or really out of shape. In any case, this was my first trip to the South, and before desegregation, and so it was quite an eye-opening experience for a 10 year old. Segregated bathrooms, segregated motels, and people living in shacks that looked like the Beverly Hillbillies original cabin. What a shameful era.
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