Road Trip Memories
Thanks for such a great magazine. Your trip from California to Pennsylvania [Apr. ’12] and back [May ’12] in a CJ brought back great memories for me of when I drove a ’78 CJ-7 with a four-banger from Minneapolis to Red Lodge, Montana, in July 1995. I was driving my Jeep with my two daughters (ages 9 and 12) as passengers. We picked up my two nieces (ages 4 and 7) in Billings, Montana, to join us for a camping experience in Red Lodge, Montana. Yes, all five of us were in that Jeep with seatbelts for three in the back seat! We spent four days and five nights camping in the Red Lodge Mountains and four-wheeling up to 10,000 feet on July 4. I have photos of the girls standing in a snowbank in the mountains in Red Lodge on July 4 when it was 95 degrees in Billings. Our trip was a great experience and wonderful memory. To this day we still talk and laugh about our wonderful trip, the crowded vehicle, and the “heads bouncing around” in the ’78 CJ-7. You can only imagine the bathroom stories the four girls have—camping without a bathroom. Given the opportunity, I would do it all over again. It was a wonderful experience for all of us.
Thanks again for such a great magazine. I read it cover to cover every month. I will be renewing my subscription after reading this story and hope to see it in print, as will the four girls (all grown women now).
David Lind
Via email
Fred Williams’ CA to PA trip hit home for many people, including me. We will take more trips like this, and we hope more readers will do the same. In fact, where do you think Fred and Lemon Pie should head next? Canada? Baja? Alaska? Nebraska? Post your ideas on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/4wheeloffroad.
Reader Rant
It Does Matter
I understand that you can’t publish where every item is manufactured every time, but in regards to your reply to Mr. Proctor [“Where Are They Made?” In Box, July ’12] I feel that’s the attitude that has helped to land our economy in the state that it is in. You may not care where your underwear is made, but it sure bugs me to know mine weren’t made here. I own thousands of dollars in Snap-on tools, and nothing drives me crazier than to see a tool on the truck made overseas. The tool costs no less than it did when it was made here so to me it seems clear that only greed drives these decisions by big corporations. But I’ve digressed.
My point is all the other mechanics at my shop couldn’t care less where that $100 chisel set or that $80 file came from or if the tires they just spent hundreds of dollars on were made here, but some of us do. I’d spend twice as much for identical items simply because they’re made here. It seems to me if more people demanded products made here by American companies (your Toyota made here to avoid tariffs doesn’t count), more companies would sell American-made products; consumers drive the market, right?
Randy Bosworth
Via 4wheeloffroad.com
My deepest apologies to you and to everyone else who wrote in taking me to task for “not caring where tires are made.” I meant that when it comes to how tires are tested, how they perform, and how they are rated, where they were made did not matter, especially since many tires of identical types are made in local as well as foreign locations. For the record, I do care about “Made in America,” and when I have a choice of a purchase for the same or similar price, I choose the American item. And I agree that if we all banded together and only bought American, our economy would be different.
I do need to ask though: Would the economy be better? First off, all Americans would not buy only American—look at your own mechanics. If you don’t believe what you wrote, look at what you said you would do. Tell me you would pay $4 a gallon for American gas when you could buy imported gas all day long for two bucks a gallon. Would you? I wish all of us could pay twice as much for what we believe in and that there was no “corporate greed,” but it just isn’t so. The answer? If I had the answer I could probably afford $4 gas.
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