THE DAY WE FLOODED THE MOTEL

Today I am going to share a story about me and my brothers as written by my mom--your Great Grandma Eileen Giberson. "The Day We Flooded the Motel."

In 1960, my parents took my brothers, Todd and MIke, and me to southern California on a vacation. My little sister, Robin was not quite a year old and she stayed with my aunt and her family so that we could enjoy the vacation without a baby. Here is the story by my mom:

"One entire day we spent with Judy, Todd, and Mickey at Disneyland. Richard (my dad) and I did take a dim view of the ride through Senior Autopia (by then freeways were hardly appealing, even miniature ones), but otherwise it was a wonderful day. I guess my favorite item on that particular Disneyland visit was Tom Sawyer's Island. We enjoyed taking the kids because after all they were the biggest ones we had and we didn't realize how small they really were. Now, I can't imagine packing a 2 1/2 year-old halfway around Disneyland--that Mickey was a chunk!---- but then, we were young, strong and didn't know any better.

This picture was taken just a month or so before this vacation.
Richard (Dad), Judy, Eileen (Mom)
Mike, Todd, Robin

I guess things were bound to go wrong at the motel. The manager was a women with not only a hawk nose but an eagle-eye. She seemed to know every going and coming that took place, at least in our case...

I absolutely swear that what happened was not my fault. We were getting ready to go to the beach and who would have expected our water to be turned off so repairman could work on the pipes out in the flowerbeds. When I started to wash the breakfast dishes, I discovered we had not water, cause unknown.

Clean breakfast dishes were certainly not a prerequisite to an enjoyable morning at the ocean so we skipped that little detail and went on to the next. The last thing I did before we piled into the car was to check both kitchen and bathroom faucets, hoping that they were turned off. With little ones around, it was anybody's guess.

Have you caught on? Yes, indeedy--- "as luck would have it" the bathroom faucet was left on full blast! While we were out blithely playing in the sun and sand, the water was turned back on and that tap relentlessly filled up the sink, the bathroom floor and went on to soak a quarter portion of the carpet in one bedroom. The problem was discovered before our return (just how, we dared not ask, afterward.) Our first intimation of trouble was when we drove into the parking lot and the landlady was waiting for us on our doorstep. She would have made a good college dorm mother.

We had the decency to cringe a little when she described, in properly dramatic tones, how the repairman had been forced to drill a hole in the bathroom floor to drain out the water. We waited until she left before we laughed.

(If you've ever lived with a water-soaked carpet, you can appreciate that our remaining four days in San Diego were spent as much as possible in other surroundings.)"

I remember that first trip to Disneyland and the pinkish orange stucco motel we stayed in. In my mind, I always thought that it was my little brothers who were the guilty parties--they being too small to understand to turn the knobs back the other way if no water was coming out. I am sure that I would known better at 5 year old.