Norfolk To Jacksonville

In March of 1960 I was transferred from the Naval Air Station at Breezy Point on the Naval Base at Norfolk, Virginia to NAS Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Florida.  I had bought a 1953 Ford sedan the previous year, and I loved that car.  For you mechanically minded guys, this was the last year of Ford’s flatheads.  Fords the next year had the newly developed overhead valve engines.

Before leaving Norfolk I made arrangements to have my 8’ X 35’ Champion mobile home towed to Jacksonville and stored to await our arrival.  My wife and I then came to northern New York to visit our parents.  Nearly a month later we left New York headed for our new destination in Florida.  The first day we got to central Virginia before stopping for the night in a motel.

We awoke the next morning, jumped in the car, and drove corner ways down over a four inch curb to the street.  The car’s engine fan went through the radiator!  Believe it or not I actually located a man that would work on the car even though it was a Sunday morning.  He surmised the fan had come loose from the engine in some manner and hit the radiator destroying it.  He located a used fan and radiator and installed both at quite a reasonable fee while we ate a leisurely brunch, and we were once more on our way.  That night we spent in a motel in Jacksonville, Florida.

The next morning we awoke to a beautiful day, until leaving the motel we drove corner ways down over a four inch curb to hear once again the same sound as the previous morning.  Absolutely, the fan went through the radiator again.  As luck would have it I spotted a garage that worked on radiators a block or so up the street.  When I told the mechanic the fan had came loose from the engine and ruined the radiator the day before, he started checking further.  It seemed the front engine rubber mounts had disintegrated causing the engine to shift allowing the fan to strike the radiator.  The fan had been destroyed by contact with the radiator rather than coming loose like the man in Virginia had surmised.

For the second time in two days we were repaired and got under way again.  Our radiator was repaired, a second used fan, and new front engine mounts were installed.  I then drove to the local office of the national mobile home mover that was storing our home awaiting our arrival.  They had never heard of us, much less were storing our home.  A call to Norfolk discovered our home was being stored there.  We spent two more nights in a motel while our home was towed to Florida, but at least that gave us time to locate Cecil Field and a Trailer Court in the vicinity, so when our home arrived it had a place to stop.

Our new mobile home park was named Cox’s Trailer Park, and was located at 9842 103^rd St, which headed west from the southern part of Jacksonville to the Cecil Field Naval Air Station.  We were located only three miles or so from where I would be working at VF-174 a training squadron for the F8U aircraft.  One of our new neighbors, whom we would meet in due time, were named Eshelman.