Rose Bowl road trip in ‘Gulley’s Rocket’

In the midst of photos from past Badger Rose Bowls is one of Carson Gulley, a civil rights pioneer and chef at University Housing for 27 years, with four UW-Madison students. It was Friday, Dec. 26, 1952, and the group was bound for Pasadena. They stand in front of Gulley’s car – you can see Washburn Observatory in the background.

“The Rose Bowl trip was one of many great times I’ve had in my life,” writes William Trickel in a letter accompanying photos of the trip that he donated to University Archives. “We enjoyed each other’s company. After my student years I would occasionally stop at his home when I was in Madison. He was always a gracious host and good friend.”

Before the trip to Pasadena, Gulley had made his way from Arkansas to Wisconsin over many years.

He was born in 1897 in Nevada Township, Arkansas, one of 10 children. His parents had been slaves and later became sharecroppers. Gulley was just 6 years old when he learned how to pick cotton. His parents emphasized education and Gulley graduated from high school in just two years, later returning to teach.

“I found out early that all you have to do to learn is to use your eyes and your ears,” Gulley said.

But he wanted to learn a new trade. He took a job as a dishwasher and went from cleaning up after meals to preparing them when the regular chef missed work due to a hangover – again. In 1926, Gulley was working the summer at Essex Lodge in Tomahawk, Wis. As the story goes, Don Halverson, director of University Housing, was passing through when a thunderstorm hit. He sought refuge and food at the Essex, but the kitchen was closed. He asked whether someone could rustle up a sandwich. Gulley instead prepared a full meal. Halverson was impressed – and full. He visited with Gulley after the meal and invited him to fish with him the next morning and then to lunch. And dinner. Halverson offered Gulley a job at UW–Madison, which Gulley started that December.

While not a student, Gulley and his wife, Beatrice, were residents of Tripp Hall. They’d been turned down for housing in several neighborhoods, so the university built them a small basement apartment in Tripp, the same hall where the students in the Rose Bowl picture all lived.

They brought white poster paint and wanted to decorate Gulley’s car for the trip.

“Yeah, go ahead and do it,” Gulley said.

They named her “Gulley’s Rocket” and headed for California with Gulley at the wheel. Trickel’s letter details driver switches, stops for food and an oil change in Amarillo, Texas along Route 66, “the Mother Road.”

“The car radio was playing most of the way going and coming,” Trickel writes. “I remember one song that was played over and over by every station, little Brenda Lee, age 9, singing, ‘I’m Sorry.’ We must have heard it at least a thousand times.”

They stopped to buy a bag of oranges along the way at a roadside stand.

In Los Angeles, the students were meeting up with other students while Gulley met up with his wife, who had arrived a few days earlier.

Trickel later reunited with Gulley and his wife at the Los Angeles Mirror, which was doing a story and wanted a picture of Trickel and the Gulleys. It appeared in the paper Dec. 31, 1952.

The trip was enjoyable despite the outcome of the 1953 Rose Bowl game, which the University of Southern California won, 7-0.

“In the third quarter of the game, Rudy Bukich passed to Al Carmichael in the end zone for a touchdown and the only score of the game,” Trickel writes. “Wisconsin missed two or three chances to score but no dice.”