Sunday, Jimmie preached in the small Presbyterian Church. This was our first experience in a church where no offering was taken. The officers said it was no use - no one brought an offering. Several members subscribed to the support of the church and the Board of National Missions paid the balance.
Monday evening we returned to Salt Lake City and spent a week in our favorite camp. This camp was situated in a grove of Elm trees and around their roots, mushrooms grew in abundance. As we were feasting on fried chicken and mushrooms, we thought of some folds who declared they wouldn't make good campers, for they didn't like bacon and eggs.
Tuesday we attended the Organ Recital in the famous Tabernacle, then went thru the museum. During the week we visited the Great Salt Lake and Copper Mines. Jimmie addressed the student body of West-Minster College in chapel one morning.
Sunday, Sept. 9th, he preached in Westminster Presbyterian Church, the college church. The next morning, we left on our way back to Dallas, drove all night our first night out and arrived in Laramie, Wyo. early the next morning, a distance of 452 miles.
During this night, Henri saw for the first time the beacons for guiding airplanes, and in this desert section, they presented a sired spectacle.
We were retracing our route south to Dallas and nothing eventful happened except as we were entering Denver, driving rather slowly along a main highway, a "woman driver" came out of a private drive on our left, stepped on the gas instead of the brake and even tho we pulled into the ditch to avoid a collision, her car hit our rear left wheel, punctured a tire and broke a hub ca. She started "bawling us out" for being on the highway, said she couldn't help hitting us for she was driving out of a dangerous driveway and could not see. Jimmie said, "You ought to know lady, you live here, I was just driving thru on a Federal Highway."
Well, we fixed the tire and went along. She was insured, but with a company in Minnesota and we might have had to hire a Philadelphia lawyer to the price of the damages.
We arrived in Dallas, October 14th and spent a few days with the Hudnuts while we were getting located. We took an Apartment at South Marsalis St., Where we lived for about a month.
The day after we moved in , the "Welcome Wagon": visited us, leaving a basket of groceries and dairy products. This was a method of advertising by some of the Grocery and Dairy stores. A clothing store sent a very good clothes brush as their part in the welcome. Jimmie preached in several churches during our stay in Dallas. On one occasion, he preached in a country church about 25 miles out of the city.
The services were well attended, especially by the young people. We were invited to the home of one young couple for dinner. As soon as we arrived at the home, the wife said to her husband -"If you wring the chicken's neck, I'll get the water boiling." And, so, in an amazingly short time, the chicken, fried Southern style, was on the table.
This young couple was much "better off" than most families. They rented a small farm, which, of course, was planted in cotton - the wife had a small garden, some flowers and her flock of chickens, most of which she would sent to market. They had a 3-room cabin, with both doors and windows in tact - and curtains at the windows, if you please.
The bedroom - living room, was very comfortably furnished with one bed, two chairs and a dressing table. The other furnished room was the kitchen, which contained a beautiful new "Florence Oil Range", the pride of the housewife - a table, four chairs, a water bench and the dish cupboard. Everything was spotlessly clean. They were completely happy and very gracious hosts. We truly enjoyed our visit with them.
They, like the other cotton farmers, worked four months of the year "in cotton", with the hope the crop would at least be sufficient to keep them from starvation the rest of the year. Enterprising Jimmie asked why they didn't try to find employment in the city during the other eight months of the year - but they were getting along alright and had never thought much about it.
With winter and the holiday season approaching and all our kinsfolk in the east, we decide after all western Penna was the "land of the free and the home of the brave" for us. Beside it was time we were attaching ourselves to a position and we felt sure we would not care to "settle down" in Montana, the Mormon area, nor Texas, so we headed the "Honeymoon Express" eastward with all the speed with which she was capable and made the trip 1,444 miles in four days. Funds were getting low and small change looked big to us then. A few hours out of Dallas, we arrived at a small stream - The Arkansas River - which served as a boundary between Texas and Arkansas. I was about to offer the "gateman" at the bridge, 25 cents for the toll charges when he informed me the charge was 75 cents - "Seventy - five cents" echoed Jimmie, "Don't you call that robbery?" "Some people do", replied the gateman calmly.
While still in Arkansas, we received another "financial"" shock when we were assessed $1.wt for the privilege of sleeping in a so-called cabin - in reality, a room in an old barn where we even had to provide our own beds. There was no convenience at all. We soon shook the dust of Arkansas from our fenders and found ourselves in Missouri.
Jimmie had always kidded Freddie Robb about Missouri's poor roads. We had been experiencing such very poor ones in Texas and Arkansas, we almost dreaded coming into Missouri, but Lo and Behold! When we crossed the border into the "Show-me state", we found good roads - in fact we didn't find any poor ones, except the side roads. When we were almost ready to leave the state Jimmie decided this would never do, he'd have to show Freddie a picture of Missouri's poor roads, so we transplanted a road sign temporarily from Route 37, and Jimmie posed while I took a picture showing the poor side road under an assumed title. We arrived in Latrobe, November 14th and the next day donned our best clothes to attend the Centennial Celebration of Western Seminary, including a banquet in the Fort Pitt Hotel.
In a few days we were on our way again, this time to Glen Spey, where we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then we hurried back to Latrobe to establish residence and get a car license before the new year overtook us.
Jimmie did supply work out of Latrobe until April when we located in Utica, Pennsylvania.
And so, with the speedometer reminding us we had traveled over 13,00 miles, our first honeymoon came to an end.
No comments:
Post a Comment