Voter's Alert from 1000 Friends of Oregon West By Northwest E-Books West By Northwest is honored to reprint the memoirs of Mr. Thompson, a retired nuclear engineer and active peace worker. His experiences capture the core of North American modern times from the farm boy dreaming of the answers of technology to the man who knows we must work for change. An especially wonderful section of this chapter is the diary entries of his first wife, Barbara, who recorded their trip West during the Great Depression when fresh out of school, they looked for a future. - PM Gray My Life in the Twentieth Century By A. Stanley Thompson EDUCATION Scanned image of "Breaking Home Ties", Norman Rockwell, 1954 from Norman Rockwell, Artist & Illustrator, Abrams, NY, 1970 "I arrived in Amherst by train in September, 1931." CENTRAL GRAMMAR SCHOOL Had I been born a few years earlier, I would have attended the one-room school at Townsbury. Central Grammar School came about in a consolidation of several such scattered one-room schools into one new building containing four classrooms on two floors. There were now only two grades in each room, as opposed to eight previously. Pupils in odd-numbered grades shared a room with the next higher even-numbered grade. Central Grammar School had outside toilets, as did my family home. The boys toilets were about 100 yards east of the school building and the girls about 100 yards west. Each set of toilets was about 100 yards too far away in winter and 100 yards too close in summer, the usual case with outside toilets. In 1919, when I was five years old I fell in love with Miss Perry, my first grade teacher at Central Grammar School. Miss Perry rescued me from an overwhelming humiliation. Part way through my first day in the first grade I needed to go to the toilet, but didn’t know how to get proceed. Later I learned that one raised one’s fingers to get teacher’s attention and permission to go, one finger for No. 1 body function and two fingers for No. 2. Outside the school building, boys had words for these body functions which could not be used in the classroom. While I was wondering desperately what to do I became aware of a liquid pool forming on the floor around my feet. Then, to my chagrin, one of the children also noticed and notified Miss Perry. I remember that she washed my clothes, put a towel around me while they dried, then restored me to a condition as good as new, somehow without causing me additional embarrassment. Miss Perry and the other grade school teachers were unmarried, as was required by the Board of Education in those times. The only exception was Mrs.Estelle Dildine, who was the Principal as well as teaching the seventh and eighth grades. I became fond of Mrs. Dildine as I passed through the various grades. When I was sent to “The Principal’s Office” for misbehaving, she assigned more interesting problems than were available in my home room, especially when I found myself for the second year in the same home room. Mrs. Dildine and her husband, Fred, were my parents’ friends. Fred, who liked to tell stories, sometimes did carpenter work for my father. I remember his story about working for a fussy boss. Fred was required by his boss to mark his board with a pencil, then saw to the mark, leaving half the pencil line on the board as a measure of the accuracy of his cut, Fred’s solution to this difficult task was to saw the board as accurately as he could, then drag the pencil over the edge of his finished cut, which showed the proper width of pencil line accurately aligned with the cut. His boss inspected and was satisfied. The year I had malaria I missed school for a while and was kept for another year in the fourth grade. When I returned to that room for the third year, I felt as if I’d been there forever, and became completely bored and dispirited. My parents persuaded the school system to advance me to the fifth grade - a whole new room. I hated the sixth grade series of multiple choice speed tests in arithmetic. One had to repeat each set of tests until all answers were correct before being allowed to proceed to the next set. I got stuck on one set so long that I had memorized the whole thing, including my mistakes. I would still be doing that test, only they decided to get rid of me by passing me to the seventh grade despite my failure. I was pleased after so many years to arrive at Mrs. Dildine’s room. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH The fundamentalist Great Meadows Presbyterian Church influenced my education, both negatively and positively. I can’t remember my parents ever going to church, but they sent my sister, Edith, and me. I believe this church, set in the midst of a Catholic community of Polish immigrants was a stronghold of racial and religious tension. I felt uncomfortable because my father hadn’t paid his twelve dollar assessment to the church and I was led to believe my parents were bound straight to hell.. I had trouble believing stories of the Virgin birth, of a God so horrible he’d sacrifice his “own begotten Son,” and Santa Claus, all mixed together. However, through the church experience I obtained my first experience with “literature.” Reverend Hamlin’s sons, who attended Blair Academy rather than the public schools, had pretty much complete sets of such classics as The Rover Boys, Tom Swift and his various marvelous inventions, and the dime novels of Horatio Alger. The Hamlins were generous with their literary riches, and I became addicted to reading every book they had. All other books on science, geography, history, and civics paled compared with Horatio Alger. There were few books in our house, a motley collection mostly from farm auction sales. I owned and read, for some reason with great interest, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I read over and over again our one book about animals. Hackettstown High School In 1927 I entered Hackettstown High School. Getting there required walking about two miles to Great Meadows to meet an Overland automobile which, with Mr. Miller, its owner-driver, served as a bus for the ten mile ride to Hackettstown. By this time I had transferred my crush on Miss Perry to the Dildine’s only daughter, Mary Frances, who also rode to high school in Mr. Miller’s car. By this time I had learned how to get to the toilet, which was inside the high school building and had running water, but I still didn’t know how to let a girl know I liked her. I remember only fights among both male and female passengers over opening or closing car windows for ventilation during the ride. After graduating from high school, Mary Frances married a person I didn’t know. They were both tragically killed soon after in an automobile accident. I remember particularly two high school teachers, Miss Lloyd and Mr. Souders. “College preparatory” students were required to take two years of Latin, but were not permitted to take typing. Presumably secretarial services would be provided to Latin-trained college graduates by graduates of the high school “commercial” course who took both shorthand and typing. Mr. Souders, Principal of the high school, taught Latin by verbally abusing the less competent of his pupils. Girls in his class, attempting with difficulty to translate Julius Caesar’s “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,” would be bullied to tears by remarks such as “Don’t scratch your head; you’ll get splinters.” The bullying could also go the other way, from student to teacher. Miss Lloyd, a timid, gentle person, taught algebra. Several boys in her class would simultaneously take snuff to initiate fits of sneezing. Then handkerchiefs containing pennies were yanked out of pockets, scattering the pennies over the floor. This was followed by mad scurrying to collect the pennies and return them to their owners. When Miss Lloyd, reduced to tears, lost control of the class, Mr. Souders would appear from down the hall to reestablish order. I suspected that Mr. Souders, who loved the high-school football team, secretely enjoyed the spectacle of some of his “boys” having “fun.” Some time after I left the high school I heard that Mr. Souders had been institutionalized after a nervous breakdown. High school French was taught by Mrs. LaBarre, who despite the name was not French. I did not do particularly well in French, mostly because I made the strange decision that languages would not be useful to me as an engineer. Even though I was given a C grade in French, I still received a five-dollar gold piece as a prize because all the better students were seniors and the prize was limited to juniors. The five dollars was later spent during college when I was particularly poor. I don’t remember ever being in the Hackettstown public library, in a house on the main street. Travel to the high school was by bus both ways, and no encouragement to dally on the way, for libraries or anything else. My family sometimes came to Hackettstown to shop, but it wouldn’t have occurred to any of us to go to the library. Anyway, my family thought I was already too much of a “bookworm” because I had read so many of the Hamlins’ books. Somehow, despite my limitations of attitude, I graduated close to the top of my class. After graduation from high school I went away from the farm to Amherst college. One could well ask, “With your social, cultural, and financial preparation, how did you get to Amherst College?” It’s a good question to which I will address myself shortly. But first there’s the question of reading and libraries and some of my general attitude and background to consider. MY DREAM As I grew up on a farm in Warren County, New Jersey, I never met an engineer, but I saw about me on our farm products of engineering accomplishment, examples of what I thought of as proof that progress from muscle to treadmill to tractor was modern, continuous, beneficial, and everlasting. My family acquired machinery with their farms, including a threshing machine, a corn harvester, an ensilage blower, and a tractor, and my mother had a sewing machine. Henry Ford’s Model T was showing up in increasing numbers. A few examples of pre-depression affluence such as Packard, Peerless, and Pierce Arrow, which my father called the three P's of fine automobiles, passed through Warren County on their way from one wealthier region to another. The Pierce Arrow was distinguished by headlights mounted wide apart on the front fenders. In a time less conscious of automobile accidents than now, people joked about the driver who, thinking the widely spaced lights of the Pierce Arrow coming toward him were from two motorcycles abreast, decided to drive between them. At the time I wasn’t as impressed as I am now with my father’s argument against tractors, that he could raise a horse and its feed, but he had to buy the tractor and its fuel. Modern entrepreneurs and economists would say he wasn’t contributing as he should to the gross national product. I knew little of other societies which had built immense engineering structures and created great wealth for a few, based on oppression of poor people. I had never seen the Pyramids, or a Roman bath, or the Acropolis. I did not know about Side, on the south coast of Turkey, where the Greeks had built a great city and an artificial harbor one thousand years B. C., its prosperity based on slave trade and piracy. I wanted to be an engineer, but I had little idea how to go about becoming one. When I finished high school in 1931, in the depth of the Depression, I had no money or any foreseeable way of getting money. President Herbert Hoover was promising that prosperity was “just around the corner,” but the corner never appeared for the people I knew. Newspapers carried pictures of shantytowns around cities, called “Hoovervilles,” and of people in New York City waiting in “breadlines” for food. A layer of newspaper under one’s coat, to keep warm in cold weather, was called a “Hoover blanket.” A typical joke of the period was, “If we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.” Government troops evicted war veterans from Washington, DC, where they went to demand their promised bonuses. My mother raised chickens and traded her eggs for groceries at the country store. My father barely kept up his farm mortgage payments. Sometimes he had hired help on his farm, transients who were paid their keep and little else. These were broken people, often with tuberculosis, who often became drunk and disappeared when they had any money. I remember one such derelict, working with us in the field during haying, drinking from his bottle, refusing drinking water with the explanation that he’d heard that “water rusts the stomach.” The County poor farm, near where we lived, was not a desirable place to live, but it was also so crowded with applicants that it was hard to enter. No one among my family relatives had gone to college. The engineering school about which I had heard was Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I took College Board examinations to enter MIT - an unusual decision for graduates of my high school at that time. I believe it was fortunate that I was rejected. I was so ill prepared that I could only have failed. At this point in my life I needed a fortuitous happening. One of my grandmother’s summer boarders, over a period of several years when my sister, Edith, and I were visiting in Ocean Grove, was Howard Carter, a graduate of Amherst College who planned to be a doctor. Mr. Carter had for me a special aura. I understood that his health was so poor that he could not live much longer, even though he looked quite young. I still hadn’t learned that all of us were certainly going to die at some time in the foreseeable future, so Mr. Carter seemed to me unique. On Mr. Carter’s recommendation I was admitted to Amherst College. Going to Amherst seemed the only way open in my right general direction, though Amherst wasn’t an engineering school. Perhaps I could learn something worthwhile anyway. AMHERST COLLEGE I arrived in Amherst by train in September, 1931. Tuition was then $400, $225 payable at the beginning of the first semester. I joined the registration line at the pay window with my father’s check for $25 and his verbal assurance to the College, through me, that more would be sent in installments as he received his monthly milk checks. Standing in line I imagined the eyes of college officials and all prospective students turned on me as I tried to describe my father’s normal way of doing business in our farming community. I was shunted to the office of Charles Andrews, Treasurer of the College, to whom I introduced myself and, seated before his desk, repeated my story of my father’s promised future payments. I still picture Mr. Andrews, behind his desk, a small hunchbacked man, looking at me with a sober smile, his hands clasped behind his head, as if wondering, “What shall I do with you?” It was many years later that I learned the term, “Disaster Case”, applied by admission officers to impecunious student applicants. I didn’t know about Amherst that once they had admitted a student they went to great lengths to help him complete successfully his stay there. Were it not for that attitude on the part of the College, I think that I would never have graduated. Charles Andrews is high in my personal list of rescuing angels, along with Maude Miner, Charles Cadigan, and Franklin Roosevelt. Mr. Andrews, having accepted my adventitious challenge, became the person most helpful in enabling me to attend and finally to graduate from Amherst, with help in the form of scolarships, loans, and jobs. I operated the college switchboard nights and weekends under the supervision of Maude Miner, a cheerful, zestful person who considerably brightened my life. A typical Maude Miner story concerned the irate telephone patron who, having told the operator to “go to hell,” was informed by the telephone company that he must apologize or lose his telephone connection. He called the operator, asking her, “Do you remember the person who told you to go to hell?”, followed by, “Well, now you don’t have to go.” Informed that this was not an acceptable apology, he called again and volunteered a make-up kiss, to which the operator replied, “Just a moment,” and then, “Go ahead; my dog is sitting on the telephone.” Charles Cadigan, the Chaplain at Amherst, hired me to keep some of his personal accounts, including paying bills with his presigned checks. Besides my pay I gladly accepted the invitation to steal snacks of crackers and cheese from Mrs. Cadigan’s kitchen while I worked. When Franklin Roosevelt became President of the United States, one of his new programs which replaced Hoover’s promises of a “chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage” was the National Youth Administration, the NYA. Under this program, I worked with maintenance personnel on a project in the College woods which, for a time, provided a significant part of my support. Not much money came from my father. I didn’t ask because I was sure he couldn’t afford to give it to me. AMHERST STUDENTS I came to Amherst College ill prepared by my background for this new experience. According to a college song (perhaps an inaccurate rendition). Oh, Lord Jeffery Amherst was the man who gave his name To our College upon the hill. And the story of his loyalty and bravery and fame Abides here among us still. And for his Royal Majesty he fought with all his might, For he was a soldier loyal and true. And he conquered all the enemies that came within his sight, And he looked around for more when he was through. Amherst College was named for Lord Jeffery Amherst, a soldier of the King of England. Upper class students whose grades were acceptable, and who had learned the song, were allowed to keep automobiles in Amherst. Some of the students came from wealthy families, so that they were able not only to maintain themselves in expensive fraternities, but to have automobiles, some Packards among them. Some of the national fraternities, despite College rules to the contrary, were discriminatory at that time against Jews and the few Blacks who were students. For these students the College supported an organization called “The Lord Jeff Club.” The students with whom I associated were not apt to be among those who were able financially to participate in the more expensive social activities at the College. I ate hot dogs and beans, or hamburgers, quite often at George Cramer’s Diner at the end of an alley rather than at the College dining room. A classmate who was often broke, Dave Sullivan, would announce to whover would listen, “Today’s my birthday. How about buying me lunch.” Dave seems to have disappeared from all class lists, and I do not know what happened to him. I roomed off-campus, part of the time free with a new friend, John Dayton Willard III, in his mother’s home. John’s uncle was Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone. His father, John Dayton Willard II, was away from home much of the time as head of the Education Department at Columbia University. John dreaded his father’s infrequent homecomings as times of punishment for misdeeds reported by his mother, Helen Willard. John, who had a low self-esteem, referred to himself as “John Dayton Willard, the turd.” After graduation John worked for an insurance company. Barbara and I bought our first life insurance from him. Then he worked for the FBI, but found he couldn’t stand the stress. Then he owned and operated a marina. Recently I read a notice that John had died. Another impecunious classmate, Art Schaffer, became a Wall Street broker, then retired and moved to Florida. He also has died. Frank Anker, being a Jew, could not have joined a fraternity, had he wanted to or been able to afford the privilege. When he achieved Junior Phi Beta Kappa, Frank decided to stop working so hard, but he said he was given all “A” grades anyway. Frank became a doctor in Oakland, California, where I visited him once. Millie and I saw Frank and his wife, Meriam, at our sixtieth class reunion, the first reunion I’ve attended. Frank is the only classmate I feel I still know. Though there were negative feelings between some students and some local residents of the town of Amherst, I felt more comfortable with some town people than with many of my Amherst classmates. Among my friends was Jack Decker, a motorcycle-riding “Townie” who made his living as an auto mechanic. For a while, under his influence, I had a motorcycle, which I didn’t need and couldn’t afford. Jack played the harmonica and attempted to teach me. He could also whistle so that his tone fluctuated between a base note and its harmonic, somewhat like yodeling. Jack was killed several years later when his motorcycle was struck by an automobile. At Amherst College I had, for the first time, access to an excellent library. However, I was uniquely unprepared for the experience. I approached the library with some dread, having no idea how to use the Dewey Decimal System to find what I might want, and very little idea what I might want from a library. Some of the social science courses vexed me. Not only did I disdain the subject matter, but I was for some reason reluctant to ask for the help I needed. I think I had to finish school altogether before I was free to find that libraries could, indeed, be pleasant and helpful places, with useful information not otherwise available, with interesting books and ideas relating to the human condition, and with people willing to help follow one’s interest. I have come late to some appreciation of libraries as a storehouse of the sorts of “education” which I rejected when their study was required as a part of the educational process. In my senior year I particularly enjoyed an Amherst course in poetry by the poet, David Morton. Barbara played a part in my metamorphosis. BARBARA At the end of my sophomore year, I spent the summer working on the College telephone switchboard. William Duncan Morse, one of my new friends at Amherst, in a class ahead of mine, invited me one afternoon to walk with him to his family’s summer place, near Amherst. On the way we stopped to swim and to dive off a rock cliff at the edge of a pool formed by a dam across a stream which had once been used to power a “fish rod factory.” I surfaced from a dive near a young woman who asked me with a smile, “Did you know your eyes are green?” Duncan introduced me to his cousin, Barbara Stuart Nice, who was visiting Grey Rocks. Barbara was about to be a freshman at Ohio State University, where her father, Leonard Blaine Nice, was head of the department of physiology. Her mother, Margaret Morse Nice, was an ornithologist. Barbara’s grandfather, Anson Daniel Morse, had been, from 1892 until his death in 1916, professor and then emeritus professor of history at Amherst. When I was at Amherst there was an “Anson Daniel Morse Chair of History.” Professor Morse had built a large house on Northampton Road in the town of Amherst in which some of his family still lived, and a large summer home called “Grey Rocks,” in the Pelham Hills looking west through large plate glass windows toward the town of Amherst. Every summer, Anson Morse’s widow, Margaret Duncan Morse, nicknamed “Muppy” by her family, held forth as matriarch of as large an assembly of her children and grandchildren as she could persuade to come. I visited Barbara several times at Grey Rocks. Then she returned to Columbus and I did not see her until the next summer at the end of my junior year, again at Grey Rocks. I was now broke, my scholastic record was too poor to maintain my scolarship, and I felt generally discouraged and defeated. I spent the following year away from College in another Franklin Roosevelt program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, in a camp on Jenny Jump Mountain, near Hope, New Jersey. There I was assistant to Bruce Stickney, Educational Adviser at the camp. During that year Barbara and I corresponded. When I returned to the College for my senior year, I was still broke. Theta Xi fraternity loaned me money to pay for my dormitory space in the fraternity house. Money borrowed from the College paid for tuition and other expenses. During that year Barbara was in the town of Amherst, having persuaded her father to let her spend a year at Massachusetts State College. We often studied together in the lounge of her dormitory or at the Amherst switchboard while I was working. To me Barbara represented many of the cultural aspects of my background which I had disdained because I knew almost nothing about them: music, poetry, literature, history, languages. These cultural lacks became something to correct to the extent I could, not something an prospective engineer needed to resist. During a break in classes Barbara and I hitch-hiked to Quebec. I was impressed with elevator signs and other public notices in both French and English. I remember a dark little district called “Sous le Cap,” where ragged children gathered around us with outstretched hands begging for “un pennie.” On the return trip we were picked up by a vacationing couple, Schuyler and Helen Patterson, who said that, in return for our automobile ride we were to help them drink down their supply of wine to the amount with which they could legally cross the border into the United States. Schuyler, a divorced father of a grown family and now married to Helen, a former Rockette dancer, was head of something in New York City called the “Brewers Board of Trade.” We stayed with them overnight at their summer place on Lake Champlain, and were returned the next day to Amherst. We were both impressed to know such up-beat people. When I graduated from Amherst in 1936, still in the midst of the Depression, Barbara and I parted with the promise that we would be married as soon as Barbara finished her final quarter at Ohio State. Barbara was the first young woman I saw as a fellow human being, though I thought she was the smartest in that category I had met and I was flattered that she valued me. We discovered that we treasured our relationship and wanted to spend our lives together. But to marry would have ended college, and therefore any possibility of the sort of future we wanted to have together. The “Great Depression” surrounded us, and would have engulfed us. I was still not an engineer. I still didn’t know any engineers. One of my professors reminded me that the function of Amherst College was to help its students learn how to live, not how to make a living. Through the influence of Georgia Werthheimer, a Smith College student I had met, I received my only job offer, from Continental Baking Company. Georgia’s father was President of the Company. I accepted, and went to work at their bakery in Mt. Vernon, New York, supposedly to learn the business. Barbara graduated from Ohio State. On March 17, 1937, St. Patrick’s Day, she and I were married at her sister’s New York apartment, with Barbara’s sister and her husband, her mother and grandmother, and my sister in attendance, in a ceremony accentuated by the “happy” sobbing of Barbara’s grandmother. We moved into the apartment in Mt. Vernon which I had been sharing with my sister, Edith, who moved to another apartment. Barbara, starting with the meeting at the Fish Rod Factory in 1933, complicated and enriched my life for more than fifty years, until December 30, 1987, when she died from colon cancer. The separation from my class which occurred because my senior year was not spent with them weakened any bonds which might have drawn me back for attending college sporting events or class reunions. In 1995, I went with Millie, to whom I was now married, to my 60th class reunion. It was fun showing Millie the Amherst campus, which had changed so much with new buildings that for a time I felt disoriented. We had breakfast with my classmate, Frank Anker, and his wife, Meriam. MY FIRST JOB When I graduated from Amherst College in 1936, I still had my dream of becoming an engineer, but I still didn’t know how to get there. The Depression was still on, jobs were scarce, and I had no money. My job with Continental Baking Company (Wonder Bread and Hostess Cake), required me to load the shelves of my company truck with bread and cake at the bakery in Mt Vernon, starting, like farm chores, at three o’clock in the morning. Then I coaxed the underpowered, four-cylinder White truck north on a beautiful but sometimes dangerous drive along the Hudson River, delivering bread to stores from Croton, through Peekskill to Cold Spring. After my 3:00 AM start, I generally returned to Mt Vernon at three or four o’clock in the afternoon, thoroughly tired. Harry Schwartz, a long-time company employee, my trainer and my friend, remarked occasionally, “Well, today I only worked half a day - twelve hours.” Harry’s thank-you speech at a company ceremony when he was given a bronze medallion for a year of safe driving was in its entirety, “For me you could have beat it out into a five dollar gold piece.” Once for a birthday celebration Barbara took me to a Shakespeare play, Richard the Second, through which I slept compulsively, waking only when she nudged me so I would’t miss the excitement of whatever murder was currently being enacted. Barbara and I paid off my debts to Amherst College and to Theta Xi fraternity during the first year of our marriage from money skimped from my bread company pay. To save money we rented an unheated two room apartment over a store, in Yonkers, bordering on the Bronx River Parkway. Once, with a group of our Italian neighbors, we watched President Roosevelt passing on the Parkway with his entourage. When we had been married for three months, Barbara became pregnant, inevitably, but still unexpectedly. For the delivery she went to the clinic at the New York Women’s Hospital, where Malcolm was born on January 13, 1938. After working all day from 3:00 AM, I was bringing them from the hospital late one freezing Saturday night. When our car stopped on the Bronx River Parkway, the new mother and baby had to sit in the cold car while the new father walked to find gasoline for the tank he had neglected to fill. Malcolm became our joy, a bubbling, inquisitive little person who wanted to be part of everything in our world, of which he was our center. I have a picture showing us on the grass in the parkway, both of us looking pleased as he learned to walk holding my hands. I remember him holding my hands as he walked up the front of my body, then around my head to sit on my shoulders. In the winter he was delighted to learn about snow. One morning I discovered too late as I came slowly in rain over a ridge that the steep north slope was a glare of ice. The truck slid off the road and stopped in a woods, turned backward and bogged down in mud, its shelves collapsed onto crushed baked goods. I walked a considerable distance in the rain to phone the Continental office for a replacement truckload of goods, and for a towing service to pull the truck out of the mud. The longer I drove the bread truck, the more I wanted to become an engineer. Even though for the first time we had a little money, and an income, Barbara encouraged me to follow my impulse to go directly toward my goal. After two years I quit and we became homeless, in the belief that we would somehow accomplish the miracle of our own rescue. GOODBYE TO MALCOLM We moved all our furniture to my family’s farm (where quite a bit of what we thought of as our treasures was later stolen). Then, in December 1938 we accepted Barbara’s family’s invitation to live with them in their large Chicago house while I looked for a job. Malcolm had his first birthday in their house. For a short time I worked for the R. R. Donnelly company arranging displays in stores for an advertising campaign, until that ran out. Then I traveled to theatres in distant cities for a man, named Geldmeier, selling a course he had devised to teach movie projectionists the emergency repair of their equipment. Malcolm developed an increasingly severe series of asthma attacks, for which the doctor prescribed ephedrine. He may have been reacting to Chicago smog. I suspect that Malcolm was also reacting to a subconscious awareness of our insecurities as his parents, and lost his own sense of security. He became terrified of our absence, wanting always to be held, to sleep with us at night. I would awaken to find him asleep on top of my chest, with his head next to mine, a memory I still treasure. While I was in Evansville, Indiana, selling Geldmeier’s courses I received a telegram from Barbara’s father telling me that Malcolm had suddenly died. I do not know how I managed the 300 mile trip back to Chicago. When I arrived late at night, Malcolm had already been taken to a funeral parlor. All I had of him was such signs of his recent wonderful life as a smelly diaper. Malcolm had had a particularly severe asthma attack. The doctor came, and while Barbara held Malcolm gave him a shot of adrenaline. Malcolm immediately stiffened, convulsed, and died in Barbara’s arms. The doctor committed suicide soon after, whether because of Malcolm’s death I do not know. Disconsolate at letting him go, Barbara and I transported Malcolm’s cold body by taxi to a crematorium. There was no alternative; his fingernails were already turning blue. Later we scattered Malcolm’s ashes at the top of my father’s farm, at a place from which we could see Delaware Water Gap on the distant horizon. Barbara wrote of Malcolm after his death: 'The next day we saw him at the funeral parlor. Not “prepared” yet; they had not expected us yet. There was a blanket over him, and he was still in his little rompers. A sort of bruise on his temple. Disintegration already. The reverence with which we touched him. 'I don’t remember when we drove out to the place for cremation. I only remember riding in the back seat, with him in a box; so small. He had on a yellow romper. I kissed his small nose; the curve remains in my memory. So still. So beautiful. 'And then - nothing. We must have left him there. It is a blank to me. We must have returned home. My parents planned various things, to help me get over it. A trip away to the Dunes. A trip to Columbus. I asked Mother to write to my friends but ask them not to mention Malcolm’s death. Strange thought; of course I could not face them. But any plan to get away Stan vetoed; he felt we should be about the business of living. 'At least Malcolm was at peace. These were not words of comfort, for I felt we should have found what was causing his wheezing after a time. I could feel guilt for having been restless, for having wanted to work, for having chafed under the ceaseless care of a baby. 'Once I had come home from an afternoon off, and had seen him at the window before he had seen me. He was looking out, and suddenly it struck me that he looked infinitely lonely. Forlorn. Yet when I spoke to him and he saw me, he came to life instantly, and vibrated with pleasure, as babies do. My heart went out to him. Yet there had been that moment, and it is the one I remember now, when I try to visualize him. 'There were other times. Holding Stan’s hands, and walking down a snowy sidewalk. Walking around the dining room table, holding onto chairs, chewing on an orange segment till nothing was left but fiber, then putting it into my hand, and accepting another orange slice. His calm. His sense of discovery. His joy on seeing Stan. His weight in my arms. His first words, in that final month. Walking in the park, when I would take him in the carriage, and then he would get out, even though the ground was still damp, and pick up sticks and acorns. Endlessly fascinated by the world about him. Climbing on the stairs. Sense of accomplishment. Peering at us from the landing above, through the railings. Taking off his shoes when I was undressing him, and dropping each into the tub, accidentally. Taking a bath. All the small bits of life that had taken on fresh meaning with him. How does one reconcile death with such vitality? ' [End of Barbara’s account] NOW WHAT? Suddenly our future seemed a great blank. Now what would we do with our lives? It seemed to us a break was required. We must get away from Chicago toward something creative. My memory from boyhood, having never been west of Scranton, was of the sign in New York’s Grand Central Station, “CHICAGO AND THE WEST.” After our years of jobs leading nowhere Barbara and I decided to take our fate into our own hands. With Geldmeier’s agreement, we started west with a trunkload of his courses, and a list of the cities he wanted us to work. We found that Geldmeier, without telling us, had covered all the places to which he sent us, so that few sales were to be made. For some reason the idea of Seattle, about which we knew almost nothing, appealed to us. We notified Geldmeier of our schedule on our westward trek and started out, selling his courses where we could. At each stop we had a letter from Geldmeier, either firing us, or suggesting other cities to try. In new territory we sold enough to cover our expenses, and to send Geldmeier his agreed upon portion. But let Barbara tell the story of our journey across the United States during the last part of the “Great Depression.” What follows is her diary of our trip, written in the car as we traveled. THE TRIP TO SEATTLE Otumwa, Iowa May 15, 1939 Yesterday we crossed the Missouri River at Omaha. The river bottoms extend perhaps a mile, mainly covered with grass or bare in newly planted fields, thickets of shrubs here and there, a few cottonwood groves, the wide pale brown river wandering sluggishly along the west bank, bordered by tall dusty railroad elevators. Picnic in shaded grove near edge of Missouri, high on Iowa plateau. Buffaloes resting in hot sun in a large enclosure. Stan had to sit - in the sun too! - where we could watch the buffaloes as we ate. Later discovered little buffalo calf snuggled tight against its mother, tho she looked far too hot already. The baby stood up after a bit, and while the rest of the herd placidly ignored us, resting with heaving sides on the bare hillsides (hair coming off in unsightly patches) the little calf watched us with a funny blank stare. Much like a cow calf, lacking a hump as yet. Found leak in tire as we stopped. Stan changed tires, later we bought patch kit and he patched it just before we crossed the Missouri River south of Omaha. Nail in tire. We drove across a high bridge on a level with the west bluff, and down again into the flat green valley. After two miles perhaps, we reached the far side - hills rising out of the valley bottom lands. As tho entirely naked, but on closer view, we could see that there was a thin sparse veil of grass across their precipitous sides. They rose sharply and steeply up, and were sliced off as abruptly on the far side. Sometimes two or three hills were strung together with a razor-back edge connecting them. Sometimes one hill stood by itself, carved into a narrow butte. We saw a horse feeding on the knife edge of one hill, and Stan wondered how it maintained its footing at all. Barren farm houses clung to a precarious foorhold against the lower parts of the hills. Their yards were bare dirt, no doubt solid mud in rainy weather, the ramshackle buildings unpainted, chickens and lean pigs straggled about the enclosures. There were some miles of driving thru this arid country of strange, wind-contorted peaks, then we were higher, crossing the green fertile countryside of Iowa. The fruit trees are past. The forests - and there are a few, especially in the creek hollows - are in full leaf, and only in a certain delicacy of color show that it is still spring. The fields are ploughed, ready for sowing or for the small new crops to show themselves above ground. May 16 Sat in car in shade of huge elm. Pleasant garden, columbines, tulips, a bird bath enjoyed by numbers of English sparrows, a catbird, robin, and a brilliant Baltimore Oriole. Heat intense outside on street. Cool and a slight breeze in our spot. Elderly, largish woman in respectable elderly hat perched on top of her head came out back door with thin thirtyish daughter - probably a school teacher. I smiled - elderly woman asked in high voice, “How do you like my garden?” We were delighted with it, and pleased that she enjoyed not only our appreciation, but that of others who found the same shady spot pleasant relief from the heat outside. Left Shenandoah on learning only one operator in town - who did not buy a set! Crossed river again on expensive tollbridge ($.55) Drove south in Nebraska. Rolling hills, wheat a foot or more high touched with patches of yellow from the drought. Farms pleasant among groves of evergreens. May 17 Reached Beatrice last night about 7. Had dinner, filling if not distinguished, then looked for resting place. Found a pleasant cabin in a tall grove of oaks on the Blue River. The river was a delight last night, shining in the street lights, wide and dark and placid. This morning it turned into a sluggish brown river with a strip of caking mud extending 3 or 4 feet up each bank. Our cabin, a third of a long one, has one room with a tiny bathroom (hot and cold water!) and a luxurious shower! The grove is cool with even a breeze. Stan returned from center of town limp from the heat. This afternoon it stormed spectacularly, first a wind that grew in intensity while the sky turned dark and the river surface ruffled angrily. For a few minutes dust blew violently from the south. I shut the south windows to keep the leaves and dirt from blowing through. Finally it sprinkled lightly for five minutes! The sky remained shadowed for an hour more, with lighter patches in the north west, but the river soon subsided to its customary placidity. People mention the dryness, regretting that the storm amounted to nothing at all. The evening was cool and fresh, with black clouds fringing a lavender and mauve sunset, and later flashes of lightning along the eastern horizon. I wrote letters after Stan went to the theatre to see the operators. Afterwards I walked to the center of town, a mile perhaps, and rather to our surprise, I found our car and Stan met me after ten minutes or so of walking up and down the sidewalk outside the post office. Union meeting Thursday night in Crete. We cooked our meals today on our electric grill. Mainly soup - a can each of corn, tomatoes, beans. Ham. raw cabbage, carrot strips, bread, butter, bananas, oranges, milk. This morning Stan had the Lincoln electric clock, out of Pegasus [our previous car], installed in the glove compartment door. It was done in a machine shop with elaborate facilities, and while he watched much of the process, I read in the cool library. The clock looks very handsome in the dash now, and once more we have accurate time before us. Last night we promised ourselves the luxury of a hot shower - only to discover after an evening walk across the river and into town that there was no hot water! Our west neighbor had exhausted the supply. So we went to bed complete with our Nebraska dust (from miles on a level dirt road, State 3) and this morning had a grand hot shower. This afternoon I washed some of our numerous dirty clothes, filling the tiny bathroom and shower so thick with socks and shorts and pajamas that we can scarcely squeeze in. Beatrice, Nebraska , May 18 Packed up this morning. Stan washed my hair in the shower; hot water lasted till almost end of rinse. My hair, unset, is very silly and fluffy. I rubbed baby oil into it, which it seems to enjoy, and promptly acquires some character again. We drove to the Post Office, found a letter from Geldmeier containing no money (we have $2.85 left to live on!) and various objections for not having sent fuller reports, or gone to Otumwa first instead of Lincoln (when we left with the express purpose of rushing to Lincoln for the meeting). He has a way of writing unpleasant peremptory letters - “sit write down and write full report, etc.....” yet is uniformly pleasant in conversation. So after a week with 2 sales to show for our trouble and no money forthcoming, we wrote the report and a clear statement of what we expect from this job - which should be one good chance in new unspoiled territory (he already has covered much of this section and left in a surprising number of cases hard feelings behind - certainly he must have known how unprofitable it all would be to try to make good our losses. This has turned out to be one of those mirage jobs in the past 4 months - promising brighter fortune just ahead, and never catching up with it. We have debts to pay - and nothing at all in the bank. So this time - if by Saturday morning we haven’t received a thoroughly satisfactory reply, we are going to head out for the west coast on the $50 in travelers checks that Daddy and Mother lent us for emergency. It may be the best plan anyway. We left Beatrice around noon, and drove out on dirt roads for Crete. While I was typing the letter to Geldmeier with the typewriter balanced on my knees, Stan absently took a wrong turn. Our dirt highway began to look ruttier as we progresses, gradually as small roads turned off it for farmhouses and an occasional cross road, our highway diminished until finally we found ourselves on a single track between fences, the track grass grown and bumpy in the valley or two we crossed. At last we came out on a healthier road, and following it, landed on [route] 4 again just as we were planning on stopping at a farm house to inquire the way to Crete. Thinking we must have already passed 82 which turns off of 4, I suggested we drive east - and we did, finding ourselves almost In Beatrice again where we first missed our road, and having to turn around and retrace our way. 82 turned off a quarter of a mile beyond the point where we had turned east! After a leisurely trip to Crete, another small unhurried Nebraska town, we found a large park just west of Crete, and stopped beside a rustic hall on the edge of a flat field. We continued the letter (a masterpiece by the time we finished it) and ate our lunch on the ground below some youngish oak trees. A stout old man, one of the 18 owners of the park, drove up, said “How do!” to Stan’s “hello,” and entered the recreation hall, came out to wield a paint brush above the long surface of a picnic table and bench that he had built during the last few days out of planks from an old bridge. Stan went over after our lunch to talk to him. He turned out to be an early settler; his father had come to a farm on the prairie near Crete in ‘72. They moved to Crete in ‘85. He painted deliberately, scraping off bird droppings with a knife, slapping the grey-green paint in long slow streaks across the table. Once wanted boots with green fronts - got red. Raised hell all the way home about it. On reaching home, his father “hammered hell out of me.” Mother took her 7 children to town to buy winter clothes - had $72 to spend, savings from her eggs, 4 and 5 cents a dozen, and butter, 4 or 5 cents a pound. Outfitted all 7. Families lived in dugouts in sides of hills, or shanties. Went to church to hear preacher deliver his sermon dressed in overalls like his congregation. Arranged to have next Sunday dinner with another family. Crossed prairie diagonally to Lincoln. “Nothing but blue stem and heaven.” Grass reached almost waist high. Often people got lost; dad and he slept out one night waiting for morning to show them the way home - which turned out to be 3 miles away! “Movers’ wagons” on their way west stopped at crossroads near their house for night. One mover on his way west met another, and they all had a pleasant trip - “nice for the folks - together.” Indians passed twice a year. Siouxs and another tribe, on their way to Omaha to be “paid off by the government. Sort of like a pension.” Once a horse died in a mover’s camp by their house. His father said he would take care of it, and dragged it off in a field to be put in a hole later. He and his brother Henry decided to put strychnine in the meat to poison the wolves - coyotes - that were pretty thick. A group of Indians cut off some of the meat and ate it! He and Henry were pretty scared, expecting the strychnine to have effect - “sure some of them Indians would die. And damned if not a one died!” On crossing the prairie, they saw buffaloes in the distance. He wanted to shoot one, but they all were too far away - 3/4 of a mile perhaps - and scarey. When they ran in big herds - with a leader like bees fly - the ground shook. Those were the days. Nothing to worry about but getting something to eat. We drove back to Crete to mail the letter, and buy some more provisions - milk (raw, 5 cents a quart) and rye bread. I drove a little around the countryside, flat here, with parched wheat, cracked land at edge of fields, no trees along roads, a few around houses and in infrequent creek bottoms. There is no freshness left in the country here, although it is only the middle of May. Picnic supper in the same park, this time in the old grove of oaks, catalpas, maples, sycamores, an elm or two - all very lofty and their tops filled with strange bird voices. I went searching birds to match the voices, and while hunting found not only a brilliant rose-breasted grosbeak (there were two of them singing) but an unfamiliar heavily streaked flicker (my fisherman friend decided after many “Lordys” that they called it a woodchuck! not the red-headed woodpecker) with a hoarse screech and a hole high up in a catalpa into which it popped as we watched. The fisherman, in overalls and with a weatherbeaten small face, youngish, eager to explain the reasons for the fish not biting (dirty water, no rain), told me lots of accounts of his experiences in the dust and rain storm yesterday, his mother’s canary birds, his plan to visit his girl friend in Crete and come back for more fishing, his adventures in a big city chasing a fire engine and getting bawled out. “I was sassy right back; no I didn’t know no traffic rules; sure I’d go to the station. He let me go, bein’s as I was out of town, but Lordy, I learned my lesson. I’ll never chase no fire engines again. Gee, I’d rather of had a barrel of monkeys sittin’ on the seat than get that bawlin’ out." He finally found out from Stan that it was nearly eight. “Jesus Christ, will I get hell! I was supposed to be at my girl friend’s for supper. Will she give it to me!” He went off shortly at a rackety speed in his old brown Model A Ford that jounced and rocked in an alarming way over the bumps. Stan polished the car, and as it grew dark, adjusted the headlights. The beams worked opposite, a dim and a full light in each lamp, so Stan switched wires so that both dims and fulls went on together. Then we opened a huge can of plums, and ate a few, emptying the rest in a pan and a milk bottle for further attentions. Our cash was down to $2.48, and as we are resolved not to spend anything out of the $50 lent to us on this job - and as reinforcements won’t arrive till Saturday, if at all - we decided to sleep out. We drove out of an increasingly mosquitoey river bottom up onto the field where we had had lunch, and with the car parked behind the hall, we spread one army blanket on the grass and covered ourselves with the other two. Stan dozed off and on, while I watched the stars beyond the fringe of the oak leaves, and struggled with a compelling desire to fall asleep. Finally I did, Stan promising to stay awake and watch the time, and while he slept too a little, we both woke up half an hour before we needed to drive back to the union meeting. We got up at last, Stan dressed in his brown suit, while I dug out of our suitcase a sweater, jacket, cotton stockings, a knit skirt and a wool skirt, and put my short navy coat over all. It was a warm if bulky costume. We waited outside the Isis Theatre till the operators all arrived, seven in all, at 12:45. Stan went in while I curled up on the front seat and listened to a vague and far from clear program from Mexico. Stan returned in half an hour or so, surprisingly soon, to report that while the men were interested, their treasury money all had to go now for national dues - but some of them are planning to write in for it soon. All of which doesn’t help our financial situation in the important present. We returned to our park; Stan changed back into his old trousers - really too thin for sleeping in the open - and a sweater. Contentedly we lay on our blanket, discussing stars and galaxies and the universe. The Big Dipper had swung much lower in the sky while we were away. Occasionally a tiny star shot out across space, to flare and disappear - one brilliant meteor left a shining trail for a brief moment behind it. Although it grew later, or earlier, we didn’t get a bit sleepier. A huge grain mill a mile or less away kept up a steady grinding roar of machinery that got mixed up with the imperative whistling and rattling of trains rushing through the town. Their echoes seemed to tangle themselves in the trees, and reached us confused and intermingled. Towards dawn a sweet smell of damp grass reached us, and the air began to be a little cooler. We finally stopped talking, and lay resolutely face downwards, I counted 20 and held my breath 3 or 4 times, but there were so many sounds beginning, and the sky was paling and the stars dimming and the morning star arose clear and steady in the east and Stan looked at his watch and read aloud “Four o'clock.” Most of the bird sounds were unfamiliar - I have an appalling ignorance of bird songs - but there was a fascinating growing chorus, conversational rather than operatic. One early bird sounded definitely cross and complaining. Later voices were more enthusiastic in discussing the dawning new day. There was a lovely clear “Red Cedar” with a whistle at the end - and who is the singer? Later the two notes with their funny trill afterwards revealed a chewink in the neighborhood. A robin scolded, a chorus of chirps and tits and a few pure notes of liquid song from a wood thrush joined in a strange and lovely medley of voices. I think I must have finally slept a little, for Stan asked me at 5 if I were awake, and I was, but unsure of my previous wakefulness. He was too cold to stay any longer, so we got up to see a chilly new day. White banks of fog misted the trees at the edge of our field, the morning was clear and cloudless with the sun still just below the horizon. Later, as we were driving slowly south toward Beatrice through thick fog that settled on the windows in wet clouds, Stan woke me up from where I was beginning to doze with my head on his leg, to see a pale round sun barely shining throught the mist. May 19 Breakfast at 6:30 in Beatrice. It took us an hour and a half through the fog 33 miles. A card from Mother at the Post Office. Life is so strangely unbegun at dawn. A telegram from Geldmeier this afternoon with a check of $10 only. “Doubtful if you can sell enough in Kansas City or anywhere else to carry on. STOP. Return to Chicago.” It puts a neat finish to any plan to work longer with him, and with $10 in our pockets we can go a long way west. It was such a momentous decision that we could hardly wait to look at the map. San Francisco, Washington, Yellowstone, Texas? While I returned a milk bottle to a grocery Stan found an itinerary for us - and in 15 minutes from the time we read the telegram we were on our way west - to Yellowstone and Spokane! If our money gives out, which it should fairly soon, we shall have to get jobs or sell a set or two. We are planning to keep the sets and sell them as we go, sending Geldmeier the money minus our own $5 commission on each. The land is very level. Almost no trees. Dust reddish on weeds by edge of road. Small hills, near Hastings, rounded, characterless, almost bare of grass. Wide fields covered with straw-colored wire grass, barren, looking like winter tho the middle of May. The hills are desolate, extending in a low line beyond the nearest fields. Sky darkening in the west. Tiny patch of rose sunset to the south west. Wind rising. We stopped, got out to wipe dust off car before running into rain. Clouds looming across sky. Darkness of clouds extends to ground. Drove on. Wind increasing. Sharp flashes of lightning divide white diffuse flashes. Occasional jagged silver arrows to earth. Colors for first 20 minutes a sultry pink, as though clouds held dust. Flashes more frequent. Storm still across west sky, closing in. Stopped to listen for thunder. Almost silent, eerily so as flashes illuminate whole sections of clouds. Slow distinct ominous rumbling directly overhead. Wind sharp. Air full of waiting. Storm reached out arms either side of us. Suddenly after approaching it for an hour nearly, we found ourselves in the middle of the storm. Sudden flurries of dust hiding roadbed. Considered going back to village, but drove on. More flashes, jagged streaks plunging to earth. Blinding light illuminating entire landscape. Drops of rain on windshield. Something leapt out of bushes - Stan braked a moment - only tumbleweed. More whirls of dust. Rain, even, mixed with dirt. Closed car except for tiny ventilation strips. Wind powerful, twisting wheels. Rain a little heavier. Flash after flash of lightning. We have to squint at times. Wind swaying car. Lights too rapid to follow. In front, both sides, seeming to close in on us in back. Jagged streaks of lightning, thrusting their electricity with powerful jabs into the helpless earth. Centers of light just off to the right, to the left. We seem to be in the middle of the storm, great flashes of light turn the night for brief gripping moments to day. Rain heavier, clicking on hood. It’s hail! and suddenly the storm is lashing at the earth with its full terrifying force. The hail beats against our car, striking the windows so hard they surely must break. Wind pulls at car outside. Explosions of light so swift we are not in darkness; after one the next flashes over us. Spurts of lightning - one startling curved bolt directly ahead like an almost complete arch. Horizontal zig-zags, thin and white and venomous across the sky before us; strips of 2 & 3 displaying at the same moment. One watches, unable to accept this vast uncontrollable unleashing of elements. Can such masses of lightning fail to strike one’s own small car? The light is unmerciful, surrounding and blinding us. Forked lightning strikes in two places. Sickle-shaped bolt overhead. Storm has closed in on all sides. Will we never escape this shattering storm? Hail less heavy. More blinding glare. Rain steady, slowly lessening. Wind howls against side of car with threatening voice. Rain almost stopped. Toad hopped in long leaps across road, shining in our headlights and a swift flare of lightning. More silent fireworks in sky ahead. Incredible thin wires of lightning hurling themselves thru space with a shivering energy. Another toad. Rain again, swift, insistent. Strips of jagged lightning plunging into earth directly ahead. Wind rising again. Full flash, revealing straight dark wet road, green grass strips beside the highway, telephone poles beside railroad just beyond fence. Land flat. Once we saw faint rolling naked grey hills beyond near fields. Torrents pounding on windshield. Great light showing foggy rain-filled landscape, a bolt of earth-bound lightning held within its lesser, wider light. Quieter - fewer bolts of lightning, continued white flashes. I lean back for the first time against the back of the seat. Rain heavy, sparkling in headlights. Broad flash, but off a little to our right. For the first time we seem not to be at its core. Onto bridge. Sudden flash - and a pale expanse of water, with pushed-up humps of sand crowned with straggly bushes. Black again. Water on bridge claps up under our fenders and the floorboards beneath my feet so I feel the swoosh of each impact. Another flash - a shadowy town emerges for a moment. Reach end of bridge. [Platte River at Kearney?] Lights of town ahead. Drive into town. A few broad, more distant flashes above catalpas lining street. Stopped - town hushed - greeted by rolling rumble of thunder above. May 20 Spent fine night in car, Stan curled up in back seat, I on the front. A bit cramped - but we did sleep soundly. Low rounded hills, not soft yet outlines rarely sharp against horizon. Not a tree. Dull grey with a little dry mantle of grass showing earth between clumps. To Chappell, Nebraska Fourth magpie. Broad black and white wings, long thin black tail following behind. Flowers along road - lovely round white blossoms growing on dusty greyish plants close to earth. Spires of lavender or deep blue or almost magenta flowers - even a few pure white growing all together on one side of the road. Flowers have the look of larkspurs, thick on central stem. Yucca again, dark splotches against grey green slopes. Prickly pear, showing new green nubbins growing on the old grey pads, catch the sun in low clumps. Rock ledges cropping out along sides of hills. Clay banks exposed now and then, limestone beneath. Some houses sticking up out of plain, treeless, unpainted, a grey house, barn, outhouse or two, windmill. The heat in summer. Occasional oak groves, refreshing and green, lining invisible streams or creek beds. Hills freckled with yucca. Cheyenne 3:40 p. m. Stopped in Cheyenne. Left past airport. Rolling slopes eroded so that they flow into each other. Dotted with white faced cows, little bouncing calves. Enough grass to look fairly greenish. Windmills sticking up out of plain, for cattle. Suddenly drove down steep hill into low broad plain. Off in distance steep bluffs spotted with yucca. Little peaks rising, sloping off. Drier plains speckled with clumps of dry grass, cactus. View: cattle gathered near windmill on baked field. Up again on plateau; distant hazy view of jagged Rocky Mountains on west! Family rejoicing. Clear sky, but misty along horizons. Down into another dry wide valley. Edge of far plateau sheer and rocky, with striated cliffs and one abrupt butte cut off from the rest of the bluff. Took picture. Talked to oldish couple with vapor lock. Series of long cliffs surmounted by flat even plateau. Country gradually wilder. Sage growing on barren sandy peaks. Dry - One deeply eroded valley full of limestone buttes and mesas. Passed cowboy pony, loaded chuck canvas-covered wagon with two horses pulling it and a trailer following with rolls of canvas and dead timber for camp fires. Mountains plainer, higher, uneven. Like huge bluish smoky backdrop. Nearest low mountain (probably only a foothill, but impressive after these plains) shimmering in the sun, as though made of blocks of tumbled metal; jagged ridge. Flat valley into wheatland. Trees again, houses set in groves, fields fresh and green, plowed ground healthier than any we’ve seen for a long time. Farms again - no longer bleak unpainted shacks on bare pale earth, or only cattle country. Beyond wheatland, more pleasant farms, then suddenly gravely earth dotted with cactus, down thru cut-out twisting valley between grey limestone juts onto low plain. Green again, alfalfa fields irrigated with narrow channels of blue water along edge of field, huge cottonwoods and oaks lining a river bottom. Road continues between two low gradual slopes, dry and grey with range grass and tufts of another stiff grass, tan earth showing thru. Mountains extending north and south, spectacular in their flat paper-like silhouettes so jagged along the ridges. Beyond Glendo Wide clear river carving great canyon thru edge of bluff - plateau above. Cliffs shining red in broad expanse. River disappears behind high bluffs, ridged limestone, crowned with tufted green (yucca and some grass). River reappears, leaves canyon, crosses wide plain. We cross it - N. Platte - on low bridge. Drive suddenly again onto erosion - great section of hills sliding down into huge valley north and south between us and the now clear mountains. Mountains blue, no longer silhouettes, but complete with sun-tipped ridges sliding down toward the valley. Valley dark brown and shadowy orange. And near us, below and above the road, those strange twisting runways, now bone dry, but evidently torrents at other times, the shoulders beside them loosened and sliding into the sandy stream beds, naked and stoney with a few tufts of grass or sage struggling to maintain a foothold. Miles of this - dry, sandy, white with drought, ridges between creek beds, barren hills above - valley shadowy, mountains rising blue and majestic beyond, jagged peak on peak against the west sky. Haystack, close to Casper. Beyond the rolling range country over which we are driving, a long purple range - steep cliffs below a ridge. Patches of white - one long, most angular and small. Snow! We looked at it with the glasses. The patches are rounded, the edges are all melted. But snow in May! Sunset - silver-touched flamingos flying across the sky. Turquoise sky behind, these strangely lovely long-necked salmon flamingos outstretched across the turquoise. Turning a deep purple, soft pink wisps of clouds scattered beyond. Sheridan, May 21 Writing cards to families. Listened to snatches of conversations - one tough blunt-faced young fellow swearing mildly - tale of fellow being shot up in a town, locale unknown - “They just dragged him by the feet out into the middle of the road, and left him a couple of hours before anyone did anything about him.” Salvation Army - three or four youngsters playing mandolin, guitar.... Singing nice old salvation songs - boy, 14 perhaps, sensitive young face, chin still round, hair dark, with guitar, singing with clear alto - no one too much in tune, all hymns delightful - no expression but lots of music. Decided to omit Yellowstone for a few days, and try Montana, driving north to Billings. May 22 Woke up at 5:30. There seems to be too much light in the morning to sleep beyond dawn. The world was black last night when we stopped; this morning we discovered that we had parked on a gravel road extending across a ditch into a ploughed field. Rolling range hills - off to the west the long range of the Big Horns - off to the east a dark red bluff, weathered and striated. Through Crow Reservation. Long wide valley, fertile along cottonwood-lined Little Big Horn River. Up on plateau. Long rolling swells, smoothly yellow with a stiff dry dead-looking grass. Edge of plateau to our left - slopes rounded steep divided by small valleys. To our right - plateau surmounting this larger one, ringed by a wall of sandstone cliffs like an ancient wall of great blocks fitted together around a medeival castle. Descending now in curves between cut-out slopes. Green of trees in winding line in bottom of valley - water. A great oval mesa - circled once near top with buff and faintly orange sandstone, again near bottom. Down among hills - our oval mesa turns out to be broken into various smaller mesas, steep space below upper rock row scattered with huge blocks tumbled down over stone and bare earth. Yucca, lodgepole pines, a few cottonwoods. Winding up thru hills. Top again rolling, yellowish grass over dipping small hills. No fences. Horses cropping next to road. Dark spots of cows grazing on grama grass below a hill, its valley dotted with pines and rocks. Summit - far view of wide valley. reddish in streaks, mainly flat, dark with trees and white fences. Billings, half hidden by low sawed-off hills, on side against horizon, long plateau with steep sun-touched slopes, sprinkled with spots - pines - along top ridge. Bushes across range - grey - look like tiny junipers. Birds - western meadowlarks, horned larks, numbers of magpies spectacular in black with wide white patch on each wing black tipped long tail, doves, a kill deer, two huge and hunched hawks on fence posts neither moved as we drove by, one as we backed up to see it, lifted himself in air and flapped away, soaring after a bit, joined by a second (mate?) both backs reddish, fronts white. Huge heron, streaked a queer greenish - taunish - flapped heavily as we passed near it (on side of road by marsh) then alighted again, 3 or 4 feet in height. Great blue heron overhead yesterday. Bobolinks? white on wings, white on each side of tail as it flies. Red-winged blackbirds. Grackles. Ravens. Kingbirds, also western. Reached Billings. Lunch on top of plateau. Cooked a glorified chili of our own concoction on Boy Scout fireplace - sand, sculptured sandstone rocks. Hole through one. A few tall gnarled pines. Valley of Yellowstone River at our feet - green, patched in fields lined with trees - long purple cliff-edged plateaus across the valley. Rained in afternoon. First rain in a month for this parched land. Found cabin in Billings; stove, sink, shower, bathroom, hot and cold water - a pleasant big room with tiny bathroom off one end - all for $1.50. May 23 How we slept last night! After a grand hot shower. I got up at 7:00 and scrubbed clothes. Sun shining again, sky piled high with glistening white clouds. Hung clothes on line. Shopped, made elegant stew while packing and Stan at meeting of operators. Left Billings after noon. Suddenly saw the Rockies - very dark blue, etched here and there with snow on the summits, partly hidden by low deep-blue clouds. Desert country. High hills either side of valley - like brown sheets stretched over clumps of grass - draped look - not a blade of grass. On hill in distance, three great blocks of rocks on top, rest of hill washed into small ridges and gullies with that queer look of drapery. On left, land all tilted, broad gradual slopes on one side, striated cliffs on other - hill after hill like this. Lower foothills eroded, seem to be sliding into valley. Valley broad, sandy, spotted with grey bushes, pink-showing prickly pear. Dishearteningly dry. Saw prairie dog on hind legs by road. Mountains turning purple and gradually disappearing. Evidently heavy rain. Wind colder as we drive on. Rest of sky full of fluffy white clouds, bluest sky. Storm ominous ahead. Drove thru 2 or 3 little baked towns, treeless, dusty, general store, filling station, one or two shacks with tin sides (old signs sometimes), a house or two with usual quota of ramshackle outbuildings, old rusty machinery. Irrigation canals - most of desert baked, wide sections of plain sand - over a fence, greenest alfalfa, tiny irrigation ditch beside. Follow along irrigation canal, every 100 feet or so with a gate and falls of four or five feet - water pouring thru - muddy with speed and recent rain in mountains - increasing in size as we get closer to mountains, finally small river. Storm breaking over mountains. Verticals where rain still pouring, misty radiance beside. Snow in slabs on rock, revealed in sudden rift in clouds. Spectacular great rocky bluff - framed in rain clouds. Cody Flat plain, then beyond sudden dip into canyon. Start climbing. Smell of sulfur - great piles of greenish sulfur by road. Really into canyon. Red red rock and gravel above. River 50 feet or so below us. Bluffs on far side - tilted formations, topped by small block of rock like huge candle. River greenish, churning white in rapids. Pines high up on rocky cliffs at top. Below steep grey-grassed slopes, dotted with grey bushes, breaking again into rock just above river. A sulfur mine across the river clinging to hillside. River roaring, green and white. High up - rocks cut and split - great wall. Pass thru tunnels. Find great truck in tunnel. Stop. Roar of river fills canyon. All rock cliffs now, perpendicular 100 feet and more, enough slanting space for pines. Great chunks of rock, with bands of white (granite?) fallen in jagged piles in water. Sliding shelf where pines, half-way up cliff, grow among fallen rocks. Cliffs broken perpendicularly, and crosswise too, tho not so much. Yellow, pink, orange layers visible, tilted, warped. Shoshone Dam. Tremendous dam, 328 feet high, cliffs 2-1/2 times as high. Rocks pink quartz granite, strips and blocks of black basalt, intrusions in strips, rocks curved in arch, jutting out in vertical. Sprinkled with dark green pines among talus. Roar of river. Thru tunnel again, out onto lake. Wide lake (looks natural, where was original valley?) bordered by sloping dry hills, mostly stoney and grey sagebrush, against big hills little peaks of eroded bare earth. White faced heifers grazing by road, stare as we approach. Great cliff range across lake - thick lines of snow - rugged peaks. A glimpse of solid white glacier above immediate line of peaks. Plateau shuts out view of Snowy Range. Slopes bare, pines in higher valleys, steeper as it goes up, finally great wall of rock, and on top green pines and grass, and a castle of vertical pillared rocks. On other side - posts and twisted blocks of reddish rock sticking out of bare earth. Bluffs coming slowly out of mist at right - lightly shining with a wet snow! Seems to be snowing now. Dark ahead too, more storms. Sprinkling now. Beyond lake. Weathered walls of rock skirting hills. Sudden view of snow peaks beyond dark bluff. Glaciers clearly seen in valleys. Snow in every gulley. Foothills queer and showing grey and tan in layers where washed. Pouring now. Walls of sandstone high on all hills. Great valley opening up - mist at end, sprinkled with snow patches on mountain reaches. Clouds still cut off top of mountain on left. Snow-filled valleys shine in light. Valley ahead narrows. Steeper hills lifting on each side to rocky buttes - one has a long level “Chinese Wall” crowning its slopes. Jagged purple hills bristling in opening between the two gateway hills. Passed several handsome log-built ranches, set in cottonwoods, some dude ranches. Several elaborate log cabin courts. Driving next to Shoshone river again, curling in white frothy scallops. Fretted rock - a thin question mark against the sky. Great three-columned temple on high cliff. “Holy City” - beautiful turrets lifting to sky all along side of steep valley, crowned by temple on top. Valley widens a bit; hills on each side, tilted again, their cliff sides not very steep. Hail! Shoshone National Forest Rock layers suddenly vertical, turned on end. Pass thru green woods - pines, willows. See rocks again - broken into jutting jagged peaks, cross-valley full of pines. Occasional round holes - caves. Glimpse of opening valley, great peak covered in patches with snow, along horizontal rock layers. Stone wall like New England stone wall, up and over a hill. Rock layers absolutely on end! More rugged peaks, hills bordering both sides of valley. Numerous National Forest campgrounds. View ahead - snow over low hills! Must be snow on road in a couple of miles. Road suddenly dirt, a little slippery after rain. Gets narrower. Abruptly ends in pile of rocks! We stop - will we have to go way back to another entrance? A great Diesel Caterpillar tractor against cliff wall, driver munching a sandwich. We jump out, start toward him to find out what happens now. Before we can reach him, he starts motor, and pulling levers in a bewildering fashion, turns around, lowers his plow, heads for rocks, pushes rocks down road, and shoves them over the bank! The caterpillar spun around, one wheel moving to turn the whole lumbering machine. Scraped road level - still gooey with clayey clods after the rain - we thanked him, he smiled, waved as we left, went on munching his sandwich which he had done all thru the process. Rocks had just been scattered over road from dynamiting cliff wall for new road. Follow bumpy, under-construction road “passable but dangerous” - no one warned us about this construction at all! Road badly muddy in spots. Forests thicker, tall Douglas fir, aspens just newly leafed, a few white birches. Shoshone smaller now, swifter, breaking in white crests over the rocks. Shallow. Saw a moose! wandering idly thru aspen grove. Yellowstone Park Stopped at entrance. Friendly young officers took us out in back to see another moose! this time a female grazing in open space behind cabin. On - wonderful view of mountain way high, between two wooded peaks just across the stream, so white with snow that it's hard to tell sky from mountain. Mountain brooks dashing, silvery crystal, a rushing sound when we stop. Such sweet fresh air! Cold and sprinkling - getting dusk. Another moose, huge, heavy-necked, grazing behind big dead tree. Valleys fork, we follow north valley, climbing steadily. Snowing! View up valley, steep forested mountains, snow showing thru, sometimes in good sized patches, great snow fields ahead on even higher mountains (Breath-taking beauty). Another sparkling tumbling cascade down mountain side by road. Still climbing. Spruce turning silvery with snow! Valleys split again. Snow deep in woods across valley bottom. Trap rock slope, steep, on right crowned by jagged rocks. On left, great mountain side, old snow thick (holes around tree boles). Great drifts to right next to road - on both sides now! road cut right thru drifts higher than the car! Sylvan Pass! Deep snow both sides. 8,562 feet high! Road starts down. Lined with tall firs and pines, snow in drifts on forest floor - sudden little black lake, rimmed with snow, “Lake Eleanor,” ice on one end in a round patch or two, snow perfect and white and cutting a precise and lovely line. Bogs. Snow piled in drifts, water clear, shallow. Another lake! Edged with pines, snow in places. A lovely little long island, snowy floor, tall pines. Sylvan lake. Baby firs cunning with powder of snow. Stream sparkling, tumbling over rocks in little strips. Carpet of woods green, starred with tiny flowers. Spring beauties, and golden thin-petaled bells on short stems, long oval leaves, all small. Yellowstone Lake spread out - long arms - flat - grey in fading light. Land lower beyond, long plateau. Grizzly Peak! High square to a pointed peak, snow-covered, evergreens black below timberline. All wintry - snow quite deep beneath firs, open grass in winding paths and patches. Sulfur smell again. Banks of grey earth. Pond below green and murky with sulfur. May 24 Powder of snow over ground! Not quite freezing. Both of us got chilly - only 5:45. Lake level and grey. Peaks far away shining white through lifting clouds. Deer in open field. Three. Lift heads to look at us, move a bit to leave - decide to stay. Another deer - two - behind pines near road. White tails. Lake, dark and clear; beaver jumped in off log. Circled the Thumb, end of Yellowstone Lake, turned off in woods toward Old Faithful. More snow under pines. Drizzling snow. Saw 3 more deer, bounded a few feet into forest, stopped. Lone Star Geyser - a mile or more off road - great cone, 8 feet high perhaps. Stream coming out of top and out of holes in hillside. Lone Star bubbles out of top - a foot or two high, every five minutes. Real eruption about 3 hours apart. Old Faithful. Elaborate hotels, stone cabins. Old Faithful a low hill pouring out steam. Hillside full of steam holes. Old Faithful becoming more enthusiastic, water bursting out now and then. Suddenly up - we jump out of car, race over to watch it. Geyser basin. Beyond camp. Steam rising in clouds. Spouter Geyser - almost constantly bubbling over 2 or 3 feet high - water sucked back thru 2 holes near center. Holes in ground, water gurgling 4 or 5 feet below surface. Black sand pool. Black obsidian gravel, bluest of water, rippled, ridged tan mud. Punch Bowl Spring rising in one end. Edge fluted like pie crust, vertical. Grant Geyser in broken cone, steam twisting up. Occasional gushing up of water 2 or 3 feet high. Quiet. Just steam again. Other geysers next to it on platform on wide flaky plain descending in shallow steps. Spouting, spray every few minutes. Found Riverside in eruption! upper crater(usually 5-1/2 to 8 hours between). lower crater Double cone. Angled across river. Steam and a little jet of water, water from small upper crater, steady shooting fountain from lower - breaking into comets of spray high in air - huge clouds of steam sailing out over river and among pines. More steam now. Sound of pressure and steam puffing. Still snowing some. Grotto Geyser. Strange. Crests of water suddenly thrown up, breaking into spray over rocks - bursting up into great showers over all rocks. Sounds - steady rush of steam underneath, crash of water falling on rock ledges and stream between us and road. Background of white moving steam clouds. Water spouts behind pillar half encircling it - and shooting on up in a half-hollow fountain. Best yet! the grotto a fascinating structure. Back past Riverside - only steam plumes. Along road, steam clouds rising every now and then among pines. Morning Glory Pool _ bluest water too deep to see bottom. Stop at “Cocoa Pond” - our own pool, as we not only used its hot water to wash, to shave, but also to make cocoa! Satisfactory for washing, delicious cocoa! Warmed our stew earlier in Surprise Pool - very hot as sides were shelves over water, causing pressure. White tails grazing in thickets in swamp below beaver dams - Stan whistled - an alert head came up to watch us for a bit. Farther on - great hairy moose among deep bushes! Two together, bull with heavy antlers, cow. Others solitary, on far side of marsh, one in center, wooly, losing hair. Suddenly passed others, 3 together next to road! One suspicious young bull, threw up his horned head and trotted off, as I took pictures of a cow grazing in marshy opening. Cow ignored me chiefly; I got fairly close. Finally trotted off, then galloped, leaped up and down, and chased along pasture beside us for a bit, then swung across road and into main marsh. Saw two groups of Canada geese in marsh in distance. Honked. Met bear finally. Or he met us, blocking our road and coming too close for comfort as we slowed down to pass him. Followed us. I threw dry bread on road behind us. He padded along, gulping each piece as he reached us, and putting on quite a bit of speed to catch up to us for another. We kept a safe distance between us, for he was entirely too insistent. In wide marsh - “Swan Lake” - actually saw a swan! looking like a white patch of snow in the low bushes by lake edge. Two inquisitive cinnamon and brown ground hogs examining us from among rocks - popped into their holes. Tasted unpleasant Apollinaris Spring surrounded by tremendous evergreens. Just south of Mammoth Hot Springs. On edge of geyser basin. Wide flat shelf just below our point, gently steaming, shallow roundish pools colored tinny orange. Dotted with pale turquoise smaller round pools. Two dark pools. Surface between covered with white or grey or almost black siliceous sinter. One end of shelf rimmed with terrace, white and grey, two steps with deposit formed like water running over terraced rocks. Beyond - South - valleys closing in, long rather bare, faintly green slopes meet in center, lift finally to great height of peak after peak - snow topped, clouds mingled among them. North - U-shaped valley - heavily timbered - long blue snow-dotted mountain at end. West - great sliding shaley cliffs below a plateau. Shoulders dotted with pines. East - crags above rising meadows and forests, snow in patches. Walked down to wide terrace. On bank, springs bubbling out below top, encrusted with delicate white and yellow tracery like fibers intertwined and preserved in rock. Water comes out of tiny cave hung with yellow and white stalactites. Below, colors turn to pale green, and orange-rust, and silver in little frozen ripples. After driving thru rocky barren hills behind terraces (Rocky Mountain cedar, twisted junipers, low deeply purple flower like elaborate larkspur, two charming little striped ground squirrels) a few cones, lava walls, “White Elephant” another poured-over terrace. We drive down main road - view of white series of terraces, fretted and silvery. An eagle’s nest. Driving north to Tower Falls. May 25 No bears visited us last night at all! We slept well, started out again at 4:10. Tower Falls. Elk grazing on edge of grove. Great white peak lifting above valley. Broad snow fields extending down into dark timbered shoulders. Mountain close to it, beige cirque painted with pines. First rosey lights among lavender clouds. Sky still mainly overcast. Looking back - wide snow fields on long round mountain. Evidently snow over all open fields last night. Mt. Washburn close. One great shoulder sited in wraith-like cloud. Clouds above salmon. Bull moose in light-snowy slope below us. Sprouting antlers. Watches us without moving. Suddenly in snowy woods. Still climbing. Opening - range snow-capped to south.. Robin flew into lodge pole pine. Pines long straight, slim, snowy spires. In open again - three pyramidal peaks, snow-topped, timbered, a line of trees on top. Snow deeper, even across road an inch deep. Someone has been thru here before us in a car. Drifts 4 to 5 feet cut to let road thru. Stop to look down into long wooded valley. Forests in center rising out of stream bottom, dark, gradually a silver touch to their spires and finally their green is almost totally obscured by snow. Solid snowfields with lines of powdery trees reaching to very tops. Far in distance - bluest of ranges, breaking into jagged peaks. Out thru Dunraven Pass (8,859 feet) - leave shoulder of Mt. Washburn. Valley full of billowing grey-lavender clouds. Beyond - blue line of rocky broken peaks etched against the pearl and gold of the sky. Sun coming up over shoulder of Mt. Washburn behind us, touching with radiancy the snow about us. Snow pure, untouched. Cut here and there by delicate tracks - deer. View of valley - lower - woods, mists rising behind low hills. Tetons shining in sun far to south. Snow banks giving way to a mere light layer of snow over the ground as we descend. Road no longer slippery. Clouds breaking up. Blue sky gleaming above, dotted with small faintly pink clouds. Sage brush on open slope tipped with silver. Almost no snow except last winter’s drifts in pine woods. Inspiration Point Canyon walls sliding, jagged wind-eroded pinnacles of rock jutting out from canyon sides. Strange vertical stripes of color, saffron and rust and sulfur and pink, blended and merging as they change. Far up canyon - sheer white of falls, transparent column of spray lifting toward the east wall, bluest of pools above, rock tinted buff and pink. Early morning sunshine gleaming thru mist in lower valley, touching the canyon walls with unbelievable color. The erie “keee-keee” that we heard yesterday - we searched - and wheeling below us an eagle! We watched - it soared and sailed, ocasionally uttering its queer and not unpleasant cry, then turned and mounted swiftly, landing on a pinnacle to the north - surmounted by a pile of sticks and another eagle! As we watched, the brooding eagle slipped off, the other moved so quickly into her place that we had no view of the eggs (we assume there are eggs) and the free eagle sailed off down into the valley. The nest was only a little lower than the Point - if at all, on a rocky peak of red rock. It grew chill; our hands and fingers were numb, so we climbed back up the steps to the car. Stopped again at another built-out platform nearer the falls, unnamed and the railing not too secure. Roar of falls thru canyon. Stan - “Look! an eagle!” and I “There's another!” and still another, soaring on outstretched wings up and down the great chasm (750 feet deep, 1500 feet wide!) Startlingly white underneath, with dark brown wings and squarish tail, whose bars are visible only when close and below, black hooded eyes. Ocasionally that weird scream. We counted five wheeling thru the canyon at once. Sometimes one stopped for a while on a dead tree, or once one alighted on a bare rock peak. They sailed up toward the falls, wheeled back across the rock face, dipped down past the pine woods clinging to the wall beneath us. Almost never rose level with the top of the rim, nor dropped near to the Yellowstone far below. We could see no food caught in any way. One sailed up finally, and alighted on the bare rock face. I turned the glasses on the spot (inaccurately as usual) and found him after a bit - not only him, but a nest built on a shelf on the cliff, and a second eagle beside him! We could see little but their two white heads, their nest was so far away across the canyon almost opposite us. They sat - and sat - and finally one stretched his wings and flapped them. They shifted their positions; the other lifted her wings and waved them for a moment. Then they sat still again. There seemed to be no brooding, for while one remained constantly by the nest, it did not seem to be really settled, but just standing on the edge. One finally flew away down into the canyon. An eagle sailed out of the valley and up to a red crag far higher than the first nest. Stan looked with the glasses, and found a second nest! We couldn’t see whether there was a second eagle on the nest. The first spread his wings and soared away soon. Later an eagle returned to the nest for a brief visit. We watched them so long we were stiff with cold. The white flashing falls were only a background for a tiny distant bird, so far away that it was only a speck that disappeared and reappeared against the water and the tinted cliffs. Once in a while an eagle passed fairly close to us. Finally we drove on, past the smaller upper falls that break into cascades just above the rocks and their true fall. Above that, the Yellowstone is a clear peaceful broad stream giving no hint of the turbulence to follow. River bends below upper falls so that you can only see one falls at a time. The upper are set among dark rocks and shadowy pines. The water glistens very white in contrast. The lower falls, around the bend, tumble a far greater distance, filling the canyon with their roar, banked each side by huge yellowish and pinkish bluffs. Toward South entrance Tall lodgepole pines, bark faintly red; Lewis Lake very blue and rippled. Wooded hills on far side. Lewis River, rushing over rocks, dark and clear and white- crested with haste. Falls broad, framed in pines, sparkling. Canyon - snow under trees, water white and rushing far below, tilted dark-rock cliffs. View of Tetons - mainly hidden by clouds as white as their magnificent peaks. Sat on slope overlooking Jackson Lake. Back to West Thumb. Bought two gallons of gas just outside entrance - 30 cents a gallon! Just made West Thumb - station closed! Stan finally found the man who could open it, and sell us five gallons of gas - at 25-1/2 cents a gallon. Enough to take us to Gardiner. Stopped at Old Faithful again. Road winding, thru dense pine woods most of trip. Just before eruption, saw mother bear bounce across road with 2 little black cubs scampering beside her. Youngsters ran after to take picture. Bears disappeared in woods. Old Faithful more wonderful than ever - a brief warning of water jets, then the tremendous fountain, soaring up and up, one side clear and straight like a pine, the other billowing into great clouds of steam. Less fun in a way, sharing the geyser with so many other people! about noon. Drove on. Passed geyser, bubbling and boiling away, fluted edged Punch Bowl Geyser, several steaming bowls, our special Grotto that was, alas, quiescent, Riverside - only smoking placidly. Had lunch again by our Surprise Pool - using another smaller pool farther off the road for a preliminary warming. These smaller pools are often unknown quantities - one can’t decide just how safe their surrounding crusts are, pitted with tiny (or large) steam vents and pools. Surprise pool hotter - Stan finished heating the beans in it, and I washed my face, letting the wash cloth blow in the wind a bit before putting it against my face. Dipped cloth back in - bubbles began breaking all around! evidently addition of cold air makes water burst into steaming bubble. White Rock geyser, with fine built-up cone, smoking quietly away a hundred yards from the sapphire blue of Surprise. On - stopping for water at a cold delicious spring by the road in a deep canyon. Met cinnamon bear, hurrying out of woods to greet us. Tossed bread to him. Followed dignifiedly along, gobbling bread hunks. A herd of elk on hill next to road, very calm and uninterested in our proximity. Beaver lodges and elaborate dams in Elk Park. More moose - a bull and several cows at distances. Yesterday saw 3 close together, also a pair, today a pair. Far out in marsh, grazing among bushes. Tried to take picture of tame deer pair - followed them - lost them! Doe tiny, worried about me, scampered now and then after buck, who regarded me complacently - but moved away too fast for me to quite catch up. Another herd of elk. A second bear - black, grubbing beside road, moved out across our path. Threw bread to him. He ,too, lazier than our bear yesterday. Relaxed muscles, almost clumsy appearance, but extreme swiftness of action if necessary. Saw more Canada geese. Swan again on Swan Lake, a solitary white dot in distance. Mountains sharp blue and white against sky. Thru Mammoth, down Gardiner road past our Eagle's nest (saw white alert head sticking up out of nest - but did not revisit her!) Left Park. Road to Livingston thru crumpled brownish hills, bare of trees, strange to see fences and farms again. Followed Yellowstone River - first a turbulent stream crowded in its bed, then a wide placid clear river. Views of long jagged snow-covered ranges. Near hills steep. Thru Bozeman Pass (5,750 ft). (Sacajawea led Clark thru here in 1808 to explore Yellowstone River). Surrounded by high green hills. Dipping down again to valley. After Bozeman - sign where John Colter, member of Lewis and Clark expedition, explorer of Yellowstone later was captured by Indians, his companion killed, he stripped and given headstart across prickly pear field - outdistanced Indians, dove into river, hid under driftwood (or according to another tale, in a beaver lodge) till disappointed Indians gave up. Traveled 7 days “out-nuding the nudists” to Fort Lisa, his headquarters. Stopped on open range before dark. Rounded range country, brownish steep hills toward horizon, crags shining white with snow to north and south. Crimson patches of a sunset. May 26 Awoke at 6. Wonderful fresh morning. Prairie horned larks tinkling, a songsparrow singing his sweet and familiar tune. A movement in the range grass - a prairie dog! Sat up glanced about, dropped down again, fiddled with grass, scampered over to another promising spot, twitched tail. Another beyond. Stan woke up presently. We saw more prairie dogs, 6 babies all at once poised by different holes! Walked over to one hole down which a small prairie dog had jumped - heard “cheep, cheep!” just below surface. As we drove off, saw lots of prairie dogs on both sides of road. On highway, often passed prairie dog in green edge of road, eating unconcernedly, or standing alert and erect on bank edge of prairie. Passed cattle in a large herd, rounded by cowboy. Breakfast en route - hard-boiled egg sandwiches, oranges. Reached Helena. Diamond jubilee in July, all town going 1864. Main Street stores to be covered with boards, women to wear sunbonnets and long dresses, men to look like early prospectors. Such an array of beards in the sprouting stage! Some are cut in fancy shapes, side burns, and goatees, and full beards minus mustaches, and some just pathetic patches. Astonishing to have red-bearded postal clerks addressing you behind straggling thickets, and black-bearded bread men answering your direction-queries - a beard this time so luxuriant as to be a real asset. Drove out road into gulch. Stan changed into eleganter clothes while I sunned myself on the grassy steep hillside (so steep I kept sliding slowly downwards) by warm scented pines. Drove up mountain road in search of water. First a stream bed set with a few cottonwoods and bushes, then water in a fine trickle, hill rising precipitously either side, pitted with holes 3 or 4 feet wide, often more long. Prospectors’ diggings. Kept on, entered aspen woods, then pines. Up, passing pleasant stone cabin, and ending with road before a low log cabin set among grey rocks and pines. Old mine opening into hill. Pleasant woman came out, greeted us, surprised at our New York license - invited us in. We went first to the spring, down the hill a distance. Tiny stream shining with golden flakes - apparently not however gold, but iron pyrite. Some mica. Examined old diggings along trail. Mrs Luma showed us her pleasant roomy cabin, used only in summer (it’s cold there even now, and there are killing frosts in August) She and her husband and perhaps one son 16 (another in the navy) move here from Helena for the summer. Told us about panning gold, showed us old gold scales, described prospecting somewhat. A pleasant dark-eyed, cordial, nervous woman. Took us to see her brother in the stone cabin just below. Met her friends who drove up hill to see her - a fat little bald recruiting officer, his unset-permanented rouged wife in blue corduroy slack suit - both intensely ordinary. Hot little kitchen in cabin, old woman, mother or mother-in-law, grey and worn, young woman with pug nose, sister or sister-in-law. Lawrence Linderman - the Prospector. Thin, in dusty old overalls, lean face with fine dark eyes, long nose, good lines about his mouth, a lighting infrequent smile; accepted sister’s suggestion to show us diggings. Linderman proceeded to pan a wide metal pan of dirt in a big tin wash tub by a pit he had dug. Shook dirt and water around and around, poured off water, added more, shook again, on and on, till only a half handful of black dirt left, with sparkle of gold dust and one wee piece of gold - worth about a penny! Not much left in present diggings. Linderman fixed rocker to show us. Broad trough with rocker bottom on a frame tilted down hill - open end. Canvas in bottom, fitted with framework to catch gold and light dirt that fall thru - on top of this, second trough, also open at end, clamps into place. Iron perforated section near upper end with wooden partition blocking off perhaps a square foot. L. shovels in dirt in blocked-off end, then holding handle with one hand, rocking the contraption back and forth, with other hand directing hose with spray of water over dirt. Fine dirt washes thru holes in iron sheet, and all but gold particles and finest dirt wash out below, leaving dust and gold on canvas. Larger pebbles and rocks wash off the top trough. Linderman an interesting man. Prospecting 7 years. Not much luck now. Tired of it. Broke a few weeks ago, sold his small bottles of gold. Now flat broke. Hoping to get a job _ “but no jobs.” Looked undernourished to us. Hands trembled. Showed us well-paying mine he worked before, mostly in tunnels under earth. Found a good amount of gold. Last year he made $130 a month out of his gold mining. Now nothing. Back to Helena. Lunch on way down. Bean sandwiches with cabbage leaves, milk, last of pie, oranges. Theatres not open till 7 - too late for matinee. Looked around town. What an assortment of underdeveloped beards! Up gulch road again. Built fire in sand (dry bed of stream) heated rest of beans, made cocoa. Sprinkled a bit. Thunder in the distance rumbling like a car crossing an old bridge. Hastily extinguished fire, expecting a car down road, and our consciences guilty. Only thunder, but our supper was all done. Very filling. Wild pale blue iris in bloom. Dark purple flower and lighter thistles. May 27 Left Helena last night without success with operators. Headed west for Missoula. Up thru mountains, dark, high. Smell of evergreens. Passed a porcupine hunched up in ball by side of road. Backed up; porcupine rushed across road, and with rustling and rattling, scurried down slope. Farther on, “Bobbie look!” A fat creature with bristles, pointed head, wide body, short wide-spread legs, hesitated, turned around, hurried up slope and out of sight. How extraordinary porcupines look. Stopped at last on far sides of mountain on grassy space beside road. Woke at 6:00. Lonely baw-aw! of cow echoing thru valley. Looked out - radiant sky, white piles of clouds, valley mounting up into steep timbered slopes tho open range near us, farm houses beyond field among cottonwoods, snowy peak looming over hill to north, a herd of red-backed, white-faced cattle across the fence on other side of road. Gave stiff old man a ride to settlement, 2 miles or so. Broke both knees when “just a young feller,” and sometimes in changing weather he's “plumb paralyzed.” Used to herd sheep all thru mountains. Now too old; rents small cabin back up the road, has garden, gets small jobs now and then. On his way to sharpen saw. Drove on. Into narrow valley of Missoula River. Hell Gate. An old trail of plains Indians into buffalo country. Blackfeet used to waylay them here to steal horses; ensuing battles resulted in a piling up of skeletons that caused a French explorer to call this “Porte d’Enfer” - now Hell Gate. River named Deer Lodge, Clark Fork (after Clark Expedition who passed thru here), Hell Gate, finally Missoula in different portions from its source. Wasted afternoon in Missoula. Hot. Operators apathetic. We had to break first $10 of our reserve fund. Set out at supper time for Spokane. Scenery spectacular. Climbing again. Trees immense. Wonderful U.S. forest of virgin White Pine - feet across, so high they took our breath away. Only a fairly small grove however. More heights with views of dusk-filling valleys. Down somewhat, to reforested areas on territory of 1910 fire. Drove thru miles of this; hills bristling with black skeletons of trees. Small evergreens growing up, but not big enough to cover the horror of the fire's rampage. It lasted for miles and miles. It was dark before we left it, entering the Cour d’Alene canyon. All mining towns. Lots of cars thru darkness. Mines on hillsides in storied terraces. Silver, etc.? Cour d’Alene River churning away below, white with speed. Valley walls towering above the river, so close there was hardly room for towns. Houses straggled up hills. May 28 Woke AST. A few birds singing light lilting forest songs. Overcast sky. Folded our blankets, took off the parts of our pajamas (Stan wears the top of his under his jacket. I wear the bottom of mine under my skirt) and put on our shoes. With a little straightening up in back of car, we’re all set to go! Spent night near road and a lumber camp. Drive thru valleys, along sparkling tumbling little brook. Trees bigger. Towering shafts of white pine; a cedar (red?) with lacey leaves like ferns, with bunches of tiny cinnamon cones, rough slightly fibrous-looking bark; a spruce with fan-shaped ends to its branches tipped with lighter green new leaves; a drooping spruce. Wonderful smell of pines. Dipped down beside Coeur d’Alene Lake, set among timbered mountains, shining deep green from above. Up along road skirting hillside, view of lake - winding among hills, so deep and translucent below; road bordered by flowers, white flowering bush (like steeplebush), golden daisies, blue spires like lupins but feathery hairs like larkspur, and best of all, clear pink wild roses all along the wayside. Down to Coeur d’Alene city. Flat valley land from now on - small hills in distance bordering wide flat valley land. Cross Spokane River - full ruffled broad stream. Sprinkling off and on. Along four-lane highway into Spokane. Bungalows on either side. Occasional filling stations. Street car line on right, its side thick with reddisn grass, the clear blue of those unnamed flowers, the pale yellow of daisies, the occasional white of yarrow. Gardens everywhere, in every yard. Quantities of irises, golden bushes of Rosa Hugonis, scarlet poppies, sweet William, budding peonies, columbine, white roses in bushes, irises the queerest colors, bronze, brown! cream. Entering Spokane itself. Street lined with unpretentious spotty little stores, roadstands, filling stations. May 31 Domestic morning fixing breakfast, washing clothes and dishes, straightening out car. Mail from Mother. No promise in Spokane, so decide to start west toward coast. First drove down hill thru pine forests - dry and not large yet. Fairly level land outside Spokane to west. Dry. Fields ploughed in large areas, wind spiraling dust, miniature dust tornados spinning across ploughed lands. Water standing in hollows, red-winged blackbirds perching on reeds. Pale blue of short wild irises along every pool, in solid blue patches in field corners. Sage brush? and bare earth along road. Dark smooth rock, like trap rock, breaking into irregular squares, sticking up out of ground, eroded bare in places and protruding in broken chopped up walls. Blue hills in distance. Down into a valley, shaded with pines, rock revealed only by road, a rounded paler rock. Up on hill again, same dark rock chipped into jagged pieces 5 or 6 inches square. Grand Coulee Rode over barren sage brush hilly land - suddenly started downhill, saw view below - great canyon with buttes on side, greyish brownish tones; river vivid blue, curling around bend. Hills either side, treeless, desolate. Grand Coulee stretching to south. Straggling spotty town across its higher end above Columbia River. Drove down to Dam. The water churns green and white-foamed as it sails over the relatively low structure blocking it. (River 60 feet deep perhaps here below the dam). Bleak hillsides spotted with houses, union workers tents (all labor completely union) mess halls, administration buildings, an unhealthy grey brown like khaki. Across - east side below Grand Coulee - a settlement of delightful cottages with gardens, green grass and small evergreens. Once there are trees here it won’t look quite so desolate. Stan re whole barren canyon - “The Lord forgot to finish it.” Water spraying over long house roofs on west for workmen. Immense gravel pits on mountain side - white with spillways from pits - biggest in world. All work done in colossal measurements - tons and millions rather than pounds and hundreds. Dam to be 4/5 of a mile long, 500 feet high. Displays of it, models, on both banks; a talk on the east, a continual display on west showing water pouring over, being lifted by gigantic pumps (to be largest in world) to be stored for irrigation purposes in Grand Coulee, letting water over the top in high season (summer, not April like every normal river - rises because of melting glaciers), closing drum gates in dryer seasons, letting water thru pipes perforating dam 2/3 and 1/3 high. A moonlit scene turned the white dam with its dark green water to a thing of strange lovliness. Glowing golden lights went on one by one in the miniature power houses, on the road that will cross the top of the dam, in the giant pumps to the east of the lake, on the smaller dam at the head of the Coulee. Tremendous place. One has no conception of its size, altho tiny trucks and train cars (Diesel electric) carrying 12-ton buckets of cement trundle back and forth on the high trestle, tooting on a high shrill note. Power houses either end look nearly finished, tho they are to be much higher some day, but the middle part is still just a framework, water rushing thru in wide spaces between half-built blocks. Canyon walls of this wide coulee - 1/4 mile across perhaps -of the same dark crumbling rock we saw higher up cropping thru ground's surface. In columns sometimes above the horizontal beds; other times worn wrinkled surface. Crumbled rock lying in sheets down the hillsides, so dark it looks like coal sliding down steep slope. Below these strata one sees occasional outcroppings of the under beds, a lighter color, no splitting and crumbling. Steamboat Rock - great black mesa in center of Coulee plain. Rocks along cliffs showing faint colors - brick red and a pale yellow. Later - sulfur yellow, changing to rust and back. Like great dabs of paint all over cliff face. Cause? Coulee widening. Horizontal beds dip under earth. Out on flat plain. North side still abrupt, gradually turns into hills. Sage brush flats all thru coulee. Dry Falls Park 1 mile - so we turn south - plains abruptly drop to a new floor of coulee! A long butte ringed with that queer black rock tinted greenish yellow rises out of floor. Pools - 150 feet deep! at bottom of falls. Wide horse shoe, 3 miles across. Above, tiny buttes and a round depression or two. Nothing to give one idea of water here once. Another lake, beyond butte ridge and invisible, 300 feet deep! Valley 400 feet below us, marshy from overflow from blue, clear lake, 1 mile across - with wide points of land jutting out like an alligator and a pollywog. Longest basalt beds (this horrid black rock) stretch from Canada to Mexico! Height of canyon impossible to conceive. High ridge once an island. 3 miles across canyon. Floor of canyon full of humps and rounded pillars of black crumbling basalt. Continue thru sage brush rolling country. Road, like many others out west, under construction and frightfully dusty in places. Long ride over choppy rocks (basalt again) dumped over road to be oiled later. Up hill, mainly steep and a grey color, dotted with sage brush. Small ploughed field, 2 horses rolling over with great enthusiasm, raising tremendous clouds of dust. Small chestnut colt having supper; finished, and mother joyfully rolled over in a smoky cloud. Down into Moses Coulee. Broad valley, sage brush bottom with winding road. Could have been Grand Coulee. Black basalt ledges. Views looking back from opposite side as we climbed, again of cliffs, tinted delicate gold and a little spot of rust here and there with lichens. (This explains the colors - 26 in all, we are told Down into Pine Canyon - 2800 feet at top, 800 by time we reached bottom after 6 miles of wandering around curves down the precipitous slopes, mainly yellowish grass, a few pines - but only a few scattered along edge of entering canyon - rocks breaking thru surface of hill in crumbling banks. Continued dry. Finally descended into another canyon. Entered thru long steep valley leading down. Streambed beside us, a little water near the top, none down below; bed thick with small stones and gravel; evidences along rim of great torrential force undercutting bank. River ahead, wide and silver flashing. The Columbia! Valley lands arid, growing sage brush only. Orchards in neat tight rows here and there along banks, irrigated with small channels criss-crossing ground, the water lifted by means of some pumps we didn't see. Cherries already turning scarlet on the branches. Peach and apple trees as well. Drove across bridge into Wenatchee. Stopped earlier at Lincoln Rock - a clear view over the Columbia of a cliff, framed against a valley whose shoulders grow blue as they fall in line beyond each other, that made an astonishingly accurate Lincoln profile. I am waiting now for Stan, who is in a Wenatchee theatre. Nearly 9. Olympic Peninsula Sunday June 4 Canyon of evergreens, almost meeting. Tremendous trees. Walk into woods. Trees 6 feet thru. Ground soft, carpeted so deep in moss, needles, leaves, one wonders how far beneath real earth is. Tall ferns, sometimes waist high. Fallen logs, deep in moss. One stump, 10' high, with garden on top - tiny spruces, wee ferns, another green plant or two. Bending maple, hung with festoons of moss. Look up! Great shafts of trees up and up, nubby moss-rounded stubs like velvety deer prongs, then branches, not wide, green and dark branches - woods wet - we shake off moisture from each small fern and tiny spruce. Color - a grey rather than green. Stop again. Enormous cedar. Long fallen log - garden of small spruces, flowers. Flowers - Solomon’s seal, great pale; a little pink blueberry blossom, white flowerspike, small dogwood, hepatica. Naked snail, 2” long, ivory, fleshy, a few black spots. Woods below cedar - in terraces from fallen logs and branches thick with moss, forest dark and mysterious, damp with rain and fertility and growth. Silent; a bird twitters now and then, otherwise no motion, no sound, but drip-drop of rain drops. No rocks anywhere; humps under moss and ferns part of fallen logs or uprooted stumps. Ground elevated with criss-crossed fallen branches and logs. Walking precarious, one might crash thru rotten wood covered with vegetation. Occasional openings; hideous camps, shacks of slabs, great black stumps everywhere, slash around. Very occasional brooks - clear clear water. Not much slope here, probably too near Pacific level. Logging roads, messy, fallen trees. Burnt-over area; skeletons of cedars raising arms to grey sky. Raining. Road lined with small - 15 feet high - spruce and hemlock, like a hedge. More enjoyable further back, where trees closer to road, keep down edge growth; one can look right back in forest. Cedars again. Look slightly twisted as tho someone turned them half a turn - one looked twisted around 2 or 3 times. Bark seems to strip off after a while; perhaps branches at top aren’t sufficient to support. Quits! River emptying into foggy space - the Pacific at last! River seems to be flowing inland, tide? More untidy cedar woods. Roots upturned, broken dead trees. Fallen branches. Not much hanging moss on trees here. Woods. Cut-valley to Pacific - grey breakers showing crest of foam on beach! Driving along shore, the ocean hidden by a strip of trees and bushes on a higher level. Channels cut by brooks give us triangular views now and then. Water coming in to beach in long waves, white near shore, grey far back. Contemplated swim, but too cold. Fine drizzle, a little later heavy rain. Thru woods, not so large this time. Hoh River, deep, cloudy (most streams very clear). Other rivers a wonderful teal green. Mist thru mountains rising in spirals. Did us no good however. Straits grey, tide out, mud flats across road, pebbley beach. Stan collected 3 shells, 2 fluted and one a queer oyster shell, and lots of real oysters! We tried to open them, contemplated oyster stew, but their smell discouraged us, and we tossed them back in the rising tide. Crescent Lake - a miraculous blue-green like nothing ever seen - the green of firs, the blue of mountain peaks combined into one strange color. Mists rising, trailing little tendrils of white smoke. More open, flat country. Passed smashed up cars along highway. Had one tantalizing view of snow-streaked mountain, its summit veiled in mist. Saw no real peaks in our whole trip! Passed thru edge of [Olympic] National Park, tall trees again. Stopped in Olympia for bread and a quart of milk. Drove back into Seattle. Highway sides golden with broom. Reached Seward Park. Found a fire still in hot coals in an oven, added wood, and had hot cocoa with marshmallows. June 5 Slept soundly in Seward Park under great trees. Awoke, dressed, washed, drove down to P. O. for mail, shopped for meat, fish - haddock, onions, butter, milk, rye bread. Built fire in oven in Woodland Park, took long time to heat, but finally fried potatoes (left over from baking in coals in Spokane) and hamburgers, and bread and butter and milk and grapefruit. Cooked stew of onions, carrots, potatoes, and the haddock for tomorrow’s reheating. Almost dark by this time, so drove to Everett. Dozed in car a while; at midnight Stan went to the union meeting. I slept in the back seat; woke up when Stan returned with 5 silver dollars and a $10 bill! What wealth for a surprise! Seattle June 6 Finished last night in Woodland Park. Dressed as neatly as possible under circumstances - stopped at P. O. to find two letters from Mother and Evelyn. I had an interview at Employment Service with pleasant blond young man, who after being amused and concerned by our camping in Sinbad [our car], ended by inviting us both to the apartment he shared with another man for dinner. Stan was just as glad as I to have a real dinner after our enjoyable but unsatisfactory picnics. We heated our stew in Seward Park at lunch time, and wrote cards and letters afterwards. Had fresh big strawberries! Delicious dinner with John Davis and Jack Pollard (his wife, a book buyer at Frederick and Nelson’s, is in Russia via freighter for the summer). Pollard is slight, baldish, light voice, effervescing enthusiasm - especially for this remarkable state. He wrote a history of it some time ago, and has a lot to say about it - and Chinese theatre and Seattle’s provincialism and the dump that is California and the Swedes of the Svenske Poste. We had lots to eat, with wine, and fresh crushed strawberries over ice cream for desert. Davis and I washed dishes, while Stan and Pollard talked in book-lined study; all admired rich deep-rust Chinese silk coat sent by friends of Pollard’s in China, and ghinko petrified wood specimens (given to Pollard as a historian), and a wee Buddha carved exquisitely, set in a box of teakwood. Suggestions for jobs - companies that may some day hire Stan possibly. Davis is young and fair with a grave interested manner, capable of twisting a phrase as well as Pollard - more of a listener than his companion. All heard music program - deep silence during Ponselle's “Ave Maria,” and Enesco’s “Hungarian Rhapsody.” Davis lives in Walla Walla. We left to go to an operators’ meeting at 12. No luck; meeting began at 12:45, a joint meeting with Tacoma and Portland and they felt time was too short to give Stan a chance to really show the courses. So we drove up to Park to sleep till morning. June 7 Stopped in at Employment Service - pleasant encounters if not much encouragement from Mr. Elliot and John Davis. Drove to Olympia for 1 p.m. meeting - no real interest. Slept from 6 to 11:30 on side road in fragrent woods. I woke up - saw time, woke Stan - and we rushed to Takoma for a 12 p.m. meeting - hall dark; meeting called off because of joint meeting last night in Seattle! Had something to eat, and headed south. Sun came out for a while this afternoon. Aberdeen June 8 Rain, light as we woke up on side road. Heavy most of day. Meeting in Aberdeen. 7 operators bought courses! $35 for us and wealth. Vashon June 9 We are going to an island! Later perhaps we are to pick loganberries - a mysterious berry unknown as yet to us. Sound grey-blue, glassy, scarcely rippled by our ferry. Wooded islands cropping up out of water; steep-sided, level on top. Reached our island. Ring of clouds around horizon. Mt. Rainier! A white smooth crest among the fluffy clouds. Disappears slowly behind clouds. Winding road down among hemlocks, fern-lined glimpse of Sound among trees. Bird songs - woodsy sound. Fresh smell of forests. Stop to read road signs. Song sparrow notes. Wind thru damp woods. Road ends in long narrow wood wharf extending out into water! Turn off on tiny road twisting around fence to shingled house half-hidden by apple trees. Two great white roosters at foot of apple tree in deep grass. Scythe hanging in tree. Stan talking with light-overalled man - yeah! he knows where George Walls lives! Turn here and there.... Evidently George’s brother! Queek! Queek! of some bird. Gambel’s sparrows singing in orchard. Lots of robins. Another island a short distance away across the blue-grey gleaming water. Stopped on the hill before unpainted little house. Stan departed to find out one thing or another. Calm almost summery. Vashon, little treeless town in middle of island. Three Indians in work clothes sitting on steps of corner store. A puffy-faced Indian family walk across street - partly white, judging by brown hair. “The Alibi Restaurant” combined with the “Golden Rule Bakery.” Talk to friendly postman who stopped to talk to us. Mukai berry farm. Great shed with loading platform. Three pleasant women in socks and cotton dresses, and several men in light overalls. Elaborate house, lawn, rock garden, white office. Well-dressed Japanese with white teeth in smile talked to Stan - also lean hunch-shouldered foreman. 200 pickers now, and no one extra needed at all. A big impressive place, nice perhaps? to work there. Decided to go to Portland, getting our mail. Berry picking as far away as Vashon would give us no chance to hunt real jobs in Seattle. Heard clear “Bob White” whistle on hillside. Waiting for ferry, we saw starfish in the greenish water below the wharf. Several more were clinging to barnacle covered piles. Stan - “Look at the fish!” I ran over, looked down into the shallow water. A big gun-metal grey dogfish, almost three feet long, moving slowly and gracefully with a lazy but efficient movement of its tail over pebbly bottom. Interested in queer object, caught it a moment in its underslung mouth, then lost it, described careless circle, returned to object, tried to catch it, missed, swam lazily away, reappearing to try again. We saw suddenly that it was a big fish head, one of three we discovered in the water, cut off and thrown into the water by a fisherman. Another dogfish appeared, managed to catch fish head under its mouth, chewed busily till it lost it - a bad shape with the meat so protected in the gills, for a shark to get his teeth into. Walked on. Tide moving past wharf, dimpling water on west of piers. Wee delicate jelly rings? floating there, twisting with motion of water. Like transparent thin onion rings. Saw more in water shadowed by wharf, tiny filmy things with an outer ring of white jelly and a round spot in the center, seemingly unconnected. Ferry in from Harper. Drove on first. Wind too cool across sound. Ferry large, white, with upper decks to watch view, a restaurant with magazine racks. Sun low over Bainbridge Island. Clouds a faint wide-spread rose, touching water. Like delicate pastel water-color. Glassy water, never breaking, undulating almost imperceptibly, forming dabs of creamy rose like the strokes of a water-color painter. Islands turning darker. Drove along forest-lined highway to Takoma, then to Olympia, finally to Centralia. Late, and both sleepy. Stan parked by highway - I awoke - immense spires of trees pointing up toward stars! Portland June 10 Awoke to a fresh new world, sweet with the smell of forests. A giant Douglas fir rising majestically beside us. Woods wet with dew, long grass, bushes, a tiny brook wandering along beneath overhanging branches and over round dark stones. Sun shining mistily - blue sky overhead! Drove on. Soon out of grove. Much of this west of Cascades country level, rich, well-cultivated. A few groves of evergreens. Farmland, orchards, neat vinyards. Reached Portland at 9:30. Their Rose Festival, held yesterday, still holding town - banners, pictures, etc. Sunshine after all these days of rain and mist! Big stores, lots of theatres, summery-dressed people. Continued south to Salem. While waiting for business agent to come on at 6:00, rested and sun-bathed in woods. Oddly, woods composed of oaks, looking dry and brittle, and ground seems parched. Fields green and prosperous however, on gentle rolling swells. Orchards, hay fields. I shopped for oranges and lettuce and bananas and bread while Stan talked to Business Agent. Picnic supper in car. Drank quart of milk later on court house steps. Handsome new Capital - white, long, with shaft [rotunda?], not like replica of national capital in Olympia. Just new, shining and unplanted. Roses, fat and pink and drooping, lining streets along main park blocks, also holding capital. Drove south. Slept in corner of gravel side road. June 11 Sunlight this morning. Flowers all about us, golden California poppies, blue and a few magenta cornflowers, white daisies. Poison ivy thick around fences and corner bushes. Drove to Eugene. Parked on hill while Stan changed his clothes for impressing operators. Turning hot! Wasted time over Portland newspaper - read ads as usual. Lots of commission salesman jobs - almost nothing else. Found Business Agent off till 6:15, so after hearty boughten dinner, drove off to wide shady campus. Surprised us by being University of Oregon. Slept for hour or so in sunlight. Walked among buildings, heterogeneous collection, spaced widely, beautiful great cedars and a new hemlock of tremendous size, and lavender rhododendrons. Stan talking now in theatre. June 12 Slept last night in wooded corner of road on a hill near Eugene. Poison ivy, crisp shiny leaves, abundant. Breakfast in car. Stan went to meeting, I to library. Stan returned, solemn-faced - but I knew by the secret look that something nice had happened. 7 sets sold! We drove to Corvallis, a hot tree-lined town with leisured tempo - sold one more to a union member. Ice cream to celebrate. Swim - in small delightful pool - comfortable water. Thompsons unambitious - swimming for first time for nearly a year surprisingly strenuous. Lovely setting, great slim firs almost shutting out late summer light. Tanned a bit, big flies bit us. Watched tanned young men dive, splashing us. Supper of spicey spaghetti from Dave’s Pie Shop. Bread and butter, milk, oranges. Drove back to Eugene. Collected our checks, and drove up to Salem. Heard horrific play over radio, about walking mummies and vampires and Prince Ra the devil. Took walk around town. Stan napped a few minutes while I rubbed his head while we waited for operators to meet. I slept while Stan was gone; seems they were interested, but only half turned out for meeting. So no more sets sold yet. Drove on a while. I was painfully sleepy, unable to keep my eyes open. Stan pulled off road to flat space near storage shed. June 13 Awoke hot - sun shining in car along side of highway. Along Columbia for a short distance - wide, slow, dotted with shallow islands. Pleasant country, rolling a little, groves of great firs, mixed forests, towns. Mt. Hood, faint in haze, seen as we left Portland. Soon after - Mt. Rainier, tremendous, rising up and up out of land - streaked with glaciers and blue strips between - looks pointed on top, not as broad as from other viewpoints. Haze forming around it. Mt. Hood still barely discernible in south east. Clouds collecting. Decided not to see Rainier this trip - too long, and cloudy view. Calm ride into Seattle. Firs dark, pointed; landscape levelish, flowered, green. Clouds hiding mountains; at Tacoma we could see a vague and vast pyramid of snow - flanks smaller, also white with glaciers. Summit hidden by drifting clouds. Sun shining, but not especially warm. Ran out of gas, ran into a gas station, filled 15 gallons at 17-9/10 cents. First grade 24-1/2 , 22-1/2 for regular, 20-1/2 for third - what we generally buy. With first (we bought 5 last time to test mileage) car had smoother power, no ping any more. But made only 109 miles, while once with third, made 107. Not worth difference. Rotund grey-haired woman with pug-nose and face crinkling up to smile - filled gas tank. Came over from Ireland at 16, spent 4 years in N.Y.C. That is the grandest city in the world! Stan said we liked this country. Do yuh? surprise. Waiting now in Seattle for Stan at Employment Service. Planning to settle in Seattle now that we have some money ahead. What luxury to have a whole bed to stretch out on (no kinks in our knees in the morning) and a chance to wash our socks and faces every night. I’d love to cook big meals again and wash dishes! Seattle has a large Japanese and Chinese population. We see more Japanese children near the center part of town than white. All laundries are Chinese, all fruit and vegetable stands Japanese. Seattle is built on a series of ridges. Lake Washington lies on one side; we climb a high steep hill, sometimes two if we miss a better road, then descend precipitously to Center and Sound. Cable cars, little dinky red street cars climb the steep hill - too steep for Sinbad to climb except in lowest gear - by means of a cable under the paving. Machinery controlling these cables grumbles and rattles under metal pieces near each corner crossing. Autos are warned that cable cars can’t stop. Tink - tink - tinkle - and with only that jangling alarm, a dusty red cable car pops into view around corner of slanting unpainted (once yellow I believe) store - Victory Grocery - all people attached to it, a delivery truck driver too, have been Japanese. Pipes running down wall in back, a few spots with spindly green plants on side of old orange crate, a dry square for flowers - only a sad iris plant, a few radiant California poppies rise out of its crumbly dryness. Girl in dull bolero black, girdle showing thru, hat consisting of white ribbons and black, a white cloth pompon, high-heeled strapped patent-leather shoes, black bag on arm, intent look on not-fresh complexion. July 4 Drove thru wooded country - rolling, often burnt over, scrubby. [with Jack Pollard and John Davis] Mukilteo. Just missed ferry - pulled out as we rushed into dock, winding road downhill. View of islands in Sound. Steely grey water, slope of Whidby Island wooded, open patches of golden-green fields, tiny white houses, pines reaching slender spires against sky. Gap between islands - sand bank, crowned with evergreens. Ferry returned. We drove on at head of line of cars. Stan and I mounted stairs to decks. Views of purple mountains rising into banks of clouds; only a suggestion of their true height by the broad base. Whidby a pleasant green spot, logged and burned. But second growth sturdy - fir and spruce. Golden fields of blooming mustard, blue-green fields of oats, yellow-green barley acres. Inlets - grey water curving against dark pebbley beaches. Lunch on beach piled with drift wood, old masts washed white and smooth and naked by sea, odds and ends of boards and blocks and logs. Jack made coffee, with advice from John. I buttered pumpernickel slices. We all wore our bathing suits to tan - but too cold for swimming. Sun came thru thin cloud - veil across sky for a while, but not long enough to thoroughly warm the earth. We ate salami and sardine sandwiches, coffee, bananas. No one could find the fig newtons Jack and I packed before leaving. John waded out for a fat sample of kelp, that peculiar plant with one end attached to a stone on the floor of the sea, the other ending in a bulbous roundness, with fronds, dark and slimey, floating in the water and attached to the bulb. Stan practiced cracking the whip with it, its sinuous length whistled thru the air, and wrapped itself around his shoulders. Gathered up our belongings, returned along pebbley beach (my feet were bare, and hot by the time I reached the car.) Drove to Deception Pass. Deception Pass, a rocky channel between Whidby and Fidalgo Islands. Tide rushing through opening, frothing along rock edges. A small island, a sheet of rock on edge, rises in center of pass; the bridge crosses to Fidalgo, using it as a stepping stone. Out toward China - and we could faintly see the outlines of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula end and open shimmering, hazy water (Straits of Juan de Fuca, leading into the Pacific) - a round island floated on the grey water, one side bare of trees, covered with yellowish grass, the rest wooded with tall spruces lifting their slim peaks to the sky. I should like to buy that island, and keep its charm selfishly to myself. Jack says one can buy one of the tiny islands numerous about Whidby, but there’s no water on them, just solid rock. We drove to Fidalgo, parked with countless others in a tremendous grove - ancient cedars, gigantic firs. We walked along the beach where a few were valiantly swimming, but it was entirely too chilly to try the water. We put jackets over our bathing suits, and took an exhilarating walk along the curving beach, up a steep path over a hillcrest covered with fragrant evergreens, down again to a narrow shoal between two bays, up and over another hill. The sea breaks against rocky cliffs, cut back into inlets and small bays - one even had a great window carved out of a great rock on the end of an island almost attached to land - it is by a gravelly stretch separating two narrow arms of water almost meeting around the rocky island. One has to descend by ladder to the runway, then climb a second ladder up to the top of the island. The tide was racing past just below us, undulating in strange patterns, whipping at the long brown arms of the kelp. My island out in the Sound was much closer from here. We climbed a steep path skirting the edge of the cliff, sometimes alarmingly high over a sheer drop to the bay below. Madrona trees shone pinkly against the grass. Junipers and firs made the woods prickly and aromatic. We came down a precipitous trail to the beach at last, sliding and jumping on the wet moss - it was drizzling by this time. Drove on up to Anacortes - a dingy sprawling town around the curve of a lovely harbor. Home again by land, through heavy downpour till Everett - then the glimmerings of a sunset that turned into a glory of color. [Barbara’s job at Al’s Diner] July 5 Gladys wasn’t here today, so I filled in - getting far too rushed with customers coming in steadily, dishes to wash, orders to remember. I mixed up a malt order - which upset Al who insists on the customer being satisfied (no one minded in this case, tho) - I took change properly tho I had a job remembering whose was what. I dropped the crackers into a bowl of soup I was ladling out (and poured the soup down the drain, hoping Al hadn’t observed my mistake). In the afternoon when Al was out, I ordered malts instead of milk shakes for two customers; one accepted the malt, the other didn’t like the malt flavor, so while Susy made her a milk shake, I drank the malt! I was already too full after a hearty dinner, but it was good. Al paid me $.75. I met Stan at the library where he was reading Automotive Engineering. Thursday July 6 Went to hospital in police building for preliminary examination. A slow process with so many others - often thin and grey-faced. Small children, who look thriving, and plump older women. Why should they have tuberculosis? I waited, finally had temperature taken, weight (112-1/2) Friday July 7 Worked hard as usual. Made 40 cents because Gladys left at 1 p.m. Al made one unintelligible remark to me and smiled - I asked him over, surprised to have him seeming pleasant - he said, “Don’t hum while you work.” I was so startled I stopped wiping dishes a minute - evidently I hum quietly quite a bit to keep my spirits up. He is an odd and unpredictable person - talks with a stutter sometimes, jovial and perfect host with customers, a tyrant sometimes with Susy and me, likes Gladys better than us. No call from Sears - a black cloud over our heads. Can it mean the end of Stan’s selling in Sears - our $5 mainstay? July 8 Second Manteau at hospital. First negative. Examined by doctor who thumped and bumped, and decided that all my chest reactions are disappointingly normal. Went to Al’s, where I learned my services are no longer needed even temporarily (to my relief really - tho should I be dismayed that I am not to become Al’s full-fledged waitress after all?) Walked down to Sears - a lovely warm shining day - a long, long walk. Upstairs - so distractingly slow - where was the automotive supplies? And there - what joy and relief. Stan looming above the tables, smiling in an impersonal may I wait on you fashion, showing me flashlights while I tried to look like a customer while my heart jumped up and down - we’ll eat this week! Some mistake about the call - or could it have been ignored by our friends here, Mrs. Quillen being away? I wandered through Sears, taking peeks at Stan around refrigerators and corners, and finally waited in the car for him to join me at 1. He came at last, and we ate up all the lunch I had fixed for him. He gets paid at 6, so he could buy some supper. I drove home, washed clothes, shelled peas in the sun while toasting my legs and arms in unaccustomed sunlight. Stan and Charlie Hausel arrived at 9:30 or so, and we had supper - pot roast, peas, potatoes, and rhubarb - all very filling. Sunday July 9 A day at the races. [?] July 10 Went to hospital for a check. Second positive. I’ll have a final report next week. Tired again. Stopped in high school to find about shorthand classes - have to see principal tomorrow. Evidently I really need mechanical skills before I can achieve any sort of promising job. Mailed Geldmeier’s books and all papers - COD to Chicago - what a load off our minds! July 11 Stopped in University of Washington Employment Office. They have more jobs than the State Employment Office. Stan went down to inquire about a possible job with L. C. Smith typewriter. Early this morning , a special delivery letter from Special Agent Swan - an appointment for Saturday. May or may not mean much, but we are all excited. I saw principal at high school. Unimpressed by my enthusiasm for catching up 3 weeks of work, but told me to appear at 8 tomorrow. Left car at Studebaker place. How we shall miss it. [traded for new Studebaker, to be delivered later] July 12 Arrived at high school, sent up to class with note. Young teacher gave me book. I am now to apply myself to master this intricate scribbling. Washed clothes on return. Sat in sunlight and typed in backyard. Stan has a possible job perhaps, perhaps with L. C. Smith! Learn more later. July 13 I have joined the ranks of schoolchildren again. This shorthand business is something of a problem. Logical, wise, but scrawls and scribbles to me. I pressed Stan’s shirts and my skirt which I washed yesterday. I don’t seem to be much of a housewife. Stan came home - a nibble! In fact, a job maybe - the L. C. Smith fellow here has to send in to his boss in Syracuse to make sure it’s all right to hire a married man. We’ll know Monday or so. Great rejoicings in our family. July 14 Stan stayed home and mainly looked after me. He accompanied me to class this morning (Jack’s alarm clock, which we have been borrowing lately turned out to be 20 minutes late, so we had to race, arriving at school just after the bell, but before the teacher had opened proceedings.) The rush was not good for me, so off to bed I had to go on our return, and recuperate. My medicine tastes awful. There’s an inflamation somewhere, the King County Hospital doctor informed me Monday, possibly in my kidney or vicinity. Stan enjoyed the class. The teacher gave him a book, and he started studying Lesson No. 1. Afterwards we talked with the teacher, a pleasant young man greatly skilled in not only shorthand but typing, bookkeeping and accounting! Why didn’t someone insist on my learning at least two skills well in high school? My typing is very mediocre. Stan fixed us delicious dinners - hamburger with carrots and potatoes, and hot cocoa with marshmallows floating in it. A luxurious day in bed, mainly studying. July 15 Stan had his interview with Swan of the FBI this morning. Thence to Sears. So I shan’t know till tonight whether the interview was discouraging or hopeful. I have been studying shorthand rapidly though not thoroughly. I want to catch up with the class in general, then review intensively the preceding material to consolidate my gains. My typing is far from marketable; will I be able by fall to be a real secretary? Stan looked grave and handsome as he left with his suit so grandly pressed (by him) and the clean tan shirt (which I pressed, and which has shrunk alas when I washed it) and Simonized shoes and our last $.22. All we have now are two milk bottles worth 3 cents each. It was pouring this morning when Stan left, grim and neat - if only this FBI affair materializes into something! The sun is shining this afternoon. Even my mountains lift white and streaked crags through the shrouding straggles of clouds. I tried to sleep, but plans of our future chased each other too industriously for me to take a nap. [End of Barbara’s diary notes] We arrived in Seattle, and decided to stay. We sent Geldmeier his left-over courses, the money we owed him, and our resignation. We found a small house, $12.50 a month rent, and shared it carefully with a skunk which lived underneath. Times were not good in Seattle in 1939. We were poor, and down but not out. Most everyone we met was down, and many were out. We both had college degrees which were useful mostly as calling cards to people who might help us. Groups of people collected on downtown street corners were harrangued by speakers lambasting the economic injustice of their situation. “What this country needs is a war to make jobs for people.” We found that most of the jobs which might otherwise have been available to us were tightly held by the union, and we couldn’t join the union because we didn’t have a job. For a time we made our living cleaning windows in a new housing development, borrowing ladders for the purpose. I found a job, for which I used Geldmeier as one reference, repairing L. C. Smith typewriters at the local typewriter agency. My first engineering job? My main memory of the L. C. Smith typewriter of that time was that each of the striking arms was mounted on many tiny ball bearings which fell out and disappeared if one was careless in disassembly. One day I was called into the boss’ office, where I was confronted by a letter from Geldmeier claiming that we had cheated him, having retained our commission from the amount we sent him. After I explained the situation, my boss crumpled the letter and tossed it into the waste basket, exclaiming, “That man should have his throat cut!” But what about engineering? Was the L. C. Smith typewriter our future? © Copyright 1996 by A. Stanley Thompson, Eugene, Oregon My Life in the Twentieth Century By A. Stanley Thompson Introduction Chapter 1 - A place in Time Chapter 2 - Education Chapter 3 - Engineering Chapter 4 - Where East Meets West Chapter 5 - Washington, DC Chapter 6 - Cabinhill Tree Farm Chapter 7 - Eugene Chapter 8 - Retrospective © Spencer Creek Press, West By Northwest 2000-2002 All Rights Reserved unless otherwise noted. The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily the opinions of the publisher and/or sponsors. publisher@westbynorthwest.org webmaster@westbynorthwest.org West by Northwest Spencer Creek Press PO Box 51251 Eugene OR 97405 West By Northwest Voices of Peace, Volume V Dr. Andreas Toupadakis' Notebook W.H. Auden's poem September 1, 1939 Sam Smith of the Progressive Review writes Nobody Left But Us Robert Jenson explains why extraordinary Corporate Power Is the Enemy of Our Democracy DynCorp is Something to Watch Norman Solomon on New Media Heights For A Remarkable Pundit, Pentagon's Silver Lining May Be Bigger Than Cloud, and Six Months Later, The Basic Tool Is Language Patrick Morris, actor and director writing on the theatre's Hourglass Challenge Marvelous Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival World Choral Music Photographer and web designer Stephen Voss Stephanie Korschun's Insect Drawings, a class apart. That Photo Guy, Barbara S. Thompson's My Life chronicles a journey of courage by a real story teller, Chapter 3. Mary Zemke of Stop Cogentrix says "Standing tall - Opposition floods the proposed Grizzly Power Plant." Norman Maxwell writes to the Editor - a Summary of the Fire Road Preservation Struggle. Patricia Frank tackles Spring Cleaning the Closet. Lois Barton's Sunnyside of Spencer Butte finds the Heron Rookery. M.G. Hudson's Spencer Creek Journal remembers Laddie and the baby goats as the war on terrorism affects Spencer Creek Valley Ryan Ramon's Life on the 45th Parallel, Rain & Ramallah. WxNW.org Web-Wise Links DEN, from Defenders of Wildlife. Archive Early Spring 2002 Winter 2001-2002 Fall 2001 Late Summer 2001 Summer 2001 Late Spring 2001 Early Spring 2001 Winter 2000-01 Fall 2000 Late Summer 2000 Summer 2000 Spring 2000