FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA January 19, 2004 By 9:45 A.M. on June 28, 1951, we had our new 1951(?) gray and pink Chevy or Ford car packed up and ready to head cross-country from Youngstown, New York (north of Niagara Falls) to Spokane, Washington, where my father was waiting for us to move in with him in a nice house he had rented for the five of us-Mother, Daddy, Johnny (age ten), me (age nineteen) and my then husband Ric. Daddy had recently accepted the position of General Superintendent of Montana Ferro Alloys, Inc. located in Spokane. Just picture it as a steel mill. Mother, Ric and I had already packed up all of our household goods and furniture and the moving van was going to pick all of it later that day. Note: we packed the fragile dishes, glassware, etc. in wooden barrels. Mother's friend Irene Randall would stay at our house until everything was loaded up and emptied out. After waving goodbye to Irene we set off on our 3,407-mile-journey. I kept a brief journal of our trip and I had jotted down that odometer showed we had 1,629 miles on the car. Five hours later we crossed the New York border into Pennsylvania. Two hours later we crossed the Pennsylvania boarder into Ohio. Four hours later we stopped overnight in the Sunnyside Cabins between Lorain and Vermillion, Ohio. Trust me, those cabins were so rustic they were almost primitive, but they did have indoor plumbing. June 29 1951. The next day we crossed the boarder between Ohio into Indiana. In my trip journal I made the notation, "Stopped at Logansport, Indiana, for the car's 2,000 mile checkup. We shopped around for two hours and I noticed we were starting to hear a Western drawl!" Just over two hours later we crossed into Illinois and stopped at Bates AAA Motel in New Berlin, Illinois. Note: motels that we had in the early 1950s didn't even come close to the motels that we have now, but the Bates Motel beds were much, much less lumpy than those at the Sunnyside Cabins! I must make comment about the scenery along the way so far. Since there were no thruways at the time, we drove the two-lane state or county roads and the scenery was truly beautiful. The green rolling hills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were almost breathtaking at the time. The farmlands, the small towns and the roadside Burma Shave signs kept our attention. June 30, 1951. We crossed the Mississippi River into Hannibal, Missouri. We stopped the car and took pictures of the river. None of us had ever seen it before. On the whole, it wasn't a wide river at the time and not that impressive, but we all stood and looked at in wonder. The muddy Mississippi River! Wow! We then crossed the Missouri River outside St. Joseph, Missouri, going into Kansas. We noticed a few very badly flooded fields around there but as we kept driving through Kansas in the area of Laurence, Kansas, we saw the most marvelous fields of corn and wheat. We even stopped to take a picture of three cute mules just standing there watching the passing parade. Outside Topeka a detour sign stopped us because of the flooded road ahead. The man in charge of the detour directed us to the only road open to Colorado Springs, Colorado, 100 miles out of our way. There were a couple other cars stopped there also and we got out of cars and discussed the situation. But what we didn't expect was when a Mrs. Miller introduced herself. She was a friendly perfect stranger but when she said she lived in the small town of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, our mouths dropped open! Bridgeville was where we had lived back in the early 1930s! What a unique "coincidence" in the middle of Kansas! We stopped for the night at Schmidt's Motel in the very small town of Baileyville, Kansas. I'll never forget where we dined out that evening. It was the only place in town, a general store!!! vee