DAD’S LOVE AFFAIR

Dad always had the wanderlust. When he was 20, he left his hometown of Kearney, Missouri, determined to realize his dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean. Why the Pacific and not the Atlantic remains a small mystery. Perhaps the romantic West drew him more than the long-settled East Coast.

He set out in May of 1934, in the grinding depths of the Depression, and returned less than a month later, thanks to a mysterious letter he received from Mom which caused him to turn around and head home, just short of his first look at the Pacific.

During his journey West, he wrote Mom faithfully, and she apparently wrote him just as regularly in care of General Delivery as he progressed, although we don’t have her letters, just Dad's, which she saved. His letters reveal little of the actual happenings on his hitchhiking trek but do reflect his deep love for Mom, whom he addresses almost invariably as, “Sweetness.” Although those were different times and traveling was safer then, there must have been many unpleasant aspects of the trip Dad felt best to keep from Mom, but I would give anything to know more details about his journey.

The first or second night he slept in a cemetery. Another time he mentions sleeping in a park. He even considered a jail. Reflecting upon how fastidious my father always was, sleeping accommodations alone must have caused him great discomfort. A letter mailed from Colorado tells of staying a night in a transient camp in Denver, where they gave “bums” meals. They could stay a week for ninety cents. If they stayed longer, they had to go to work for the camp. Dad ate only a third of his supper, so the food may not have been too appealing. He had to take a shower, during which his clothes were taken away and sterilized. He commented on the nice beds, with clean sheets and blankets.

Dad made good time on his trip. He first headed to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he worked for $1.50 a day, paying board while staying with relatives of his father's. He stayed about a week, and then was off again, eager to get to California. At one point, when urged to stay another night, he declined because, “My feet were just itching.”

He seems to have been lucky in catching rides, but did mention walking ten miles in one day. By June first, he was in California, the first state he had liked since he left home.

There was undoubtedly a lot of time to dream about a future with Mom, and it is obvious he would have liked to share the journey with her. He couldn't begin to describe the mountains of the West and wrote, “I just have to bring you out to see them when we get rich.” Another time, he wanted to bring her to see the country, “in a fine way.”

It is clear from the letters that both had agreed to date others, and one letter even describes one such date of Dad’s, where he expressed no desire even to kiss the other girl. However, when “Sweetness” dated some other young man, and reported on it, Dad, nearly in sight of the Pacific, cut short his trip, turned around, and headed home. He must have taken a train straight home from Los Angeles with funds he had set aside for emergencies. There were no more letters, but our folks obviously worked things out, as they were married less than six months later.

Weddings were simple in the Depression, but Mom was always proud that, in her little town, she was given three wedding showers. She kept a list of every gift and the donor. Her grandpa gave her a hog. Some of those gifts were passed down to family members later on. Each granddaughter received a sugar bowl and creamer. The hog’s fate is unclear.

My parents had a small wedding. They drove to Liberty and were married by Doctor Hester, a noted Southern Baptist minister, at William Jewell College.

Dad was late picking up Mom for the trip, as he had to do all his farm chores before he could get married. There was never a possibility of a honeymoon, in those hard times.

The next day, Thanksgiving, was celebrated with Mom’s side of the family, and the newlyweds posed for their wedding pictures at that feast. Dad is wearing his blue suit and Mom her cream colored wedding dress. Pictures show a shy, virginal couple, not even bold enough to hold hands.

It’s a sweet picture, both of them looking so happy and innocent, standing stiffly side by side. It must have been a difficult day for them, facing all Mom’s relatives and an uncertain future…except that Dad still had his dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean.

In just a few years, World War II put an end to the Great Depression, creating jobs for everyone, but things which had not been available before because of the lack of money were now unavailable because of rationing. Tires and sugar, gasoline and shoes, butter and eggs—all were rationed.

In 1944, Dad finally persuaded Mom to come to California. They were barely in their 30's and had four children by then. After four births and one miscarriage in seven years, they decided there would be no more children. In later years Dad would say, “I wouldn't take a million for the kids I've got, but I wouldn't give a nickel for another one.”

Mom was terrified and yet excited about leaving Kearney. She would be leaving her entire family, while Dad's family had been moving to California little by little. We traveled with Dad's parents, and his identical twin brother Ray would come last of all with his wife and two children.

The only way Dad talked Mom into coming was to promise her that if she tried it for six months and didn't like it, we would return to Missouri. In six months, San Diego had become home, and we stayed. Our folks eventually bought a home overlooking San Diego Harbor and beyond, Dad's beloved Pacific Ocean, where they lived the rest of their lives.

Dad never lost his love of travel, and nearly every summer we would drive back to Missouri, to visit Mom's family. Dad saved up all year for those trips, a coin at a time, dropped lovingly and carefully into a battered coffee can. Each year we would take a different route to and from Missouri, and each time we saw more of the free attractions of this country—Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, Navajo women tending sheep in their bright velvet skirts, countless exhibits of roadside oddities, even the forebidding entrance to San Quentin. Our long-suffering relatives always welcomed us with open arms and later sent us back home to California fortified with “to-go” packages filled with wonderful Missouri cooking.

Years later, after our parents died, as we four kids were going through our parents' keepsakes, we came across some interesting items. Mom had kept their wedding clothes, so small they looked like dress-up clothes for children. Her dress had been dyed, so that its usefulness could be extended, where a wedding dress would only have had limited use. In a small blue suede packet was Mom's original gold wedding band. A small note tucked away with it said the band cost $8.00. Engraved inside was “Sweetness.” And finally, there were the ration stamps—dated several months before we left for California—stamps good toward 250 gallons of gas. Proof of Dad's good faith in promising we could return to Missouri if Mom didn't like it here.