(1944) The Trip Home
Harvey was released, and we drove down the coast and on over and down through Mississippi and through the rest of Tennessee and on into Alabama and Georgia and ended up in Florida, and spent the night at Pensacola. We nearly froze to death there. We couldn’t get a room; everything was full so we had to sleep in the car. We spent most of the night running around in the car to keep warm. Then we came across the South. We went through Mobile, Alabama and Gulf Port, Mississippi and Biloxi and on over into Louisiana. We went across the Seven Mile Bridge down in Mobile Alabama. Anyway, there’s a seven mile bridge there across the bayou. You can’t stop on it. If you get a flat tire you just have to drive right on through, because they wouldn’t let you stop on the bridge then, they do now, maybe.
We had a funny experience in New Orleans; I’ll have to relate it. We got on the wrong road, I was driving and Harvey was asleep. So we got up there quite a ways and decided we were on the wrong road. So I thought well, (I could see the coast highway) I’ll just cut over and go through there so I was heading across there, it was all level land, all of a sudden right there in front of us was a deep drainage ditch and I was just able to turn the car in time to miss going in it. So then we had to go clear back where we’d started and get on the right road and then go on into New Orleans. It’s a lot like repentance, you have to realize you’re wrong and then go back and start over. We had a wonderful time in New Orleans and also in Mobile Alabama. We spent a day or two in New Orleans and then went from there over through Texas. We entered Texas at Orange and we stopped off at Beaumont and Fort Worth and went down to Lubbock and over to San Antonio. We spent a whole week there. We didn’t intend to, but we stopped there on a Saturday night and they were having a dance at the church. We just happened to pass the church as we were driving through. So we went in and had a nice evening and then the Branch President, Brother Turley, invited us to stay at his house and so we stayed there for a week. Every time we started to leave they’d say, “Well can’t you stay a little longer”, and we were only to glad to, because she was a good cook and we were enjoying everything. It was a funny thing because a couple of the people that I had known at college, Velma Dalton and Dale Dunn, they had gotten married and he was there in the service so we had quite an interesting evening. We went out to the Alamo and went on the river. Oh, we had a big time. We went to church and I had a interesting experience because we attended the Spanish Branch and the bass for their quartet didn’t show up that night so they asked me if I would fill in. Well, I didn’t know Spanish but I knew the tune so I was able to makeshift and it worked out alright.
We left San Antonio and went up to El Paso and then I had friends in Deming New Mexico, the Crandall’s from Rexburg Idaho. He was there in the army and I knew his wife, so we stayed the night with them and had a wonderful time. We went on across to Lordsburg and there was a bad blizzard. We had a funny thing happen on the way there. They have dips in the highway, for the water to run over and we were driving along not thinking and it had filled up with snow and we drove into that and there was no bottom, we had a hard time getting out but we got through and went onto Lordsburg and Albuquerque. We went from Albuquerque to Phoenix Arizona where I had friends and we stopped and we spent a week there in Phoenix and went to the Mesa Temple and I’d been writing to a girl in Phoenix by the name of Jean Ward, so I, of course, had to go see her but she had a boy friend with her that night so I didn’t pursue that.
We got down to Mesa and wanted to go through the Mesa Temple. We wanted to go through every temple on the way home. We had planned on getting recommends (You had to have a recommend for each of the temples then). So we planned on going through every temple on the way home. Well, Harvey was able to get his because he had been by the Mission President, but I called my mission President and I had to come into Chicago to get mine and it was quite a ways from Detroit and it was during the Christmas season and he wasn’t able to be there (the President wasn’t) and I’d have to wait awhile for him to come back, and so I went and didn’t have my recommend. That was before we went to the Mesa temple. So we were walking down the street and ran into Joseph F. Merrill, he didn’t know me from Adam. I told him my plight and he said, “Oh my daughter lives right here, we’ll fix that”, so he went in and without even asking me, or questioning me or anything he wrote me out a recommend for the Mesa Temple, the St. George Temple and the Manti Temple and he said that I could get my own when I got to Salt Lake so that’s what we did and we went through the temples as we came north.
While I was in Mesa, we ran into Grant Moon, whom I’d gone to college with. He was just getting off his mission. So he fastened onto us and we brought him along with us. We went through St. George and on up to Manti. And my Uncle James and his wife officiated in the Manti Temple. So they invited us over to their place and we spent the night there and had a lot of fun. And we went from there up to Salt Lake and got our release and got our temple recommend and went to the Salt Lake Temple and then on up to Logan. Grant Moon was from Malad, so we dropped him off at Malad and came on home. We got home the last of March, just in time to start cutting potatoes.
