Pampa, Texas & Grandparents

Pampa, Texas, the First Time
It was in the last part of my third year that we moved from Albuquerque to Pampa, Texas. Pampa is a small town in the Texas Panhandle about sixty miles from Amarillo. My grandmother and her boyfriend were living there, and my dad was being transferred from Kirtland Air Force Base to Alconbury Air Force Base in England. Mother and I couldn’t go. Mother had miscarried a couple of times after I was born and was pregnant with my sister. She and Daddy were afraid she would miscarry again. Or that is the story I remember. There was also the part about we would have to go by ship instead of plane, and it is possible Mother didn’t want to be on a ship from the east coast all the way to England. Maybe she was afraid to get that far from Texas and New Mexico where she had always lived. As I got older I had the thought that maybe Daddy just didn’t want us to go. I don’t know which was the true reason why we didn’t go to England but stayed in Pampa near to where Gram was living.
I have found an address for then on postcard, and on a get well card to me written to Mother by Daddy from England – 203 Sunset Dr, Pampa Texas. There is a blurred APO address on the envelope for the card but it has a New Jersey address instead of where he was in England. The envelope is post marked Mar 1956
I also have a postcard sent by Gram to Raymond Williams at P.O. Box 1961, Pampa, Texas and postmarked Aug 1954 from El Cajon, Ca talking about how the baby is doing fine. I assume Gram went out to Ca to see Auntie Elnora when she had one of her babies. Probably Bruce. I think Jerry was a year younger than me which would mean he was born in 1952 so my cousin Bruce would have been born about 1954.
I said my grandmother and her boyfriend in the preceding paragraph and that sounds so odd as Grams boyfriend was to become my grandfather whom we called Papa. Not long after we moved there Gram, Alma Coe Green, married Grover Raymond Williams. I don’t remember the wedding but there are photos of them outside the church afterward. It was a small wedding as it was a second wedding for both of them and was held in the Church of Christ church in Pampa.
I remember Papa was only about 6 feet. On the Green side of the family the men were all 6’ or over. Gram’s first husband Boyd Green was 6’2” and was the shortest in his family. My dad was also about 6’, but was a bit taller than his dad and his brothers. Papa like Grandpa Barnett was kind of heavy set. Not fat, or at least not at first, but stocky and strong. Maybe about 200 pounds. Where as Daddy was about 175 pounds in his prime. In some ways Papa was the teddy bear type of man. The kind you just was sure was there for you to snuggle up to and hug, and would keep you safe. He was born Grover Raymond Williams and always called Raymond. He was born September 3, 1905 and died June 1967.
They lived just outside of town on an acre of land that had what was called a shotgun house on it. Another words if you went in the front door you can see straight down the hall to the backdoor. There was a living room, and bedroom on one side of the hall, and another bedroom and a bathroom and a large kitchen/dining room on the other side of the hall. With a lot of remodeling it was to be their home for about the next fifteen years, and the place we spent most of our vacations. First Papa built a large livingroom with a huge picture window on the so called front of the house. Then he turned the original livingroom into his and Gram’s bedroom. On the front of the new livingroom he added a front porch with a roof and a two seater swing. Eventually one end would be covered with a huge vine. I don’t remember what kind. Now on the other end of the house he built another roofed porch, but this one was screened in so that it became the place where everyone gathered. There was a table, several chairs and eventually a double bed in one end. Since the kitchen and the master bedroom were right next to the porch there was a window from each room to the porch where we passed things back and forth. Especially food from the kitchen to the table. Finally in later years Papa built a patio on the other wall from the kitchen but since there was no door leading directly from the house to the patio it was a lot more difficult to use. It, too, was roofed and screened in. One great memory which Mother got on movie film was when we and Mother’s sister Wanda and her family were there at the same time. Aunt Wanda and Uncle Dale had three children, my cousins Denise, Dana, and Diana. At that time Dana was about six months old or so, anyway not walking yet. We were totally enchanted with our little boy cousin. In the movie film piece we were all eating watermelon on the patio and Dale was feeding it to Dana who had never had any before and loved it. He was so cute trying to get more and more from his dad.
Since Gram and Papa lived in a area of the country where there could be frequent tornados, Papa decided to dig a storm cellar in the middle of the garden area just about 25 feet from the back door. When he dug it was when we were still living in Pampa while Daddy was in England. I remember watching him go up and down and up and down the ladder as he hand dug all the dirt and carried it all to the top. I would guess that the cellar room was about 15 feet by 15 feet and almost round. While he was digging it he frequently found what he called mud puppies. I think they were a kind of salamander. Papa kept calling them puppies and as a small child I kept expecting a real puppy, only they were these ugly little lizards like things that I was afraid of. He didn’t insist that I play with them but I think he had thought that I should like to. At one point in the digging of the cellar Papa fell from the ladder and broke his arm. The digging got put on hold for a while but eventually it was finished with a wooden roof over the room hole and then he piled all the dirt he had dug out onto the roof. They planted flowers on it but it seemed only weeds would grow there even though Gram always had lots of flowers in her yard. The cellar was filled with a couple of cots, and a port-a-potty, as well as all kinds of emergency food rations, water, first aide kit, even a gas camp stove, and books and magazines. It was never used for any kind of an emergency like a tornado but was used for storage of all kinds of things, especially all the jars of canned stuff from the garden. Papa always seemed to think that us kids would enjoy sleeping down there when we came to visit. But I don’t think we ever did spend a night in it. It was a bit to damp and creepy feeling for us to sleep in.
We did sleep on the screened in back porch. In his later years Papa became quite ill with empasima and asthma. I believe he had a week heart, too. He and Gram spent many a day and night on the porch in the summer. It was fairly weather proof from the occasional rain, and usually cooler than the house. I believe a TV was placed out there. I know us kids loved to play out there and Papa enjoyed having us out there with him after he got sick. It is some of my fondest memories of the man who adopted us as his grandchildren. He was the best of grandpa’s. I have a two seater glider swing that is very similar to the one that sat in Gram and Papa’s backyard. I spent many an hour on it listening to Papa tell stories, and wish I could remember them. And more hours reading books in that little green swing. I also use the same cane to help me walk that was Papa’s when he was sick. For long years after his death I really didn’t think much about him but lately using his cane I have been thinking more about him. I can hope that he is with me now. I know that a lot of what I have written was long forgotten until I started writing this story of my life history. Maybe he is helping me to remember. I wish I knew more of his history before he married my grandma.
For three girls who adored their Gram and Papa is was a wonderful place if a bit boring at times. And as a three year old I quickly learned to love this man who was to be my adopted grandfather. Remember my real granddad had died a few months before I was born. Yes, I did have another set of grandparents but at this time I didn’t know them. Daddy’s family lived in Cortez, Colorado and I had only been there a time or two. And when Daddy went to England it made more since for us to be near Mother’s mom.
Papa had lost a thumb in some kind of a machinery accident many years before and one of my favorite first memories of him is the game he played with me of pretending to hide his thumb in his hand and then having it disappear. Now it might be considered a bit of an odd game for a man to have with a little girl but at that time I thought it was so funny. I did ask lots of times if it hurt and he always assured me that it didn’t.
It is a bit odd what some of the names are that children end up calling their grandparents. It was while we were living in Pampa that the question of what I would call my grandparents came up. Mother’s mother wanted me to call her Grandmother. Mother said that was too much of a mouthful for a small kid to say. Mother wanted me to call my grandmother Granny as she had called both of her grandmas. Gram didn’t want to be called Granny or Grandma. Said she wasn’t old enough to be one. For some reason I wanted to call her Gram. I don’t remember why. I guess all those G names got to me, so I just shortened them to Gram. My cousins never called her Gram they always said Grandmother.
As for Papa. Well he wasn’t my real grandpa which is what I called Daddy’s dad, and his mother was called Grandma. Gram didn’t want me to call him Granddad as she seemed to think that named was reserved strictly for her first husband who was my real blood grandparent. Again it seemed to be my idea to call him Papa. Not sure why. Years later my dad didn’t seem to really want to be called grandpa and my son and my sister’s kids quickly picked up calling my dad Papa. My son, Dustin, did call my mother Grandma but some how my sisters three children picked up calling my mom, MeMe.
Papa loved children. He had a daughter by his first wife but I have no idea what her name was or what may have happened to her. I do remember that she was born without much of a right hand. When I remember her she was a young woman with a newborn baby. She never let her lack of a hand interfere with her life. I remember watching her put a clean diaper on her baby and wondered how she could do it so well with only her left hand and a stump on her right.
Gram was always proud of the fact that Papa was a good part Choctaw Indian, although I have no proof of it. Papa didn’t seem so impressed with his heritage. He didn’t know how to speak Choctaw or anything about the culture. All of which is a shame as my sisters and I would have been more than willing to lean about it. As it was he did his best to teach me and later my sisters a lot of what he did know. He wanted to teach me how to box as he had done some when he was younger but my mother didn’t like that idea at all, so it didn’t go very far.
Papa didn’t read very well when he met Gram. She taught him how and the two of them would read a lot of books together. Mostly they were nonfiction books, animals being one of their favorite subjects, as well as travel.
It was about this time that they got a black dog that was probably mostly dachshund. Papa named her Weenie as dashhounds are commonly called weenie dogs after the hotdog sausages. Weenie was never spaded, it was usually wasn’t done back then, and she seemed to always have a litter of puppies but they never seemed to have any trouble finding a home for them, although I was never allowed to have one. I’ve no idea why.
In our family having and knowing how to shoot a gun was learned at a young age. Papa started my education with guns at this time. The house was about a hundred yards from the garage which was a large barn-like building that could have held at least four cars. It was used mostly for storage. Gram and Papa didn’t ever clean the place properly, in fact we were never allowed to play in there and it was rather spooky, being dark and full of spiders, and rats. Frequently Papa and I would sit at the back door of the house and wait for the big sewer-type rats to come out. When one would come out Papa would shoot it with a small rifle he had. Probably a .22 caliber. Again it is something that wouldn’t be regarded as something for a grandpa to teach his granddaughter but I guess Mother and Gram allowed it. They needed to get rid of the rats and hunting had been one of my real Granddad’s favorite things to do. Papa was more into fishing than hunting.
It had been on Granddad Greens last hunting trip that Mother had decided she was pregnant with me, as she kept having morning sickness while they were gone. Hunting was considered important to the family as a deer meant that the family would have meat for the winter. My dad was raised the same way and he went hunting every fall that he could all his life. Later, by chance, I married a man, Lee Borror, who felt the same way. It was on an elk hunting trip that I got pregnant with our son, Dustin. But by the time Dustin was old enough to lean to hunt Lee had pretty much quite. Dustin did lean all about guns and how to handle them properly but doesn’t hunt.
Papa worked for the oil company Philips Dodge. His job was to sit in a small building near several huge oil tanks and keep an eye on the level of the oil in the tanks. I am reminded of those tanks by the big water tanks that we have here on the desert near my home that supply water to Rio Rancho. Of course my memories are enhanced by the photos I have and the stories I remember from Papa, Gram, Mother and Daddy. I believe Papa had to climb up the small ladders on the outsides of the tanks and take a reading of the gages on them every so often. There was what seemed like a large lawn at the small office type building near the oil tanks. On Easter Papa had to work, so Gram drove Mother and I and a big Easter basket with lots of eggs I had helped to dye the day before, to where Papa worked. If I am remembering correctly Papa had had very little experience in celebrated Easter either in the church or with a child with eggs, baskets and all the goodies. He quickly got into the excitement and enjoyed hiding the eggs and helping me find them. There are some great old black and white photos of us doing this.
The idea of Easter eggs and hunting them was to become a big deal in my family. Mother would tell us how her dad, Granddad Green loved hunting eggs, too. Each Easter when she was growing up they dyed eggs, (I guess people have been doing it for some time, and before there were commercial dyes they used homemade dyes) and on Easter, after going to church, they would go on a picnic where the eggs would be hidden and hunted. Granddad liked to hunt better than hide the eggs and he enjoyed dying them. My mom and dad let this family tradition continue as my sisters and I grew up. As I became a teenager and thought that I was a bit old for this my sisters would get perturbed with me as Mother wouldn’t let them hunt for the eggs the first time until I got up. Sarah is about five years younger than I am and Jan is seven years younger than me. Not wanting to upset my younger sisters overly I would eventfully get up and help them hunt eggs.
Frequently we would get small stuffed animals in our Easter basket when we lived on Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. When I was about nine I got upset because my sisters had several teddy bears and I didn’t. Why I should have been so upset over this I don’t remember. So I had hinted that I wanted one for Easter as I had let my mom know that there wasn’t an Easter Bunny. I don’t remember what I did get but it wasn’t a teddy bear. I never asked for one again and never got one. I did make sure that my son had several although he could care less now and I have them.
Two years at Easter we lived on McDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. We had a small upstairs apartment and knew we couldn’t hide and hunt eggs outside as all the neighborhood kids would want to find our eggs and it would be a mess. So we hid them in the house as we had done in previous years when the weather was bad. It was these two years that my sister, Jan, really got into the egg hunt. I would have been about 12 so she was about 5. I remember spending many hours before and after Easter hiding eggs for her and Sarah to find. I was bored anyway and it kept them happy for a little while in that dinky little apartment. It was during that time that Jan learned to hide plastic eggs in mine, and other people’s beds. She says that she wouldn’t have done it if Mother hadn’t encouraged her to do it. So actually it is Mother’s fault. Shows you what a weird family I came from.
I left home when I was 18 for the Navy and married Lee when I was 19. We had only been married about a year the first time we went to see my parents and sisters. Of course I never thought to tell Lee about the Easter Egg jokes. So when we went to bed that first night there were, naturally enough, plastic eggs in our bed. As you can guess he didn’t know what to think about this strange family tradition. Jan said she was scared that he would be mad but she, Sarah, and Mother decided to hide the eggs anyway. Lee was sent off to Hawaii and after a few months I joined him for another few months until his ship left there for ports west like Hong Kong, Singapore and Viet Nam. So I had to return to my parent’s home. I got there fairly late at night and had to walk from the bus station home, about a mile, as Daddy was working and Mother had never learned to drive. As I crawled into bed I was very tired and missing my husband very much. But there was something strange in my bed. Round, hard lumps. I pulled one out. It was a plastic Easter egg. And it was late August. Plastic Easter eggs had been a wonderful addition to the egg hunts and we always had several bags of them around. Now I found them stashed in my bed and all around the camp trailer I was to use as a bedroom while Lee was gone. I was disgusted, I was upset, I was mad at my sisters and at my mom for allowing them to do this, and at the same time it was all I could do to keep from laughing and laughing which I finally allowed my self to do after several long minutes of screaming and yelling at my obnoxious family. So started the plastic egg game. To this day I can expect to find plastic eggs hid around my house after Jan comes to see me for a visit. I live in New Mexico, and she lives in Oregon. Last year when I went to Oregon to help her after she had foot surgery she got my niece, Cyndi, to hide eggs in her, Cyndi’s, bed that I was to use while I was there. Of course I hid eggs all over her house, about 25 or 30 of them before I left. I knew she would be living in the downstairs for several weeks after I left due to her surgery before she would even be able to go upstairs to her bedroom. As I didn’t count the eggs I am not sure she has ever found all of them.
Back to being a four year old.
While we lived in Pampa Papa’s father lived with him and Gram. I just remember him being called Dad Williams. He seemed tall and skinny compared to Papa who was only about six feet tall, and stocky build and a bit on the flabby side. A real teddy bear type of man who I loved dearly but I was afraid of his dad. Dad Williams was always trying to get me to like him. He was always giving me pennies, or nickels or dimes or sometimes a pretty rock or flower from Gram’s garden. I always wanted the little gifts but didn’t want to take them from him. He always smelled bad to me. I believe he didn’t bath very often, and smelled heavy of cigarettes. My dad smoked a pipe, and so did Papa but didn’t smell like Mr. Williams did. He died in 1961. I don’t know what kind of medical problems he might have had then but there were some. I don’t know what he did as a young man but I remember that he had been a security guard of some kind in his later years. Well after I left home my dad gave me a Smith & Wesson .38 pistol that Mother had inherited from Gram that had belonged to Dad Williams. Daddy said that he thought that the old man had bought the gun at a pawn shop when he became a security guard as he had to supply his own gun and couldn’t afford to buy a better one. The gun has white handle grips that may or may not be real ivory. I am sure the gun is now fairly old.
I did find a small newspaper article that Gram probably sent to Mother on the death of Dad Williams. It listed him as John Riley Williams, 84, who died in 1961 and had been residing with his son G. R. Williams (Papa). “He was born Feb 9, 1877 in Indiana. And had come to Pampa six years before from Wyatt, Mo where he had been serving as a peace officer.” I was told he had been a security guard, but figure he was probably a policeman before that. “Survivors include three sons, G.R. of Pampa, Texas, Louis A. Of Los Angeles, CA, and W.W. Willard of Boston, MA. One daughter Mrs. Jewell Smoot of Pulaski, Ill; Two brothers Ben, and Penny, both of Fisk, MO; one sister, Mrs. Maude Spears of Wynn, Ark, and nine grandchildren.” I found an 8X10 black and white photo of Dad Williams and a younger woman who may have been his daughter Jewel as she reminded me of Papa.
Somewhere in the Pampa area was a woman who lived on several acres of land and had a number of Shetland Ponies. Some of the ponies were trained to wear a saddle and walk round and round a small corral or pen with a young child on its back for a small fee. I don’t remember the first time Gram or Papa stopped there and let me ride one of those ponies. I feel like I do really remember sitting on a pony and how thrilled I was. How it felt so right to me to be on that little horse. I loved the feel of running my fingers through it’s mane, the shift of muscles as it walked, the clip-clop sound of it’s hooves on the well defined trail around the corral. I never wanted to get off and it seems several times I cried when I had to. Wish I knew more about the place, what it was called, and if they took good care of the ponies and weren’t cruel to them. I am sure it is long gone and forgotten now. It did seem that Mother didn’t like to go to the place but maybe it was the cost or that I didn’t want to leave. But I could get Gram or Papa to take me once in a while.
As I said Papa loved children and was really happy that mother was going to have a baby. He had quickly adopted mother as his daughter and me as his granddaughter which made Gram very happy. I do vaguely remember a story about Papa’s first wife killing herself by driving into a cement overpass pillar when she discovered she was pregnant again. Maybe I am wrong about this story. I hope I am but if not it must have been very upsetting for him. I always got the impression that he might have not been on the best of terms with his family, nor was his dad, but I have no idea why.
With Daddy in the Air Force the military required that Mother go to the Amarillo Air Force Base near Amarillo, Texas each month for her checkups. Since Mother didn’t drive, once a month Gram would drive us from Pampa to Amarillo which was pretty much an all day trip. I remember being very bored on those trips. Of course as a four year old I really didn’t understand why we went. Being told I was going to have a baby sister or brother didn’t make much since to me. Mother made a green tote bag and gave it to me to carry a collection of color books, crayons, a doll and a few other toys in for the trips. I still have that tote bag. We nearly always had lunch at the cafeteria that Gram had worked at when she moved to Amarillo and where she and Papa met. One day we stopped at a gas station about half way between Amarillo and Pampa. There was a small café or snack bar with the gas station and out back they had a small corral with a couple of longhorn steers in it. Mother and Gram were interested in the longhorns, and I was too, but I was more interested in the prairie dog town that was beside the corral. The owner had taken the time to put up a wood fence around the town to keep the prairie dogs sort of contained as an attraction to get motorist to stop. I believe the place may have even been called Prairie Dog Town. The rodents were a great fascination to me. A lot of the café garbage was tossed out to the little critters. They would sit around the town and eat the left over salad, bread, or whatever was thrown out, and when startled would dart down the holes in the dirt that led to the underground tunnels where they lived. After that I always tried to get Gram to stop at the gas station to let me see the prairie dogs. I still like the little things even though I now know what a pest they can be. We have a few where we live in a semi rural area outside of Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Recently there was quite an outcry from the public when a church wanted to kill out a small prairie dog town that was on a piece of land they wanted to build a playground on. After leaning that the public didn’t like the idea of killing off the rodents even though the playground was needed they let them stay and build the playground somewhere else.
Eventually my sister, Sarah Emily, was born on July 1, 1956. I don’t remember being overly thrilled with her. She took a lot of my mom’s time that used to be mine. I guess it is something that every child goes through except the youngest child in a family or an only child in a family as my son was to be. I do remember that there was a man at church that was going to buy my sister from me for a nickel and I was all for the deal but he had to back out when he saw that I really wanted to sell her.
Mother was worn out by her new baby and four year old brat. What mother wouldn’t be? And having her husband off across the ocean in England didn’t help. So every afternoon she would lay down with the two of us and she and Sarah would take a nap. I don’t think I napped all that often. The small apartment we lived in had flowered wall paper on the walls. Mother taught me to count the flowers hoping it would keep me quiet so she and Sarah could sleep. When that wasn’t too successful she would turn the radio on low hoping I would listen to the music and be quiet. I did listen to the music and still really like country and western music. But as luck would have it there was a new group of singers that called their selves The Statler Brothers who had a new hit song out. And it was called Flowers on the Wall. Having a song that was about the flowers that I counted on my wall was wonderful. I quickly leaned most of the song, and was even more pleased that it was about Captain Kangaroo who I got to watch when at Gram’s house as we didn’t have a TV. Of course the real meaning of the song was way over my head at that time. Mother must have been horrified when she would turn on the radio, lay down with her daughters and the oldest one would put her feet on the wall, and stomp on it in time to the music while singing Counting Flowers on the Wall.
Yes, I was a brat but this is one of the few things I really remember that well that I did that really irritated my mother. And, yes, I still love that song.
At that time I, also, leaned to love the songs sung by the Sons of the Pioneers, especially Cool Water, Tumbling Tumble Weeds, and my all time favorite Riders in the Sky. The Sons of the Pioneers were one of my mom’s favorite groups. Other favorites were The Tennessee Stud, The Strawberry Roan, The Cowboy in a Continental Suit, Zebra Dun and The Tennessee Flat Top Box. Johnny Cash has always been one of my most favorite singers. Others have been Marty Robbins, Neil Diamond, The Ventures (who were an instrumental group from the ‘60’s), Chris LaDue, Jim Reeves, Kris Kristofferson, Tex Ritter.
Starting from when I was little Mother taught me lots of songs that she knew. She would sing them to me when she was cooking, ironing, sewing, or trying to get me take a nap. Apparently she went to lots of dances when she was a teenager and was married the first time. She married when she was 16 to a man that was a good bit older than her. Turned out he was a drunk and couldn’t hold a job down. When they moved to the Portland, Oregon area and she couldn’t stand him, or the rain. any longer she got a divorce and moved to Albuquerque where her parents had moved to. At most of the dances there was live music and I believe she said that her husband, Slim Lensy, ( I am not sure of his real first name but it may have been Clay. I know he is buried in Silver City, NM ) as he was known by, played guitar. All the old cowboy songs were among her favorites. Like Streets of Laredo, I’m an Old Cowhand, The Red River Valley, Billy the Kid, Buffalo Gals, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Down in the Valley, Git Along Little Dogies, Home on the Range, Little Joe the Wrangler, Old Chisholm Trail, Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande, Pattonia the Pride of the Plain, Rye Whiskey, Skip to My Lou, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, When the Works All done This Fall, Yellow Rose of Texas. She had a notebook that she had written down all of these songs and others in. Of course the tunes weren’t in the book but the words were, and she taught me the tunes. Somewhere I have a notebook that I copied the songs into. I found this website where there are the words to a lot of the songs.
http://www.lonehand.com/cowboy_songs.htm#Yellow%20Rose%20of%20Texas
Several singers have done albums with a lot of the songs in them; Marty Robins, Tex Ritter, The Sons of the Pioneers, Riders in the Sky (the group), and lately Chris LaDue, and Michael Martin Murphy.
At some point after Sarah was born and before Daddy came back from England Mother decided we would go to California by train and visit with her sisters. I guess back then a lot of people traveled by train while now it is usually just for the fun of it. I remember being bored on the train even though I had my green cloth bag with its selection of toys. We stopped at one place in either New Mexico or Arizona, at a little wide spot in the road or in this case along the railroad tracks. I wonder if it might not have been somewhere on the Navajo reservation or along side of one of the Pueblos. There was an Indian, or as is properly said now, a Native American who was selling a set of children’s books. Mother decided to buy a set for me. I couldn’t read them but I could look at the pictures which were very good drawings. Mother would read the stories to me. There were 8 books and each one was about an Indian child from a different tribe. They were actually very informative for there time. Later I read them to my sisters, and later yet to my son. I still have them. For some reason we were very careful with these books and they are still in good shape.
It was on the train that I discovered what was to be one of my favorite foods or deserts from then on. Mother decided we would eat one meal on the train in the dining car. We ate and I wanted chocolate ice cream. Mother tried to explain to me that I could have vanilla but they didn’t have chocolate. I was almost to the throwing a temper tantrum stage I guess when our waiter said he could fix it special just for me with some chocolate syrup on it. I wonder if that elderly black man had any idea that he was giving me such a wonderful treat. I had never had chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream before and it quickly became the most wonderful thing in the world to me. I wish I could tell that man thank you. I just remember that he was tall, but not overly heavy nor was he skinny and with gray hair and very nice to a fussy little girl.
After reaching San Diego, California by train we were met by Mother’s sister Elnora. She and her husband Alfred Botts lived in El Cajon, CA just north of San Diego. On that trip I got to meet my cousins Jerry, who was a year younger than me, and Bruce who was two years younger than Jerry. I got to see the ocean for the first time, and we went to the San Diego Zoo, and the Point Loma Lighthouse. At the lighthouse I found out I was terrified of heights. The winding staircase up the center of the lighthouse was a nightmare to me. Literally. I had nightmares about it afterward and still do on occasion.
. I didn’t know it then but Mother was also afraid of heights. I have never lost this fear, and neither did Mother. Wanda took us to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame where they put the stars in the sidewalk for famous actors, actresses, and singers. It is very vague but I do seem to remember wondering why those people were so famous and why they would want to have a star with their name on a sidewalk. This would have been about 1955 so there are lots and lots more stars in that sidewalk now than there was then.
Both of my uncles Alfred Botts, and Dale Dickson died a few years ago. My Aunt Elnora is now 80 and in fairly good health. She and Aunt Wanda visited me last fall. While they were here I took them to see the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta that is held here each October. They seemed to enjoy it very much. Elnora, her son Jerry and his family still live in El Cajon, CA. Bruce and his family live just south of Portland, OR. Linda and her family live in Flagstaff, AZ, while Shirley and her family live in eastern California. Wanda’s son, Dana, died about 1990. Her daughter Denise, her husband Ted, and daughter, Christine moved to Ohio this spring where Ted has a new job, while Diana and her husband live on a houseboat in San Diego, but have another home on the Big Island of Hawaii.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/cabr/lighthouse.html

After a visit with Aunt Elnora, Aunt Wanda came down from Las Angeles, California. I don’t remember if she was still in school there at that time or was a working girl by then. She took us to visit with her and she lived in an upstairs apartment. That didn’t help my sudden fear of heights.