Their Story, part 4: Traveling Blood

First: thanks so much for all the lovely remarks on my “Forever 71″ (the last Blank Slate blog). Second: some weren’t able to open the last Blank Canvas blog, “Painting in Stages.” All such are viewable here on the website located under the bars at the top. Third: We’re traveling.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted accounts of my family lore, but if you’ll remember, there are deep roots in Wyoming. Now we (Anne and I) are headed there. After a full day in the van yesterday we had dinner across from the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and ended up last night in a quaint find, Lava Hot Springs, Idaho (pop. 400). We’re on our way to Yellowstone, and after that, Jackson Hole.

The creaky old inn at Lava Hot Springs might have been new when my parents were first married and making their own early trips. Not that they would have stayed in it, flat broke as they were. But we’re finding it quite charming. The shower is in an old claw-foot tub, located in the communal guest bathroom . . . down the hall.

Folks are friendly. Fellow guests just told us how it snowed last week in Yellowstone. Good thing we’re not camping . . . which is the only way we ever traveled when I was growing up.

Here’s an account of an early trip by my mother just weeks after getting married, with Dad and two of his brothers. They headed out of Wyoming over to the west coast and, without result, back again. It gives a picture of how things were.

Hy had occasional jobs, one lasted one day—some a week, one a month or so at the power house at the Semino Dam, where Comer was working. At the end of that month, the job was over because the power house was finished.

The next week we decided to go to Washington to see if the men could get jobs at Grand Coulee Dam. Comer, Muriel, Hy and I started out in Comer’s car with a minimum of camping gear and a minimum of money. The four of us took turns, two would sleep in the car, and the other two would sleep on the ground, unless we could get a motel for $3.00, the maximum we could pay, and we often got one for that price. Some-times we would sleep in a park, once in a hay stack, once on the ground in Yellowstone Park.

Because the men didn’t belong to a union, they couldn’t get jobs at Grand Coulee. We decided to keep on going to the west coast and visit the World’s Fair in San Francisco. They had pay checks coming from their jobs at Semino Dam, so we sent a telegram to Mother Moore to ask her to mail those pay checks to us.

We chose a small town near San Francisco because we figured it would be easier to find a post office there than in San Francisco and asked her to mail them General Delivery. On our way we saw many things new to us, including the Columbia River Highway, the Redwoods, and the Pacific Ocean.

After two days at the World’s Fair we headed home, stopping to “swim” in the Great Salt Lake on the way. We used a coffee can and every day or so we’d each put an equal amount of money in the can and all expenses were paid out of that. Our two week trip for four people cost us $200!