Kansas City, Here We Come

My family with the Young's, somewhere along the 
the Alcan Highway.  Look how dirty our vehicles are. 

We left Alaska in 1973 and headed for Missouri. We were driving the same car down the highway that we had driven up four years earlier. However, this time it was summer. No snow, just a whole lot of gravel and dirt. Traveling with us were our friends the Young’s. Their son Chris was my age and he had two younger sisters. Just the opposite of our family of two boys and a girl. Some of the Young’s now live in Illinois, at least Chris and his family do, and his parents are in California. We all still keep in touch on Facebook. The trip down the AlCan would end up taking almost two weeks.

This was an exciting trip because we were going through Canada in the summer and the flowers there were so beautiful.  I remember thinking how clean it was.  There seemed to be no litter, anywhere. We had a brief stop in Calgary to visit with a "Hatch" family, that we knew from our congregational church in Anchorage. 

One of the most exciting things about the trip was the opportunity to go through Rapid City, South Dakota, where I was born.  I had not been there since I was a baby so it was fun to see the town of my birth as a teenager.

Google Earth photo of the corner I stood on when
I was 16, when it was the hospital where I was born. 
See previous blog for that pic.

We visited the hospital where I was born sixteen years before.  I wrote a little bit about this and had a picture in an earlier blog Honeymoon High Jinks.  As I mentioned there, it is no longer a hospital but is now an apartment complex.  

When you think of Rapid City, you think of Mount Rushmore and of course, we took time to go and see it for ourselves. Until you actually see it in person, you can't believe the enormity.  How did they do it? It almost seems to be an impossible endeavor but there it was, and it was magnificent! Below is a picture of us standing in front of the Presidents.  My brother Kevin looked so cool in his shades. It was a beautiful day to visit and one I won’t forget.   We also visited Yellowstone during this trip and saw Old Faithful. 

We had been in Alaska for four and a half years, so this was a hard move to make. We had lots of friends, some who we would never see again. We were going to a new place, where I would start high school, and we would not know a soul. Unlike schools on military bases, we would now be in a public school, where most of the kids grew up together. We would be deemed outsiders. But one thing you learn, as a Military Brat, is how to go up and introduce yourself to new people.  That was so important, when moving from place to place.  The kids at my school were very welcoming.  But it was still a scary time.

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  I discovered a really cool website that is great for genealogy but also has so many other possible uses.  It is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).   DPLA is a platform or a hub for many different resources bringing them altogether for easy access.  I have already found many references to things I have talked about in other blogs.  One was the Wilson County Tobacco Festival in the previous blog, Southern Pines Teen Shot in Hunting Mishap. The DPLA website has a bunch of pictures from that event, dating back to the 1940's.  It was fun seeing that Festival captured in time through those photos.  Some other things I found were old postcards of different towns that I have referred to. I found an old card with the Southern Pines train depot here, and this is what it looked like several years ago. (Please pardon the car mirror!)

There is a tab on the DPLA Homepage that says "Map" and if you go to the state you want, it will bring up all the info they have on their platform for that particular area.  This site has some terrific info but beware, it can be addictive!  

Honeymoon High Jinks

Clara Jean Garrison became Mrs. James V. Hatch on September 14, 1956, in the Minister’s Parsonage of Culdee Presbyterian Church. She wore a beautiful dress, hat and white gloves and Dad was decked out in a very sharp looking suit. Both sets of parents were in attendance along with numerous other family members. After the wedding, they set out for their honeymoon to the mountains in western North Carolina, ready to start their life together.

Wedding Day, September 1956 

After they had left, Clara Jean’s brother Fred realized he had their luggage in his car. He realized it too late, however, to catch the happy couple, as they were already way down the road. He was in a state of panic that the newlyweds would not have the stuff they needed for their trip. He tried everything to get the bags to my parents, even contacting the local law enforcement, but to no avail. No worries though. Dad said it was not a problem because they had all they really needed for their honeymoon.

They toured the mountains, a Cherokee Indian Reservation and went to visit one of Clara Jean’s sisters, during their time away. Knowing that dad would have to leave when they got home, probably made the trip seem shorter than ever.

Several days into the honeymoon they were driving along and there was this horrible odor emanating throughout the car. They had noticed it a little along the way but now it had gotten much more pungent. Dad is looking at mom and mom is looking at dad, wondering what or who was making the smell. Awkward! They finally figured it out that it wasn’t either of them, so they pulled off the road and went through the car and discovered an open can of sardines under the rug, beneath one of the seats. One of their relatives or friends had placed it there as a joke. It took a while to get the odor out but the thought of it made them laugh whenever it came up, even years later.

After they returned home, dad headed to South Dakota and mom stayed in North Carolina to finish school. At Christmas of that year, she headed up to join him in the frigid Rapid City weather. They began their life together a long way from North Carolina, a long way from home, a long way from family. 

A little over a year later, the first of their three children arrived in this world. Me! My mom had a very hard pregnancy. She was sick for many months and lost a lot of weight, which she couldn't afford to lose. I was born on January 6, 1958 at St. John’s Hospital, there in Rapid City. Years later, the hospital was converted into apartments. Our family went through Rapid City when I was 16 to see the town, Mount Rushmore and the hospital I was born in.

I asked my dad about the day I was born and he said, “We did not live far from the hospital. We had made several dry runs to time it, see how long it took, etc. The night your mom's water broke, we got up, got dressed, got her bag, got in the car and drove right past the hospital…we laughed about that for years. In those days you could not go in the room for delivery… I got word of your birth then took off to see you.”

Me standing in front of the hospital I was born in.

Our little family lived in an apartment, which used to be part of a local motel. It sat on the outskirts of town, on the road to the airport. It is still there today. I have pictures from back then with my mom and I, and outside of the change in color, it looks very much the same.

I don’t remember anything about our stay in South Dakota because I was still very little and we weren’t there long after I was born. As was typical of Air Force families at that time, we were off to a new base long before we had the chance to put down too many roots. However, I do know that while there, Rev. Rew Walz baptized me at First Presbyterian Church. Right after I was born he typed me a note and placed it inside a tiny white bible that he gave me. I still have both to this day.

It wasn’t long and we moved to Goldsboro, North Carolina. My dad was transferred to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and on April 15, 1959, my brother Kevin came into this world. We are 15 months apart in age. He was my best friend and what one didn’t think of, the other did. We had many exciting adventures as kids, much to my parent’s chagrin. I’ll share more on our escapades later. 

This was a great place to go after being all the way out in South Dakota. Mom and dad were close to home again. Our house was on Luftberry Drive and when I went looking for that address on Google Earth, it looks like the houses of that time have been torn down and new ones constructed. The house was a Capehart home, which was typical military housing on several of the bases we lived on. If any of them are still standing, they are very old.

Kevin, too, knew little of his birthplace, as we were off to Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage, Alaska, long before he was able to remember Goldsboro. Moving to Alaska would once again take us a long way from Pinehurst/Southern Pines, North Carolina and to another very cold climate! Would we like it?

Terri's Tidbit for Today:  I really like my Amazon Prime!  With the Prime membership, you can get free two day shipping (I used an option where you could take a longer delivery time, still free, and got a $1.00 credit towards a book), you get great music you can listen to, you can watch lots of instant videos and I learned today that if you buy something from Amazon and they drop the price within a week, you can contact them and depending on what you bought, they may credit you the difference.  Because I have family all over the US, I really benefit from the free shipping but I love all the other features too.