So
we had to move Mom (Gladys) out of the house and into assisted living in August 2013. In
October 2013 we decided we needed to clear out the house and sell it
before some bad people took the opportunity to clear out the unoccupied house
for us. In the process I acquired several hundred, maybe as many as
five hundred, postcards collected by my folks during their travels.
I am using these postcards to send a note to my grand-munchkins once
or twice a week just to give them the old-time thrill of receiving
mail and letting my daughter know what modest chores I am attempting
during retirement.
Within
the boxes of postcards that my mother kept is a handwritten list in
my mother's beautiful script of their travels. Since I have not
written anything new since my retirement in September 2012, and this will be my first post
in months, I thought I'd get back in the swing of things by simply
retyping my mom's list here. The list of sites is quite impressive.
My folks must have loved to travel.
When
looking at the dates keep in mind that I, as the last kid of three,
graduated from college in 1974, and Dad retired a couple years later
once I was no longer a financial drain. Also, Dad died in the fall
of 1984, so the trips after that my Mom was traveling on her own or
with a tour group. I will attempt to type the list exactly as Mom
wrote it.
The
list -
1977 Apr
to May Atlanta – Fla
1977 Sep Canada – Bob's
1978 Spring w
Walt Okla – NM – Grand Canyon – Phoenix – Tuscon – el Paso
– San Antonio – corpus Christie – Beaumont – Atlanta
1979 Jan
& Feb Southern Trip – SE Georgia – Gulf Coast – Florida –
Mississippi
1979 Fall Cape
Breton – East Coast – Boston – NH, Maine, etc
1980 Austin,
TX – California - Atlanta
1981 Fall Bill's
(NJ) SE Coast – Tom's Thanksgiving (Atlanta)
1981? Canada
1982 Sept Canada
& West Coast
1983 Jan
– Mar 07 Marco Island, FL
1983 June to
NJ
1983 Oct Atlanta
& NJ
1984 Jan Hawaii
1985 July Minn
St Paul
1985 Sept Door
County
1985 Dec Chgo
Trip
1986 Mar Texas
New Orleans
June Tour
St Louis
July Cottage
NJ
Sept Milw.
Sept
10-12 Theater Trip Minn
Sept
27 To Ark
Dec Atlanta
1987 Feb/Mar Calif
May LasVegas
Dec Atlanta
and Gainseville GA
1988 July Topsail
Beach, NC
1989 July Topsail
Beach
Xmas Al
& Joan – Bloomington
1990 July Topsail
Beach
Xmas Atlanta
1991 Jan Florida
/ Nassau
The
list ends with the January 1991 entry. The boxes of postcards
indicate that there were many more trips that were not on Mom's list,
both before and after, but there are so many of them and no way to
know when they went to these places. There was a trip to Spain in
there sometime and another one to Sweden. Ah well.
Ah fooey, the blog doesn't support the nicely tab-formatted list that I put in my word processor. Drats. I'll have to insert a bunch of spaces to neaten it up. Her list is much prettier that this.
All
for now.
Wow. They went a LOT of places. I hope to be able to do something like that someday. In the meantime, we "vacation" for a year or two at a time at each of our homes. Y'all are getting to explore much the same way :)
ReplyDeleteThat was neat to see. What Aunt Gladys also did so well was write a Christmas letter about each trip in addition to the wonderment of her grandchildren's' achievements.
ReplyDelete