South America in 1946

[htmb]

While working on the thread “World War II: My Father’s War,” I found myself wishing I had information to share about my mother’s travels to South America in 1946. It would be the most logical follow-up trip report for me to write since, just after the war ended and my father returned home, my grandparents sent my mother south for several weeks during the summer between her sophomore and junior year in college. However, other than family stories and the words “your father threw out all my trip photos because he was jealous of my other boyfriends,” I had nothing to show in a report, until I opened this box.



I was actually looking for photos from the trip my parents had sent me on after I graduated from college in 1974. Inside the box, my photos were nowhere to be seen, but instead there was an absolute treasure trove of other items, some of which were unfamiliar to me. I am sure I had packed this box when I was cleaning out my parents’ house after Dad died. Back then it was my theory that if it looked important, but could wait, it was better to toss it into a box than to throw it out. I could always go through boxes later.

Now, almost twenty years after the fact and three different moves, I was giving this box a more serious look. It contained the many photos taken by my mother on her trip to Jerusalem in the 1980’s, complete with a box of commercially made slides. I had seen all this before, but it really didn’t hold that much interest for me even though she had written on the backs of many of the pictures: “Here’s me on a camel,” “We saw this stretch of desert,” etc. I had lived through that period of time and, as interesting as that trip had been, it was something already familiar to me.

However, there was something more: a Winn Dixie grocery bag filled with photographs that were either loose, or were attached to paper that looked like ripped apart scrapbooks. As I dug deeper, I felt like I had travelled back in time.

I never shop at Winn Dixie, so I am sure my mother filled this grocery bag when she was cleaning out her own parents’ home. Perhaps she and her sisters had dismantled the scrapbooks so they could share? Many of the pictures must have previously come from my maternal great-grandparents home (I’m sure you see the pattern here). There were photos of my GGPs, who were seasoned travelers and very active in Rotary International.

    


That’s my GGF facing the camera, as his group heads down a trail into what I believe is the Grand Canyon (or, perhaps, Yellowstone. Anyone?)



I discovered photographs of their only child, my grandmother, at what I believe is Smith College where she started school in 1914, at the age of 16, and a photo of my GM in an airplane with someone listed on the back of the photo as “President Pete” (I assume he was president of some Rotary Club or another).

I also found a picture of my GM and GGM, with either my mother’s maternal or paternal grandmother on the right.
The clothes were absolutely incredible!

My GGPs were very close to my mother mainly because her older sister became very ill and subsequently died at the age of six. My mother lived with her grandparents for at least a year, and spent a lot of time with them off and on for the rest of her childhood.

I was thrilled to find the following photograph of my mother and GGF at Connestee Falls near Brevard, North Carolina. The picture was taken on September 12, 1934 when my mother was 8 and my GGF was 56.



My GGF had been a concert violinist who later opened two music stores. The photo below is dated January 13, 1939, and was taken in front of one of the stores where my mother worked demonstrating pianos.

Below is a picture of my grandparents standing in front of Duke Chapel where my mother was a college student in the 1940s. The photo has reminded me that the women on my mother’s side of the family were all very formally educated, as my great-grandmother attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, founded in 1885 “…by New England Congregationalists who sought to bring their style of liberal arts education to the Florida frontier, Rollins is the oldest recognized college in the state of Florida.” Rollins College

 
 
 
 

Deep at the bottom of the bag I also found letters written by my maternal grandfather’s mother, who I never knew; a letter from my great-aunt referring to my grandfather’s mental breakdown in 1935 (when he took off for California for a year after my GM gave birth to a fourth girl); and a card from my very uneducated paternal grandmother thanking my Smith College educated GM for the “gift' of my mother and stating that marrying Mom was the greatest thing my father had ever done.

I spent several hours pouring through the box of family history and, as I began to reorganize much of the items, I had even more of a shock. Tucked inside the photos of Jerusalem, obviously where my father would not have looked, were my mother’s South American travel papers along with several photographs, and a beautiful poster salvaged from her 1946 trip.

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[nycgirl]

Wow, what an incredible treasure trove of memories! You certainly come from a very adventurous family. I love the vintage Bolivia poster.

[htmb]

I love the poster, too, nycgirl. I'm having it framed to hang on my wall.

The eight college girls and two chaperones left the city of Tampa, flying Eastern Airlines to Brownsville, Texas, where they would exit the United States. On the way they stopped in New Orleans, LA where they ate some memorable meals.

[bixaorellana]

This is magic -- like a trip down a telescope into your own history! And you've brought the magic to life with the wonderful way you've presented this treasure trove. Can't wait to see more.

Are all the photos that little?

[Deleted]

Damn! A $1.00 minimum at Antoine's? I must take my trade elsewhere.

[htmb]

Dec 9, 2012 5:37:24 GMT bixaorellana said:

Are all the photos that little?

Unfortunately, all the photos are very small. I've been working to increase the size, but there's a sacrifice of quality if I expand them too much. The pre-WWI photos are really cool, but are just to small to show in this venue.

[mossie]

A real window into the past. Very interesting.

[htmb]

The strangest thing has happened today. My older daughter, who was a teenager when my mother died, was cleaning through boxes of her own today and came across a diary titled "Seven Weeks in South America." It's my mother's diary of her trip; something neither my daughter nor I remembered existed. I am just blown away.

[Deleted]

Can't wait to hear more about that!

[htmb]

I cannot begin to convey how grateful I am to my mother for having written, and saved, this diary. What a fantastic gift to be able to hear my mother’s voice at the age of twenty. I get choked up just thinking about it, and I am not an emotional person.

The diary itself is one of those five year types, with a latch and place for a key on the front. My mother dedicated it to her father, and she faithfully filled several pages for every day of her trip. I stayed up too late last night reading. Now I am about halfway through, as I have just gotten past her visit to Machu Picchu. The style of writing is that of a twenty year old woman, seemingly without a care in the world.

My mother was a very gregarious, outgoing person who loved to have fun. She was loud, laughed a lot, loved people, and was interested in many different types of things. This comes through in the pages of her diary. I found myself delighted over her description of bartering in the markets of Guatemala, and feeling the wonder in her voice when describing the magnificent places she saw. She made the trip sound like such a marvelous adventure.

I will do my best to relate some of this new information, along with a few more photos and copies of documents, as this trip continues to unfold in my mind.

[mossie]

Absolutely fascinating. This must be so heartwarming for you.

[htmb]

Dec 10, 2012 15:03:49 GMT mossie said:

Absolutely fascinating. This must be so heartwarming for you.

Yes, that is for sure, Mossie. My mother and I were not very close when I was growing up, as I was always a Daddy's girl. My mother and I seemed to be so different. Her emotional demonstrations were so hard for me to relate to it was sometimes painful for me as a teenager.

We really didn't seem to have much in common until I became a mother and began to be thankful for all the years of good parenting I had known myself. She certainly gave me a lot to draw from! Now this opportunity to get to know my mother as a twenty year old college student is absolutely priceless!

[bixaorellana]

This is an astounding turn of events! Somehow, you were meant to have all of this delivered to you right now. A million thanks for being willing to share it here.

[htmb]

When reading through the diary, several things have stuck me as interesting. For one, my mother seemed to know the names of all her airline pilots on several different flights. She also remarked many times about how the captain usually came back into the cabin to talk with her and her friends on each flight. Another interesting piece of airline trivia was the need for passengers to receive extra oxygen while in flight to Quito, Ecuador due to the high altitude.

It turns out that my mother’s trip was sponsored by Duke University and she was traveling with five of her classmates, along with the two chaperones. It wasn’t a group of Tampa girls as I had originally supposed. There were also two men from the travel agency with them who seemed to serve as guides/drivers.

Mom’s description of Mexico and its vibrant colors sounds like something I’ve been known to say when looking at Bixa’s photos; and her excitement at seeing the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, then driving to the “Atlantic” side is fascinating, as well as her report of standing at the Equator for the first time.

Mom’s detail of fun parties and dances serves as a reminder of how different life is today. I am sure she traveled with lots of luggage so she could take various party dresses and hats. There seemed to be numerous fun activities scheduled in the different cities visited; and I have been amazed that she had chance meetings with at least two young men she knew from home who just happened to be in the area at the same time.

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Discovering the letter from the Brownell Travel Bureau, posted in reply #1, was a revelation to me since it listed the countries, in order, that my mother would be traveling to on her trip. Leaving from Brownsville, Texas, the group would visit Mexico, Guatemala, Canal Zone, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, the Argentine, Brazil, and Haiti. I also learning why the group assembled in New Orleans, rather than Brownsville. It was so they could visit the consulates, one by one, of each of the countries they would be visiting so they could have their papers verified and stamped.

The group flew Eastern Airlines to Brownsville, and then on to the countries mentioned in the letter. What follows in the diary are stories of landing in a city, staying there for two or three days, and doing all the typical tourist-type things. They visited a lot of Cathedrals, many monuments, stirring vistas, etc. Mom mentions the conditions of the native peoples in each country many times, and she also comments on the United States presence in each South American country as being a deterrent to a new war. At one point she raged about the Catholic Church being part of the reason why the indigenous so poor. It was her opinion that the Church was working hard to suppress the people and keep them uneducated.

Other than seeing the body of Pissarro (which turns out wasn’t really him), my mother had what seemed to be a fairly delightful time until they headed towards Machu Picchu. The trek was very hard, they were extremely cold, and they made the last part of the journey on burros. Mom was fascinated with Machu Picchu and wanted to spend more time there than allocated. She enjoyed exploring the area and later was reprimanded by a priest at a religious shrine when she wandered into a space where women were not allowed.

[htmb]

The section in the diary that I have just read, and which I find the most fascinating so far, is the description by my twenty year old mother of her time in Bolivia. Leading up to this point her words had mostly been lighthearted and fun. Here, in her own words:

Monday, July 22, 1946

Bright and early we left cold Cuzco by train, and what a cold trip. We played bridge all day and finally in the cold of it all we reached Puno – the place never to come back to! We went through the craziest customs to get on our river steamer. Then we had to get our passports, etc. fixed for Bolivia. There was a revolution going on and we had to sign all their papers.

Finally we got on our cute little steamer. This was also freight and we didn’t get started until the freight was loaded. We went to sleep on Lake Titicaca, not knowing what to expect the next day.


Tuesday, July 23, 1946

We got up pretty early and the view of the lake was beautiful. The natives with their little lake boats fascinated me. After breakfast we docked and were to take a train to LaPaz. We didn’t know whether there would be a train or not because of this revolution. We went through customs and sure enough there was a train. We had to watch our bags every moment because these little urchins will run right off with them.

It seems LaPaz had a lull today. They have killed their president because he was a dictator and was too much like Hitler. He resigned at 11 o’clock on Saturday, and was shot at 2. He had waited too late. He had made a Gestapo state out of his police force and more people disappeared.

Thursday the students started the (revolution), and so many were killed the army came.…There was no leader (of the country). We arrived right outside LaPaz and had to wait for three hours while funeral processions passed. When we arrived at the station men with machine guns greeted us. We were taken to the hotel in a huge truck and saw (more) men everywhere with machine guns. It was all very quiet. None of the men were wearing ties and we learned later that wearing a tie was suicide since it meant support of the old government.

Later we went out into the night for a drink. We couldn’t all four walk together because that meant a counter revolution. People were all around with guns. We didn’t find a place to get a drink, so went back to the hotel.

… (The next day at the Presidential Palace) we saw the bullet holes and the place where the students got in, in their tanks, and shot the president. I saw the machine gun (they used) ….we rode by the prison and blood was in front. The driver said that’s where one of the prisoners tried to escape yesterday.

The description of the revolution, mixed in with the beauty of the views, continues for the next several pages, and she even remarks about how 14 year old boys were directing traffic, “with drivers showing them much respect.” Mom later reports “people of the town have gone out to a mountainside where the mayor is now hanging.”

In the middle of all this horror, mom bought a vicuña rug and went to a lot of trouble to have it shipped home. I remember the thing as being soft on the outside, with stiff, scratchy skin. It was sort of rotting. I thought it was pretty gross, but Mom kept it stuffed in a trunk up in our attic. Now I see the meaning it must have had for her. I think I threw it away when I was cleaning out the house.

Here’s a photo of the group, along with some additional friends. My mother is the tall one looking over everyone’s shoulder.

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[bixaorellana]

Good grief! The passages from Bolivia sound like the death train part in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Well, really, they sound like history. Thank goodness this was written in a diary. Can you imagine the reaction of parents reading it in a letter when it was still fresh?

I love the amazing sang-froid of casually strolling out separated from each other in order to get a drink in the midst of a revolution -- whew! Her comments are so condensed, but so incisively evocative.

[Deleted]

Totally fascinating story. I have been in a few places with revolution brewing and I know how it feels with all of the soldiers out on the street and machine guns set up at intersections -- but I don't think I would have "gone out looking for a drink."

[tod2]

Wonderful reading htmb! The best history is personal history and you are one lucky lady to have all this at your finger tips. It has also struck a chord in my own life as I think it's time I went through the photo albums with my mom and she related the circumstances and stories as best as she can remember.
At her age of 91, I am still lucky this is still possible. There is no-one left in her family. She has outlived all 3 sisters and a brother.

[mossie]

Wonderful, what it is to be young and have that wonderful feeling "it can't happen to me".
Airline pilots are all captains, notice their uniform will have 4 rings on the sleeve, exactly the same as a sea captain. In the good old days part of their duty was to mingle with the passengers just like the captain of an ocean liner. With the aura of glamour they carried, who knows what liaisons took place at layovers

[htmb]

On the flight from Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina the "Captain" invited my mother up into the cockpit to sit in the Co-Captain's chair. She then goes on to describe the view from the cockpit as feeling as if she was going to fall right out the window. She and her friends went out partying with the three pilots later that evening.

Knowing my mother, I assume this was mostly pure-eyed wonder and innocence on her part. She was very outgoing and gregarious, but she was also very much a "lady."

The question I would most like to ask my mother now would be how she could go on a whirlwind, 7 week tour of South America, return home on August 13, secretely marry my father in Valdosta, Georgia on August 26, and then return to Duke. I wonder if she ever second-guessed THAT decision.

[htmb]

As for the news of revolution, now I know why my mother didn't get too excited when I was visiting Portugal in April of 1974. I guess she both loved adventure, and was also a bit clueless about the danger. Either that, or she just held back information in writing the diary. My experience of my mother was absolute and total panic in an acute crisis, except when it came to caring for the health of her children.

My grandfather would have been excited to hear about Mom's adventure, while my intelligent, long-suffering grandmother would probably have gone catatonic with fear upon reading about the situation. I'm wondering what the adult chaperones and tour personnel were thinking! I am very surprised they didn't adjust their plans and head straight to Chile, rather than enter Bolivia.

[Deleted]

It was only when I started seeing the world that I understood how much my mother had wanted to do the same. One time she told me "you are living the life that I dreamed of." So I did my best to get her out and about (sometimes with my father, sometimes not), and even though she has forgotten it all (yes, I have asked her), I took her to Kenya, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia and Thailand as well as many European places that she had not seen herself.

Probably not all of these countries are on people's top list of places to go, but my mother loved every minute of it, even when things became slightly worrisome. I remember that when we left Addis Ababa to go to Jeddah, our plane stopped in Dire Dawa to load drugs (qat) for the addicts in Djibouti, and then in Djibouti, she had to pay $100 for the flight to Aden (I had a free ticket from Red Sea Airlines, a short-lived company). Once she saw the plane, a Piper Twin Otter, her first exclamation was "I thought I was buying a ticket, not the plane!" And then in Aden, since we didn't have Yemeni visas, they didn't even want us to go inside the airport, so we waited on a bench alongside the runway until our Saudia plane appeared.

Oh, if only she could remember all of that...

[htmb]

What wonderful things you have been able to do for your mother, Kerouac. No wonder she looks at you with adoring eyes. You have been her rock and her consistently loving son. No mother could ask for more.

I laugh it off when friends tell me I should write a book. I'd have to go into seclusion afterwards. . However, with your expertise at telling a story, your fabulous photographs, and your international experiences you have all the tools to write a wonderful book. Have you ever considered the idea?