Event, experience and Energy 2007
The title comes as a result of a sermon at our church this past Sunday. The sermon was about Pentecost; however, the three points were event, experience and energy. This article is my personal story in which the three points were definitely a part.
The setting was June 1945 and an uninformed (dumb) 16-year-old bride of three months was off to meet her groom in a distant state. Our wedding (we eloped) took place in mid March and then John (in the Army Air Corps) was sent to Jamaica for three months, but had been returned to the states — located in Hastings, Nebraska (a long way from Talladega, Alabama).
I had graduated from high school and was living with my sister in Talladega and had a job when I got the call that he was back. It was determined that I would travel there to be with my dearly beloved and Sis sent him a telegram stating when I would arrive; however, she did not tell the mode of transportation. Sis was the mother of twins and had a sweet black lady working for her. Lizzie and Sis packed a lunch for my trip in a shoebox. They also tied up the $60 I had and pinned it to the inside of my bra.
I departed Talladega on a Wednesday morning travelling via bus. In Birmingham (maybe an hour away) I had a four-hour layover. John’s aunt came to meet me and we went to a movie to kill time. How I made this trip successfully is beyond my thinking. I traveled on bumpy buses, experienced layovers and missed connections until my arrival on Saturday at 9 p.m. The swaying wheat in Kansas was a new sight for this Sand Mountain girl and, beautiful though it was, it made me sea sick to watch — so I traveled much of the time in that area with my eyes closed. In Kansas City I left my coat on the bus and had yet another experience trying to find it (which I did).
Now here I was arriving in this strange and tiny little town (Harvard) in Nebraska where the bus station was located in the back of a drugstore, where I immediately saw “black” and “white” drinking fountain and “black” and “white” restroom signs. Another experience — there was no John to meet me. I had spent fifty cents on the journey. The place was crawling alive with service men and I had little enough sense to ask the older man behind the counter if he had seen John and I described The One I Love Best. Of course, he wouldn’t have known it if he had seen him. I went in and out of the drugstore/bus station several times, bringing in luggage and getting somewhat settled. During all this I thought I had seen John enter a café down the street and when I got so I could I walked down there, but no John. As it turned out, he had entered that café about that time and stayed long enough to drink a glass of milk.
Of course, I was scared out of my wits. I didn’t know what in the world to do. I went back to the older man and asked his advice. He suggested that I get a room across the street in the hotel with the hope that the next day John would show up. I was somewhat reluctant, but followed the sound advice. The hotel was old, wooden and several stories high. I was housed on the second floor and the door to my room had a large transom above it. The old building was a firetrap to say the least. There was one bathroom for the whole hall and that was another concern (one more experience). There was no air conditioning and the window was raised allowing noise from the street below to enter. After the bathroom visit (and that was not for a bath), I locked the door and for added security wedged a straight-chair back under the doorknob. Dog-tired I fell in the bed and sleep quickly arrived regardless of the noise, heat and worry.
About dawn I heard my name being called and felt something hit my back as I lay in bed John had pushed a chair up to the door and climbed up in it and was throwing keys, chewing gum and whatever he had in his pockets through the transom in an effort to get me awake. As it happened he had spent the night at the TRAIN station waiting on his bride. Another female (or so he says) arrived there with two small children and no husband was there to meet her so he helped her get to the hotel. This all sounds good, but I keep asking (and have for 62+ years) why were you at the registry? If he “helped” the lady to the hotel, why was he seeing the guest register? Anyway, I had been the last to register and he saw my name written there, so that’s how he found yours truly in Harvard, Nebraska. What happened to the other female? Only God knows.
He had a room rented for us just down the street from where I had spent the night — we had a bedroom and ate our meals out. Quite a life, but we spent lots of hours at the USO working puzzles, playing games and/or singing around the piano. Our next move was to Smokey Hill Army Air Base located in Salina, Kansas but there we had an efficiency apartment – complete with kitchen (of a sort), but we had to share a bathroom with another couple.
That trip was an event which called for a lot of energy where a world of experience was gained by a dumb Sand Mountain youngster with her style of country living.