Note: Miss Harmon was my mother’s business partner in their nursing home. I grew up with her and considered her my family. After they sold the nursing home Miss Harmon moved back to Charleston, South Carolina, where she was from and where her aging parents lived.

Miss Harmon and her parents

Journal   February 8, 1953 Sunday

Slept until about 7:30. Gave Sandy her breakfast early. Miss Harmon gave us breakfast about 8:30 or 9 am. We spent the day visiting and seeing the house and yard. The house is brick. It’s in a lovely old forest with Spanish moss on all the trees.

I put both children in the tub where they loved splashing. Roland and I also each took a bath.

In the late afternoon we took a ride through old Charleston with “Uncle Rube” (Miss Harmon’s father) and Miss Harmon. Charleston was lovely with it’s high walls hiding quaint old gardens, old cobblestone streets, palm trees, and more. Then we drove home, put the children to bed after a bite to eat. Then we chatted until late – to bed!

Journal   February 9, 1953 Monday
After a quiet morning we ate an early lunch and took off for Magnolia Gardens. The ride was beautiful through tall trees meeting over the highway, hung with Spanish moss. In the gardens all the Camellias were in bloom. How lovely they were.

Sandy was very fussy all day. The kids fell into bed early. I did a wash. We visited all evening. We leave tomorrow after a pleasant visit.

Journal   February 10, 1953 Tuesday
Got up early but didn’t eat breakfast until about 8:30 or 9 am. Then we gathered odds and ends together and finally said goodbye about 10 am.
The weather was lovely. We humpidy, humpidied over Georgia’s rough roads. Then we got stopped by the police because our trailer was swinging back and forth but he didn’t give us a ticket as we weren’t breaking any laws.

We had to cross dozens of little narrow bridges – load limit 6000 lbs. On some we met trailer trucks. On one bridge a whole crowd of people were standing looking over the bridge. I thought I saw a body floating in the river so I rushed Roland out of the car to ask what happened and to tell the crowd that we saw a body. After awhile he came back and said no one seemed to know what happened.

Then I said, “Look, there it is again!”

What do you suppose it was? A porpoise. All the rest of the afternoon Roland mumbled about how foolish he would have felt if he had told everyone his wife saw a body in the river.

We stopped for ice cream about 3 pm. For awhile we drove beside the train tracks. A train came along and Lesley and I waved to the engineer. We stopped in a trailer park just outside of Jacksonville for the night.

Waving at the train engineer in Florida

Note: Traveled route 301 to Florida