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CHAPTER THI RTEEN
The next year we thought about driving to California and
visiting mother's sister Aunt Mary Baer, her husband Emil and my
cousins Serena, Serepta and Ellen, whom I hadn't seen since they
had moved to California from Shiocton, Wisconsin. Grace found
three teachers who wanted to go with us and offered to pay the car
expenses, otherwise we couldn't have afforded to make the trip.
Grace also wanted to visit her Aunt Aggie and two cousins Harriet
and Ruth Minster.
On the way west we stopped to get something to eat at a town
just before you get to Las Vegas. Besides being a restaurant it
was also a gambling casino full of one arm bandits. I watched
an old grandma feeding two machines. She had a cigarette hanging
out of one side of her mouth and kept putting money into both
machines, when she ran out of coins she went to the cashier and
got more and no one dared to touch her machines as long as she
was still playing them. In Las Vegas we found that every store,
restaurant, drug store, 5 & 10 Cent stores all had one armed
bandits in them.
We drove to Bryce Canyon and spent several hours there. The
formations are beautiful, reds and browns predominating. We ex-
pected to drive to the north side of the Grand Canyon so when we
were ready to leave we asked the manager how we could get there
and what were the accommodations. We told him we had to have a
reasonably price place and couldn't afford to stay in any high priced
place. He told me they had very nice tourist cottages at Grand Canyon
which would cost us only $5.00 per night plus the rental of any
extra blankets. He wanted to call ahead for us to reserve one as
they had their own telephone system. They were operated by the
Union Pacific Railroad. I called the women over and had him re-
peat what he had told me and he then called, in our presence, and
asked to reserve a $5.00 tourist cabin for our party.
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