Phyllis Hughes
In the summer of 1937, 17-year-old Phyllis Jeanette Hughes set out with her family to make a cross-country trip from Santa Barbara, California, to the East Coast and back. They rode by train along the northern route to Michigan, where they continued by car in order to explore the South and visit her father's family in West Virginia. They ventured into Virginia, visiting Natural Bridge before heading north to New England and back south to take the southern route back to California. Hughes kept a daily journal of the trip, adding the type of colorful commentary only a teenager could provide, which reads like a modern-day social media feed. She made a scrapbook from the photographs taken throughout the trip and added her journal entries to the corresponding photographs and ephemera. This exhibit will highlight excerpts from her scrapbook.
Southern Pacific Lines map of the United States (1937) by Phyllis HughesOriginal Source: Library of Virginia
July 3, 1937
"July third at last! For how many weeks - even months we had looked
forward to this day, planned for it, talked of it, counted the days - until going to meet new worlds--and until leaving behind dear friends and habits. The trip had been long dreamed of as being 'sometime' in the future. The folks had evidently been talking of it for some time, unknown to me. Then Mom 'sprang' it on me. She said calmly, 'You know we're working toward going back East this summer, don't you?' I remember cocking my head to one side and smiling whimsically and doubtingly, thinking, 'Quit ya' kiddin!' as I answered aloud, 'No.' The plans were explained to me and from that time were carefully worked out. During the two intervening weeks after school closed, the real work began of shopping for innumerable things, big and little; altering and mending clothes; assembling articles; seeing about tickets and routes; writing and answering letters; visiting friends to say 'goodbye;' and trying to get to the beach to acquire a little tan to show off to the Easterners."
"As the train pulled slowly out of town, a great many emotions were struggling inside of me, but the predominating one seemed to be that of sadness at leaving. At Sola Street, Jeane and Helen and some other Simmons’s were sitting anxiously on the fence ready to wave to us, but the train was long, we were on the wrong side, and even going slow it was a little too fast. They didn’t see me though I waved frantically. That was the breaking point. I just couldn’t keep the tears back. And Ronce’s missed us too. But as the time went on, the countryside began gradually to take on a new appearance, and I began to perk up and get interested in the unfolding road."
July 4, 1937
Sleepy eyes, as yet unaccustomed to the light, were dazzled by the patches of smooth whiteness that marked lovely Mount Shasta. The two rising peaks were towering rough mounds of chocolate cake over which thick, creamy marshmallow frosting had been poured. The morning sun made it stand out like a magic cameo against the sky. ....Then - at last, Portland and an hour's stop over before boarding the train that was to take us eastward to Chicago."
July 5, 1937
"Oh boy! What a night's sleep! I guess I didn't wake up at all. Daddy started tickling me. 'Say, do you know what time it is? Nearly 8 o'clock!' 'Oooh! I thought from the way that you said it was almost 10:30!' We found ourselves in Spokane, WA, license plates had changed color again over night. Out of Spokane were quite a few trees, looking like Big Bear, only the trees were rather small. They looked the same as pines to me, but so did the ones yesterday that the porter said were all 'fuhs!"
July 7, 1937
"On this, our last morning on the train, we got up and ate quite early so as to be ready when the train pulled into Chicago at 8:40. There was a heavy haze that hung over the city...the coal from the factories. I definitely did not like Chicago. Uncle Clarance's at last. It met my expectations and passed them. Jeanette Baker, one of our cousins was a nice girl, but so quiet that one almost forgot she was around, except the work just got done, almost unnoticed."
"Jeannette was going to a party that night and asked me to go. We met about 10 other cars at North Reading Baptist and went to a farm. I gathered it was a birthday surprise party. I was surprised to see an elderly man meet us with a shot gun ready for action!"
"He laughed as he put it [the shotgun] away when he found the young people of the church marching up to him. I found out he was Will Balcom, one of my cousins! It was a grand party, we didn't get home until midnight."
July 8, 1937
"We slept in late and spent the morning writing letters. After a light lunch we began our rounds of visiting by going to Uncle Clarance's farm to see Aunt Bess Murray, a very nice and lovable lady. We met her son Marlo who was pale from being sick so long."
"We went to grandma's old home and met cousin Bion Murray, his wife Luella, and his daughter Katherine, who is just my age. She had been in the field all day driving the team for haying. Gee, all the kids get pressed into work around here."
"Grandpa got to telling me about Grandma -how she used to come out on that porch to see him on Sunday evenings, and how they went to young people's meetings together and what a long drive it was to her house from where he lived!"
July 9, 1937
"That afternoon visiting was started with Ed Galloway, an old neighbor, then Fern Balcom, Cousin Florence's sister. She is rather prim and nice looking. We went to take some pictures of the little white schoolhouse that everyone seems to have gone to."
"This visiting was all very nice, but I wished we were going to be here so longer so that we wouldn't have to make the visits so short and pile them up so fast. Daddy and I sat like bumps on logs, because folks knew Grandpa and Mother, but we're strangers."
July 10, 1937
"Mother, looking out a window [at her childhood home], exclaimed that her 'lilac bush is still there.' We visited 'Aunt' Jean, and Daddy was sitting in the corner and had a cat-nap. Mother, afraid he would snore, coughed loudly, which disturbed him into politeness. That evening we walked down the next block where the Reading band gave a nice concert. I had quite a conversation with Cousin DeWitt Baker. He will be a sophomore at Huntington College. He is studying to be a chemist. He is one of the nicest of the cousins so far."
July 11, 1937
"The bell in the tower began to toll, announcing to the countryside that Sunday School was about to begin. I like the informal, friendly atmosphere. The Elder asked Grandpa to introduce us and saw a few words. Grandpa started out smoothly. Grandpa started out saying something about the old folks who put so much into the church and would be soon be gone-then his voice broke with heavy emotion and trembled. I never heard Grandpa cry before, it brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat."
July 13, 1937
"Off for the Sunny South at last! It took nearly the whole day to go through Ohio. Columbus, the capitol city, is fairly large and pretty. We crossed the OH River and found ourselves in West Virginia."
In WV, "we passed innumerable villages marked "unincorporated." One of these, Red City, was a gov't city that has been started for the unemployed who had lost farms. Our first site of Charleston was not favorable. We went through miles of crowded narrow streets."
"There was no one home at Uncle Charlie's though we waited long. Some neighbors showed us the way to where old friend's of daddy's lived. We wound our way around the hills and discovered the more elite of the city. There were some beautiful homes."
July 14, 1937
"It was a beautiful drive from Charleston to Oak Hill, the town that was daddy's home for so long. It was mountain country. Part of the way ran by a pretty stream. All of the way was the loveliest greenery and wild flowers. There were also coal mines along the way."
"Daddy remembered Oak Hill as being a little one-horse burg with not much besides a general store, post office, bank, and school, and was unprepared for the shock of finding a thriving city. As his wonder increased, his vocab decreased to 'Gosh!' and 'My golly!'"
"We drove out to the old high school he used to go to. He found very few people he knew in the town, most of them old folks. Of the young ones, several had gone to war and never returned, some had died in a severe flu epidemic, and others had moved away."
"We passed the coal mine where Granddaddy has worked the transfers taking the coal off the cars. At Mount Hope we found the Dickinson Family, our first set of southern relatives. Their house was a mansion. Uncle Bob was Granddaddy's uncle and a living image of him."
"It had been a long day-especially for Daddy. I have never seen him so excited before-he seemed almost like a different person in the way he acted, talked, and laughed. He had come back to a strange home after twenty-three years."
July 15, 1937
"Before starting through the Alleghenies, we had one detour to make-Ronceverte. Ronce was an unnamed baby when the Hughes Family migrated from VA to WV. As they passed Ronceverte, Grandmother took a fancy to the name. We got a chuckle out of sending him postcards."
"The Alleghenies were such old, smooth, worn-off mountains that one would hardly realize he was going through mountains-and was it hot! We took a side trip to see the great Natural Bridge, advertised on billboards as one of the 7 wonders of the world."
"We were completely unprepared to be asked for $1.10 each! 'Well!' we thought, 'this bridge must be pretty good It better be!' Then we came upon it-it was beautiful and wonderful-but the $1.10 each kind of spoiled it."
"It was late afternoon when we started over the famous Blue Ridge Mountains, awfully hot, tired, and sticky. Up a little ways we felt a steady, cool, delicious, refreshing breeze. We perked up like wilted lettuce in the refrigerator."
"As we got away from the mountains, we looked back and saw why they were called 'Blue Ridge.' The sun had just dropped behind them, leaving them shrouded in this deep purple-blue haze, crowned with a lovely golden glow. The sight was very satisfying."
July 16, 1937
"It's a small world! At breakfast we met a citrus grower from Florida who knows Mr. Stow, a friend of Daddy's at home! We struck out for Roseland, Granddaddy's old home. Aunt Florence asked me to play piano. It was out of tune so I played the pump organ."
"These people had surprisingly little. They envied Mother's and my short hair. They knew there were such things as cameras, but had never seen one before. I had to explain just how mine worked, they watched wide-eyed while I changed rolls and took pictures."
"Aunt Florence was really excited with our visit and insisted we stay for dinner. We agreed and said we only wanted a sandwich. But she killed and fried a chicken. Daddy wondered if she did all that when we asked for a sandwich, what she'd do if we were hungry!'"
July 17, 1937
"We went to New Hope to Uncle Ed and Aunt Ora Harner's. Uncle Ed is Grandmother's brother. We were there most all morning, and different ones of Uncle Ed's dozen children kept dropping in to meet us. But there were so many, I shan't attempt to catalog them."
"We headed for Grand Caverns and stepping through the door into the mouth of the cave was like walking into an ice box. It was far more magnificent than our imaginations had pictured. From the caverns we took the much-recommended Skyline Drive."
Research, text, and arrangement by Dana Puga, Prints and Photographs Collection Specialist, Manuscripts & Special Collections Department. Editing and assistance from Sonya Coleman, Digital Collections Specialist.
Images from the Visual Studies Collection, Manuscripts & Special Collections, Library of Virginia.
