Mon. Mar 21: Woke up just as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and came abreast of Alcatraz, under the Oakland Bridge and had a vista of San Francisco apartment buildings high on the hills str…

Mon. Mar 21: Woke up just as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and came abreast of Alcatraz, under the Oakland Bridge and had a vista of San Francisco apartment buildings high on the hills straining to see over the heads of their neighbors. Docked at Alameda before 8 ... took the train and ferry across to S.F. Side notes: Floating under the 10-month old Golden Gate Bridge at daybreak would be a memorable introduction to the bay.

The After-the-Trip Letter After five+ months of zigzagging the planet, Helen is back on U.S. soil. A longshoreman's strike gave us one day instead of the five we'd expected in Los Angeles. I was taken on a mad dash across county to see everything at once: Hollywood, the Troc, the Brown Derby, Wilshire Boulevard, the University (U.C.L.A.), the…

By now I thought we’d already be to South Africa, if not further. But here we have just shoved away from The Big Easy’s decadent docks. There are just so many good bits to share. From a…

Setting Sail In The Helen Files, I mentioned that my uncle Bob had transcribed Helen’s travel journal from her 1937 trip around the world, with its eensie handwriting, and that it came out to…

Day-to-Day Journal Side note: Helen is floating east at 14.21 miles per hours, towards San Pedro, California, with six days of Pacific Ocean to go. This sea seems angrier than the ones before: literally, with its heaving and burbling waters; and figuratively, with warships all over South East Asian harbors. And then news from abroad is heaped with literal dread.

Day-to-day journal Lat. 25° 53' N Long. 163° 05" E Dist. 354 mi. Av. Speed 15.01 mph Mon. Mar 7: Filled with good intentions for work, it's bright cool, sunny. Said hello to Shag and stayed until after 10. Session with J. on time, hour angles, tec. Morse - I get progressively worse. Lat. 27° 27' NLong. 168° 55" E…

A few more things before the next chapter (which I keep saying, but then I find more things). A Brother in Awe While all the booze cruising and high flying was going on, Helen received a letter fro…

The After-the-Trip Letter When we reached Manila we felt as though we were practically home, and the twenty days across the Pacific were the shortest ever, in spite of the extra Wednesday after we crossed the International date line.  Side note: Twenty short days for pondering big questions. To recap: a super young smart and accomplished race-car driving hottie has asked (more than once) for her hand in marriage.

In the last post, we established that Helen was way more foot loose and fancy free than her outward persona would indicate. My husband commented about the cruise post and how strange it must have b…

In December 1934, Helen travelled, most likely from Gulf Port, MI, to New Orleans, LA, to board the S.S. Sixaloa, a Great White Fleet vessel that was part of United Fruit Company (now known as Chiq…

The day-to-day journal Be sure to read all of this one, as it has some extra juicy parts. But they're peppered about, so don't skip. Thur. Feb. 24: Talked to the new passenger — been mining engineering, new mining laws giving Gov't right to confiscate mines and equipment is scaring out foreign capital. Large gold mines, very large manganese and chromate (used in autos) mines, the former shipped to Japan.

I was wrapping up the ‘The Early Years’ section, with Helen exiting the U.S. for the first time in the early 1930s to voyage by freight ship around Central America, but then two things …

The After-the-Trip Letter Sam and I (he was a passenger we acquired in Java) stopped traffic in Cebu, and the citizenry turned out to stare, for he wore shorts and I had on slacks, and such peculiar creatures had not been seen before in those parts. Side note: In 1938, women's slacks were popular (and controversial) in a host of places near and far.

Racing Cars My mother got me in touch with a couple who knew Helen in Vancouver, B.C., through Shadbolt Cams (a shop that repaired cars, and at some point, if not always, specialized in vintage and…

When I got to transcribing letters later on in the chronology of things, I remembered that, quite often, people tell stories in letters. Helen didn’t have the final version of letters that sh…

The Socials Everything else went into chronological order, all of it ready for inspection. I also started to pester family for intel, including my mother (b. 1938), the last of her generation, who …

I was busy making piles of materials in chronological order, trying not to peek too closely and get distracted again, when a single piece of notebook paper titled WHERE I WAS distracted me. And rig…

The previous posts seemed a fitting preface to her life, as flying was a recurring theme, decades after she stopped doing it. And there’s more to it, including some freaky parallels to Amelia…