Gonna Take A Sentimental Journey

In 1946 my mother and I left Florida for Los Angeles, California to live with one of her sisters, her husband and their two boys. She was leaving our father and five months pregnant with our brother. Because she didn’t feel able to handle two toddlers in her condition, my eleven-months younger sister went to stay with an aunt and uncle in Minnesota.

This aunt and uncle never had any children and they formed a very close attachment to my sister. They knew my mother was getting divorced, how hard it would be for her to raise three children alone and would have adopted my sister if my mother would have allowed it but she never would. But they always had a special spot in their hearts for DS.

Our brother was born in September and sometime in November we traveled by car to Minnesota to pick up my sister and take her back home to Los Angeles. Mother said that when DS and I saw each other again we ran towards each other and did little happy dances. We returned to L.A. and continued to live there until mother met and married the man we came to know as dad. He and mother later added two more boys to our family.

My sister and I never saw our birth father again after we left Florida. Our brother looked him up before he went to Viet Nam and they formed a relationship of sorts that lasted until his death. He had remarried but never had any other children.

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad merged in 1967 with Seaboard Air Lines Railroad and became the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. It eventually became part of CSX Transportation, one of the largest freight railroads serving most of the East Coast. The total fare paid in 1946 was $131.83, from Tampa to Chicago to Los Angeles. The current Amtrak fare is approximately $271, coach.