I remember lots of trips my father took me on. The earliest I remember was to Niagara Falls when I was five. I'll never forget the colored lights on the American Falls at night from the Canadian side. I recall that a month later I started first grade, and we were to do a crayon drawing of something from the summer, and I drew the falls with several colors on them, and the teacher said that falls don't have colors, and said I should have made them blue or white. She didn't believe that they put colored lights on them at night.

There were several trips to New York City, to Atlantic City, to Ocean City (MD), and many to Baltimore. I do remember that for Franklin Roosevelt's second inaugural (Jan 20, 1936) I went to school, and Dad came into the classroom about 9:15 and took me out of school to drive to D.C. to see the Inauguration and the Inaugural Parade. Still remember the army trucks with anti-aircraft guns and searchlights in the parade. The army was so small then that they probably had to use half the serviceable vehicles to make a decent display.

The longest trip I remember was to Charlotte, North Carolina during the war. Uncle Brin was Sheriff, and asked Dad to drive down to bring back a man for failure to pay child support. Dad and Uncle Brin both knew him, and knew he wasn't violent, so Dad took me along in Uncle Brin's Sheriff's car. I remember he used the siren to get through a traffic jam on US-route 1. Also, Dad liked to take long drives on Sunday's after church. The family would pile into the Dodge and take off, eat at a restaurant somewhere, and then seek out new places to visit. Dad drove around the trestle barriers on the, then under construction, Pennsylvania Turnpike, and opened the car up. I remember him saying, "Wow, we're doing 90." When the Turnpike opened in 1939 it had unlimited speed limits, but the 3 foot median resulted in too many head on crashes, so they cut it back to 80 in 1940. I remember one Sunday when we went as far as Zanesville, Ohio and returned to Hagerstown in the wee hours. Then, during the war, War Speed came in to effect at 35 MPH, along with gas rationing, so the trips didn't go very far. I do remember one Friday afternoon Dad decided to drive to Baltimore when Aunt Libby was in College to bring her home for the weekend as a surprise. We got there and found out she had left for Hagerstown on the bus on her own. Dad drove like mad on route 40 and overtook the bus. Flashed his Deputy Sheriff's badge at the bus driver and had him pull over. Took Libby off the bus and we drove home. Don't know what the driver and passengers thought! When Libby did come home, during the war, most times we'd put her on the train for the return trip.

Don't remember Dad talking about his father taking him on trips. The only travel I remember that my Grandfather did was to Annapolis when he was in the Legislature (30 years before I was born.) Then, you went by train, and the legislators stayed in Annapolis for the whole 90 days. Got paid $5 per day though. Good pay for the turn of the Century.