<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Then after that, I have you going to California.

MH: Oh, yes. Well, what I should have said, also my brother was born there.

TI: Okay, good.

MH: My brother was born in Hawaii.

TI: And this is your brother Charlie?

MH: My brother Charlie. And so then when we -- this is a story. When we came back to the States, my dad was to go to the Naval War College in Newport. We landed in California, and my dad bought a machine, an automobile, and we got as far as... oh dear, I can't remember the name of it, something Mountain in Nevada, and the engine fell out of the machine, out of the automobile.

TI: Literally just dropped out of the, the car?

MH: Yes, so we were stuck in this little hole in this little nothing town.

TI: And so it's the three young, younger children...

MH: Well, yes, there was... no, in the car was my mother and my father. My sister, Elizabeth, who was, let's see, she must have been sixteen at that time. Well, let's see, how old was I?

TI: She's probably more like --

MH: No, she was eighteen at that time.

TI: Eighteen, right.

MH: And my sister Elizabeth, myself, my sister Charlotte, who was the cerebral paralytic, my brother, and a German shepherd dog going across the U.S. at that primitive time for traveling across the U.S. And that, and as I say, the engine fell out of the car, and we were stuck in this place 'til they could import another engine for the car. And then we went on to Chicago where the World's Fair was being held. And it was hot, I tell you. Traveling across the country in an un-air conditioned car with all of that load in the car. It was not comfortable, it was not comfortable.

TI: And as you go, went along, did you stay at, like, motels?

MH: What little places there were, you know. There were sort of primitive motels along the way at that time. I do remember in Chicago we stayed in a hotel. And then we did stay, as we got farther east, I think we stayed a couple of times with friends.

TI: Do you know why your father and mother decided to drive across?

MH: My father always -- I think we drove across... that was the first one, either two or three times, either from west to east, or east to west. Yes, Dad liked to drive across.

TI: Good. Okay, so you now are in Newport, Rhode Island, eventually.

MH: Yes.

TI: And how was that? What was that like?

MH: Oh, that was nice. We had a very nice house there, and I remember it was on a block where there was a, there was a haunted house which was in the woods which was nearby. We were very scared, I think we once went up to the porch and that was about the extent of it, though, there. It was in that house that my dad was tutoring me in math.

TI: In, not the haunted house.

MH: No, not the haunted house, in the house we were living in.

TI: Because you were then about eight? Seven, eight years old?

MH: Seven or eight years old, uh-huh.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.