Victoria

The last time I went to Victoria, I remember well. I had just finished a year of teaching in Billings, Mt, broken up for the final time with my boyfriend of over 7 years and traveled on a bus to Washington to meet my college roommate Colleen who had taught her first year in Port Angeles. 

The bus experience I will never forget.  I was the only one on the bus with all these soldiers and I was shy.  Each time I passed one with an empty seat he would encourage me to sit down.  I finally sat near the back next to a sweet, shy, looking guy.  It was so cold on the bus I shared my blanket or coat or something with him.  Innocent me, he tried to get fresh...but he was so nice it only took a word from me to put him in place.

Colleen and I took the ferry which was so exciting to me and I loved Victoria--this was in 1956.  Port Angeles was very rainy and I thought then that I could never live in Washington.

Colleen and I then started on a month long trip down the west coast to find a place to teach.  I thought Oregon was beautiful but we kept moving south.  The San Francisco area was very interesting.  We both wanted to tour a Navy ship and naively approached a sailor at the bus stop and asked him if he had any friends who would take us on a tour.  He called a buddy from a pay phone and let us talk to him.  He said he would be there in a minute and would love to take us on the ship.  I asked how we would know which one he was and he said he would be wearing a white hat!!

Well, I guess he liked how we looked because he actually brought a friend and we had a wonderful tour of a huge ship.  They even invited us to a tour of San Francisco that night.  Honestly, I know you could not do that in this day but they treated us royally and we had the grand tour, something to eat and nothing but gentlemanly attention.

San Francisco and San Jose were not hiring any new teachers so we moved on.  We toured the Hearst Castle and various other side trips and our next place to interview was Santa Barbara.  We loved that place but they were not hiring either.  We spent a lot of time in Los Angeles at Muscle Beach, the Lawrence Welk Show, etc. and eventually drove in to San Diego.

It was gorgeous.  We immediately knew "This was the Place"--coincidentally it was the Last Place, too.  We had had a roommate from San Diego named Gerry.  She was married and we called her and asked her why she never told us what a great city this was.  We stayed at the Ocean Beach motel and started touring the town.  At that time Mission Valley was mostly farm and dairy and Mission Bay was mud flats.  We loved to go to Ocean and Mission Beach and thought the perfect place to live would be La Jolla but it was very expensive.

Oh, yes, we applied right away at the Education Center.  They told us the man who did the hiring was out of town but he loved BYU students and he needed teachers and he knew he would hire us.  Just go have fun and we would received contracts in the mail.  (We did!)

The funniest thing was driving around San Diego.  We kept running in to dead ends but finally decided that North Park/Hillcrest would be in our price range and a good central place to live if we got the teaching jobs.   The big department stores were all downtown so we would shop and then go to the movies down there.  It was so funny.  You would be surrounded by oceans of sailors in the movie house.  San Diego was a good place for single girls at that time.

We went home after our month long trip and I took the train from Utah back to Glendive and then in August took the train again to San Diego for my newest adventure.  Coincidentally my boyfriend was on the train with the National Guard so we said Goodbye again but I spent most of my trip in Montana with my childhood friend George--they were all on their way to NG camp.

John, one of returned missionaries doing time in San Diego--Fall 1956.

In San Diego we rented a darling place not too far from the zoo with a big orange tree on the patio.  We attended 4th Ward where there were 17 new school teachers, even more returned missionaries who were now doing their Navy time plus lots of locals.  It was a great ward. 

We soon moved from our Zoo area place to a bigger place with 4 other teachers. We were just a block from the ward.  Our place became a second home for all the sailors.  We had lots of dances, mutual activities and the older people loved to follow our social life.  It was a great time for young people in San Diego.

Chuck, one of our Navy Officers in the ward, brought his friend Bill to do a demonstration  with him in my school class.  That started a whole other new adventure in my life.  So what was I talking about?  Oh yes, Victoria, looking forward to going there again with Maria and Linda on March 25th.