5 Days and Counting,,,,,,

5 Days and counting!

Yes, that is right, we have 5 days before we leave this great city of Broussard and head for Houston where we will stay with a friend of Pauline’s for one night then she will take us to the airport for a 6:10 pm flight to Miami, then from Miami at 11:05 pm we fly out to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, arrival time 8:10 am.

Speaking of Houston, the last time I was there was around 1976, I think, my sons will correct me if I’m wrong because that trip was an unforgettable experience for all of us but especially them. We had decided to take this adventure, sold what we needed to sell and packed the rest in a pull along trailer (that my husband had built) and set out with 5 children and 2 adults in a Ford, Maverick, can you even imagine that? Our youngest son at that time was about 5 years old and quite small and he rode most of the trip up in the back window haha yes, we looked like the modern day Beverly hillbillies!

It was a fun trip until two youngest boys contacted Impetigo and the oldest Gastroenteritis, and we spent about a day in a hospital in one of the states we were driving through, oh dear the memories of that! But thank God we were believers at the time and we were prayed up, well at least my oldest son and my daughter was, my faith at that moment was waning.

Moving on to when we arrived in Houston and set up camp, that’s right you heard me, set up camp. We lived in a campsite in a huge tent, which was our home. Oh did I mention a friend of ours and her daughter and 2 dogs were our travel companions? Forgive me for leaving that part out, haha. They had their own tent, thank God, once again!

We thanked God for a lot on this trip because after living in a tent for 3 weeks and no job possibility for my husband, we decided to go back to NY from whence we came. We left Houston and our campsite with about $185 to get us back to NY. Of course back in ’76 gas prices were not like they are today so we felt that this was a possibility barring no complications.

We got as far as Arkansas and our radiator went, long story short we were able to get it fixed, there is a whole lot to this but someday I will post the “whole” story. Got back on the road again and BANG the transmission went. By this time we knew that the money we had would not fix a transmission and so we made a call to our home church and our pastor came to our rescue and wired us the necessary funds to get the transmission fixed and hopefully get us back to NY. Oh did I mention that our traveling companions left us hi and dry without even offering a helping hand? Yup, they just said well, “we will see you back in NY bye bye” and off they drove.

On the trip to Houston we had to leave our home made trailer and its contents in a Maryland storage unit because the weight of it on our little Ford, Maverick driving up those Blue Ridge mountains was a bit much for her. So we stopped by the unit to make sure all was well and promised to return in the very near future to retrieve it.

We were very close to home when we realized we were a bit short of money and knew we wouldn’t make it the rest of the way so my husband decided to pawn his bow and arrows and that got us another $85 and the rest of the way home.

There is so much more to this story and like I said I will post the story in its entirety at some future date. I re-lived with you some of the adventure I had on my one and only trip to Houston. Now I’m going back there and I wonder will I see some of what I saw in ’76 or will things be so changed I wouldn’t remember?

One can only guess.