Before I left for Connecticut, i got my worn tires retreaded and found somebody to share the trip and expenses with me. Maryanne was glad to find a cheap trip home to Boston.  We left Berkeley where I now lived with Joan, as Patricia had moved to Rome to marry her Vittorio, early in the morning. I wanted to make it to Winnemucca, Nevada at least by day’s end. And so we did, with tire treads falling off along the way. I didn’t know that putting new treads on my old tires wasn’t safe for highway travel.

I called my parents and asked them to wire me $200 to buy four new tires. That’s what they cost then. We found a motel nearby, had dinner, slept and woke to get the money. It didn’t take them long to put on four new tires and we were off again. No more tire trouble.

The next day we traveled till ten o’clock at night to make up for the time I felt we lost with our tire problem. We ended up in one of those motels where you don’t dare take off your clothes before lying down on the top of the bed. And it was a party motel, too. We rose early and got the hell out of there.

The rest of our trip was smooth. I was glad to be home again. Maryanne took a train to Boston. She would fly back in a week or  so.

I spent time with my parents, my sister and my friends, and before I realized it, it was time to return. One of my aunts got worried over my traveling back to California alone. “Now, Elinor, you won’t pick up any hitchhikers, will you?”  “No, Aunt Ruth, I won’t.”  “Well, you read about that girl….”  That girl had picked up a hitchhiker and he had killed her. How I hated that hitchhiker! I’d heard about him from each of my parents and now my aunt.   “I’d never pick up a hitchhiker. That’s a crazy thing to do.”

Now that the tire problem was solved, I found I had to add a quart of oil to my engine every 300 miles. But I kept my eye on the mileage and pulled off the road religiously every 300 miles. I had no problem with it. Or I’ve forgotten the problems I had! I picked up Joan at her home in Salt Lake City and we made it back fine. But I did go and trade my oil guzzling Ford for a new model.