Page 58 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

twenty carloads of kids the previous Sunday. The day ended with an unforgettable
fellowship gathering after church that evening

Even though I was excited about the new experiences ahead for me in Alaska, I was sad
that I might never see these friends again. When I told them that I was catching a 2 AM
bus to California, I was very surprised when one of my friends, John Nance, offered to
get up at that hour to drive me to the bus station. I waited an hour and there was no bus.
When it finally arrived, the driver told me that the ticket agent had given me the wrong
time…probably the time it left Tulsa. I felt very sorry that my friend had to get up so
early in the morning for me to catch that bus. I had a three and a half hour wait between
buses in Oklahoma City, so I went to see a boy I knew in the hospital there with a bone
infection. Boy! He was really surprised to see me. As I talked with him, my pastor from
the church in Stillwater suddenly walked in. He was very surprised to see me there. A
couple hours passed before I headed back to the bus station.

From Oklahoma City, I rode the bus across the panhandle where I finally saw a
mountain in the distance that was so far away that it took hours to reach. We were
traveling on US Route 66 past Amarillo up to Santa Fe, New Mexico and not far from
the Grand Canyon through Flagstaff, Arizona and the mountains were beautiful. The
sun was low, and the shadowy effect on the mountains produced many different colors.
I really wished I had a color camera to take pictures! We finally reached Los Angeles
and transferred to another bus that took us through Bakersfield and the San Joaquin
Valley. The countryside appeared so bountiful with orange trees, olive trees, cotton
fields, grape arbors and all kinds of farm products like tomatoes and watermelons. I
finally arrived in Pittsburg, California. I checked in around 5:45 PM, six hours before
my deadline. I was glad I had taken extra time to stay with my friends in Stillwater.

At Camp Stoneman, I was to be processed for travel to Alaska, but it would be a week
or more before they’d get to me because my name was near the bottom of the alphabet.
In the meantime, I was assigned a few duties, like serving gravy on the chow line and
passing out letters in the mail room. After processing was completed, we were bused to
very long lines at the docks. After reaching the ferry, we lifted our large duffle bags to
our shoulders and climbed the gangplank onto the vessel. It took us to Camp Mason,
which was on the San Francisco Bay waterfront near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was
there that we transferred to a World War II Liberty ship, the USNS Aiken Victory.

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