Aurelia really wanted to travel across the country. She wanted to see North America. She wanted to hitchhike as far north as British Columbia, as far west as California, south to Old Mexico, and all the way down east to Florida. But it’s 1928, and good girls don’t do that.
Good girls from Millerville, Minnesota get married, raise kids, and settle down. In 1928 there were 140 people living in Millerville. Today, almost 100 years later, there are 100 people living there. Not much has changed in Millerville. Aurelia grew up a good Catholic girl in this tiny, sleepy town, then entered the nursing program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester with her good friend Ollie. And as soon as they graduated, the two girls stuck out their thumbs and headed west.
This was an exciting time to be alive! It was the Roaring Twenties, a period of social and cultural revolution, a time of moving pictures and radio, the birth of jazz, and a goofy dance called the Charleston. Aurelia and Ollie were also twenty, dressed like flappers with short skirts—knee height was considered “nearly naked” back then—and bobbed hair cuts that curl under the chin and expose a lot of neck. Ollie’s bob is a classic, straight out of 1920’s Hollywood, while Aurelia’s is a mop.
This was only one year before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. But for Aurelia and Ollie, 1929 was nowhere in sight. What was in sight—great stretches of prairie. From Aurelia’s scrap book there’s a photo of her with her backpack and tall hiking boots, setting out on a grand adventure that would absolutely change her life.
The girls hitched a ride to the old Cariboo Trail in British Columbia, scene of the Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1860’s. In a picnic scene they’re relaxing beside a mountain and smoking cigarettes. Women did not typically smoke in public back then. Aurelia and Ollie were a bit edgy for the times.
Next they turned south to California and visited famous San Francisco. From high atop Mt. Tamalpais they took a photo of the city without its world-renowned bridges—the Golden Gate Bridge would not be built until 1937—nor any of its recognizable buildings. That photo was taken close to my favorite campsite.
The two girls hiked up Mt Diablo overlooking the entire Bay Area—also close to a spot where I’ve frequently camped. Aurelia’s scrapbook shows Alcatraz, just a few years before Al Capone was sent there, from a spot where I often anchor my sailboat Pamela.
I was deeply moved when I discovered Aurelia’s old scrapbook. I knew she’d traveled across the country, but I didn’t know she’d visited many of the places that are very dear to me today, such as a photo of Stanford University, where my boys were born, with little palm trees that are now huge. When I saw Aurelia’s handwriting of “Palo Alto” my heart skipped a beat.
Aurelia and Olllie then hitched a ride to Universal Studios in Southern California, where the general manager took them on a tour of the 360-acre back lot. The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera had just been filmed there, and many other great silent films of the era.
Aurelia’s scrapbook shows the girls traveling across the American Desert down to Juarez in “Old Mexico”. In various photos there are men, sometimes clinging tight to Ollie, other times holding Aurelia close. But there’s often no mention of who these men are.
But in Miami, Florida Aurelia meets Denzel Rae who trains greyhound racing dogs. He’s from a small town in Kansas, not very different than Millerville, except that while she was learning her catechism Denzel Rae was learning how to race dogs on the prairie. Nonetheless, the two seem to hit it off from the start.
Miami is small but booming in 1928, partly due to rum running and gambling. Al Capone has just bought a property on Miami Beach. Denzel Rae travels the eastern seaboard from Atlantic City to Miami on the greyhound racing circuit, and happens to be in Miami when Aurelia and Ollie arrive. Looking quite dapper in his tailored suit and fedora, Denzel Rae strikes a pose with Aurelia and Ollie on the Miami Beach boardwalk. Aurelia clutches his arm with a wan smile while Ollie looks sadly at the sand at their feet.
Things start to heat up. Soon Aurelia and Denzel Rae are posing in bathing suits on the beach.
There’s a photo of the two girls sitting on a wooden pier in Florida, with Aurelia’s mop-top and Ollie looking shyly over her shoulder. That’s the last photo of Ollie in Aurelia’s scrapbook.
Aurelia and Denzel Rae Maggard, my grandparents, get married and settle down. A good Catholic family, they have seven children in South Florida. Denzel Rae retires from greyhound racing and opens a barber shop in West Palm Beach, where I’m born many years later. When I meet them they are old and seem light-years away from their time in 1928.
Did Ollie and Aurelia have any idea how their lives would be changed by their youthful road trip? No way. They followed their dream of traveling across the country in an age when good girls didn’t do that kind of thing. Their story is an example for each of us to take a step into the unknown.
This is a story worth telling.