Toward the end of World War Two, Malcolm Morehouse of New York, and Phyllis Lloyd of Maryland, met in California. Mac was an Army chief warrant officer teaching radar systems, after Signal Corps duty in the Solomon and Fiji islands. Phyllis was an engineer for Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, after deciding she didn’t like working as a nurse in Baltimore, and then moving to the west coast in the early 1930s to become her own woman.
On May 30, 1945, they married. On that day began a marriage with the typical ups and downs of middle class American life of the post-war period.
May 30, 1945
Without dwelling on the details of their “ups and downs”, these pages will briefly describe my plans to drive across the USA, as Mac and Phyllis – my parents – had planned to do when they retired in 1982. Unfortunately, soon after their retirement, cancer and heart attack prevented them from fulfilling that dream. In their memory, I’ll be driving a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 220S, similar to my parents’ car, which I’ve been restoring over the last twelve months.
Blauer Engel - the "Blue Angel"
So after a slight delay, Mac and Phyllis take a trip.
Here’s the “route” planned so far:
Starting and ending in Connecticut, the target areas on the trip are: Annapolis MD, Clarksville TN, Fort Worth TX, Tucson AZ, San Jose CA, Yakima WA, Edmonton AB, LaCrescent MN, Appleton WI, Metamora IL, Athens OH, Allentown PA, Glens Falls NY – and points in between. I’ll be visiting family, friends and former students along the way. Also, using period travel guides, I’ll include points of interest that my parents would have visited back in the 1980s,
I hope to make the trip a balance between interstate and “two lane blacktop”. As classic cars are “weather sensitive”, if I leave in the Fall, I’ll start on the northern route. If I leave in the Spring, I’ll start with the southern route.
Altho’ not all destinations are shown, here’s the proposed route:
