Episode 4 - SVW Tapes - 4th July, 1978

Summary

Episode 4 lands on the Fourth of July and offers a vivid slice-of-life from a summer spent balancing holiday festivities, broken appliances, and family updates. Sharryn narrates with a blend of dry humor and maternal warmth, giving Nana and Grandad an intimate window into their day-to-day chaos.

The Scene at Home:
The tape opens with kids being kids — yelling, playing, and watching cartoons while Sharryn tries to record over the noise. She’s multitasking: taping letters, managing domestic tasks, and trying to keep the house cool. A heatwave has hit Atlanta, and their air conditioning is broken. She jokes that it’s "bloody awful" and blames it for slowing her down. The dishwasher is also on the fritz, and she’s been forced to hand-wash everything again.

Fourth of July Festivities:
John takes Maitland and Rachael to watch a fireworks show at Lenox Square, a major shopping center in Atlanta. Maitland returns excited by the fireworks and eager to share his experiences with Grandad. Rachael talks about their outing to Stone Mountain earlier in the week, where they saw a massive Confederate carving and rode the cable car to the top.

Kids' Contributions:
Maitland and Rachael get plenty of mic time. Rachael proudly talks about being in a reading group at school and describes a popcorn-making adventure. Maitland, ever the entertainer, shares his thoughts on snakes, fireworks, and the heat — even telling jokes (again). He’s in full imaginative mode, talking about building a machine that can "cool the whole house down with a button."

Health, Work & Household Logistics:
Sharryn gives an update on John’s job hunt and university prospects, including an application to Georgia Tech. She expresses worry about finances but seems hopeful that things will improve. The family is still planning to move into the Elsons' house, and she’s trying to juggle work at the clinic, childcare, and a constantly ringing telephone that seems to never bring good news.

People, Places, and Brands Mentioned:

• Family & Friends: John, Maitland, Rachael, Vicky, Allison, Beverly
• Locations: Lenox Square (fireworks), Stone Mountain (Confederate memorial site), Elsons’ house
• Events & Objects: Independence Day fireworks, broken dishwasher, popcorn maker, heatwave
• Pop Culture & References: Bugs Bunny cartoons, Confederate monuments, Stone Mountain cable car, Maitland’s ongoing obsession with snakes

Sharryn’s tone throughout is light but layered — both amused and mildly exhausted. Her storytelling is full of heart, colored with little details that bring 1979 Atlanta to life. She ends the tape (as always) by urging her parents not to worry too much and reassuring them that the family is managing, even if the house is “about to melt.”

Full Transcript 

Oh, Praise my soul, the King of Heaven..." "In... Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy..." "Number 32, Morning Has Broken. Both by Dorothy..." "How Many? Harmony part optional and sang with a gentle float." "Now something a bit more lively this time..." "...because it is getting a bit boring. You must stay down there in the cold." "I'm gonna sing Zinga Za Za Za, can't you hear music play..." "...which is a song that I got from Max when I was there. It's a very lively song. And it's..." "...Okay, I hope you enjoy it. Here we go. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3." "Zinga, Zinga, Zinga, Zinga, can't hear the music playing in the city square. Zinga, Zinga, then..." "...with the music playing in the city square. It's like... it's not quite as lively as when they're screaming it." "Hi... sister, but... I really like it in this way because I'm not quite as lively and don't quite jump around as much as my sister." "I'm sorry she talks so long, but she was trying to find the music at the same time." "Okay, here we go. 1, 2, 3. Zinga, can't... with the music playing. Zinga, then, then... I play music playing." "This is dedicated to my dad."

Oh, that's right, yeah. John came in to meet me. John came in and met me at lunchtime that day because we had the afternoon off, that's right. And Sue had taken all the children to a place called Elitch Gardens, which is fun there. Playground area for children in the park, which they just simply enjoyed tremendously. Sue was very, very kind to them. I'm sure she took them on everything that was able to be gone on, up or down, roundabout and all the rest of it. Anyway, when John met me at lunchtime, as I went out to meet him, he was talking to a lady who had come rushing up to him when she'd seen our New Zealand flags. It turned out her name was Helen Peterson, and she was a part Indian lady and was in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs here in Denver. Well, she'd rushed up to John because she'd seen the flag, and she said, "Oh, you're from New Zealand." She said, "I've just met someone from New Zealand," and she said, "I've been... the other weekend with him or something." She said, "It was Bishop Bennett. Did we know him?" We said, "Yes, of course." We don't know him personally, of course, but everybody knows of Bishop Bennett. "Oh," she said, "such a charming man," and was delighted about having met him. And oh, she was so thrilled that we were from New Zealand and how nice he'd been that she said, "How about coming to lunch with me?" So she said, "We're going to the Top of the Rockies," which is a really fabulous restaurant right on the 30th floor of a very large building in Denver, and naturally overlooks the Rockies. So we all went up to the Top of the Rockies for lunch. A little thing that happened, which we thought was quite funny, was to get up to the top of this really fabulous restaurant where they had fabulous food. And Helen ordered a hamburger, a typically American thing to do. It really, yeah... take some beating. Anyway, lunch didn't finish till somewhere around 4:30. We had a great time with her actually. Why she was outside the Hilton Hotel was because she was meeting two women who were at the conference. That's why she got sort of carried away, the fact that I was at the conference. And she was meeting two women, both of whom were lawyers from out of state and dealt with Indian affairs and property and land problems and so on in other states, and whom she'd known for many years and had had dealings with. And so we all had lunch at the Top of the Rockies.

Well, I went back to the hotel at about five, and John went on; he was going out for dinner with all these artists and so on again. I went back to the hotel because that evening we were going out. And the... most of the conference had to be broken up into smaller sections, too many people to go to any one place at one time. And the particular dinner tour that I was to go on was to a place called Heritage Square, which was... oh, I suppose about three-quarters of an hour out of town. That's right. Evening... 200. And we took... us in a bus out to this Heritage Square, which is a Wild West town, completely restored and so on, and there's an opera house there, and you have dinner, and there's a musical show in the evening, which was very well done. It started with old-time movies, and then they had the musical, which was Buffalo Bill. And then they had a Vaudeville act as well, so it went on to something like half past ten, and it was a fairly late night but was very good fun. And then we all went back to the hotel. John, as I said, went out for dinner with his friends and so on. I think they all went off to town after dinner and went to some folk music place and had cheesecake.

On Wednesday, the 28th, the fourth day of the conference, was the big day for voting. We had reports from the United Nations and immediately heard our fellowship awards, and then we had the voting. And then we had a free... so that evening, I didn't participate in the scheduled program because they were going down to Colorado Springs to the Flying W Ranch, which we had already been to, or the Philharmonic Orchestra concert. So I went home after midday... after the voting, and to Sue and Henry's, and we had a lovely evening meal altogether. That was the first time I'd met Henry, and he really is an absolute pet. He's got just such a sense of humor, oh Lord, he's just marvelous fun. And they live in a very large condominium, which is in a very nice part of Denver. The children had played, and Rachael had gone to the movies in the afternoon with Julie, the little girl had a sleepover evening. And we spent the night there.

And in the morning, I went into the final session on Thursday, which covered everything else that hadn't been gathered. And that night, of course, was the... So to dinner... the banquet, which everyone was all under the one roof, was at a place downtown at the conference center. And the dinner was very well run, very, very nice indeed. And they had dolls on every table, international dolls from every country on every table, of which they had little... you know, one person at the table had a star underneath their coffee cup or something or other, and mine was the one, and I won this little doll, which I think is from Switzerland somewhere, which Rachael, of course, is delighted with. But I had Sue's people at my table that night. Unfortunately, Beverly Bennett wasn't feeling too well. But they seem to be able to revive her enough to attend the conference, the banquet dinner. And... oh, that's right. That afternoon, John picked me up after dinner. We went to the Museum of Natural History in Denver, which is a very famous one because they have particularly nice animals and things there. And they had a new Indian display, which was very, very good. Three-dimensional things they do here, which are extremely good, and it's a good cover of... of Indians throughout the upper part of the United States. So they dropped me back at the hotel for dinner at night, and we all went off. After that... well, after the dinner, we came back to one of the girls' rooms, and there was a party-like atmosphere all around. Actually, the Australians had been having so many parties that they were told they weren't to have any more, so the best thing to do was move down to the next floor and have them in the New Zealand girls' rooms, which they did. John came back to the hotel and joined in with the party. And I was quite sad to say goodbye to the girls that night, really. Most of them were heading off the next day.

And so that was the end of the conference, which was pretty successful, very well organised. The thing that I think probably... one of the things that intrigued me most was the fact that there were these women there that were incredibly worldly dressed. We just couldn't get over the clothes. They must have just had about 10 hat boxes with them. They actually wore hats most of the time, and they had massive jewelry and fabulous clothes. And of course, it turned out that they were from Iran and all the Arab countries, and they certainly were the women at the conference. They were also very outspoken; they seemed to be getting their message across pretty well. And I think the whole thing... the main thing that I gained from the conference was the fact that we must work for, you know, the betterment of people in other countries. Definitely an international world where we must all work together. And not concentrate so much on our own home areas, but that we must think internationally. It's so important; the world is so small now. We must work for the status of women and children throughout the world. And it's... it's difficult to explain the effect an international conference has on you, but it's... it's something that I feel that if people can possibly go to, they must, to get this international feeling that just broadens your horizons so much further than your own backyard, which, you know, I know it was very important. It was such a very small world nut. First, we are running out of resources, and yet there are so many people, so a choice is made from so many of our countries.

It was interesting to listen to the report... the woman from the United Nations. Oh, no, it was during the conference. And it was... oh, Helvi Sipila from the United Nations, and she had been to the opening... President Carter had opened something at the White House the day before, and she had been there, and he was saying how deprived in so many other respects the children of the United States are in so many social ways, and that they have too much television and all these other things that one feels that they come from a country of great affluence, which is so true, but they are so deprived in so many other respects, and that one should look more carefully at these other angles of things. Which was quite interesting, I think, something that we should all be more conscious of. Anyway, so that was the conference. And it was naturally a great deal more, but I... you can't explain it all on the tape, of course. So we didn't finish up at the parties at the Hilton until pretty late that night.

On Friday, we had a very leisurely time, Friday, the 30th of June, at Sue's. We cleaned up and chatted with Sue, and little Julie was going off to summer camp, so Sue had to take her up into the mountains that day. So we went off to see them... the Mint and...?...which was a very interesting experience. Unfortunately, they were doing the annual stock take, and so the actual coins weren't flying through the machines. However, we were able to see how it all worked and went... saw some gold bullion and all the rest of that. And that night, there... train... we took the children to McDonald's for dinner, which, of course, they always think is pretty good. And Henry and Sue took John and I to a place called Brooks Cafe, which is a very, very quaint restaurant. It was an old gas station that's been converted into a restaurant, and it's unique in that it's operated completely by solar energy. And just after we arrived in the States here, they had a day called Sun Day, which was a special day for solar energy and saving other energies. And on that particular day, President Carter had eaten at this restaurant because of its unique capacity for operating completely under the... under solar power. The fabulous restaurant thoroughly enjoyed that night but had a great time, it was really, really great fun. And one of Henry's daughters... Henry has been married before, and he has five children from the previous marriage, and Katie, one of his twin daughters, babysat for us that night. She's a sweet girl, actually. Kids are just sweet. Other than the whole... really great family. They don't live far away, and so they visit very regularly.

On the Saturday, 7th of July... and a month gone by... time just... is going so fast, as you can see. I have great difficulty in coping with the correspondence. It really is quite impossible. It's hard to explain, but living in a camper once... you know, sort of the kids are up with the crack of dawn, of course, we're travelling a lot during the day, we're seeing them a lot during the day. It takes me all my time to keep the diary up to date, and by the time night time comes, because we don't stay in camping grounds, we can't hook up, and it runs our batteries too flat to use the electricity for the lights. So you know, we're unable to write in the evenings, so it's very difficult really to get mail away.

On Saturday, Henry, who's really such a sweetie, absolutely insisted... Beverly Bennett hadn't been feeling too well during the conference. She'd, I think, been struggling a bit with the altitude. It wasn't too bad for us because we'd been around the area for a while, but the girls that just flew in... they didn't notice that we were at 6,000 feet, and it seemed to... Beverly was pretty exhausted. She'd been working terribly hard up towards the conference, and I think it had her beat. So she wasn't really feeling like going on. They had a tour down to the Air Force bases on the Saturday, but it meant sort of a whole day on a bus and stuff. So we decided we'd run her down there because we hoped that she really could see it, and she was contemplating not going. And being, you know, in her area of state, not work... we felt we really wanted her to see it. So Henry absolutely insisted that we took his Merc... well, Beverly and Ann came too. Delighted to see Ann, such a nice girl, all up, I'm sure. So we travelled down to the two Colorado Springs Air Force bases in great luxury in the Mercedes Benz. And we toured Beverly and Ann around Manitou and Colorado Springs as well. We got back about 7:30 that night, and Henry was going out for dinner, so they shot off. We just had a quiet night.

On Sunday... And... oh, that's right. On Sunday morning, we were up very early because Helen Peterson, the lady whom we'd met outside the Hilton Hotel, the Indian, who had invited us for breakfast and wanted us there at 8 o'clock. So it was one almighty dash to get there by eight. And of course, we were treated to a fabulous breakfast of pancakes and sausages and scrambled eggs and goodness knows what. And she'd invited some Navajo people around for breakfast as well. Their name was... they were full-blooded Navajo Indians, and they had two children and a most interesting family to have breakfast with us and chat. They were getting ready for a powwow in their area, so it was great excitement planning for that. This is when they all wear their national costumes and all get together for their Indian affairs. Now, Helen, marvelous woman, she really is a women's libber before her time, has had a great deal to do with the women in politics in this particular city and has been involved with politics here in Denver. She, I suppose, would be, you know, 55, and she had her little granddaughter, whom she had invited for breakfast too so that she could play with Rachael. She was the same age as Rachael. And Helen collects Indian jewelry. Well, we had seen masses of Indian jewelry, but she had the most incredible collection that she showed us. She collects it for two reasons: that it's an investment, and she hopes one day when she retires from her professional life to probably trade and sell, perhaps in a boutique or something, having Indian jewelry. So in the meantime, she's getting the pleasure from it, but it's also a good investment. They have these blossom necklaces, which are very, very large and quite cumbersome, very, very expensive, full of turquoise and silver. And she had many of these. She actually gave me a lovely turquoise ring as a present, which was very, very sweet.

She took us all over town, took the kids swimming, took us out for lunch, and took us to Molly Brown's house, which was fascinating and quite interesting. And Molly Brown, of course, is the now infamous, unsinkable Molly Brown. She was actually a passenger on the Titanic and has this very ostentatious house which has been restored in Denver. We really were terribly sad to say goodbye to Helen. She wants to come down to New Zealand, and she wants to bring with her a group of Indian children. She thinks that they would enjoy meeting Maori children and that she feels their cultures have a lot in common. Actually, she enlightened us on many aspects of the Indian traditions and the way that things have happened in the United States with the Indians. One is inclined to feel that they've been terribly badly done by, but you know, she's an Indian herself, and she sees things in a completely different light, and a very, very loving and kind person, very understanding, and has done, I think, a great deal for the Indians herself and really doesn't think they've had such a bad deal at all. She said they're very wealthy; they have lands that they now have, rich in minerals, that they... Taxes, of course, in this country... Indians pay no tax at all. They pay money to their own tribes or to assist with the running of their own tribes, but they do not pay any taxes as the Americans do. That's providing, of course, they're on a reservation and so on. And the Americans here pay incredible amounts of property tax. You know, just what we would call an average home, where we pay, you know, about $160 in rates a year, they pay property tax every year, and it's often $1,500, seems to be, you know, a regular amount that they might be expected to pay, which is pretty steep every year just for the privilege of owning your own house. It doesn't really encourage you to do so.

Then after we left her, we went round to Rob's. He was having another party, barbecue, and he had yet another girlfriend whose name happened to be Sharon. And we had a lovely evening with them, and once again, a very sad goodbye because Rob was a great guy. He's young, and he's great fun. And he was just terribly kind to us. We really... already feel very sad, especially knowing that meeting people was wonderful. We just can't meet enough people; they're also great. But you know, it really is very, very difficult to part with them.

Well, now we're in July... Monday the 3rd, and I see it's Anna Reid's birthday. And as I hear in my letters, these tapes seem to get around heavy birthday days. And I would... And now that your little finger has stuck back on, my bitter mother wrote and told me that you merely lost a finger, and Rachael and Maitland were agog to hear such a gory tale with great detail, and I had to read it three times to them about your finger and what happened to it. And since, of course, I've heard from Jocelyn that Sue's nearly lost a foot, and Joan's lost... I better not say what... and things are not going too well, the Reids at the moment. And I'm very, very sad that I was unable to be there to help you move, Jo. I know what a hell of a lot of stuff you've got and how much time it'll take you to move, and I'm very sorry that I'm not there too to be of help to you because I thoroughly enjoyed the last move really, thank God when it was all over, but it was fun. You always seem to find it... you always seem to move when there is some great hassle... Unfortunately, this one didn't sound as pleasurable as the last. Anyway, you're feeling better to us. I've really been quite concerned about him. Right, so that's Anna's birthday.

Oh, we were still up Sue and Henry's... yes, that's right. Of course, 3rd of July, we were busy preparing for the 4th of July. And Sue and Henry were having their whole family over, and of course, Henry's got five children and hundreds of relatives, and Julie, of course, a little pet, who's a little girl. And we had a quiet day, but Sue was frantically preparing for the arrival because not only did she have all the family coming on the 4th of July, but Henry's mother was arriving from Miami that day. And his... her sister, Henry's aunt Sylvia, the grandmother was Flora, and the aunt was Sylvia. Well, they were just priceless. Just love them. Flora was 75, if you please. And so the 4th of July was not only the 4th of July, but it was also Grandma's 75th birthday celebration. Well, never seen such a young seventy-five-year-old in all my life. She was so fit; she was just fit as a butcher's dog. Arrow of the bee and an epilogue scream. They, of course, are all... as soon as I heard their voices, just about cracked up. It was real untouchable stuff. They said, "They got good boy and though boy," and they're Jewish, of course, and they're from the Bronx in New York, and one never forgets that accent. It's really just unreal. They flew in from Miami, and we had a brief formal dinner with them that night, and it was really great fun. This great... mother of Henry, or Grandma, as they will call her, is an absolute darling too. We had a lovely evening, and that night we managed to kick the kids off the waterbed in the rubber room, and John and I had our first experience sleeping on a waterbed. Everybody has waterbeds here; they're very, very popular and quite cheap. Just might bring one home. They're okay, except if somebody else gets out of bed, it's like a tidal wave. Very comfortable, though. If I think of you that are... knee ache or something, it'll be most comfortable to sleep on. Lava.

So the 4th of July came around. Well, the kids all went swimming because Sue and Henry's condominium, of course, has a magnificent swimming pool and a fabulous recreation area, and they have lounges and everything, and anybody that owns one of the condominiums is entitled to have the lounge area, which is very large, for parties or whatever. They've got, you know, a recreation room with all sorts of bicycles and garden hoses. And so we prepared all day for that, and then we went round to Henry's children's house in the afternoon, spent the afternoon with the girls. They were making the birthday cake for Grandma. We had to make two in the end because people kept arriving, and in the end, there were 26 for dinner or something. So they made a carrot cake, which is beautiful, really nice, and we had to put 75 candles on it. Took all afternoon. And then we all went round back to Sue and Henry's for the big party. And of course, they had... the girls, the daughters, had all gone round in the afternoon and prepared the house with streamers, red, white, and blue streamers, and great big balls, red, white, and blue, you know, great paper things. And Henry, of course... there was an absolutely... Honey had on his red, white, and blue shirt and a boater hat with the red, white, and blue stripes. And it was all terribly, terribly American and naturally fireworks and traditional food, love American food. They eat all their... Dad wouldn't like it, and of course, they eat all their fruit with their main courses, but I quite enjoy it. And in the morning, it was quite fun because Henry's oldest son, Daniel, works part-time on a radio station, which is just... here at Boulder, and he announced that he would like to wish his grandmother a very happy 75th birthday over the radio. So everybody was quite beside themselves with this big announcement. Their family really were great friends; they really have the grandmother on, you know, they say things to her, like... the terrific sense of humor these Jewish people from the Bronx have, and they say, "What grandmother does in her 75th year?" "Come on round the table," and they all go round the table saying what grandmother should do. And the poor thing was doing everything from hang gliding to scuba diving and goodness knows what. She takes it all in great heart and laughs, she's really quite a scream. She goes to the movies all the time, so she knows everything that's going on and is quite up-to-date. Well, so we set off fireworks very late into the night that night. The children thoroughly enjoyed it. The fireworks were magnificent, huge, big fireworks, and were really fun.

And Wednesday the fifth, we packed up, and once again, we had to say goodbye. We were so sad to leave Sue and Henry because they were just so kind to us and we just had so much fun with them. They were just of such great value. And they were all for packing up and coming on a tour too. We called in to say goodbye to Sue... Henry Z's daughter, and we moved on to Boulder and to Estes National Park. Was great to be in the Rockies after all the desert, you know. It was really nice to be sort of up in the cooler air, although the altitude has its effect. One particular day over that, the next, we crossed three ranges of mountains, well over 12,000 feet. And it really... you feel quite strange, especially going up and down that often, although you never dropped below about 6,000 feet. It's really high. And you just notice the lack of air. Well, the Rockies are fabulous, just beautiful. They really are beautiful. We travelled on through them down to a place called Granby, then on to Georgetown and through the Eisenhower tunnel. We spent the night at a place called Dillon. And yeah, yeah, in the middle of the Rockies. There's a train ride, and we were planning to go on it with the next thing, Rachael and Maitland tearing around on this train, absolutely free. I can't remember how much it cost to go on it; it was a couple of dollars or something. But they chatted up the driver, and he took them on a free ride around the Rockies. The ski resort here... it's just fantastic. The sophistication of skiing in this country just puts our ski slopes to shame. It's just fantastic, beautiful slopes because they're everywhere.

On Thursday the sixth, we went on up to Vail, which is a beautiful ski... and was all really fantastic. In Vail and Aspen, which I would think are probably the most elite skiing areas around, you're not allowed to advertise at all, which is quite unusual in this country. They have billboards everywhere and enormous signs for hotels and things. There are no signs on the hotels; there are no signs anywhere. There aren't even any sort of large... direction... well, there's direction signs, you know, road signs, but usually the hotels have enormous signs showing you where they are and so on. There's nothing, and so these areas are kept just beautifully natural, and all the buildings in this country are really fantastic. The architecture really has such a natural look about it; it always fits into the area beautifully, and it's really... And mind you, you can't buy a condominium in these areas below $100,000. They started at $100,000 for a one-bedroom condominium. Mind you, your condominium... you can take a chairlift from right outside the door, and you can ski right back to that very door. It's just unbelievable. There are chairlifts everywhere, gondolas, cable trams, you name it, they've got it, and the ski slopes are just... there are thousands of them. Vail has particularly nice, beautiful summer resorts as well, all these places. Then we went on to Aspen. Well, Aspen is fantastic, just absolutely out of this world. Tin raises were... And the town of Aspen itself is just beautiful. It's all mauled areas... brick paving, and all the shops are quaint, and they've all been kept in a sort of an oldie worldie look. And the clothes and the stuff for sale was just exquisite. We just love Aspen. If you were very wealthy, you could really have the life of Riley in places like those. Moved on to Eagle, and then we backtracked a bit because we'd... actually missed going through Aspen. So off back there, but anyway. And yeah, Aspen was really the highlight of the area. It's just beyond words. Spent the whole day there. Drove on to Glenwood Springs in the evening. Glenwood Springs are very large natural hot springs here, probably about the size of the Opal or Crystal Springs, and probably in a much higher direction. Then we moved on to Grand Junction and spent the night. Spent the night there outside a 7-Eleven, the 24-hour supermarket. The 7-Elevens didn't make up; they're all 24 hours all over the countryside. Anyway, when we got there, that's right, we had written to Bev and Jack Shields, I'm getting back... and we just happened to discover that the next... on the Saturday night, they were going to be only 60 miles away from where we were then. So we couldn't resist; we decided that we would go down to this place where they were going to be called Montrose. So we... the next morning, we visited the Colorado National Monument, then went on down to Montrose where we were. At Grand Junction, we met a couple, Steve and Jean Stills, who actually came from Oxnard, which is near Ventura in California, and they had an old Volkswagen, actually similar to ours, and we were chatting to them. They'd been to Europe and so on. They're really nice. Steve works for Youth for Christ and is a really nice guy, and we planned to meet them later on, which I shall mention later. Anyway, so we went on down to Montrose to see Bev and Jack. Yeah. W... yeah, what do we do? Yeah. That's right. We went swimming and so on. We spent the evening at a park there, and we went down to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument and spent the night. The next morning, we toured that national monument and looked around Montrose and did some shopping. Oh yes, we discovered Marmite, if you please, when we'd been in Denver. Sue had told us that Marmite was available. Rachael missed Marmite something awful. And Sue had told us you could actually get it in the import sections of the larger supermarkets. It's made in Canada. Very expensive for a tiny, weeny ounce, a dollar fifty or something, but however, it really made Rachael happy. John bought three jars, so she was delighted. And then we went over to the Red Arrow motel where Bev and Jack were to be staying and waited for their arrival. And that's where I got to... last tape, and excuse me a minute.

Well, we explained to the lady at the motel that we were awaiting their arrival, so she said she wouldn't tell them that we were there and that we could use the swimming pool in the afternoon. So we had a very nice time by the pool. And, well, I think you heard it on the last tape, they arrived with great excitement. They had 22 kids with them. And we went over to the swimming pool. We didn't say anything; we just walked up to them. And Beverly looked at us, and she said, "I know you." Of course, John had a beard. It was hardly recognizable, seven years since we've seen them. And so with great joy, we all said hi and so on and so forth, and we spent the afternoon, the rest of the afternoon, by the pool. And we all went out for dinner to the restaurant called The Cameo, all 22 kids and adults. And they were at the end of their summer vacation tour that they took these children on. And the kids had been playing baseball all the way along on the tour, so this was their final night of baseball. So we found... Jack found a school ground where we could all go and play baseball, and Rachael and Maitland had to join them for separate teams and play baseball too. And Beverly and I were out fielding and so on and so forth, but John had to pitch some balls, which was really quite hilarious because, of course, these kids were all real baseball men, and John's pitching wasn't up to much, and they early said it was a good thing he was leaving town next morning. However, he managed to pitch some decent balls. Anyway, we really had a marvelous time with them, great fun was had by all, and we decided... we stayed with them till about 10 o'clock at night. They were wanting to get a very early start next morning because they were heading for Aspen and then on to Denver and flying back to Atlanta. So we left there at about 10:30, and the kids went to bed, and John and I decided to head off. We went on through Jensen, through Vernal and Manila. And... 2... you bigot too. Oh, that's right. No, we left Grand Junction and went over the Douglas Pass to the Dinosaur National Monument. Yeah, we discovered we were in the wrong part of the park. There are two parts to the Dinosaur Monument, but it was just the large area which is designated Dinosaur Monument, which is just like any national park. And then the... the actual area where all the bones are to be found and where they are still excavating, and you can go into a building in another part, which we didn't find until 10:30 next morning in the heat of the day. It's in this place called Jensen. So we went and saw... you get little shuttle buses up to where the men are still excavating, but being Sunday, they weren't actually working. And fascinating though to see all the dinosaur bones.

And then we moved on through Vernal and Manila to Wyoming, which is dreadful. It was just nothing to Wyoming for hundreds of miles. And until you get to Jackson, which is... well, it's getting there, but there's a few hundred miles in between which is pretty dull and unexciting. It... actually Wyoming's got bugger all except at Yellowstone. We actually stopped up here for dinner that night, and we were so eaten alive by mosquitoes that we just had to get back into the car and eat our dinner in the heat. There was a place called Pinedale, which is on the way up. And then we got to Jackson Hole, which is no hole, it's fabulous. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful tourist area, really nervous. I got something... We spent the night at the airport, I think we parked at the airport, that's right. And these tourist towns are just hopping with life and fun and things doing. They're really very, very beautiful. We had breakfast with a guy from North Carolina that morning. He found out that he'd been cycling around the country. He'd done about a thousand miles on his bike, and we left him. We drove on through the Tetons. Tetons are great, really super beautiful. And we stopped at South Jenny Lake, which is... beautiful area. The trees and the lakes and the mountains, they've still got snow up that high, are really very, very beautiful. And once again, the temperatures were very comfortable. We had lunch and spent the afternoon at Colter Bay Village, which is part of the Teton National Park, and the museum there, which has a very interesting... numerous museums and visitor centers of all the National Parks that are very, very informative. They all run film shows, and they arrange... or talk to you, and you can ask them questions in July and... very, very informative and well organized. Used... we went through the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Park, and strangely enough, that very... just while we were driving through there, we were listening to a news broadcast, and Rockefeller, who was 72, was killed in a car accident, which was quite coincidental.

Then on up through to Yellowstone. Lunch... Yeah, I spotted a moose, which was most interesting. And they are supposed to be grizzly bears at Yellowstone also, but I think they're probably a thing of the past. They've had so much trouble with them. They break into people's cars and tents and... well, they do really, they're very destructive, but they've moved them. They were so troublesome, they've moved them mostly up into the mountain, and so it's most unusual to see one. In fact, we spoke to a ranger who hadn't seen one in three years, so I doubt that there's much hope of... through a couple of days and seeing one. But they have been able to stop the damage because they completely changed all the garbage cans in the area, and very, very solid metal ones, which were almost impossible for humans to get into, let alone bears. Although it'll probably... more shows, but they're very difficult to get into. And we stayed the night at the Canyon, and it was quite funny because when we woke up the next morning, there were some people... we were parked outside some cabins, illegally as usual, and some people came out of the cabin whom we'd met at the Colorado National Monument a few days before, the...? Yodohakiwis? There was a lightning storm that night. No rain, but plenty of lightning.

On Tuesday the 11th, we set off from... Well, Canyon is a place with a... and that's where we'd stayed. It's definitely the largest park that we've been in, and it's really almost hundreds of miles of roads, and it's really very, very beautiful. The accommodation is exceptional. There's more tourists here than we've seen anywhere. The roads are chock-a-block with trailers and RVs. And the trailers are so enormous. Actually, the guy that we'd met at Jackson Hole on his bike, he said it was really unbearable riding through Yellowstone because these campers are so enormous from the roads... on American standards, quite narrow... that the trailers are so enormous that it's quite dangerous for riding a bike. And, no yeah, we checked out some of the volcanic activity, which is really, really beautiful. Makes Rotorua look almost... You know, they don't have Coke cans in the pools, which... does spoil the beauty. We drove from Canyon to the... Roosevelt... Tower... to Roosevelt Tower, and we took a hitchhiker part of that way, but the road was closed between Roosevelt Tower and Mammoth, which is... only the road was only closed but for three miles between, and we couldn't get through. And we thought the road might be open the next day, but unfortunately, it wasn't. So we spent the afternoon there, and we met a lot of people up there. Had a pleasant day, and so that meant we had to return, which was a very, very long way back again. We visited the mud cauldron, and there's walks around the volcanic areas, and they're very, very beautiful. And we were staying over the place at the... oh, Yellowstone Falls.

We left the Falls early in the morning and backtracked right back to this place called Canyon that we'd been at the day before. This is as far back as we had to go to get the turnoff again, and then on to Norris and Madison. All very, very pretty areas and quite a bit of volcanic activity. And then we went down to see the Old Faithful, which we waited 45 minutes to see. See it, Old Faithful, and it finally blew. It's quite a sight. And I think the funniest thing is watching all these people waiting for it to go. They all sort of start gathering, and the next thing is hundreds of people all watching. And of course, they watch it for about three minutes, and then they all buzz off and go in different directions. It's really quite amusing. We had lunch there and moved on to further areas. It's a very vast area, and we wandered around all kinds of places. Geysers and bubbling pools and... That night, we went right back up to Mammoth, which, of course, we'd only been four miles from the night before, but had to go round... that was an old army camp when Yellowstone was first made a National Park. They put the army in there first to look after them. And here is where they have fabulous terraces. They're really very beautiful. Awful start to see. And... travelling a bit. We had dinner somewhere on the side of the road. I think we stopped somewhere with some hot water coming out of the river and bathed and washed hair and so on. And hilar... then with all this motoring back and forth, and then with bathing in the river till too late at night, of course, we missed any gas stations that were open. And the United States is chock-a-block with gas stations. They're just everywhere. There's very few places where you could run out of gas. But of course, national parks aren't quite so far... and we were miles away from a petrol station. So we asked a couple of rangers how far it was to one, and they all sort of... 14 miles out of the park. We thought we might make it, but unfortunately, we ran out of petrol first time in 13,000 miles. Thank you. And we were five miles out of Madison, which is the last point before you leave the park, where a guy came along, and he had a CB radio. Well, the next thing he's shouting over his radio, "Doesn't anybody have gas?" and so on and so forth. And I really thought we had, you know, almost a national... I do... out for our petrol. I felt quite embarrassed. I thought we're going to end up with, you know, 93 gallons of gas coming along because they all listen to these CB radios, everybody's got them. However, they managed to find... the sky said if nobody came... he couldn't sort of contact... nobody seemed to answer. So he said he'd go into the camp, and he'd either come back or send the rangers up, or... he actually came back to tell me that the rangers were coming. The rangers finally arrived about half past eleven at night. They'd been busy. And they were the same two rangers we'd spoken to earlier, who leaped out of the cars laughing, saying, "Well, you didn't make her," and brought us up gas, which they charged us not a penny more than the price of the gas for, which was very sweet of them. So we moved on out of West Yellowstone to Ashton. We spent the night at Ashton. I think we... excuse me. I haven't got a cold, but it sounds like I have. Moved on to Idaho Falls, which are very nice. They are very wide falls, I mean Idaho... Falls. And very wide falls. And then we went down to Pocatello and Ogden, all farmland and very nice countryside. We swam in a lake at Ogden, and then we drove on Interstate 80 through to Park City, which is yet another magnificent ski resort. This one was particularly interesting that day. You go up on the chairlift a couple of miles, and you come down a little... sort of... sleigh thing down a very, very corner-y and very, very fast track for well over a mile. It's really quite fun, like... it's just loved up. Its beautiful buildings. Ski resorts... the shadow... buildings and fabulous... We spent the night... at... No, we went on to the plate. That's right. And drove on into Salt Lake City and spent the night near the temple.

Oh yes, we are... first thing... when was... Friday, the 14th of July, the next morning, we went around to the visitor centre just to get a bit of information. We've always started touring around Salt Lake, and a guy came... John was on at the visitor center, and the guy came rushing up to me, said, "Oh, you're not from New Zealand?" and he shouted out... and Maitland looked at me, and I said, "I'm terribly sorry, I don't understand." And he said his name was Gordon C. Young, and of course, he's a direct descendant of Brigham Young and the original Mormon settlers. And it turned out that the guy had... he was 80... had purchased the land at Hamilton for the temple, if you please, on 23rd May 1949. Well, he lived just behind the visitor centre, and he rushed off to... "This good," I wait? And I said yes, I'd wait. And he came rushing back, and he had three letters from Sir Keith Holyoake. Marsha was delighted, and he read them to me word for word. And he'd been down in New Zealand in February, and he had spoken to Sir Keith on the phone, and it was... really a very, very interesting old gentleman. And his wife was there, and he spoke Maori, aged... and spoke very well. Not being too up on Maori myself. So he invited us back to his home, and it was really quite fascinating to go into somebody's house and see so many things from New Zealand: pictures and mirrors and all kinds of greenstone and books and so on from New Zealand. And we spent most of the morning with him. Being a Mormon, he... and one of the older elders, he was off to the church in the afternoon to marry us all off so that we will all be okay in heaven and married for eternity and all the rest of it. But anyway, we... after we left, we went to see the museum, the Daughters of Utah museum, fabulous, fabulous place, full of early pioneer relics and so on. Then we went on to Bogart's Yogurt Parlour in Trolley Square. Trolley Square is a very unique sort of place. It was the old tram shed, and it's been converted into the most beautiful mall. And here we... you find Bogart Yogurt. Actually, frozen yogurt is almost more popular than ice cream here, and it's fabulous. They don't serve it... served just like a cream freeze affair. It's very really nice. It's really good value. We spent the afternoon just about in a bookshop there talking to a guy about Volkswagens and New Zealand and one thing and another. And then we... Oh yeah, we went to a swimming pool that afternoon, and two little dark-skinned boys came rushing up to me and said, "Was I from New Zealand?" and they were little boys from Samoa... Tonga, sorry... that had lived in Auckland or been born in Auckland and were naturally... parents were Mormons, and with the church, and were now living in Salt Lake City. Yeah. They were quite cute little kids.

On Saturday, the 15th, they had... oh, it's this particular weekend in Salt Lake. It is most interesting because, of course, it's the 100-year celebrations. And so the following... on Saturday morning, they had the most enormous primary... 100 years of primary schools parade with 9,000 children. It went on for a couple of hours, a fabulous parade. So we watched that, and then we went to the temple. Well, it really is an incredible place. It's 10 acres. We spent most of the day there. Of course, it's... there's a fair amount of brainwashing going on and so on, but it's very interesting to see. Of course, you don't actually get to the temple itself. But you can go through the Tabernacle and the Visitors' Center... pretty... it's pretty impressive, and a little chapel. We went back to Trolley Square in the afternoon, and it actually rained. So we had to sleep at Trolley Square. And later in the afternoon, we went to Liberty Park and chatted with a Buick dealer as well on the night. On Sunday, we went back to the temple, and we were very fortunate that day because the Tabernacle Choir recorded every Sunday morning for half an hour. And that was the day of their 50th... 50th year of broadcasting. And so they had a special, special service, and just after the recording session, they sang the Liberty Hymn, which really was fantastic. Really quite an experience. Very moving experience. Oh, we left Salt Lake City after we'd done the temple bit in the morning, and, of course, we had to call up the Salt Lake for a swim, which is really something. We were told was... once ashore, you... it's very thorough. Funny little beach sheds. The water's a long way out, and you... you have to walk out miles and miles. You'd have to walk out over a mile to get much further up than your knees in water. But it has that really strange feeling of buoyancy. And it was quite fun that... They have showers on the beach because it sticks to you like glue, and you really need to shower straight afterward to get the salt off. And oh, well, then we went onward to... but we had that ghastly 550 miles between Salt Lake City and Reno, and of course, it's all desert. And it's the salt flats, the Bonneville Salt Flats, such a famous place. But boy, of course, you've not only got the heat, you've got the glare. And the very, very flat contour of the land. It's probably one of the only places in the world where we see the curvature of the earth. It's so vast, and you actually can see the curve on the face of the earth. Well, we got to Bonneville Flats, which, of course, are so famous for racing. And we decided to go down to them, and luckily enough, there was some racing on. And we saw all kinds of crazy machines all souped up to do all sorts of fantastic speeds. They were going 290 miles an hour, some of them, that day, and we saw a girl called... Marcia... Holly, I thought her name was, yeah, who's a stunt rider, one of the best in the United States, the woman. She was riding there. And it was quite an experience. The kids enjoyed it, too. It's unreal that the heat was so great. And they're actually making a television advertisement or movie or something too out there of skiing. They often use the salt flats for skiing ads.

We drove on through to Reno. We spent the night... I spent the night at Reno, at least we got there, all pretty late in the morning. And about 2 AM, I had lunch. And then we went to see the Harrah's car collection, which is unbelievable. The costs involved are just tremendous. You know, of course, where all the money comes from: the casinos. The Harrah's... very, very wealthy family with very large casinos both in Reno and at Lake Tahoe. The large warehouses are just chock-a-block with cars from the year dot to present time, and aircraft and boats as well. They've even got the latest Rolls Royce there. Then we went to the MGM Grand Casino, which is the biggest and must be... well, it is. It's the newest and the very largest casino in the world. And its magnificence is... The chandeliers are just fantastic. It's got a bowling alley with 50... 50 lanes. You know, bowling alleys. The shops are exquisite. The restaurants are incredible. There's a French restaurant that costs you $110 a head. There's movie theaters galore and photographs of all the old film stars. Yeah, the parking available is incredible. It's just the best... beautiful place. It was completely thrown up with... millions... something like $55 million or something. And there's a terrific shortage of staff there. But we also went back to Circus Circus. It's a slightly smaller one than Las Vegas. Actually, Reno is quite a different gambling area. It's much more sort of select and a little bit more elite. Not quite as glitzy. And that night, we... oh yes, we went to Circus Circus all evening, and then we drove on to Virginia City. We camped just south of Virginia City that night. Virginia City was Tuesday, the 18th of July. Fabulous. We... I'm running out of tape again. I don't know, I seem to be going through tape like crazy, don't I? Virginia City. Well, that's really the Wild West. Real wealth that must have come from this one town. There's enough gold... well, the fact is that the gold that came from this town completely built San Francisco. During the 18th century, inflation must have been incredibly high because of the sudden wealth that these people had. There was one lady of renown who apparently went for a gourmet dinner and the theater, and then the feather bed cost $100 a night, which I imagine shows that people had a few bob. But there's, of course, all the famous Wild Western heroes. And I didn't realise Mark Twain was in these areas during those days, and this was where he first started and first used the pen name. He was writing for the newspapers here at the time, but this is a beautiful town. It's been completely kept as it was since the last fire. These towns... all the West towns got burnt down many times, and this, of course, was one of them. There was a hotel that stood there during that time in the 1860s, 40s to 60s, and it cost then $265,000 just... it's incredible. The... that fire was always a big problem for him, and also death by ill fortune was another thing that went on. On one occasion, 88 people were... were killed or murdered or whatever before one natural cause death was registered. So it was a place that probably one wasn't terribly safe, only knew there was a very big population in those days. Fascinating place, really fascinating. And... good. We left Virginia City and moved on to Lake Tahoe, really. Lake Tahoe is... it's beautiful. Well, Taupo is my very, very favorite lake... our place. And this lake is just more beautiful than Taupo. One side of it is more beautiful than another, but the water is crystal clear, and it's really truly magnificent, beautiful blue water. From there, we went up to the... We spent the night at the Donner Pass, and we didn't realise quite the historic significance of that until the next day when we went to the visitor centre and learned all about the Donner party. Unfortunately, in this area in 1846, half of them were lost as they crossed the mountains. This is... the most interesting book about their expedition. They got caught... they left the East too late, and they got caught in the snow, and they had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Most harrowing story. We fished at Lake Donner on the morning of Wednesday, the 19th, before we visited the... the visitor centre where you can hear all about these early pioneers. After that, we moved on down through Truckee to Squaw Valley, of course, the International Olympic site. And by coincidence, just as we arrived, they were bringing down the tram car that on April 15 of this year, four people were killed, and there were 82 people on board at the time, and the cable broke, and it happened over the mountain. And, in fact, they couldn't see the cable car from where they were, but they had just brought it down, and we had... hopefully a photo of it as they pulled it over the side of the mountain. It was very badly damaged. It's surprising that more people weren't killed. Interesting to go to Squaw Valley because it's so famous, of course. It's not as beautiful as some of the elite ski resorts, but they're sort of more geared for professional sport. And we then... oh, after leaving Squaw Valley, that right, we drove on down back to Lake Tahoe. We'd left Lake Tahoe as we drove north, and we'd come back to it. We also crossed back into Nevada, so there were more casinos at the... at South Lake Tahoe. They've got a Harrah's casino. Have to go on yet another tape. So we're into the third tape now that you can offer... and Tahoe. See you on the next page.