Nineteen-year-old Elizabeth May Moody, niece of Inez and Walter Lowdermilk, was excited.
She was leaving Pasadena, California, crossing the United States by herself, and then seeing the world. It would be the trip of a lifetime.
Yes, she would have to tutor her cousins, Billy and Westher. Yes, she would spend thousands of miles sitting in the back of Uncle Walter and Aunt Inez’s 1938 Buick. And she would be gone for a year and a half.
But what an adventure.
England, France, Holland, Italy, North Africa, the Near East—and who knew what else?
Uncle Walter’s work sounded fascinating to her. The U.S. government was sending him through the old lands of the Roman Empire to study what centuries of agriculture had done to the soil—and what the successes and failures of the past might teach American farmers and ranchers.
Elizabeth said goodbye to the scent of orange groves, her parents, and to her high-school boyfriend, Forrest Daggett,1 and on August 1, 1938, boarded the Challenger in Los Angeles for Chicago.
Forrest had equipped her for the journey with “gum and dark glasses.” At the last moment he handed her another small package: “a lovely gold locket (his picture inside) from Hall’s. It makes the final touch with my suit.”
Three days later she reached Chicago and transferred to the Capitol Limited, which she immediately judged “a much nicer train than the Challenger.”
On August 5 she followed the Potomac into Washington through “the woods,” with “many trees and dense undergrowth of honeysuckle and Virginia creeper.”
At Silver Spring station, in a heavy rain, the Lowdermilks were waiting for her.
The great expedition was about to begin.
1 Spoiler alert- they married three years later