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and I shared Phil's grief over the loss of his brother and my friend.
On February 1, 1974, Fran and I met Barbara and Tully at Moissant Airport in New Orleans and we flew to Mexico City. The altitude did bother us the first night but next day we all felt better. Tully and Barbara had two real friends there, Alma and Emilio Cortes Lopez, who could not do enough to make our stay something to be remembered. Alma had graduated from Whitworth College, which is located in Tully's hometown, Brookhaven. She and Emilio took us to all the interesting places in Mexico City, including the better places to dine and enjoy the best in entertainers. The most enjoyable being the MAGIC VIOLINS OF VILLA FONTANA. We rented a car and followed Emilio to Puebla, where we visited the historical gems of this city and enjoyed a fine meal at the restaurant of one of Emilio's friends.
After leaving Mexico City, we drove our rental car to a wonderful city in the mountains called Guanajuato, where we spent two nights in a lovely old castle-like hotel called San Cecelia, which was built upon an abandoned silver mine. We drove on through Leon and then to Guadalajara in a few hours and it did not take us long to realize that the most enjoyable part of our visit to Mexico was yet to come. Guadalajara proved to be a truly lovely city with an ideal climate and a population of a million natives and about 60 thousand retired Americans. The altitude here was about
2	thousand feet below Mexico City, making it much more comfortable for those of us who lived at or near sea level. We had the added pleasure of meeting the McDonalds, Barbara's sister Ellie and her husband Jack, lovely people who were so generous with their time. The McDonalds spent four months in Guadalajara each year, returning to their home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in May. The month of February was a victim of father time when our friendly foursome returned to Mississippi.
In March 1975 Fran and I invited my sister Florence to drive to Mexico with us. She drove to our home in Long Beach from her home in Birmingham, Alabama. We used her new Ford because it was much more comfortable then our Volkswagon, and drove to Houston, Texas the first day. We spent two nights with Frank and Marguerite Brown, two of our favorite people. They were wonderful to us and had my brother Harry and his wife Marie and
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daughter Gale over for dinner. It was a delightful never-to-be-forgotten evening made possible by Marguerite. The next day we drove to Corpus Christi, Texas where we contacted a dear friend, Jane Crain who had never met Sis. Jane invited us to dine at a famous Mexican restaurant in Corpus and we all enjoyed a delightful meal. It was so nice to see Jane again, no greater patriot ever lived. We left our motel early next morning after a good breakfast and spent that night in Monterey, Mexico. On the1 third night we were some eleven or twelve thousand feet up in the mountains and stopped at a town called Zacatecas. Good meat in Mexico is quite hard to come by but believe it or not, that night for supper at the Inn we each had a delicious rib.eye. Next afternoon we pulled into Guadalajara, our destination. We had reservations at the Motel de La Americas, on Lopez Mateos, a beautiful boulevard. It was nice to again visit Guadalajara, what an interesting city. We took Sis to all the interesting places we knew about and after a stay of nine or ten days we drove on to San Luis Potosi, a lovely city high in the mountains of central Mexico. This little city of 177,000 inhabitants reminds one of a city of like size in the state of Florida with its broad streets and palm trees, but cooler climate. After a pleasant but too short stay here, we drove on toward Victoria. We climbed down the mountains and drove 66 miles to a town called Huizache, then 177 miles of desert, too hot for comfort even with the air conditioner running. We were all thankful to find a nice new air-conditioned hotel in Victoria where we rested, cooled off and later found a real good place to eat supper. Next day we crossed the border after a drive of 103 miles at Matamoros, then drove on to Corpus Christi before dark where we spent the night. I tried to reach Jane Crain but she was out of town. In the morning we left for Houston and arrived there in the afternoon. I had called Marguerite from Corpus so she expected us. However, Uncle Frank was entering the hospital for an operation in a day or so and they were expecting their lovely little daughter Emily. So we left Sis with Marguerite overnight and went to the Belaire Inn where we had made a reservation. We drove to Houma, Louisiana where I had the opportunity to call my old Schlumberger buddy, Leroy Hunter, retired and living near Houma. It was nice to hear his voice again. We spent the night in