Thread: Need help on bus origins.

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Yee-ha!
Fan-b^**&%-tastic!
At the moment we're approaching the end of a tour of the U.S. of A.
We have about another five days in Perry Oklahoma until we fly back to New Zealand.
I'll quote from my diary.

Monday 20th September.

Headed off to Perry Oklahoma, the nearest place of any size to Billings, which is where our bus came from.
First stop was a motel, (Super 8,) then the Tourist Information run by the local Chamber of Commerce.
Our reception was overwhelming...pure magic.
Nothing was too much trouble; local people who knew the local people.
They got their phones working while everything else was put on 'hold'...other people coming in were shown the letter I had written and they too started getting involved..."Didn't she marry..." "No, she's married to..." and "He's dead; killed in a truck smash forty years back." and "Doesn't he live in..." "Yep, still there..." and so on and so forth.
Amazing.
Next thing we knew they had organised an after lunch appointment with Marilyn Sue Waltermire (nee Durkee) who works just around the corner at the Noble Tractor Co.
She promptly rang her brother Bruce who turned up too.
Then the reporter from the local paper...had to pose for a photo and everything.
Amazing...pure magic...just too much to assimilate...

Then out to Billings itself, where on an off-chance we called in at Kurt's Bits of This and That where we spoke with a Dick Smeltzer...once again our reception was just amazing.
If you want to meet genuinely fine people talk to small-town Americans.

Tuesday 21st September.

Back to Billings; Dick Smeltzer had arranged through a lady named Debby, who is the school secretary, for us to go to the school to check the Graduation photos...there we were able to verify what Mrs Marilyn (Durkee) Waltermire had told us yesterday...that which we had written down as 'Sid' Mason was actually 'Sue' Mason.
Not that we doubted her word!
Seems we're the talk of the town...we showed some kids at the school where we came from on a world globe...later, driving through town, She heard some kid yell "Hey! Those are the folks that bought a Billings School bus!"
Dick has also arranged for us to have a private tour of the local museum...hopefully to absorb something of what made the town what it is today.
Learned a lot too from just talking with locals...the nodding neddies are all pumping oil, not water, the crop I couldn't identify was beans, they call lucerne alfalfa, and to top it off we got invited to a barbeque at the local Baptist Church next Sunday!
Whew!