Sophia Howard, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, May 2, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 452

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and I n v r pr pared. or n t ing I cam on hip. I t II tl way through. I still till today I have my menu rom th b at and I 1 k t 11 t t they had. I couldn t have eaten it anyway. I look at it and som day m goin t book. So I came in '52 and it was about ten days that we were on the boat. I did com ith another Dutch girl so I did not come out alone. Rini came all by herself. My dad was till- my mom was here already. My mom went before. First of all my older sister went with h r hu band and then the sister that's a year older than me went with her husband. She had three children already. So they were here already. And then my mom and my other two sisters came over. And Rini, that's my sister, and me and my dad was left because my dad was still in Holland because my mom and dad, they were separated but not really divorced. My dad was kind of alcoholic, too. BEC: Your dad was? SOP: My dad was. It was all in that family. What really, was what he always did. Saturday was payday and then all those guys went to the bar and after a lot of times the money was gone. So we had things like that happen, really. But then I finally came over when I was twenty-five. I was so sick, I remember. When I came in New York, they put me in the Greyhound bus across country. Oh, I never had seen mountains. Holland is really flat. I was so scared because that bus would go through the mountains. I was sure those mountains would fall right on top of me. I never forget that. I was so terribly scared because those mountains are so big (laughs). And I _[unclear]_. I finally, oh, I think I had to go on the bus for, I think it was, close to three days. We stopped everywhere to go to stores. You could get some food. And I finally came out and my mother was there and my sisters were there. And she said, "You just look like a heap of misery" (laughs). You know, I looked so worn out and I was wearing out, really, because I was 26