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Show CORA LEE JOHNSON MARCH 6, 2002 know what they was talking about. But I learned right then and there: you keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you will soon become educated, which I did. Because they didn't know the life I'd led either. They would have been just as strange with me climbing mountains and fishing in streams and camping out and coming from a family of boys that we could ski right off Billy's Mountain. They wouldn't even known about that. Like Frank said, my brother, someone said to him, "Johnson, how big is your town?" He said, "About 295." Well, they thought it was 295,000. He said, "Hell, no." "I didn't know they counted them in single numbers." He always got a kick out of that (laughs). BEC: That's funny. COR: I'll tell you, by the time I got to Florida, the first time I ever, we couldn't meet the train we were supposed to be going in because we missed it by that breakdown in Omaha. So when we got in there, there was no air conditioning, they kept the windows open, they kept wicker, our seats had wicker seats. They came along there, the conductor and their service people, selling sandwiches out of wire baskets. Having paper cups and they served coffee out of a big pot. I'll tell you, now, we're in the war and things were scarce. And I sat right across, you know how the seats come together, and a girl said ... [door bell rings] [turns tape off] COR: Course, we went to the dining room together and we were a little late coming in and when we got to Palm Beach, well, I didn't know; I thought there'd be barracks and things like that. Couple of big trucks came with benches in. They said, "Hop in." Hop in? I've never hopped into the back of a big truck in my life. But I had a couple of good hands. And then they count off six and six, they took us to this Biltmore Hotel 28 |
