When we were first farming we had very little money to spend on any traveling. In 1963 Joyce saved money from selling our extra eggs. My parents took care of Rhonda and Mike and we set off on a trip to Chicago with one hundred dollars in our pocket. Gas in 1963 was thirty cents a gallon and we were lucky enough to hit a gas war and probably only paid around fifteen cents per gallon. Motel rooms were probably around ten dollars a night or maybe less. Motel 6 was actually only six dollars at that time. You could get a good meal for a couple dollars or less and burgers at McDonalds were fifteen cents. We went to the zoo, museums that were free, a Cubs ballgame, top of the Sears Tower, and just spent time looking around the city. I had a great uncle that lived in Chicago that I was very fond of. He came to our house when I was young and spend time with us. He would pick seeds of flowering weeds and take them back to Lincoln Park and plant them. He always wrote me letters that I enjoyed getting. He worked for a newspaper. When we called to tell him we were in Chicago and would like to see him, he wouldn’t let me bring Joyce to his apartment because of the neighborhood where he lived. So I went to pick him up but he didn’t let me in his home. He told us he would take us to a restaurant he liked and would buy us whatever meal we wanted. We walked to the restaurant and it was obvious that the farther we walked the worse the neighborhood got. When we got to the restaurant it was obviously a skid row eatery. Joyce was the only woman in the whole place. A very uncomfortable meal for us, but Uncle Bill Wedeking seemed right at home. I don’t think there was anything on the menu for more than a dollar fifty. Do believe my favorite uncle was a skid row bum! He had two sons who were not happy with his lifestyle. One was a policeman in Minneapolis and the other worked for Sears. They also spent time in the summers when they were children with my Grandparents. My Mom thought of them more like brothers than cousins. They often came for visits even to our home after we were married. We had our whole vacation on that one hundred dollars and had a really good time. We did come back a day early because we missed the kids. This story is Robert’s story not Joyce’s. Sorry about the error Pleas change to Robert. Thanks
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