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proceeded toward Cleveland as though nothing unusual had occurred at all. The captain came on the intercom with some hearty remark about dinner being ready now. The stewardess served us our trays, and I had my first meal aloft. I don't think I've ever had one since that tasted as good. We drifted down into Cleveland in due course, somewhat later but all in one piece. I said I flew home from there. Now I'm not sure that I didn't go to Cleveland home by train because I have no recollection of a further flight that evening. It was unquestionably the wildest flight I've ever had--and I've had a few that were beauts, too.

GREAT LAKES CRUISE

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Our two-day Saguenay trip in 1934 had sold Willy and me on the merits of cruises although the germ had been planted in me in 1923 when Mother and I had taken the Merchants & Miners ship from Norfolk to Boston. Now, in 1936, things were beginning to look up financially a bit and we contemplated a cruise again, only this time we'd take the children with us. The Chicago Duluth and Georgian Bay Transit Co. operated to cruise ships on the Great Lakes, the SOUTH AMERICAN and the NORTH AMERICAN. They were sister ships which had been built originally for coastwise traffic. The slogan of the line was: THE BEST TRIPS ON THE BEST SHIPS CRUISING THE GREAT LAKES. The header trademark somewhat as follows:

[[image: drawing of a ship's funnel with black, red and yellow stripes and the words Georgian Bay Line]]

As we perused the travel sections of the papers, the Georgian Bay Line looked good to us. They had a cruise from Buffalo to Chicago via Georgian Bay, and one to Duluth skipping Georgian Bay, each cruise taking seven days for the round trip. As I recall, the price was $69 for adults and half fare for the children and included everything--so, for the four of us, it would come to slightly more than $200. We felt we could swing this and we purchased tickets for the Chicago cruise to be handled by the SOUTH AMERICAN, leaving Buffalo July 4th and returning there on July 11th. We were thrilled to pieces at the prospect of a full week's cruise. It's possible we'd seen the SOUTH AMERICAN sometime when she'd docked at Erie when handling a convention or something of that sort, and had been well impressed with her. She looked more like a seagoing vessel than the various sidewheelers in the overnight local