The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

CLINTON, Iowa, En Route to SEATTLE, Wash., Thursday—Many familiar faces were seen around the Hyde Park station yesterday as we drove down to board the train. It looked as though our whole family was moving there were so many bags! We stood on the back platform with Johnny and Anne while the usual photographs were taken and then my husband waved good-bye to his neighbors and we went in to the car. The train started, we were off!

There is a difference between settling down on a train for several days and just spending a night. You unpack, and really try to make your little compartment comfortable. We found ourselves in the same little compartments we have occupied on other trips and it took us a very short time to get settled. Mrs. Scheider then came to my compartment and we did a number of little things which we had not had time to do before leaving. Everyone was weary and almost immediately after dinner went to bed, but not before all of us had argued at length over the hour at which we would breakfast. Should we breakfast by New York daylight saving time, by railroad time, or by Chicago Eastern Central time? Mrs. Scheider and I finally decided that as we were tired enough to go to bed early we would get up and breakfast at nine o'clock New York daylight time which would be seven o'clock central standard time! Miss Nancy Cook, who is taking this trip with us and who has never been west of Chicago before, joined us at breakfast though she protested that it would make today a very long day.

While we were in the diner the train stopped at Elkhart, Indiana where quite a few people gathered at the station, and I went out for a minute in the vestibule to say good morning.

In Chicago Louis Ruppel brought my little friend, Miss Mayris Chaney, who is dancing in a theatre there this week, to the train to spend the hour and a half on board while we were shunted around the railroad yards. It was very nice to see him, and a joy to see her for I had last seen her in San Francisco this past spring. Since leaving Chicago we have been going through miles and miles of agricultural land, rich soil but it looks to me as though they had had pretty dry weather though it has not assumed the proportions of a drought. These farms in this part of the country look prosperous, however.

We have had no scheduled stops today, but in almost every station we go through there are people watching on the platform and I notice along the railroad line when we pass houses near the tracks, or at crossings people seem to know that this is a special train, and they stand, watch and wave.

Just now we have left the tremendous fields and are passing through some country which might almost be somewhere in Dutchess County, New York. There are trees, brooks, and rolling land. I have a feeling I ought to be seeing a great many pigs, but so far cows are more in evidence.

At lunch today we all enjoyed some delicious trout sent by Stephen Early, one of the President's secretaries who is on his vacation somewhere in the Great Lakes region.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Clinton (Clinton County, Iowa, United States) [ index ]
  • Seattle (Wash., United States)


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 24, 1937

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated September 23, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 23 September 1937, AERP, FDRL