I’m not sure that the following tale is 100% accurate, but its family legend for us, and we’ve been telling it this way for years. So it was November or December of 1947 and the Little brothers, Don & Sheldon, had finished farm work for the year. Their Aunt Winifred lived in Denver and ran a boarding house, currently occupied by three young ladies, two of whom, Stella & Mary Lou Pankey, were sisters from Craig, Co. Winifred had invited her SD nephews to come visit and who can resist a roadtrip? Younger brother Frank Little was residing in Brookings, SD, possibly going to school & working as a bus driver. So on the way out of SD, the Boys stopped in to see Frank. Supposedly he abandoned his bus, packed his things & joined the fun. The route was somewhat circumventive of Denver, heading 1st to Mexico (have I told the one about the night in the Mexican jail?) and then to Southern California before stopping in Denver on the way home. I believe that Uncle Frank went to UCLA & studied Oceanography, so perhaps, this trip got his out there for school?
Meanwhile in Aunt Winifred’s boardinghouse, she was laying some preliminary matchmaking groundwork. She knew her nephews were on their way in a fancy car & that they were farmers. But she embellished a bit and told the young ladies her nephews were pharmacists (farmacists).
Thus began two long distance courtships, culminating in the wedding of Sheldon & Stella on November 6th, 1949 and Don & Mary Lou on November 23, 1950. Here’s a picture from Stella & Sheldon’s wedding day and a picture of the cool car with the young couples
The one about the night in the Mexico jail.
Way back on April 15th, 2018 I posted this picture of my parents, Don & MaryLou Little in about 1950 in front of their cherry red Pontiac convertible. I wrote three different posts that day & in one of them, I alluded to the fact that my father & his brothers were arrested in Mexico in 1948. I was asked today to finally tell the rest of that story, so here you go.
For those who may have forgotten, Dad took his profit from selling flax in 1948 & hitchhiked to Minneapolis to buy a new Pontiac. Soon thereafter he & his brother Sheldon left Watertown and headed south for Mexico. But first they stopped in Brookings to get their brother Frank. Even though it was late in the fall, they traveled with the ‘top down’, just because they could. So it took several days at reduced speed to get across the border.
A forgotten traffic violation brought the Mexican police into play. Driver’s licenses were requested. But South Dakota didn’t issue them yet, so none of the young men could prove their identity. There was the question about license plates that were missing. Purchase documents from the glove box recording the purchaser and the date of the sale were offered, but there was no way match the name with the face. Fearing that these three farm boys from way up north had stolen this fancy car, they were all promptly arrested and spent the night in the local jail. In the morning, a call was placed to the dealership in Minneapolis & the salesman described the young South Dakotan who has purchased the car in a cash deal. Satisfied that everything was legal, the brothers were released & continued on the Los Angelas where Frank stayed to attend UCLA. Don & Sheldon then headed home, but first they had a date with destiny in Denver, as we all know!
