CHAPTER VI: TO SOUTH AMERICA AND BACK
Accompanied by daughter Aura May (alias Sugarfoot), Pap embarked on a two-month land, sea and air tour of Latin America in late November, 1949. This journey, extraordinary for the time, was recorded in a series of letters printed in successive editions of the weekly Putnam County Graphic, Greencastle, Indiana.
Each letter was hand-written, in pencil, on yellow, ruled tablet paper, and then mailed to the paper, where they would be set into the equivalent of two to five full columns of type. The touring was extensive, and the letters were inclusive, giving conjecture to just how Pap found the time to do all this writing? Aura May said that other than during the cruise down, he did it all at night after she had gone to bed. She remembered one time in particular when he awoke her at 2 a.m. to ask how to spell the name of the highest peak in the Andes—Aconcagua.
At first there was only a two-week delay between the writing and the publication, but these intervals grew longer as the tourists progressed from country to country, demonstrating the limits of postal departments and/or carriers of the day. By the time the final letter was printed, Pap and Aura May had been home approximately three months.