The high school chorus was supposed to make the trip a few hours behind us, but upon arriving in Goodwell we called back and told them it would be unsafe for them to come.

The girls who did a solo were the only ones that competed. They canceled all other competition because of the weather. We finished our songs and started home. We all made a mad dash for the cars, because it had started to rain. I was wearing a yellow dress made of dotted-swiss material. There was so much dust in the air that it literally rained mud. My yellow dotted-swiss dress suddenly became a yellow mud-dotted dress. There must have been some of that Texas oil in the air, because the dress was ruined. Those spots of dirt wouldn't wash out.

One would think the rain would have cleared the sky, but it didn't. We were now returning home, but the conditions for driving safely were becoming impossible. We encountered a wreck and came close to becoming a part of it. At one point we were stopped by a highway patrol and asked to drive in the ditch because of accidents on the road. We drove in the ditch a few miles and finally was allowed to get back on the road.

We made it safely back to Canadian and decided to spend the night there. One of the sponsors called home to tell our folks we were not returning until the next day. I'm sure the decision to stay the night was not an easy one. No one came prepared to pay a hotel bill and two or three extra meals for ten to twelve persons. I know special arrangements had to be made with the hotel for our rooms. If I remember correctly, we sent our money for the rooms after we returned home.

We stayed in the Moody Hotel. After getting settled in, we went to the drug store and purchased notebooks and pencils. My spiral notebook had a whopping price of five cents. This became our entertainment for the next few hours. We wrote notes to others in our group and slipped them under the door of their rooms.

I'm sure by 7:30 in the evening, the sponsors were ready to pull their hair, because they took us to the Palace Theater to see a movie. It was a jungle movie. I wrote the name in my diary, but I can't read my own writing!

After the movie, we went to our rooms to get ready for bed. According to my notes, we couldn't determine which bathroom was ours. (You would need to see the hotel to understand this.) We showered and did the "usual" things one does in a restroom. That was the good news. The bad news was that we couldn't get the commode to flush. We realized we had used the wrong bathroom when the man staying next door to us came in. He used the same one. I think our faces were a little bit red!

We stayed on the third floor in room #37. Winnie L., Glenna J., Mrs. Johnson, Sharon and I stayed together. I remember we were "bunking up" so to speak, because Winnie, Glenna and I all slept in one bed. Sounds crowded, doesn't it? To bad there were no queen size beds back then.

The next morning the sun was shining brightly and we drove back to Hammon. We were disappointed because we arrived before school was dismissed. We had to go to class!!