Pat Gray

How It Really Was Pat Gray

Growing up during the Depression in a small Indiana town, I had never seen a mountain or an ocean when I was twenty-one and had scarcely been outside the state. I had a passion for travel and set out alone for California after World War II. I discovered a new world of sunny beaches, housing shortages, and a job as a traveling saleslady for a music publisher. My territory was everything west of the Mississippi. In Montana, I met a young University band director and married him. Montana was great at first, but twelve years and three children later, I felt as trapped as I had in Indiana. Soon my husband got a job in California and life became exciting once more as we traveled the state, camping at beaches and parks on weekends and vacations. When the kids became teenagers, we decided to camp Europe, so we saved furiously in order to go. It was the trip of a lifetime and it infected the whole family with the "travel bug;" the kids became exchange students, citizens of the world. Once they went off to college and became adults, I found adventure on my own traveling the globe.