The Johnsons and the Wellingtons

I had some contact with the Johnsons after I left San Pedro. I think there was an exchange of Christmas cards for a few years, which eventually dwindled and then stopped. Once, a few years after I had left, I was in the Los Angeles area for some reason, maybe a technical meeting, I went down to San Pedro and visited them briefly. They had moved out of their home and were living in an apartment. Mr. Johnson was still alive but I believe he was more or less bed-ridden. Later on I found out in some way that their son-in-law had returned as pastor for the congregation. Whether he remained, or for how long, I don’t know but I seem to have heard that he died not long after. He was a large, rather overweight man, so he was a candidate for an early demise.

Mrs. Johnson in a way lives on in my life since we named our second daughter Palma. That she was given that name was only partly due to Mrs. Johnson having that name but when I hear Palma’s name it often generates thoughts of Mrs. Johnson in me.

The Wellingtons dropped out of my life after they transferred back to Manhattan, Kansas. They surfaced briefly several years ago when my brother Verner chanced to encounter Maynard at some church meeting and for some reason the conversation between them turned up the acquaintance between me and Wellington. There were a few letters between us, and perhaps a few Christmas cards, but these presently ceased.

I have tried to recall what Mrs. Wellington’s first name was but with my poor memory for names I haven’t succeeded. I remember them with a feeling of appreciation for the company they gave me in that period of my life when I was in a new and strange place with no persons that I had known before to provide social contact.

They were [two] of the few people I’ve run into in my life who gave names to their family cars. When I first knew them they had a coupe, dubbed Eloise — I think it was a Chrysler product. Later they traded for a secondhand Ford sedan, a pre-war car but in good condition. This they named Henrietta and indeed it was a comparatively lively sort of car. After the war was over he bought one of the new-styled Studebakers. It was green in color and it became the Green Hornet. When he traded it in for a new blue Studebaker, that one became the Blue-Tail Fly. I wonder if that name didn’t originate with Betty Guthrie, Hugh’s wife, who was from the south.