The Magical Quaker Oats Bus Journey

As a child I often heard my mom say, “Eat your oatmeal.  It will stick to your ribs.”  Could the Quaker Oats Company, the provider of hot breakfasts, ever imagine they were responsible for my mother reconnecting with her family after thirty years?  It was the summer of 1986.  The company's sales were down.  They rolled out a marketing campaign to boost revenue. Anyone who saved one hundred box tops could catch a Greyhound Bus to anyplace in the United States, for $25.00.

My mom lived in Muncie, Indiana, an hour and half away from my home in Indianapolis.   We had not lived near one another for a decade.  Mom was an amazing woman.  She only had an eighth grade education, yet her intelligence was far beyond that of an average junior high student.  She loved learning.  History fascinated her.  She enjoyed helping with homework, just to pour over reference manuals and encyclopedias. 

Our family and its history were very important to her.  She married dad, who was a black man.   Family, as she knew it, came to an end.    For twenty-eight years, her relatives no longer communicated with her; they treated her as if she did not exist.   The attitude and mindset of society dictated and ruled the hearts of many, back then.  For years, I hated mom’s family, because of the heartache this caused in her life. 

Mom and Dad divorced in 1984.  By that time her children had moved to other cities, and had lives of their own.   Mom yearned to connect with her family again.   There seemed to be to many roadblocks, for this to happen.  Mom never learned how to drive, so she always had to depend on public transportation.  It just wasn’t financially feasible at the time to travel.   Then Quaker Oats Company came out with their promotion.   

Mom set the wheels in motion.  She contacted her sister June, her Aunt Lorena and me.  We all lived in the Midwest.  Mom decided that all of us would meet in Indianapolis, Indiana and travel by Greyhound Bus to El Paso, Texas, to visit her oldest aunt, Aunt Lura.  We each committed to saving 100 box tops, and the consumption of oats began. 

We ate more Quaker Oats than had ever been eaten in the history of the Owens household.  We had hot oats for breakfast, oatmeal cookies in our lunch, meatloaf with oats for dinner and apple crisp with oatmeal for desert.

Could I let myself believe that I was going to be part of this great adventure?  The only vacation I had had as an adult was my honeymoon to Niagara Falls.  I convinced Jon, my husband, to let me go and take our youngest child, Mary.  We had three beautiful children, and I was six months pregnant at the time.  So, four generations of women prepared to depart on a “Magical Quaker Oats Bus Journey”.

I saw a gleam in my mother’s eye that I had never seen.  She was like a schoolgirl going to high school for the first time--kind of nervous and getty.  Her excitement was contagious, I found myself counting the days with great anticipation.  Many would dread the idea of being pregnant, on a bus for forty-one hours, with a three year old but I didn’t.  I couldn’t wait to get on that magical bus.

Mom was going to reconnect with her family after thirty years, and I was going to meet many of them for the first time in my life.  I asked mom to tell me about her two aunts, Lorena and Lura.  This would make them my great aunts.  Aunt Lorena was actually younger than my mom by a month.  Aunt Lorena had married Cud Hanks.  They had lived on the family farm for forty years.  Aunt Lura, however, was the one that intrigued me the most.  She was a writer and an author.  She wrote for the El Paso newspaper, she had penned many articles for magazines and she had also written a book.  This book was a collection of stories about family over the years.  It was titled “Shepherd of the Hills”.  Aunt Lura was seventy years old, ten years older than Aunt Lorena and mom. 

Finally, the day arrived. I went to Muncie to pick up Mom and Aunt June.   We traveled back to Indianapolis.  There at the Greyhound Bus Station, we met Aunt Lorena, who came in from Kentucky.  We took our sack of Quaker Oats box tops and went to the ticket window.  We proudly walked away, holding what seemed to be magical tickets to El Paso, Texas, purchased for $25.00 each. 

The five of us boarded the bus for the forty-one hour trip.  Here we were five woman who were related biologically, but had little or no history together.  We walked through those bus doors, and just like magic our history together began.   I watched my mom, her sister and her aunt talk as if they had spent the last ten years together.  They picked up right where their history had left off and gathered up Mary and me along the way.  Mary went from lap to lap, being loved by each one.  One thing we all had in common was that we enjoyed the beauty of nature.  We watched the landscape change from Indiana to Texas. I know the other patrons on the bus must of thought,  “these ladies don’t get out much.”   We were oooing and awing as we saw different scenes from the bus windows.  It was beautiful, and the bus moved at just the right speed to be able to take it all in.

The part that I thought would be challenging was traveling with a three year old.  Mary was behaving very well, and actually being a little docile at times.  At one point I felt her forehead, she was a little warm, but not enough that I was concerned.  She still seemed to be in good spirits and was eating well.  About thirty hours into the trip I noticed a couple of little blisters on her face and neck.  When we arrived in El Paso eleven hours later, she was completely covered with blisters.  She had the chicken pox.

It was late in the evening when we arrived, and Aunt Lura greeted us very warmly.  She quickly surveyed Mary’s condition.  Her great-great- aunt skills immediately became evident.  She drew a warm bath for Mary.  I had to laugh, when she threw several cups of oatmeal into the tub.  We’ found another use for oatmeal.  Between the long trip, chicken pox, a long hot bath and a couple of Tylenol, Mary fell fast asleep.

As we visited that night, and the stories were being shared for the first time, I was seeing mom in a new light.  Not only was she a mother and grandmother, but she was also, a sister, a niece and an aunt.   Aunt Lura was a writer and an amazing storyteller.  I just found myself in awe, as I listened to her share their lives as children and young adults.

They talked, sang and laughed until they couldn’t go anymore that first night.   When I retired next to Mary and looked at her as she slept, I knew she had a greater heritage than I had ever imagined.  This trip had become so much more than a vacation, it had become a revelation.  It revealed why mom is who she is, and why the next generations will be who they will be.

The next five days flew by.  Mary was really wonderful and good tempered, even in the mist of chicken pox.  Aunt Lura took us to several wonderful sites.  She took us to a local Indian reservation and to White Sands, New Mexico, where everything was covered in snow-white sand.  As wonderful as all this was, the thing I enjoyed the most was hearing her share her stories and her writings. 

Aunt Lura gave me an autograph copy of her book “Shepherd of the Hills”.  As I read her stories I felt like I was right there.  Mom’s family had faces and a wonderful history.  The pieces were no longer missing.  After all these years of knowing absolutely nothing about my Mom’s family, I had the solid truth, thanks to her written words, on a page. Seeing these stories for the first time was magical.  Aunt Lura shared with me that she wrote to remember.  So much of who we are, is knowing who we came from.  She never wanted this to be forgotten by her or the generations to come.  The experience connected us to the past, gave real meaning to the present, and a promise of a hope for the future.  My hope was realizing that there could be a book inside of me.  Mom reconnected with family, and I fell in love with writing.  Like Aunt Lura, I want my children to remember too.  This was an amazing “Magical Quaker Oats Bus Journey”.