Love Letters From the Grave(38)
At the time, Maureen was already helping her father, Molly and George to take care of Aunt Dolores, so it made sense all around that, as soon as Angus was buried and his will was probated, she should put her house up for sale and she and her son should move in with Jesse and Aunt Dolores. She was there to make nearly all of the arrangements for Aunt Dolores' move into the nursing home, and essentially replaced her in taking care of Jesse and the property. Maureen was still relatively young and seemingly in good health, so Molly was very pleased that she moved in with their father.
During the first four years of their marriage, George and Molly frequently rode their motorcycles, mostly on weekends when the weather was good, touring around the area within a 100-mile radius of their home. They visited scores of small towns within this area, walking around the courthouse squares, visiting antique and novelty stores, museums and other historic and natural history facilities, and enjoying meals in outstanding restaurants - especially those featuring "home cooking." Sometimes they ventured further from home to visit unique places, staying overnight in quaint hotels or small bed and breakfasts. Molly very much enjoyed these excursions and gradually became quite skilled in riding her Indian. They also attended six or more races a year. Try as she may, however, she never became enthusiastic about motorcycle races, unlike George, who remained as enamored as he had been for many years before marrying Molly.
After four years of marriage, George began to climb the corporate ladder. By their eighth year of marriage, he had been promoted to an executive vice president position, requiring him to make frequent out of town trips. He simply did not have the time to do many of the things they’d enjoyed during the earlier years of their marriage or the energy to do the things he did when he was younger. Quite frankly, Molly didn’t mind. She did not miss the motorcycle riding, especially not going to the races.
In fact, she was beginning to feel that she could do without much of the frivolity that had characterized their early years together – though without it, she wasn’t quite sure who they would be as a couple.
George was true to his word about traveling to interesting places of the world during a two-week vacation every year, and as promised, they often included Jesse and Aunt Dolores on the trips. At the start of their second year of marriage they took a two-week summer vacation to Arizona, Utah and Nevada. The third ‘honeymoon’ was divided into two parts. First, they treated Jesse and Aunt Dolores to a five-day Caribbean cruise, where they visited the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, and then they took a second cruise by themselves, spending two days in the Bahamas, and then visiting the Grand Caymans, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, before ending up in Havana, Cuba.
As the cruise had been such a success, they repeated it during their third year. It became probably the greatest highlight of Jesse's and Aunt Dolores' lives. Later in the year, during the third week of October, the four of them took another cruise: five-days of cruising along the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, with stops at Boston, Portsmouth and Bar Harbor and on into the Bay of Fundy, along the coasts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a final stop at Yarmouth. The cruise turned out to be extra special, because the foliage colorations of the forests that particular autumn was among the best in history.
They travelled the country far and wide, as well as visiting far-flung locations on cruises and organized tours. Molly often reminded herself how lucky she was in marrying such a wonderful man as George, who was also wealthy enough to allow them to take such wonderful vacations. Molly was especially excited about their seventh honeymoon: a two-week vacation in Hawaii, a place that she had always wanted to visit for a "romantic" vacation in a tropical paradise setting. It consisted of a round trip flight to Honolulu; a tour of Oahu; and a cruise around the five major islands of: Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Oahu and Kauai.
They arrived at Honolulu airport in the early afternoon on Sunday, and after being greeted Hawaiian-style, they picked up their rental car and drove to the Hyatt Hotel on Waikiki Beach, from where they would spend five days touring Oahu before boarding their cruise ship. They started their visits on Oahu by driving around the periphery of the island, stopping in Haleiwa for lunch and in Kaneolie for dinner, returning to the hotel for an evening entertainment of hula dancing and singing. After breakfast at the hotel the next morning they left to tour some of the island’s military monuments: the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor; the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, and the defensive big gun installations on Diamond Head. Their third day was spent in visiting military museums at Pearl Harbor, Schofield Barracks, Hickam Airforce Base, Wheeler Airforce Base, and Fort Kamehameha; arriving back at the hotel in time to attend a luau, with typical native foods and entertainment. They decided to spend their entire fourth day at the Polynesian Cultural Center, at Laie - the Mormon Church's elaborate and beautiful center which celebrates the many cultures of Polynesia.
They were amazed to read that nearly all the Polynesians who worked and/or performed at the Center were members of the Mormon church, and were attending the university across the road from the Center. The university was a branch of Brigham Young University. At the time, the campus was in an active building phase, so most, of the buildings in use, were temporary wooden structures, scattered over the developing campus of 400 acres. The temporary wooden structures were gradually being replaced by permanent brick and stone buildings (one was nearly completed and three more were under construction). The central road went from the Center, through the middle of the campus for approximately two miles, where it terminated at a very large, magnificent, Mormon Temple. Interestingly, the university and Center operated as a student/faculty cooperative, like that of venerable Berea College in south-central Kentucky.