12th – Went to S.S. at Gate City & then ate dinner at Grandma’s & then at 1:30 bought ticket for Portland, cost $3.25 over NP RR. Got to Portland about 5:15. Took our telescopes & stayed all night at Bar Hotel. Tom, John, & I went to church that night.
Starting with today’s entry and going for the next few days, Jesse didn’t write every day. This seems to be a single, long narrative that he writes later. For the sake of knowing what Jesse did each day though, we will publish on the anniversary days.
Jesse has never mentioned owning a telescope before this point. We don’t know if they brought them from Missouri or got them along the way. Maybe they bought them with their final paychecks and had them when they went on the hike to Bald Hill the day before. He mentions telescopes in the plural here, so maybe they were small ones. Perhaps they were more like binoculars today.
According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $3.25 in 1901 has the same spending power as $97.19 in 2019.
In 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day, so Jesse and John are off the hook for not sending a card back home.
