My Picture Book in Color

Exie Eagan O'Brien, February 26, 1963

    The Panhandle of Texas is our land of "milk and honey."

    The streets of our town are paved with golden sunlight in the day time and at night it has the star studded sky for its ceiling with the moon in its time bringing its brightness and its shadows as it sinks slowly into the west.

    We have the snow that flies and the birds that sing as they feed from the feeder in the cedar tree just outside our window.

    Yet we leave this land of milk and honey, sleet and snow to follow the trend of things that grow on the plains, mountains and deserts as it slopes down toward the sea.

    The winter wheat as it grows along the roadside.  The white faced cattle that graze in the pastures along the way with the little country homes together, this makes what I call a pretty picture.  So, paint that "pretty" if you will.

    The next you know you are in colorful New Mexico and Arizona.  Its mountains high and its desert low will soon become aglow with its giant cacti blossoms from the pretty pink of the prickly pear to the flaming red torches of the occatillo and the huge saguaro that is called the sentinel of he desert, all join together in the silent watch.  Then the shades of evening begin to fall and the rays from the setting sun casts its shadows on the rocks there to remain until the day is done and the stars come out to lend their light to the beauty of the night.  The moon, too, casts its shadows as the wind blows the tumbleweed into its niche or corner and the jack-rabbit scampers across your path to find its hiding place beneath the tumbleweed, mesquite or rock.  To me, the "living desert" is a wonderful and beautiful place and for me you may color that "gorgeous and alive."

    As we travel along and see the beauty of the mountains, we realize there are nooks and crevasses where man has never trod, only the birds, coyotes, snakes and other wild animals have been able to enter.

    After all the natural beauty, we come to Palm Springs located along the mountain side.  This man made city here in the desert is beautiful to behold, with its lighted palm trees that make Main street very unusual.  Palm Tree Drive, which is the main street, runs for miles and finally takes you through many little towns and out onto the highway.

    Many homes are built on the side of this mountain and in order to reach these homes, you follow the lighted palms--a city of a million lights.

    Then we move on west toward a different beauty--the Blue Pacific.  

    Now there is one picture you may color Blue, for indeed it is.

    However, the beauty does not end there for beyond or within this blue pacific lies Beautiful Hawaii--with all of its unusual things.  Its fields of flowers and pineapple, its leis, sugar cane, banana trees, cocoanut trees & coffee plants, the Banyan tree with its many limbs that grow down into the ground to form another trunk.  Also, many flowering trees, many wild orchids.

    The valleys and hills with their many waterfalls.  The Wiamea canyon and all around these islands is the blue blue pacific.

    The island of Hawaii has its many volcanoes but it also has beauty.

    The little church down by the ocean and the lovely homes with their terraced yards planted with beautiful flowers.

    We saw the monument to Capt. Cook, it is on a little long strip of land surrounded by water (partially).

    It was here that our Hawaii guide played his Hawaiian guitar for us as we rested.

    The hula dancing girls were everywhere dressed in their grass skirts and colorful leis--dancing on the sun-kissed beach of Waikiki.  This is truly a land where "you can't remember what you came there to forget."

    The natives weaving their baskets and hats, thoroughly surrounded by the bright red bougainvillea vine and the many makers of the beautiful leis, makes it a very colorful picture, one you never forget.

    "Hawaii calls" is a broadcast that has been heard for many years.

    It was at the time of our departure that we heard one of the broadcasts and one of the most colorful occasions on the island.  The ladies dressed in their mu-mu's and the men in their Hawaiian shirts.

    You always have several leis around your neck before you land and when you leave.

    All this is why Hawaii calls you to come.