Highland County woman's 1958 trip across Europe detailed in newly discovered letter

The following is an account of Duane and Dolores Mootz of Danville’s trip across Europe in 1958 for the World Plowing Contest in Stuttgart, Germany, in which Duane Mootz earned 10th place.

Mrs. Mootz passed away in June. Her daughter and son-in-law, Naomi and Jerry Barnett, found a letter Mrs. Mootz wrote detailing her experience in 1958, which they had previously not seen, and shared it with The Highland County Press.

The letter is dated Dec. 10, 1958 and addressed to “Patty and all.” Below is a copy of the text of her letter.

Here is part of the trip story. Dee’s brother, John and his wife stayed here while we were gone taking care of the three school boys and also doing chores. Mom took care of Tom, and Ruth watched Timmy and Jimmy. Two days before we arrived back home, John’s wife had a fall and had to go to hospital, where she had a little baby boy 2 months premature — which was in an incubator in hospital for a month, but is now home and thriving, weighing almost 10 lbs. now.

We left Vandalia airport at noon on Sept. 24, arriving at La Guardia airport in N.Y. approximately 2.5 hours later. D.’s brother Robert and his wife Kathryn went with us. There were 49 people on our tour, the most of them left from Columbus. At 8:30 p.m. on the 24th, we left Idlewild airport with 103 passengers aboard a huge four-engine T.W.A. plane. It was a very smooth ride across the ocean, flying 300-350 mph at 20-22,000 feet, which was 8,000 feet above the clouds.

The only thing that was noticeable was while the plane was climbing and when it was coming in for a landing, our ears would crack and pop due to the air pressure, but as soon as we had reached our altitude and leveled off, they quit ringing.

Going over, we slept very little, only dozing since we weren’t traveling first class and our seats couldn’t be made into seat beds, although the backs of the seats tilted back some and we were comfortable. While crossing the ocean, we lost five hours’ time. Our watches said it was almost 8:30 a.m., while it was actually 1:30 p.m. on the 25th when we landed at Shannon, Ireland.

I forgot — after leaving N.Y. at approximately 1:30 a.m. on the morning of the 25th, we stopped over at Gander, Newfoundland for refueling, and we got out of the plane and had a snack while they were doing so. At the Shannon Airport, D. and the other plowman, Lawrence Goettemoeller, his helper Al Hartings and the U.S. Team manager Bob Barre all left the tour group and went on to Paris, then over to the Brussels World’s Fair. They had to be in Stuttgart a week before the rest of us and didn’t want to miss the fair.

At the airport, we had to have our passports stamped and our health certificate examined and go through customs, which was always the case when we landed in a new country. We all boarded two sightseeing buses for a tour through the countryside. Ireland was probably the most friendly country we visited. Their language of course was English, but they talked Gaelic when they wanted to say something they didn’t want you to know.

Mostly all of the fences there were either made of sod or stone or hawthorn hedges. Farms were small — averaged around 40 acres. All of the houses were either stone or brick with stucco — a few newer homes were made of concrete blocks. Most of the farmers seemed to be using a two-wheeled cart pulled by a donkey or burro as their means of transportation. Some had bicycles — few cars except in the cities, like Dublin, and even in the towns cars would have to slow down to let the animals get through, as the animals always had the right of way.

We visited a little Irish home which was supposed to be typical. The lady of the house was cooking dinner over an open fireplace in a big black pot. There wasn’t much furniture in the home, only table and chairs in kitchen, a stand with a big radio on it. The bedroom just had an iron bed and a couple dressers in it.

After approximately 1.5 days of touring Ireland by bus, we left Dublin by plane for London — a flight of about 1 hour 15 minutes — arriving at our hotel about 10:30 at night.

On Sept. 27, we all boarded two buses for a tour through the countryside and went through Oxford — stopped at an inn for lunch, where the ale was all set out for the meal. The high spot of the day was our visit to “Home Farm” in Lechlade, Oxon, one of the leading pedigree shorthorn farms in England. At around 4:30, we were their guests for “tea,” which consisted of plates and plates of sandwiches, coffee and teas — a table 20 ft. or so long loaded with all sorts of biscuits, as they called their cookies, cakes, sweets, etc. Mrs. Goettemoeller and I were photographed by the London Weekly Farmers Magazine.

We arrived back at the hotel later that evening, left early next morning for sightseeing in London. Trafalgar Square, St. James Palace, Buckingham Palace, changing of the guard, Whitehall, Scotland Yard, Tower of London, etc. In the afternoon, we visited Madame Tussaud’s wax works, where all the kings and queens, presidents of U.S. and famous people were all realistically created in wax. Then we went through Windsor Castle - Hampton Court.

That evening about 9:30, a dozen or so of us — after dinner — decided to go see Piccadilly Circus, which wasn’t a circus at all, via underground railroad, which was quite an experience. Monday, Sept. 29, we left London by R.E.A. (British) plane at 11:10 a.m., arriving in Amsterdam, Netherlands at 12:20 noon. After going through the usual passport, customs, etc., we went by bus to our hotel Krasnapolsky, which was the most attractive hotel we stayed in during the trip.

That same afternoon, we went on another bus excursion to Volendam and via canal boat out to the island of Market, returning via Brock in Waterland, visiting a typical Dutch cheesemaking farm. Everything was very clean in the Netherlands. Their land was very flat, and we would often see a dike (dam means dike in Dutch) holding back water — with ships in the water, 15 ft. or so higher up than the road we were on.

Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m., we left Amsterdam on a K.L.M. Royal Dutch airplane for Brussels, arriving there 50 minutes later. By this time, the English tea, which had managed to keep me awake and alert til the wee small hours of the morning, was taking its toll, and while most of the group took a tour of a lace factory in Brussels, I slept the afternoon away.

The next day, we went to the World’s Fair and visited several of the pavilions, including the Russian one. It would have taken at least two weeks to have seen everything at the fair unhurriedly.

That evening, my roommate (Miss Ray — who is supervisor of nurses at Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia) and I decided to retire early (for a change) after all the walking we had done during the day. However, after dinner, we were persuaded to stay up for a surprise birthday party for one of the tour leaders, which lasted till 1 a.m. or so.

Thursday at 11:15 a.m., we left Brussels on a Sabena (Belgium plane) flight, arriving at Frankfurt, Germany at 1:15 p.m. We had a 3.5-hour wait there for our next plane, and instead of risking leaving the airport, getting lost in town and missing our plane, we spent the time looking over the airport, which was new. One thousand American planes had bombed the town at one time during World War II, and practically everything had to be rebuilt.

Our laughable (now) incident which occurred to me in Frankfurt was: While our group all claimed our luggage and everyone was supposed to stand by his own suitcases, the German customs inspector came along and waved the others along and told me to “open dat.” I got one side of one suitcase opened, and by that time I was shaking so much I had to give the German the key to open it up. One of the ladies (after we were out of his earshot) said, “Of all the people in this group to pick on, you’re the most innocent looking of the bunch!” I later learned that the officials were usually on the lookout for young, innocent-looking American women, as they were usually the ones who tried to smuggle things in and out.

Finally, wee departed Frankfurt at 4:50 p.m. and arrived 50 minutes later at Stuttgart, where the men were eagerly waiting to see us. They had expected us in on an earlier flight. After briefly talking to them, we were whisked off to our nice, clean hotel in Stuttgart — the Furstenhof. The men (plowing team) were staying out of town, about seven miles from Stuttgart, at the agricultural college at the Hohenheim Schule with the rest of the Weltmeister pflugers auf der Worlden (master plowers of the world) and had to rush back there for a plowman’s briefing and drawing of lands.

After dinner, an American International Harvester representative who was assigned in Germany and a German I.H. man took us out to Hohenheim for a while, and we meet several other plowmen from other countries. Then they brought out the wine to toast the plowmen, which finally I decided to take a sip, and oooh!! Like that poem Rose used to recite, “my heart went pitty-pat!!!!” It was certainly powerful!!!!!!!!!!

And the people over there rarely drank anything but beer and wine. As one German told men when he asked what we drank over here and I said milk and water, he laughed and said “Milk, that is for baby; water, that is for horses to drink and people to used for baths!” They must make it a different way than it’s made here since it does not affect them like it would a person in this country who would imbibe the tremendous quantities of it that they did.
 
The third and fourth of October were spent out at Hohenheim attending the plowing contest. I had many interesting conversations with the Germans, which I won’t get into at this time.

One experience which I won’t soon forget is the evening of the 3rd, we (eight of us) missed our tour bus from the plowing site back into Stuttgart. We walked half a mile or so to a trolley car line — there were two sets of tracks — we didn’t know which set headed to town. Finally found a German newspaperwoman who could speak some English and she got us on the right one — of course after we got on it we didn’t know where to get off — bought our ticket by showing the conductor the card with the name of our hotel on it.

There were several hectic transfers from one trolley to another before we finally got into town and within a few minutes’ walk of our hotel Furstenhof. Of course, we didn’t know which direction to start walking, and no taxis around, and that helped a lot. We would smile to show our hotel card to any pedestrian who looked friendly and smiled back. They would point in a certain direction and we’d walk that way till we came to a corner, then show it again to someone else, etc. Finally, we arrived home, and the next day we made certain we didn’t miss our bus back to town!

On Sunday, Oct. 5, the world plowmen (except the American team) left on a week’s tour around Germany. Dee, Law, Al and Bob joined the rest of us again, and we all left that evening by electric train for Zurich, Switzerland, arriving there at 11:29 p.m. On the 6th, we went in a bus through Switzerland, which was very pretty and clean looking for the most park. Looking over the countryside, we saw no fences and no weedy fence rows. We learned that there was an abundance of electrical power there and about all the farms had electric fences.

By evening, we had arrived at Geneva, after going through Lucerne, Bern, etc. during the day. On the morning of the 7th, we went sightseeing in Geneva, visiting Palais des Nations, Monument of Reformation, etc. That afternoon, we were out on our own, doing a little sightseeing in stores, etc., till around 4 when we left for airport, then with a little delay there, took off in a Swissair airplane for Paris, arriving there about 9:30 p.m.

On the 8th, we visited Arc De Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Napoleon’s tomb, etc. That afternoon, Dee and I left the tour to go get his plane ticket straightened out since they had him booked to go to London, Scotland, etc. and arriving home two or three days later than the rest of us. After this was cleared up, we struck out on our own, walking down side streets, window shopping and listening and looking up at the people. We finally started looking for a taxi to get back to the Hotel de Paris, and not finding any, showed our hotel cars to corner palacemen, who would point in general direction, and we’d take off. Finally my feet began to play out, and I decided we’d have to find a taxi. We looked across the street, and we were standing in front of our hotel!

The next morning and afternoon, we were on our own again and had quite a lot of fun eating in a little tea room, where we couldn’t make out the menu since it was all in French, watching people buy bread, which was about 2.5 feet long and 3 inches in diameter and hard, not wrapped and stacked in a corner counter. People would come in and buy a stick of it, tuck it under their arm, not bothering to wrap it up or anything.

About 8:30 p.m. Thursday, we left Paris for N.Y. The pilot informed us that in N.Y., it was 3:30 p.m. and kept telling us the ball score of the N.Y. team every few minutes. He said that he had flown from N.Y. to Paris the preceding day and had made good plane time since there had been a 100 mph tailwind, and going back to N.Y. from Paris we would be headed against a strong wind. Since N.Y. weather was likely to be foggy and cloudy by the time we arrived and we might not be able to land right away, and since we would use a considerable amount more of fuel going against the wind and circling at the airport, he thought it was advisable to go up to Iceland to refuel.

When we arrived there in the middle of the night, it was cold and windy. We all had a snack at the airport, then headed on to N.Y. We couldn’t land for a while as it was foggy — were five hours later than scheduled. This made us miss our plane to Vandalia, but they put us on a later one, which stopped for a few minutes at Columbus and finally arrived at Dayton around 3:30. Got our car at Dee’s brother’s house and arrived home around 6.

Well, my fingers are about paralyzed from writing, so that’s going to be all for now. Am sending some pictures we took over there to Rose and she’ll send them to you. Will you send them on out to Ken?

Hope you’re all well. They are here — except being mean. We’ve had 0 degrees and below weather here past few days. Dee had to go get Mom and us more coal yesterday.

Oh Yes — out of 30 plowmen — D. got 10th place — Law Goettemoeller got 17th. Their average was the highest an American team has ever gotten.

Love,

Dees and all

Publisher's note: A free press is critical to having well-informed voters and citizens. While some news organizations opt for paid websites or costly paywalls, The Highland County Press has maintained a free newspaper and website for the last 25 years for our community. If you would like to contribute to this service, it would be greatly appreciated. Donations may be made to: The Highland County Press, P.O. Box 849, Hillsboro, Ohio 45133. Please include "for website" on the memo line.