I knew that I liked to travel when my cousin Mott took Mama and I to Jacksonville when I was very young.  The ocean, palm trees, eating in "cafes"; all of those made me very happy.  There were probably no ideas of world travel at that time, but that was a beginning.  At six when I learned to read, I began by picking out an encyclopedia and reading it cover to cover.  In one summer I read the entire Compton's Encyclopedia and found out about places like Siam, the Congo, and lots of others that I added to my list of places to visit.

During that same period, the soviets made their first Hydrogen Bomb, Korea was in full flame and we all worried about the bombs and how we would die the terrible deaths of the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There were discussions with neighbors about where the bombs would hit; but never any talk of what we would do when it happened.  Newspapers were full of warnings and even the political cartoons were scary.  Stalin died that year and we didn't really know that with him gone, some sanity would eventually return to the earth.