Hotel (Not) California

One of my favorite moments featuring the 1940 census was live-emailing with my dad on April 2 as we walked the town of Midland, South Dakota through the census together.  I found his grandparents living in the hotel and while I emailed him that, he pulled up Google Earth and emailed me a picture of the hotel.  Then he told me which room they were in.  He knew this because years later, when he ran away from a farm that he’d been working on at 15, he went to the Midland hotel and asked for a room. The owner recognized his name and asked if he wanted to stay in the same room his grandparents had lived in.  

So Dad described the room and the hotel to me in email while I looked up the history of the hotel and sent it to him.

Someday, I too will stay in the Midland Hotel.  In that very same room.

It’s in the cards.  Or maybe just the census.  But still...