Trip to Mobile to see an old ship becomes trip down memory lane

By Toni Miles

The sentiment “Life’s a journey, not a destination” is something 91-year-old Long Beach resident and business owner Norma Weeds knows all too well. A recent journey to Mobile, Alabama, turned out to be a welcome trip down memory lane, as Weeds recalled taking a trip across the Atlantic in her twenties aboard the SS United States ocean liner.

“Sarah [Crane] and Jeanette [Luttrell] just happened to mention that the SS United States was in Alabama, and I went bonkers!” said Weeds. “I said, ‘Really? I was on that ship! I want to see that ship!’”

And see it, she did. Accompanied by the owners of Shooter Ready, Crane and Luttrell, which is situated next door to Weeds’s Long Beach store, the Family Attic on Klondyke Road, the three traveled across state lines to Mobile to get a first-hand look at the record-holding 990-foot retired ocean liner, the SS United States, which is about five city blocks long and one-hundred feet longer than the Titanic.

“The foremen on the job, they’re getting ready to take it [the SS United States] apart,” Weeds said. “Because of insurance reasons, he could not allow me to get on the ship. I wanted to get on that ship so bad, but I was thankful to be able to see it,” Weeds said.

Weeds had boarded the ship, the largest ocean liner ever built in the U.S., back in 1954 as a newlywed.

“My husband was in the military, and he was stationed in France,” Weeds said. “We had just gotten married, so I was bound and determined that I was going to make that trip. I couldn’t afford an airplane.”

Weeds worked as a waitress and saved up enough money to take the luxury liner on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from New York, where she lived at the time, to France, where her Mississippi-born and -raised husband was stationed.

“It was a beautiful ship,” Weeds said. “The trip was noteworthy in itself. I worked my butt off as a waitress to make money enough to get that ticket. I was going to have somebody to serve me for five days, but I was sick!  I said, “Somebody’s going to serve me for once – and for five days [on the ocean liner], I was so sick. I only ate one meal on the ship,” Weeds said. “I was so sick, it was pitiful. We did have a very rough voyage. There was some kind of storm.”

Although she didn’t gain her “sea legs” from the five-day voyage, Weeds said the trip was definitely worth it. On the return trip home, Weeds was sick again, but for a different reason.

“When they told me I was flying home, I said, ‘Hallelujah!’ At least if I got sick, I would only be sick for eighteen hours, not five days,” Weeds said. “I was pregnant coming home. When I went to France, we had only been married a few months. I was very sick when I was pregnant.”

How time flies.

Fast-forward seventy-one years later, and thousands of miles from where Weeds first boarded the ship on the East Coast back in the 1950s, and it all came full circle as the historic ocean liner, with massive six-story high smoke stacks, made its way to the Mobile Bay, clearly seen in the city’s skyline. As Weeds knows all too well, you never know where life will take you.

“Who would ever think that you would ever see that ship again? I made the trip, I got to France, returned home and life went on, and now at ninety-one I get to see the ship again!” Weeds said.

The trip to Mobile turned into a trip down memory lane for the Long Beach resident, as she recalled where the voyage began all those years ago and where both she and the iconic ocean liner would wind up decades later.

“My uncle, my mother and my sister were there [as she boarded the ship] to say adios,” Weeds said. “That was our first ship, and it was, to me, beautiful. Even though it’s rusty now, it’s still a beautiful ship. I don’t care what anybody says.”

Now, it’s back to business for the ninety-one-year old, who lifts and moves heavy, wooden chairs like feathers at her Long Beach store, the Family Attic, located on Klondyke Road. There are new challenges on the horizon as new stores open, competing for business.

Weeds hopes to keep the doors to her store – which offers embroidery, quality new and used furniture and other merchandise – open, her locally-owned store she loves so much. She says she helps her keep in touch with the people of all walks of life who stop by to visit, as evidenced on a random Friday in mid-May, when Georgia resident Robert Williams engaged in a detailed conversation about the merchandise in Weeds’ store. A passerby would easily think the two had been long-time friends, although they had only met minutes earlier.

“You meet people here in Mississippi, between the Air Force and the Navy, being military-oriented; there are just so many people I meet, and some keep in touch,” Weeds says, showing hand-written letters she’s received over the years.

The SS United States is now dry docked in Mobile, Alabama. The once-stately ship will be disassembled and find its final resting place in the water, as the world’s largest artificial reef off the coast of Florida. (Photo credit: Special to Long Beach Breeze)

As the SS United States stays dry-docked in Mobile and preparations are made to convert the once-majestic ocean liner into the world’s largest artificial reef off the coast of Florida within the next year, Weeds, who was a young woman full of hopes and dreams who boarded that luxury ship all those years ago, reflects on her own fate and that of the business she loves so much.

As the old saying goes, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

Norma Weeds is proof of just that.

Norma Weeds (left) at the Captain’s Supper held in the dining area of the SS United States right before the ship made it to its trans-Atlantic destination in Europe back in 1954. (Photo credit: Special to Long Beach Breeze)