Waning Road Trip - March 1939 - Part Three - March Madness

Golden Gate International Exposition Guidebook

"9:30am

Mar. 21, '39

Dear Folks,

Here we are at the Astoria Hotel ready to start out.  Saw Treasure I. last P.M. at little.  Saw Utah & Oklahoma then Oregon and Texas play.  Did you hear the games?  Oregon won easily.  Very poor crowd, maybe 1,000 people.  Ore. & Okla. play tonite then the winner goes east. 

Spent most of yesterday getting a new muffler put on the car and seeing the city.  City not as large as I expected.  We were even able to find out hotel when we came back from T. Island.  We are located next to Chinatown.  I took a little tour through last night 1:00 A.M. looking for a garage.  Got lost for a few minutes and went several blocks through all sorts of funny looking signs.  Real pretty, lots of colors.

China Town - San Francisco

Margaret is washing a few things and is about ready to go.  I am a whiz in this traffic.  Pretty tame now but was flustered at first.  All well - rain stopped yesterday.  High fog now.  Quite warm - no wind.

Jim and Marg."

Astoria Hotel Receipt

To put the sports references in historical context, the Wanings watched the

Regionals of the first NCAA basketball tournament - which Oregon won!

According to Wikipedia:

The 1939 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involved 8 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It was the first NCAA basketball national championship tournament. It began on March 17, 1939, and ended with the championship game on March 27 on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois. A total of 8 games were played, including a single third place game in the West region. The East region did not hold a third place game until the 1941 tournament, and there was no national third place game until the 1947 tournament.

Oregon, coached by Howard Hobson, won the national title with a 46-33 victory in the final game over Ohio State, coached by Harold Olsen.

For you Bracket Fans - here's the link: 1939 NCAA Basketball Brackets.