“Can we just skip to the part of my life where I travel the world?”
A beep a bit back announced rain would begin in 23 minutes. The timing was just a little off. The rain started in fifteen minutes. I could hear the pings of the drops hitting the metal barrel on the deck. The rain was heavy, but now I can hear individual drops. The forecast is for a day of rain in the high 70’s. I just crossed washing the kitchen floor off my to-do list.
When I was a kid, a rainy Saturday was devastating. My bike stayed in the cellar and I stayed home. I’d head to my bedroom, a quiet place, with my book. I always had a book. I’d lie cozy in bed and read by the bed-lamp hanging off the headboard. Sometimes the sound of the rain lulled me to sleep.
When I was in the sixth grade, I made my first promise to myself. I would travel and see the world. I had no doubt about it. I even named it after a classmate who used to go to England to visit family, the Barrett disease.
Canada was my first foreign country. I was sixteen when we went to Niagara Falls. We stayed in a motel for the first time. We ate in restaurants or had picnics as we traveled. We took the walk under the falls. All of us were dressed in yellow slickers. We went to the wax museum. We saw the falls at night lit up with beautiful colored lights. We stayed in a huge cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario. I walked across the street and saw tiny waves lapping the shore. I remember the Eisenhower lock on the St. Lawrence River. That whole trip was amazing, and I haven’t ever forgotten it. It was the first fulfillment of my promise.
My second country was a huge leap from Canada. It was Ghana. I still remember the excitement when I was boarding the bus to leave staging in Philadelphia for the airport. I remember we flew over the cape. I took a picture, a sort of good-bye picture. I remember landing in Madrid for a new crew and refueling. I remember landing in Accra, but I don’t remember much of the bus trip to Winneba. I fell sleep. I remember my first morning in Ghana with such clarity. I stood outside my room on the second floor of the dorm and looked at the palm trees, the greenery, the roofs of houses and the hills far beyond. I was mesmerized by the unfamiliar. I had fulfilled my promise in the most spectacular place.
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July 14, 2024 at 12:50 pm
Hi Kat,
Hot as hell again today with a predicted high of 99°.
The first foreign country I visited was Mexico. My mother’s oldest brother, Jack, was enlisted in the U.S. Army by my grandfather when Jack was 16. This was between the two world wars. He was sent to Ft. Bliss in El Paso Texas where he was in the horse cavalry. He told me that they treated the horses better than the men. He said that the horses were more valuable. He settled in El Paso after his discharge from the army and married a woman from Mexico. When we moved to Dallas in 1953, my grandmother told my mother that we will be in the same state and we should visit him. My mother took my sister and I on the train while my father traveled to the furthest part of his territory, Kansas City and St. Louis, for two weeks.
That train trip took 16 hours. It’s further to El Paso from Dallas than it is to St. Louis. My uncle was living with his wife across the border in Juarez. In those days when you came back into the U.S. the immigration officer would ask you your citizenship through the window of your car when you came across the bridge. The Mexican border guard didn’t care who crossed. My cousin, during a visit in the 1950s said to the immigration officer when asked his citizenship, he replied, “Si Americano”. 🙂
Juarez was a wide open town back then. Texas was dry in those days and everyone in El Paso crossed the Rio Grande for fun. I remember having my picture taken on the street while sitting on a small donkey wearing a big straw sombrero. My uncle had learned pidgin Spanish mixed in with a little English and Yiddish.
July 14, 2024 at 5:35 pm
Hi Bob,
I didn’t visit Mexico until I was an adult. We walked across the border, and the line for Americans to cross was short. I didn’t need a passport in those days.
I always thought the horse cavalry was way long ago. Your uncle’s story had me go hunting. It was in April 1942 near Crawford, Neb., that the remaining 500 U.S. horse cavalry soldiers dismounted for the final time. The horses were sold at auction. I should have remembered that when the Nazis invaded Poland they had horse drawn cannons.
The days of people moving across the border from country to country is a distant memory thanks to the rhetoric of hate.
I used to collect old photos, and I had one exactly like the one you described except it was a woman.