The sun, the blue sky and a temperature in the 40’s beckon me outside to work today. Let the inside dust sit and grow. The bird feeders need filling and the backyard needs clearing. Pine branches blown down by the wind litter the backyard. 

I went to the parish grammar school for eight years, no kindergarten back then. There were so many of us we had two different classrooms for each grade, and those classes were filled, forty or more in each room. The rows of desks stretched from the front of the room to the back and only a little space separated each row. We were quiet and attentive for the most part. The nuns scared us just by their looks and their black and white habits. You could only see their hands and faces. They weren’t people in the same way my parents were. They were a different breed. 

In the sixth grade, I promised myself I would travel. I would see the world. When I was in high school, one family vacation was at Niagara Falls. We went into Canada, my first foreign country. It seem didn’t foreign, but I still counted it, number one on my list. 

My next country was Finland. My friend and I flew to London where we caught the PanAm flight to Helsinki. The flight also stopped in Oslo and Copenhagen. Most of the other passengers left at those two stops. What had been a full plane was down to about fifteen people for Helsinki. I wondered why. What was it about Helsinki? I never found out as Finland is one of my favorite countries. I stayed in a hostel which had been housing for the 1952 Olympics. I shopped at the market, the one where boats filled with goods were tied to the pier. Because the second language was Swedish, I didn’t know what the dishes I ate were called. I went by looks and smell. I took a train to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. From there I took a bus to Inari, above the Arctic Circle. It was midnight sun time, 24 hours of light. Herds of tended reindeer were on the sides of the road. I had reindeer meat for dinner, not one of Santa’s I assure you. I loved Inari.

From Helsinki, I took a train to what was then Leningrad. There were only three passengers and one train server in the car. The server would come to each of us and say,”Tea?” I drank more tea on the trip than I ever drank in one place. When we got to the Russian border, our car was disconnected from the train and soldiers boarded. They checked our passports and backpacks. They didn’t find the tomato I hid.

I’m ending today’s story with the soldiers and the tomato. There is so much more I’m saving for another day.

This entry was posted on March 4, 2025 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.