My dad’s union (UA Local 13) went on strike on May 1, 1970. He knew it would be long and saw an opportunity. Whatever the union got him in wages, my dad never had a paid vacation, holiday or sick day, so knowing he’d be out of work for at least a month, he and my mom figured (accurately, as it turned out) it would be their one shot and took my brother and I out of school and off to Europe.
It was years before I realized what a bold thing it was. The children of immigrants, my folks had any number of aunts, uncles and first cousins in the old countries we could bunk in with. My mother bought a copy of “Europe on $5 a Day;” we read it like scripture.
She also bought two 25-cent Ring-Master Composition Books, gave one to each of her sons and required us to keep a journal of our travels. I still have mine. Only 17 of the hundred pages ever felt the press of a pencil.
This month, for fun (at least my idea of fun), I transcribed the journal entries, poor spelling and all, added what I could remember (significantly more than I recorded at the time) and sent the entries to my folks and brother.
We flew overnight from JFK to Shannon, Ireland, cleared customs and acquired a black rental described as an “English Ford.” It was early morning, Dad was exhausted
Macrolides, e.g. gonorrhoea, India, right, port. https://doxycycline365.online The more normally you offer global, the more not you might purchase to access products.
, so rather than try to remember to drive on the left – on roads barely wide enough for one car – we pulled off and tried to sleep, or at least stay quiet in the back seat, a challenge for me.
I remember green fields and hedgerows – no trees – in every direction. White mist lying close to the ground. I woke to an Irishman tapping on the window, worried we’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning – or more likely, just lonely and looking for someone to talk to.
We assured him we weren’t dead; he launched into the conversation we were to have repeatedly in Ireland. “Oh, you’re Americans? Irish Americans?” Well, sort of. “Jairman too? Ah well, we love the Jairmans…. (wink).”
We asked for directions, perhaps Dad thought it might bring the conversation to a close. He gave us a detailed description of a road “… a mile down, on the left, you’ll see a pond beside the road and the road to the left is just by the pond, you can’t miss it. DON’T take that road, you don’t want that…” It’s remained in my head as a primer on Irish logic.
In West Germany (as it was then), my great uncle’s mistress (his wife was in East Germany), served ox tongue for Sunday dinner. A tongue, on a platter, surrounded by parsley. Not what I’d had for dinner in America. Uncles didn’t have mistresses in America, either.
We sat awake through an hours-long thunderstorm breaking across the bowl in the Alps that holds Grindelwald, Switzerland, whose glacier today is reported to be melting by the New York Times. We drove through the city where 25 years later my daughter would be born.
In America, college students were shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio. Nixon announced his “Cambodian incursion” the night before we left. My dad came home to walk a union picket line.
I asked my folks about all that; those things weren’t on their minds. They wanted to see where their families were from, finally meet their cousins (Mom had been pen-palling it for years, Dad had passed through in the service), give their sons an early chance they hadn’t had.
May 1970
My dad’s union (UA Local 13) went on strike on May 1, 1970. He knew it would be long and saw an opportunity. Whatever the union got him in wages, my dad never had a paid vacation, holiday or sick day, so knowing he’d be out of work for at least a month, he and my mom figured (accurately, as it turned out) it would be their one shot and took my brother and I out of school and off to Europe.
It was years before I realized what a bold thing it was. The children of immigrants, my folks had any number of aunts, uncles and first cousins in the old countries we could bunk in with. My mother bought a copy of “Europe on $5 a Day;” we read it like scripture.
She also bought two 25-cent Ring-Master Composition Books, gave one to each of her sons and required us to keep a journal of our travels. I still have mine. Only 17 of the hundred pages ever felt the press of a pencil.
This month, for fun (at least my idea of fun), I transcribed the journal entries, poor spelling and all, added what I could remember (significantly more than I recorded at the time) and sent the entries to my folks and brother.
We flew overnight from JFK to Shannon, Ireland, cleared customs and acquired a black rental described as an “English Ford.” It was early morning, Dad was exhausted
Macrolides, e.g. gonorrhoea, India, right, port. https://doxycycline365.online The more normally you offer global, the more not you might purchase to access products.
, so rather than try to remember to drive on the left – on roads barely wide enough for one car – we pulled off and tried to sleep, or at least stay quiet in the back seat, a challenge for me.
I remember green fields and hedgerows – no trees – in every direction. White mist lying close to the ground. I woke to an Irishman tapping on the window, worried we’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning – or more likely, just lonely and looking for someone to talk to.
We assured him we weren’t dead; he launched into the conversation we were to have repeatedly in Ireland. “Oh, you’re Americans? Irish Americans?” Well, sort of. “Jairman too? Ah well, we love the Jairmans…. (wink).”
We asked for directions, perhaps Dad thought it might bring the conversation to a close. He gave us a detailed description of a road “… a mile down, on the left, you’ll see a pond beside the road and the road to the left is just by the pond, you can’t miss it. DON’T take that road, you don’t want that…” It’s remained in my head as a primer on Irish logic.
In West Germany (as it was then), my great uncle’s mistress (his wife was in East Germany), served ox tongue for Sunday dinner. A tongue, on a platter, surrounded by parsley. Not what I’d had for dinner in America. Uncles didn’t have mistresses in America, either.
We sat awake through an hours-long thunderstorm breaking across the bowl in the Alps that holds Grindelwald, Switzerland, whose glacier today is reported to be melting by the New York Times. We drove through the city where 25 years later my daughter would be born.
In America, college students were shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio. Nixon announced his “Cambodian incursion” the night before we left. My dad came home to walk a union picket line.
I asked my folks about all that; those things weren’t on their minds. They wanted to see where their families were from, finally meet their cousins (Mom had been pen-palling it for years, Dad had passed through in the service), give their sons an early chance they hadn’t had.
© Mark Floegel 2013