Monday, May 26, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
39. Going Home
I managed to arrive for my flight with a little pocket change. Enough to buy a piece of fruit. Then I sold two poems that I had written. I sold them for a sandwich, two pieces of fruit and a bottle of pop. I started my trip with $100. $50.00 of that I sent to my friends in Turkey. I sold some of my blood in Greece for about $15.00. Carl Erik Rosen gave me $20.00 in Austria. My father sent me $20.00 to Amsterdam to catch the ferry to England. Total$155.00. I left the states the beginning of June and returned the end of August, about 90 days which averaged out to about $1.75 a day, Europe for three months on less than $2.00 a day.
I checked in for my flight back to the states and found out that there was a three hour wait until boarding time. Up to that point the day had gone well . It slowly went downhill from there. About one hour before boarding time we were told there would be a two hour delay. A couple hours later we were notified of another two hour delay. So far there was four hours of delay. After another 3 hour delay we were told we would be loading shortly but we noticed there was no plane at our assigned gate! After further questioning, the Airline Representative told us that our plane did not land at the right airport. It landed at Gatwick instead of Heathrow and would be a couple more hours until the plane was refueled and flown to Heathrow. During the next hour we were told that our pilots had exceeded their flight hours and needed eight hours of off time before they could fly the plane from Gatwick to our gate at Heathrow. Those that had the money could upgrade to a regular flight if they didn't want to wait and there was an opening on another flight. The rest of us would have to wait for our scheduled flight that was now scheduled for tomorrow, about twelve hours away.
| Cleaning Lady |
The next day, we got on our flight at the scheduled time plus 24 hours for our flight back to the States. Only one minor drawback to the whole flight. No alcoholic beverages on board. Just juice, soda pop and water. Apparently, we were considered an unruly bunch for our actions of taking over the one lounge in which we slept thus they were ordered not to supply the plane with the little bottles of liquor, wine or beer. That was our laugh for the day. Most of us could not afford to buy them anyway.
This was my summer of 1970, posts from number one through this post number thirty nine, a trip from home to England, hitchhiking to Turkey and then back to England. It was a fantastic time; I learned a lot about people and myself. My wife wanted me to write this blog so my grandchildren would be able to "read" of my past. I leave it for them and others to judge and I also leave two quotes for your consideration.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
Little Gidding V,
Four Quartets.
-- T. S. Eliot (1943)
The Name of the Wind
-- Patrick Rothfuss (2007)
Saturday, May 10, 2014
38. London - 1970
What do you do when you are in a city with very little money? I started my visit in London in my usual manner, walking around the city. I walked through the Kensington area to Chelsea, where a friend of mine lived that I stayed with when I first started my trip back in Post 2. London to Belgium 1970. I was hoping to stay there while waiting for my flight back to the states, but according to her maid, she wasn't there, she had just returned from a festival in Belgium watching Badfinger and Cat Stevens and was now on her way to the upcoming concert at Isle of Wight. It paid to have a rich father so you could bounce around from concert to concert! Some of the people and performers scheduled for the Isle of Wight Festival that year were Supertramp, Chicago, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Doors, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Kris Kristofferson, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen.
Well, it was a short walk from her place to Hyde Park where I spent the
next two nights. The British Bobbies were pretty good about it. They
would come along about 6:00 in the
morning and give you a nudge with their nightsticks to remind you to
"move along". That summer there were a bunch of free concerts in the
park but I managed to miss them too. What I did get to see was the
Speakers' Corner in action. The Speakers' Corner is an area in the
northeast corner of Hyde Park where public speaking is allowed.
Speakers there may talk on "any"
subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful.
Discussion is allowed, so one must be ready for hecklers. There is no
immunity from the law, but in practice, the police tend to be tolerant
and
intervene only when they receive a complaint or if they hear profanity.
Across town on the 22nd of August at Trafalgar square was a Anti Pig Rally to protest police brutality in London that I did manage to attend. The amazing part of this rally was the crowd control. There were about 4000 people at the rally! There were only 2 (two) uniformed Bobbies maintaining order with no problem. The band playing at the rally was the Pink Fairies.
It seemed to rain every afternoon or evening for a couple of hours. I remember during one of these afternoon downpours, meeting an "older" woman coming out of a post office one day. Thinking back, she appeared to be a cross between Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins! She was an indomitable woman dressed in a dark trench coat, had a smile that wouldn't stop and a twinkle sparkling in her eyes. She had stopped us hippies to talk with her. She spent a good 20 minutes extolling the virtues of her home country (Ireland), and trying to convince us to go visit there. She was oblivious to the wind and rain to the point that although she carried an umbrella she never bothered to open it for protection. It seemed the umbrella was used as a cane if needed and as a pointer when giving directions. We stood in the warm pouring rain and had a fantastic visit. If I wasn't heading back to the states soon, I would have headed immediately for Ireland.
After a couple of nights sleeping in the park, I splurged on a bed in the youth hostel. My timing was very good! I managed to land a job working for the people that ran the hostel. Very little money (enough for a couple of beers at the local pub) but free room and board at the hostels. What we did was tear down and store beds from an unused hostel to a central location warehouse for the next year, so they could close some of the hostels that were no longer being used. The heavy season was coming to a close and the organizations did not want to pay rent for the extra buildings. The manager had us take the beds apart and help load them in lorries. We would then get the next load ready for the return of the lorries. We were efficient enough that we would have an hour to wait for the lorry to return. While waiting for the lorries, the manager would escort us over to the neighborhood pub and buy us a sandwich and a couple of beers for lunch. The patrons were a little skittish upon meeting us but once they found out we were actually "really working" we were considered "true working blokes" and we were invited back for their evening pub fare with a warning not to tell the other hippies. They didn't work for a living. You bought your beer and you were welcome to fill your plate from a buffet set up for early evening. We were in Heaven!
The manager put us up in a hostel that was separate from the ones we were disassembling. He would pick us up in the morning and drop us off after our workday. We sometimes were asked to "watch" the check in desk also. The doors were locked in the evening and we had the list of people that had beds and would let them in the building after hours. It was at this hostel that I met Barbara Allen, a first grade teacher from Brighton, Massachusetts. She asked me to write a poem about her that night. She was probably tired of hearing people recite the 15th century Scottish ballad about the cruel "Barbara Allen". This was my attempt at a Japanese tanka poem. Right number of syllables, wrong number of lines
Barbara Allen
Barbara Allen,
A glimmering star,
A walking rainbow,
Surrounded, by drab
Incoherent shadows,
Posing as people
| Speakers' Corner |
| Speakers' Corner |
 |
| Russ Hunter of the Pink Fairies at Trafalgar Square 1970 |
Across town on the 22nd of August at Trafalgar square was a Anti Pig Rally to protest police brutality in London that I did manage to attend. The amazing part of this rally was the crowd control. There were about 4000 people at the rally! There were only 2 (two) uniformed Bobbies maintaining order with no problem. The band playing at the rally was the Pink Fairies.
After a couple of nights sleeping in the park, I splurged on a bed in the youth hostel. My timing was very good! I managed to land a job working for the people that ran the hostel. Very little money (enough for a couple of beers at the local pub) but free room and board at the hostels. What we did was tear down and store beds from an unused hostel to a central location warehouse for the next year, so they could close some of the hostels that were no longer being used. The heavy season was coming to a close and the organizations did not want to pay rent for the extra buildings. The manager had us take the beds apart and help load them in lorries. We would then get the next load ready for the return of the lorries. We were efficient enough that we would have an hour to wait for the lorry to return. While waiting for the lorries, the manager would escort us over to the neighborhood pub and buy us a sandwich and a couple of beers for lunch. The patrons were a little skittish upon meeting us but once they found out we were actually "really working" we were considered "true working blokes" and we were invited back for their evening pub fare with a warning not to tell the other hippies. They didn't work for a living. You bought your beer and you were welcome to fill your plate from a buffet set up for early evening. We were in Heaven!
 |
| Enjoying a moment in time |
The manager put us up in a hostel that was separate from the ones we were disassembling. He would pick us up in the morning and drop us off after our workday. We sometimes were asked to "watch" the check in desk also. The doors were locked in the evening and we had the list of people that had beds and would let them in the building after hours. It was at this hostel that I met Barbara Allen, a first grade teacher from Brighton, Massachusetts. She asked me to write a poem about her that night. She was probably tired of hearing people recite the 15th century Scottish ballad about the cruel "Barbara Allen". This was my attempt at a Japanese tanka poem. Right number of syllables, wrong number of lines
Barbara Allen
Barbara Allen,
A glimmering star,
A walking rainbow,
Surrounded, by drab
Incoherent shadows,
Posing as people
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)