Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Six Months Earlier
IN JUNE OF
1969 Old Mom drove me to the airport more anxious than usual. I'd always seemed
hell bent on self-destruction, but this outing was, to her, more focused. She had no doubts that
this time I was out to kill myself. She just knew it, though she repressed her anxiety admirably,
telling herself out loud that I was only fitting in with the other kids.
That is, a few would-be entrepreneurs across the land had discovered how to charter com-
mercial jets and actually make money selling round trip flights, New York/London, by the seat
at two hundred forty dollars each. This was long, long ago, way before the world got terrorized
and then got protected by security, and adventures got shut down or rendered tediously humi-
liating.
Meanwhile, what did you say? Round trip New York/London for two forty? Well, so it
wasn't a jet. It was a Scottish Airlines plane that went north to Nova Scotia to minimize over-
ocean time and took sixteen hours. No frills? We didn't even know what a frill was. We napped
on the floor. So what? And you still had to get to New York. So? You got ninety days of the
whole wide world in the bargain, which was as different as Paris, Illinois from its namesake in
France.
Anyway, Old Mom was only about fifty then, and though prone to nervous energy, she
mostly had her emotions under control. But then she cried, broke down and sobbed, driving
and reaching into her purse for five big ones folded neatly into a wad. Five hundred dollars was
another world unto itself in those days. She handed it over boo hoo hooing, admonishing me
to be safe and have a wonderful, safe time, and to get this . . . this . . . this thing out of my system
and come home safely. “This is not to spend. It's for emergency. Keep it in a safe place.”
Credit cards were for rich kids, kids who got new cars for a sixteenth birthday or a half-de-
cent report card. Cell phones were still three decades away, even for rich kids. I guess Old Mom
could have bought some traveler's checks if she thought I might lose the money, but she didn't
think of that, or maybe she didn't want to pay those bastards the five or ten bucks for their fake
money. Mom had lived through the Depression and knew what five or ten bucks could buy.
Never mind. I spent the cash on day three, all of it, quick and neat, straight up.
You bounce back easily at twenty from sixteen hours of engine noise, stale air and seats as
unforgiving as church pews. Halfway into the tortuous crossing most kids lay on the floor to
get some Zs, and a lasting image of the times was an old Scottish turbo-prop droning across
the Atlantic with its engine cowlings streaming fine rivulets of oil, its seats empty and its floor
covered with youthful adventurers in fetal positions, hugging knapsacks and stuff. It could nev-
