It's been hectic but let me tell you the story of our first summer vacation to Iran. My folks and half the 6 kids lived in Agha Jai, Iran and we older brothers (3) were in boarding school at OMA, Claremore, OK. My oldest brother was elected to get us vaccinated, passported etc and lead us to Abadan, Iran. It was a 45 minute flight on a twin-engine DeHaviland "Dove" 8-passenger prop plane from Abadan to Agha Jari (owned by IOEP&C). We left Tulsa on a Friday morning, flying to Chicago. Then on to La Guardia and then by helicopter to JFK. Our plane was supposed to leave by 9 pm from JFK but was delayed till midnight.
This precipitated missed connections all the way through our itinerary. Since it was SAS, we arrived in Copenhagen the next morning. After frantic efforts by my oldest brother, we secured new connections and flew to Rome, then to Beirut, Lebanon. They got water in the plane's fuel tanks and had to flush them out.
Meanwhile, the airline took us to the Beirut Riviera beach but it was a mixed blessing as we were in travel clothes and our bags were still on the plane. Then they took us to a museum (forgettable) and to lunch atop some hotel. Hors d'œuvre were served but wary of what animal they came from or what middle eastern weed, we turned up our nose.
The last leg was to Abadan as I recall. We arrived at the airport at a late hour Sunday night, a FULL 24 hours late. No one met us at the airport and their English was as good as our Farsi. My brother secured us a taxi to the hostel along with our bags. We arrived at the hostel about 10 pm and while signing in, the desk clerk remarked that there was another person by the same name registered there. We grabbed the registration book and looked to see who. Lopez is not a common name in Iran. It was mom. She was already in bed when we burst into her room. Our father had had to take a flight home already to go back to work.
If that wasn't enough, when we stepped off the DeHaviland Dove in Agha Jari they pulled the old you-are-lucky-to-be-arriving-on-a-cooler-day-than-usual comment. It was WAY over 100 F. And when we got to the house, they had a man-servant (women were forbidden to hold jobs) who met us when we pulled up. As was local custom, he bore down on us to honor us with a kiss! No man was gonna kiss us! We took off running around the house and a rabbit cage until he finally cornered us. He happily smooched us on both cheeks. His English was limited and he uttered the phrase that was to become part of our family lore for eternity, "You good boy."
More later
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
The Day My Mom Knew I Wasn't a Kid Anymore
In the summer if 1964 I went home for the summer to visit my parents and my younger brother and sister. You do the math, I was 19 years old. After 18, my father's company policy was to pay transportation "home" for college students twice before the age of 23. I went home twice: 1964 and 1966.
In 1964 they lived in Torremolinos, Spain. Legend had it that Frank Sinatra had once been asked to leave there after some indescretion. It was a Spanish equivalent of Galveston with it's granite sand (black) beaches and tourist trade.
After I had been there a short while, a girl struck up a friendship with me as she had known of me and pined for me since when her family was on assignment to Cartagena, Colombia when mine was in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. We got real chummy, pub crawling, swimming at the beach, riding paddle boats, dancing the night away in general. Focus, I gotta stay focused as this reminded me of another story.
One morning I was at her house visiting (what else was there to do? We had no TV, few friends and no places like YMCA or that.) and we were sitting on the sofa in the living room. Her mother could be seen through a doorway as she bustled about with loads of clothes to be washed.
At one point, for some unexplained reason, as I held her hand in mine I smelled something good, like perfume. I sniffed her hand and was sniffing my way up her arm to her shoulder when her mother walked by. She came back by and asked her daughter to come in the other room. As I innocently waited on the sofa she left and came back a few moments later, only to sit in a parlor chair. Taken aback as there was no room to sit beside her, I asked her why she didn't sit by me on the sofa.
She allowed as how her mother told her she mustn't sit on the sofa with me any more. We passed the time awkwardly until lunchtime when I walked home. When I got there, my mother took me aside to tell me that this girl's mother had called her to complain that I was at her house, in broad daylight, sitting on the sofa with her daughter and like a Lothario, I was kissing up her arm. I laughed my head off, just a-cackling at the mental image she must of had. I explained I was just sniffing up her arm, but the damage was done and it was to no avail. She looked at me differently thereafter. A week or 2 later another girl was visiting me and ma had to go out. She kicked us both out before she left so I wouldn't subject another flower of feminine pulchritude to brazen acts of wild affection. No amount of 'xplaining would suffice to keep us there while she left. It was a rueful laugh I laughed this time.
In 1964 they lived in Torremolinos, Spain. Legend had it that Frank Sinatra had once been asked to leave there after some indescretion. It was a Spanish equivalent of Galveston with it's granite sand (black) beaches and tourist trade.
After I had been there a short while, a girl struck up a friendship with me as she had known of me and pined for me since when her family was on assignment to Cartagena, Colombia when mine was in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. We got real chummy, pub crawling, swimming at the beach, riding paddle boats, dancing the night away in general. Focus, I gotta stay focused as this reminded me of another story.
One morning I was at her house visiting (what else was there to do? We had no TV, few friends and no places like YMCA or that.) and we were sitting on the sofa in the living room. Her mother could be seen through a doorway as she bustled about with loads of clothes to be washed.
At one point, for some unexplained reason, as I held her hand in mine I smelled something good, like perfume. I sniffed her hand and was sniffing my way up her arm to her shoulder when her mother walked by. She came back by and asked her daughter to come in the other room. As I innocently waited on the sofa she left and came back a few moments later, only to sit in a parlor chair. Taken aback as there was no room to sit beside her, I asked her why she didn't sit by me on the sofa.
She allowed as how her mother told her she mustn't sit on the sofa with me any more. We passed the time awkwardly until lunchtime when I walked home. When I got there, my mother took me aside to tell me that this girl's mother had called her to complain that I was at her house, in broad daylight, sitting on the sofa with her daughter and like a Lothario, I was kissing up her arm. I laughed my head off, just a-cackling at the mental image she must of had. I explained I was just sniffing up her arm, but the damage was done and it was to no avail. She looked at me differently thereafter. A week or 2 later another girl was visiting me and ma had to go out. She kicked us both out before she left so I wouldn't subject another flower of feminine pulchritude to brazen acts of wild affection. No amount of 'xplaining would suffice to keep us there while she left. It was a rueful laugh I laughed this time.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Some little stories
In another forum, I told a story about extending recess one time during elementary school by sneaking off and hiding in a cave. Our mothers had to be called to school to help find us and return us to school. We also were talking about jacks, marbles and other games involving rhymes passed down for the ages. Like: Betty and Johnny sitting in a tree/ K - I - S - S - I - N - G/ First comes love, then comes marriage/ Then comes Betty pushing a baby carriage.
We also played with tops. The kind where you wrapped a string around the top, whipped them out of your hand just-so and they spun like a top. Naturally we turned it into a macho thing by modifying our tops. We'd drill holes in them to make them howl threateningly or add burrs to rip up other tops when they got close (like on Ben Hur's chariot). If you sharpened your point that the top spins on and threw it right at another top, you could destroy that other top.
We didn't play marbles with a circle, we played marbles with a hole. You had to hit someone else's marble from the hole to claim it. That is, if you were playing "keepsies' in which case you had to lay down the rules about "lagging" and "blowsies" and the use of "steelies." Steelies were employed if you got into the hole at the same time as somebodyelse. Since getting into the hole gave you anoter shot, just like hitting somebody else's marble gave you another shot, if you knocked his marble out of the hole, you could claim it. Yu would switch to a bigger marble for this move or a steelie if you had one. A steelie was a steel ball bearing about 1 to 1.5" diameter. Thrown hard enough, you could dislodge a hippopotamus with a steelie. If your opponent was caught in the hole without HIS steelie, its likely you would crush his marble at the least. You didn't use a steelie all the time in case someone hit it and they claimed it, or because it was so heavy and not suitable for a shooter marble. If the ground was particularly hard, like an asphalt street, for example, you'd use a ball peen hammer to make the hole. A few good whacks and you're done.
Enough for this post. Have a nice day, my friends!
We also played with tops. The kind where you wrapped a string around the top, whipped them out of your hand just-so and they spun like a top. Naturally we turned it into a macho thing by modifying our tops. We'd drill holes in them to make them howl threateningly or add burrs to rip up other tops when they got close (like on Ben Hur's chariot). If you sharpened your point that the top spins on and threw it right at another top, you could destroy that other top.
We didn't play marbles with a circle, we played marbles with a hole. You had to hit someone else's marble from the hole to claim it. That is, if you were playing "keepsies' in which case you had to lay down the rules about "lagging" and "blowsies" and the use of "steelies." Steelies were employed if you got into the hole at the same time as somebodyelse. Since getting into the hole gave you anoter shot, just like hitting somebody else's marble gave you another shot, if you knocked his marble out of the hole, you could claim it. Yu would switch to a bigger marble for this move or a steelie if you had one. A steelie was a steel ball bearing about 1 to 1.5" diameter. Thrown hard enough, you could dislodge a hippopotamus with a steelie. If your opponent was caught in the hole without HIS steelie, its likely you would crush his marble at the least. You didn't use a steelie all the time in case someone hit it and they claimed it, or because it was so heavy and not suitable for a shooter marble. If the ground was particularly hard, like an asphalt street, for example, you'd use a ball peen hammer to make the hole. A few good whacks and you're done.
Enough for this post. Have a nice day, my friends!
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