I REMEMBER...Traveling in Europe in the 70's

...when I traveled in Europe many years ago, I had a self-imposed budget to keep me in bed and board for the six months I was traveling.  It was patterned after Frommer’s – “Europe on $10 a Day” (seriously...only $10 and it could be done.  There was even a $5 a Day earlier version). 

I had a certain amount of money in my pocket.  I had a finite number of days I wished to spend traveling.  Pretty easy math.  Number of dollars divided by number of days.  There were no more dollars coming into the equation, so for the equation to work, I had to be careful with the amount I spent per day.

I carried a little blue spiral notebook with me and it was very much like a checkbook.  On the first page I put the amount of money I had available and the amount I allotted myself to spend each day – all intended to arrive back home with zero dollars and zero days…mission complete.

I would track my expenses minutely, every penny, every day.  If I spent less money on Tuesday, I could carry that over to spend on the following Wednesday or add it back into the total.  I had three columns.  The first was the total dollars available for the day ($10.00). The second was what I actually spent that day.  The third was my plus or minus to carry over to the next day.  Pretty simple accounting.   


If I knew there was a day coming up that would require more money – I would miserly live a simpler life in the proceeding days to save up for the big spending day/week.  When the spending opportunity caught me off guard and I went over my daily budget, I had to pay the piper in the following days until I was even again.

The person I was traveling with voted to spend it all in London on clothes and antiques.  I voted to continue on by myself.


The unplanned cash expenditure of a one way ticket back to California (and eat the already-paid-for second return ticket) put a serious hamper in my budget.  The travel deal I had landed to make the trip in the first place was based on coming home on a specific flight on a specific date from Paris, six months into the future.  I had to make the money I had left for that specific number of days and I had just knocked a hole in that budget with about a month's equivalent of money pulled out unexpectedly.

My solution was to go to Crete - a little island off the coast of Greece and go"Off Grid" for a month until my remaining days matched up with my remaining money.  Walked forever along the coastline until I was miles from civilization (probably multi-million dollar condos there now).  I found a little abandoned bamboo hut - just in front of a large olive orchard and about ten feet from the Libyan Sea (a portion of the Mediterranean Sea) and actually had some of the best times of my six-month jaunt to Europe - doing absolutely nothing - no services - no people- no tourists - no museums.  I would hike into town once a week - buy bread, wine, cheese.  I eventually met the old man that owned the property - he had no problem with me staying there- I helped him in his orange orchard and olive orchard in exchange for the "free" rent.  He had been a wild party man back in his day and now he said the only thing he drank anymore was a small glass of extra-virgin olive oil to "stay regular".


 I still have the little blue book and a couple of photos.  I noticed that I would write down the words I needed to know when going from one country to another  (like: count to ten, bread, wine cheese, train station, etc.) phonetically, so I could pronounce them adequately..It did the job.


rlw

A upgrade from the $5/Day book - Europe travel doubled even then...

Cheap Is Still Better, Claims Travel Budgeteer Arthur Frommer, but Europe Costs $10 a Day Now  August 02, 1976    

Vol. 6

 

No. 5

That was then - this is now....

rlw

I REMEMBER: Dentists, Lincoln Logs & No Play-Dates on School Nights

This isn’t the cheeriest of remembrances, but definitely one I am unable to forget and it is why I hate to go to the dentist.

It is 1954 and I am seven years old.  We are living in McAllester, Oklahoma and I am in first or second grade.  I didn’t have a fondness for going to the dentist like any other kid, but I liked candy, so I got to take the dental trip more often that I would have liked.

 

 As it turned out, a good friend of mine in school was also the son of our family dentist. My friend Raymond had just gotten some new toys for his birthday, including Lincoln Logs , which was the best toy a kid could ask for in 1954 Oklahoma (with the exception of Lone Ranger Guns, mask and bandana.).  His dad made a lot of money, so my friend got the first, biggest and best stuff when it came out and this wasn’t just a starter box, it was a deluxe Stage Coach Stop Kit with cowboys and horses to boot.

He invited me over to spend the night, so we could play with the new toys.  It was, however, a mid-week night and was also a school night.  His mom offered to bring me to school with Raymond the next morning, if I brought a change of clothes.  It seemed like a super deal to me, but my Mom wouldn’t hear of it, as it was a school night. Mom was a school teacher and had a hard and inflexible rule about playing during the week. She wanted us to concentrate on homework, be rested and have our smarts on for school the next day. Play dates were exclusively for the weekends and there was no changing her mind.  So, the moms made a plan for the following Saturday.

The next day at school, my friend Raymond was not in school.  There was a lot of hushed whispering amongst the teachers, but when I asked if Raymond was out sick, my teacher just told me I should talk to my mom after school.

It turned out that Raymond’s Dad, our family dentist, had snapped the night I was supposed to stay over, killed the entire family with injections of poison, burned the house to the ground and committed suicide.

Dentists' odds of suicide "are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population," writes researcher Steven Stack. "Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and 

have strained relationships with their clients—as few people enjoy going to the dentist."

That was almost 60 years ago and although I can’t tell you what I did last week, I still remember that time I was invited to be in Raymond’s house that night and my fear of dentists giving you an injection.  For a very long time after, you needed three men and a mule to get me to the dentist or get a shot of any kind.  With all the dental work, injections and blood work I have had in the past few years, I am managing much more calmly and mostly appear to be an adult about the whole process on the outside. The three men and the mule are on standby, however, in case of a relapse.

So, this week, I remembered that I have a root canal/crown replacement appointment at 9:01am this coming Monday.  One and a half hours in my least favorite spot in the universe.  I’m good.  Just saying, it is interesting how the little memory pop-ups from our past still come many years down the road.

Note: Reruns of The Lone Ranger starring Clayton Moore were still being transmitted as of August 2010, sixty-one years after their initial broadcast.

Oh, and for my kids, that is probably the main reason you never, ever got a sleepover on a school night.

rlw

I REMEMBER - Fishing for Crawdads, Snake Day, Bats and my dog Suzie

My Dad and me in front of our new house

Here are a couple of stories I remember from my childhood in McAlester, Oklahoma.  We moved to McAlester into a brand new house in a new subdivision that was right across the school from a new elementary school.

All I had to do was walk out the front door of our home and walk across the street.  When I was about six years old I received a new puppy.  Suzie was what my parents called a ‘Heinz 57' (The name 'Heinz 57 ' is also sometimes used to describe a dog which is a mix of multiple breeds).

Suzie stuck with me like glue.  When my mom needed to find me, she called Suzie.  The dog wouldn’t leave without me and would tug on my pant leg to let me know it was time to go home.  My mom had a big tin whistle hanging on a nail right outside the back screen door and would step outside, grab the whistle and give it a big tweet.  I could hear it most of the time, but Suzie could always hear it.  I thought the whistle was for me, but now I realize it really was for my dog to bring me home.

When I went to school, Suzie would go with me to the front door and then follow me on the outside of the school and wait for me under the window of my class room.  She would always be there when I got out of school.  At the end of my year in First Grade (Ms Billingsly) we all got our report cards on the last day of school.  Suzie got one also that testified that she had perfect attendance and didn’t bark during class.

Summers, before I started school, were fun and the rule was that we could head out the door with just shorts on - no shirts/no shoes and if we took a butter and ketchup sandwich (my favorite) for lunch with us, we could be gone until dark.  

When the street lights came on, it was time to come home, unless there was a good bug show going on - that would buy us an extra 10 minutes.  Little bugs, moths, fireflies and mosquitoes would swarm around each street light.  Then the bats would come out.  They would dive into the swirling fog of bugs around the light for an aerial picnic.  Very cool.  Once a bat got into our house and I remember my mom chasing it out of the house with a broom.

The other memory I have about this new house was the ongoing construction of the neighborhood development, providing thrills for a small Okie boy with time on his hands (no TV, no Nintendo or Wi's, no internet...my God, how did a kid survive?)  

There was a ditch across the street before they put in water lines for the expanding neighborhood. I used to go fishing for crawdads (tiny, freshwater cousins of lobsters) in that ditch until Snake Day. If you got a long stick, tied a length of kite string on one end and a strip of red cloth (a bloody band-aid would also suffice) on the other end, you were set.  I would grab a coffee can, my 'fishing pole' and head to the creek.  There were little holes along the edge of the muddy water, that provided hiding spots for the crawdads.  If you dangled the wet red cloth up and down in the hole, you could catch quite a few crawdads (also called mud-bugs).  They would use their pincers to grab the cloth and you could just pull them out.  In retrospect, the cloth probably didn't have to be red, however, it seemed awfully important at the time. 

I mentioned above that I got to do that until 'Snake Day'.  On that fateful day, I was going from hole to hole in my little muddy ditch fishing spot, filling up my little bucket with crawdads (we never ate them, we used them for Bass fishing), when I discovered that snakes like crawdads too.  I saw this little snake tail sticking out of one of the crawdad holes and rushed home to get a canning jar off the back porch and ran back to the ditch.  Not appreciating that although I knew snakes could bite you, this was a actually a deadly, baby water moccasin.  I pulled the snake out, popped it into the mason jar, screwed the lid down tight and ran home to show my mom my new prize.  After freaking out and thoroughly checking me all over for snake bites (after all, all I had on was shorts), she scolded me forever (my mom always repeated the 'lesson' at least 5 times to make sure I 'got it'), forbid me to EVER go near the ditch again, and then hugged me and we had a big slice of watermelon.

All of these memories were before TV.  I remember wanting a TV, because friends at school had one.  One summer we were eating watermelon on the picnic table on our side yard.  I kept throwing watermelon seeds on the roof.  My mom asked me why I was doing that.  My answer was that I was hoping the seeds would sprout and grow a vine that looked like a TV antennae and then every one would think we had a TV.

Those truly were the good old days.

rlw

I REMEMBER - Baseball, the Pain and the Triple Play

I remember being an All-American kid growing up loving to play baseball.  Mostly we played stick-ball in our yard, and in the good old days we only had a back fence in our neighborhood in McAlister, Okla.  There were no side fences or front fences, and so our yard just ran through our neighbor's yard and their neighbor's yard--until you ran out of block.  Kids could play football and have the whole 100 yards with their buddies and their neighbors' yards.

But baseball was the best.  I loved it.  I started playing catcher.  I had my moves down to throw guys out trying to steal bases.  This was sandlot ball with virtually no equipment.  We had bats, balls and gloves (most of us) and that was about it.  About a month into my career as a ball player, Timmy Johnson, big time slugger, failed to control his swing and after a mighty effort (he missed the ball), he kept coming around and connected quite solidly with my forehead.  Laid me out like a cod.  Knocked me out cold.  Other than a slight concussion (my mom said a coconut was softer), I later had the pleasure of hearing that everyone thought Timmy had killed me and they ran to HIS mom's house (three houses down) and told his mom that Timmy had killed Bobby with a bat.  Boy, did he ever get in big trouble.  That was fitting payback, because just a month earlier, I had gotten into big-time trouble because I had killed Timmy with a dart.  Sorta. 

We were playing darts in his room (yes, real pub darts - no plastic electronic darts) and I was winning.  He kept trying to pull the darts out of the board before I was through throwing and was pretending to jump in front of me to "throw" off my excellent game.

Well, this time he jumped in front of the dart board just as I had released the dart, winging its way to the bulls-eye, and the dart stuck him right square in the back of his head.  The shock made him faint.  He turned and looked at me with this funny expression.  The pupils of his eyes just disappeared, and all I could see were the whites of his eyes before he landed on the floor flat on his face. I knew I had killed him.  I did the honorable thing.  I ran home and hid in my closet. His mom and my mom searched and tracked me down.  I could have lived in that closet for a long time if my dog hadn't ratted me out.  I figure Timmy's mom heard me blast out through the front screen door and went to Timmy's room to see what was up. She found him laid out, face down, on the floor with a dart sticking out of the back of his head.  Although her screaming woke him up and there wasn't much blood, they felt an unexplainable obligation to go tell my mom and blah, blah, blah - this story isn't about darts anyway, it is about baseball. But that is why I got pleasure out of Timmy getting whacked for killing me.

But I never wanted to be catcher again.  Go figure.  I tried.  You know, "Get back on the horse, triumph over fear," etc.  But I couldn't catch the ball anymore.  I kept watching the bat, not the ball, and ducking every time someone would swing. 

So, I decided to switch positions to pitcher.  I was pretty good, and once I got my glasses, I had a lot more control over getting the ball actually over the plate.  I had one pitch.  A fastball.  I was very lucky, because nobody (except Timmy) could hit. I was now enjoying my re-found love of baseball, until Timmy got off lifetime restriction (a week without baseball) and he got to come back and play ball with us.  When it was his turn at the plate, I got two balls past him. I thought I had ended his career as the neighborhood power slugger, when on the next pitch he drilled my fastball straight into my groin.  I didn't see it coming.  I threw the ball knowing it was going to be a called-three strikeout and I would be King of the Neighborhood. I had about one second to gloat and pump my fist into the air, and then I found myself on the ground clutching my crotch and crumpled up in the most agony a young man can feel.  Just as we didn't have helmets and catcher's masks, we also didn't have protective cups.  I could not breathe.  The pain was excruciating.  I knew I was doomed to a life of singing soprano in the boy's choir.  I finally saw Timmy standing over me, and although it was hard to hear because everyone else was laughing so hard, I think he mouthed the word "Sorry."  His grin, however, belied his sincerity.  He had regained his 'King of the Neighborhood' crown on his first day off restriction.

I could not even get the ball over the plate after that.  I would curl into a defensive crouch immediately upon releasing the ball. My pitching career was over. I then moved to right field.

What I loved most about playing the right field position was that you were very unlikely to get hit in the forehead with a baseball bat or in the crotch with a screaming line drive.  You could actually see the ball coming from a long way off and get ready.  The bad thing is that nobody could hit the ball that far and it was excruciatingly boring. 

That month, my family was moving to Colorado, and they wanted to get there in August so my sister and I could start school on time and not miss any days.  It was my last Saturday playing baseball with the guys.  My team was skins and the other guys were shirts.  It isn't any more complicated than that - no protective gear and no uniforms.  So you could tell the teams apart, half the guys had to take their shirts off.  We were always the skins and Timmy's team was always the shirts.  We never won (except the week Timmy was on restriction).  Today, we were ahead and it really looked like we would actually win on my last day as an Oklahoma skin. There was one guy on base and Timmy was at bat.  Like it was ordained, he hit a high fly ball into right field.  Right at me. Home runs were based on either the ball going over the outfielder's heads or them missing the ball altogether (nobody could catch, either), and the ball would roll forever as there were no fences. So, finally, something was coming my way, other than a butterfly or a bumblebee.  I was startled because a fly ball had never reached me in my short career as a right fielder.  The sun was right in my eyes.  I put my glove hand up to shield my eyes from the sun and the ball landed right in it. 

Game over. Skins win.  Finally.  I was King of the Neighborhood at last, and then we moved away to Colorado the following Monday.  Just like a movie.  Due to circumstances, I never played baseball again.

Fast forward: I am a Dad and the coach of my son's baseball team. This particular league was in between T-Ball (where there is a pipe on a mat sticking up about waist high - you put the ball on it and the batter takes a swing) and the age where you actually had a pitcher (makes my groin hurt just thinking about it).  The team's coach was the pitcher for his own team.

My son, Nick, was a catcher (with a face-mask and protective gear), and also the team's best hitter (I am sure Timmy's kids hated baseball).  So, as the team's coach and chief strategist, I told him to just swing hard, hit the ball high in the air and run, without stopping, around all the bases.  Nobody could catch the ball in the air, and they still couldn't catch it if someone threw them the ball.  He always got home runs.  So here we are, last game of the season, the game on the line, the bases loaded (the other team), nobody out, and Nick is catching.

Anybody that loves baseball should live so long as to have the following moment unfold right in front of them.  The batter pops the ball up.  All the base runners start running on the pitch.  Nick rips the mask off, catches the pop up (out number one) and tags the runner coming from third who runs right into him (out number two).  The runners from first and second base reverse themselves and tried to get back to their original base.  The kid that was on first was just rounding second when all this unfolded. He slammed on the brakes and was making a bee-line back to first base.  Nick sees him coming and, as our first baseman was busy looking at butterflies, runs him down before he could get to the bag and tags him out (out number three. A unassisted triple play).  (Wikipedia: The unassisted triple play, a triple play in which only one fielder handles the ball, is the least common type of triple play, and is arguably the rarest occurrence in baseball: it has happened only 15 times in the Modern Era.)

My personal childhood baseball demons were vanquished, albeit vicariously through my son, forever.  I bet Timmy never had this moment.

I REMEMBER - The Dog, the Van & the Amish Road Trip

It was the late 1970's and I had just finished my substitute teaching stint in Calaveras County, California.  I had a great longing to travel to Europe and  wanted to get to the East Coast to jump off for my European travels.  A couple of teacher friends were enrolled in a cooking school in New Haven, Connecticut for the summer and were going to drive across county to the East Coast a couple of weeks before the school began.  A seemingly innocuous drive across county turned into a road trip of high adventure and a story almost too bizarre to believe.

Driving north and then east through Canada, out little Volkswagen Van puttered along quite nicely.  The scenery was beautiful in June and we camped at many stunning campgrounds along the way, always having to hustle to find a spot as the parks were almost always full.

We traveled along a long lonely stretch of road in Manitoba, Canada right above Montana.  It was a bit before dusk and we pulled into a campground with no ranger in the little kiosk at the entrance. We thought that was odd, but the gate wasn't closed, so in we drove.  There were beautiful camp spots everywhere and nice facilities, but no people.  We picked the nicest spot, started a campfire and began to fix dinner.  Then the invasion began.  At first, there just a few small ones.  Mosquitoes.  Hundreds, then thousands and larger. A swarm. It was horrible.  We built a large circle of green branches, set them on fire and stood in the middle of the smoke and it didn't matter.  We all got into the van and covered up inside of our sleeping bags.  It still  didn't matter.  The mosquitoes, somehow, got into the van with us and into our sleeping bags.  It was hot, humid and miserable.  Half of us were crying.    The other half were cursing and crying.  Finally, we threw all the gear into the van, started up and drove away.  It was 3am.  We were never so happy to leave a beautiful campground.  We opened all the windows and drove out into the night at top speed until all the little winged kamikazes were gone.  This is a quote from a Canadian travel blog : "The Sandilands is probably a good place for you to try camping. Beware in Manitoba we have MOSQUITO'S that can pick up a human being and carry them away."

Upon arrival in New Haven, I decided to postpone my trip to Europe until the following year and instead, I worked for the New Haven Boys club as a counselor for the summer.  Working with a bunch of little East Coast, pre-teen, grand-theft-auto parolees was an experience in itself.  More than once, I was offered the chance to hot-wire the camp van and go for a midnight ride.  I passed.

The summer was finally over and it was time to head back to California.  We took the northern US route this time because the newly ordained chefs wanted to shop for quilts and antiques in the Amish country of Pennsylvania.  I had just picked up a new Labrador puppy in New Haven before we departed west, so the dog and I were relegated to the back of van, which was fine with us.

We arrived in the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside that contained many interesting Amish towns, some with memorable names.  We stopped in Bird-in-Hand, Pa and the chefs bought a lot of quilts and an antique, painted rocking chair.  We loaded up the van with the chair and the dog and me in the back.

Driving along we couldn't resist stopping in one more well-known Amish community:  Intercourse, Pa.  Rumored to have been renamed from the original name Cross Keys, because "the word 'intercourse' was commonly used to describe the 'fellowship' and 'social interaction and support' shared in the community of faith, which was much a part of a rural village like this one."[

So, we are walking around taking pictures of signs and marveling at the number of horse drawn carriages and non-motorized  vehicles in daily use.  When you have a lot of horse drawn vehicles, you also have a lot of horse "plops".  I don't know what it is about dogs and their fascination with the excrement of other animals.  But, true to form,  my dog "Sabu" decided to roll in the little "used hay" piles and then, started eating them.  It was totally gross.  My fellow travelers would not let us back into the van until I found a hose alongside one of the buildings and washed and hosed the dog as best as I could.

The dog, finally acceptable-to-the-nose of my van mates, and I got back into the van and we all headed West.  Apparently, my quickie wash job had not been the best or perhaps the horse-dookey-eating dog's breath didn't leave anything to the imagination, because the driver's complaints about the odor started to mount with each passing mile. I  opened the back windows and told my dog not to breathe through his mouth, but to no avail.

To top it off, the old paint on the newly acquired antique rocker started to flake away and now it wasn't just the horse-poop dog-breath that was a perceived problem, but that my dog was also eating the chair.  The dog and I both could see where this was headed.  We were not too far away from thumbing our way back to California.  We were just unwelcome passengers and we were feeling the heat.

Gross as it was, the coolest thing I have ever seen a dog do, happened.  The driver had started a new rant about the dog, the paint, the odor, his breath, the fact that I had a s**t -eating dog, etc.  It was almost unbearable to me, but the dog had surely reached  the end of his canine patience.

When people and animals are going to throw up, they usually give warning and go through some "I think I am going to be sick" motions.  Not on this day.  My dog, who normally stayed away from the driver on this trip, as there was an obvious dislike for each other in the air, calmly proceeded to walk up to the front of the van and vomit hot horse crap down the back of the driver's neck.

A few minutes later, standing along the side of the road with my dog and pack, with my thumb out and a freshly made sign that said "California", I felt that I had the unique privilege of witnessing, perhaps the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, before or since.  I swear I saw that dog turn and look at me and smile, as expletives I hadn't since my sports days in the locker room, filled the inside of the now "freshly spewed upon" van.

The dog and I made a relatively event-less trip back home to California and entertained each driver thereafter, with easily the best tale they had ever heard.  The dog shared with me later, that perhaps, he did nibble just a bit on the antique rocker.

I REMEMBER - Chico State College and the pigeons

When I had first started thinking about college and where I should go, I set up a meeting with my high school career counselor.  Being seventeen, I was seeking independence from home and my parents, as my top priority.  Career, college, life...everything else was secondary.

When I met with my counselor, he asked "What do you want to do"? and 'had I thought about what college to attend'.  I told him it had to be in California for in-state fees (my parent's criteria) and it had to be at least one hour away from Rancho Cordova (my criteria - not living at home anymore, close enough for me to get home when I wanted to and yet, too far away for my parents to just drop in anytime they wanted).

I applied at several colleges.  My grades were good, my SAT's were good, so I got accepted at a few places and took them into my counselor's office to discuss. We narrowed it down to UC Davis, Cal State, San Luis Obispo, and Chico State College. We talked about the merits of each:  UC Davis was a good university and close to home, so I could save money from dorm fees and live at home.  San Luis Obispo was a good school, close to the beach and was only a few hours away.  Chico State College was a good school, one hour away, rated the number one party school in America in Playboy magazine and had an enrollment of 3 to 1, women to men.

It was a tough decision, but at the end, I chose Chico State.

My first day enrolling for classes was easy and yet, traumatic.  I had done my research on available classes, filled my schedule card early and was taking a break under one of the huge Valley Oak trees that is a hallmark of the Chico State campus.  I was reading over the class descriptions when I was approached by a very friendly and attractive coed, with an arm full of books.  She asked if she could sit down in the shade (early September in Chico - close to 100 degrees outside).  I gladly invited her to share the shade and thought to myself: "This has to be the best school in the universe. Here it is - the first day of school and I might end up with a girlfriend".  We talked about where we were from, blah, blah, blah and the whole time I am thinking how lucky I was and how great it was to be on top of the world, as I was, at that moment.

Then, the moment ended. 

The challenge of sitting under the shade of a large tree, is that birds also like to sit on the limbs of shady trees.  The young woman and I were hitting it off magnificently and had closed our personal space to about two feet, when a large pigeon pooped on my head, my nose and down the inside of my glasses.  I was stunned. At first I thought it was rain - but at 100 degrees on a cloudless day, that couldn't be it.  A second later, I realized my budding romantic moment had just been crapped on.

My new friend had maintained a respectful silence for that same long one second also.  Then, unable to hold it in any longer, she burst out laughing, so hard she fell over.

I turned beet-red and tried to clean the bird doo off my nose, head and glasses with my shirt sleeve.  It didn't work.  It smeared and got worse. I am sure I looked like I had Indian war-paint on, in gooey black and white streaks, from my nose to my chin.  I couldn't see because the inside of my glasses lenses were streaked with the same greasy pigeon droppings. 

I thought my new friend was going to choke to death.  She couldn't get her breath.  Tears of laughter and big air-sucking sounds were bursting forth from her face. I took it somewhat personally, as I had not yet fully refined my now finely honed, self-depreciation skills.

I got angry.

She grabbed her books and ran away, laughing hysterically.

I had just lost my first college relationship in record time (from beginning to end in under seven minutes). I didn't even get her name. I was hoping she didn't remember mine, as I am sure I was the topic of conversation in her dorm that night or probably all week.  That was 46 years ago.  She is probably somewhere, writing a blog about it, right now.

The day wasn't totally crappy as I got a brand-new  3-ring binder out of the deal.  She had dropped one as she ran away and didn't stop to retrieve  it. I eventually gave the binder to my roommate.  Too many memories.