Worst job ever: selling encyclopedias door to door. Or, in my case, not selling encyclopedias, door to door.
You may not be aware of what an encyclopedia is. Before the Internet, conscientious parents bought a set of encyclopedias for the home. Each was a matched set of 20 or so think leather-bound books. They presented a comprehensive summary of human knowledge in alphabetical order. Kids used them to do homework. Look up Thomas Jefferson, Pearl Harbor, lizards, Greek tragedies, and there was the summary. Like wikipedia today. I was supposed to be selling the Colliers.
They trained us. It was a culture of cynical deception. In sales meetings the good salespeople bragged about deceiving stupid customers. Selling to a childless household was a big achievement. They’d brag about how many times they got through the door promising they weren’t selling anything, then selling something, and getting their victims to bay.
First step, when the door opened, was tell them I was doing an educational survey. A lie. They taught us to answer objections (everyone always asked “what are you selling?”) with straight bold-faced lies (or bald-faced if you prefer). The goal was to get inside the house and into the living room.
Next step, in the living room, was the survey. How many kids? What grades? How much do you care about education? How far have you (parents) gone in school?
Then the hook: “Do you know that kids in homes that have encyclopedias have (some outrageous lie) percent more chance of going to college?”
And then, the fancy brochures come out. Pictures of encyclopedias. Sample pages. Payment plans.
If you know me, you’ll guess how successful I was. That’s right: zero. Not one sale. I spent two weeks in training, and four weeks trying, but not a single sale. I never even convinced anybody I was just doing a survey, much less getting into their living room. So I made no money. Not a penny. There was no base salary plus commission, no payment for training; it was all on commission and I sold nothing.
What I learned: I don’t like general sales. I especially don’t like selling stuff people don’t want or need. I am not a convincing liar. Also, I hate that culture: The book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill, and the people who brag about lying well and selling stuff people don’t need or want.
By the way, I did have an after-sch00l job while I was in high school. I’d walk from St. Francis High School to my Dad’s office. Dad had an optical store in one side of the office. He prescribed glasses, and they sold them. I worked after school five days a week. I liked the people, and it was a pleasant job.
The summer of 1966 changed my life completely. Magic for me, black magic to my parents. Finishing high school, followed by a magical summer, followed by a disastrous failure to launch. I left home to join the hippies in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. And returned home to go to Notre Dame. I was witness to history. San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, the summer of love, and hippies. Me included.
As I graduated high school that year, I had a summer job lined up at a mountain camp, and I was going to Pomona College in September. I had a dorm room reserved and classes chosen. When Stanford and Harvard declined the honor of me, Pomona College was my best choice. I’d also been accepted to Notre Dame, but I’d respectfully declined. I did not want to go to a Catholic university in the dregs of the Midwest.
The summer started great. Right after graduation, eight of us took off for Yosemite. We left cars in the valley, took the bus to Glacier Point, and hiked up Illilouette Creek. Thick snow kept us from going through Red Peak Pass to the upper Merced basin. We gave up, hiked 16 miles back down to Little Yosemite Valley, then climbed Half Dome before going back home. It was a good start for a summer, early for backpacking, but my best way to celebrate graduation. With my new down sleeping back, a graduation present, which is still in the family as of 2020.
Camped where we had to turn back, about two miles from Red Peak Pass. That’s me on the right, sitting, looking at the camera.
The summer of 1966 changed my life completely. Magic for me, black magic to my parents. Finishing high school, followed by a magical summer, followed by a disastrous failure to launch.
Then I was off to Camp Unalayee, my summer job for 1966. It was the ideal way to spend a summer, backpacking, dealing with kids, living in the mountains, and getting paid for it. High up in the Trinity Alps. West of Mt. Shasta, an hour or two of dirt roads from the tiny town of Callahan, CA. It isn’t in the high Sierra; but it looks like it should be. Shiny granite, beautiful clear blue lakes, gorgeous green meadows, and snowy peaks.
The camp itself still exists. You can find pictures with Google images, and it appears on Google Maps. We sent three kids and two cousins there in 1984. In 1966 it was one or two rustic old buildings along the creek that drained out of Mosquito Lake, surrounded by clusters of makeshift group campsites around the creek and along the edge of the forest looking over the meadows and the lake. At each group site, kids slept in the open, sleeping bags on ground tarps, around a campfire with a metal grill for cooking. Each two-week session included boys and girls 6 to 16, grouped by age and gender, with two counselors for each of the 10 groups. It rarely rained that summer. When it did, we all got wet.
We got to the camp in the back of a flatbed truck with wooden staked sides that drove for all of 12 hours from the Bay Area. Locked in without shade, with people I barely knew. They were all friendly, but I was me, and they were strangers. The last two hours or so, after we passed Callahan, was over bumpy, dusty dirt roads. The truck shook violently with the bumps, so we all had to stand and hold to the sides. That was a long day.
And then, pretty much paradise. The Unalayee of that time was a non-denominational kids’ camp run by left-leaning anti-war parents, mostly. And the culture was all hippy all the time, a kaleidoscope of folk songs, protest songs, long campfire discussions, and all of it laced thoroughly with peace and love and hope for a new world order. We all read Tolkien and J.D. Salinger, and we were all either Franny or Zooey or Frodo to the elders’ Gandalf. Each one of us was a voice in the wilderness, speaking the truth of a whole generation, dancing to our own individual drum; no matter that it was all the same voice and the same drum. There were no drugs at Unalayee, but I was pretty much high the whole time. High on all of it, from the kids, to the cooking, to the overnight backpacks, to all the thoroughly reinforced ideals. We were against the war, against racism, in favor of dropping out and tuning in. We were Ken Kesey’s magical bus. We were the Beatle’s Magical Mystery Tour. On days off between sessions we’d be driven in the truck down to Callahan, where we felt like a scene from a movie, the hippies encountering the small-town rednecks. We were heroes of our own movies in our own heads.
I did have the occasional adventure at Unalayee. The second week of the camp, three of us counselors had taken a group of younger kids on an overnight backpacking trip to Washbasin Lake, about three miles from the main camp. The lake was nestled in a meadow, with peaks above it and a wide view of the Callahan valley below it. After a campfire dinner, one of our youngest, a six-year-old boy, had bad stomach pains. Agony apparently. Was it appendicitis? Feeling heroic as hell, two of us hiked at night back to the camp, guided by moonlight on the mostly rocky and open landscape. We got to camp and then hiked back with an old canvas stretcher with wood handles. Then we loaded the kid on the stretcher and hiked the trail, still at night, back to the camp. We got there about dawn, at which point the kid was fine. Gas pains. But we still felt heroic.
I’ll never forget Log Lake at about the sixth week of eight. The morning I dove into the lake. I was stuck without camera, without journal, so I recorded the moment in memory.
Log Lake has its own small patch of paradise, invisible from anywhere but the high peaks above it. There was a meadow on the east side, a few trees, good sleeping spots, and good rocks and old logs for cooking and eating. On the west and south side, the rocks rise through boulders and snow patches, very little green, up to peaks above it. It was like a perfect Sierra Club calendar photo, although it’s not a particularly well-known landmark. I’ve never seen a picture of it published anywhere, never even heard of it since. I did find it in Google maps, so I know I didn’t just imagine it.
We had reached Log Lake after a long day’s hike. It’s about five miles one way, but tough miles, cross country without a good trail. We had to go down from the camp to Tangle Blue Creek, and then up a steep hill through rocks and bristle, navigating by maps and faith. It was a tough hike, but we got there in time to settle in, cook a simple dinner, hold a campfire with the kids for a while, and then sleep.
I can’t tell for sure, but this could be Log Lake. It looked like this. The photo doesn’t identify it well.
The next morning, I woke up before anybody else, shortly after the sun hit my sleeping bag, and jumped into the lake. I had braced myself for an icy, painfully cold mountain lake, like an electric shock that takes your breath away. Instead, its temperature was so much better than icy that the memory lasted. It wasn’t warm by any means, but it was no colder than the brisk temperature you’d expect from a country club swimming pool in August.
I guess Log Lake was that much warmer than normal because it was small, shallow, and surrounded by rocks. It must have been warming up during the days. I don’t know that, and it doesn’t make sense that it had snow patches just a few hundred yards above it; but they were small patches, probably not draining all the way down to the lake in August. A bracing swim, drying myself laying on a rock in the sun, then breakfast. A glorious moment.
I was about six weeks into the eight-week camp. When I looked ahead, it was back home with my family in Los Altos for a couple of weeks, and then off to Pomona College. There was nothing, but absolutely nothing, wrong with life at that moment, and everything right.
Two weeks or so later, I was back in the back of the truck. I held on to the staked sides as the truck reeled back and forth. I canned across the Tangle Blue Creek valley, to where Log Lake was hidden from view below the peaks above it. I was happy, tired, lost in my own thoughts. The dust clouded everything. “Tim, you’ve got a beard,” one of the older — she was like 23 — counselors noted. My blonde silky excuse for a beard only showed when covered in dust.
I was going home in a glow, floating. I was lean and wiry, weighed 30 pounds less than two months earlier. My hair was long and flowing, down past my shoulders. And I belonged to a worldwide movement that would change the world. We were hippies. If membership IDs had been issued, I would have had one. Peace, love, world unity, power to the people, an end to the rule of the military-industrial establishment. Dance to your own music. Drop out, tune in. Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and, of course, the Beatles too. Flower power. Don’t trust anybody over 30.
I was in love with the group, with the music, with the people I’d been with, and also (I was 18; give me a break) with one of the girls, 16. For days on end, I slept at home, but spent all day with my new friends, much of the time in San Francisco. When I wasn’t able to take the family third car (our much-beloved 1958 Chevy station wagon, which pretended to be mine most of that year with Chip away at Pomona), I’d get one of my new friends to pick me up.
Pressure built. The parents became more worried, and me, just footloose and fancy free, an 18-year-old hippie, enjoying my friends and the streets of San Francisco.
After a few days of it, the parental foot came down. No, I was no longer allowed to spend every day gone with my friends. Too much was too much.
To which — sign of the times — I responded by leaving home. With some nasty insults as I left. I came home around nightfall in the car of a guy named Howie (another counselor) to get my guitar, sleeping bag, and backpack. I spent the night God-knows-where and ended up in the San Francisco Airport the following morning, with a guy named Mac Brown (also a counselor) and a ticket to fly to Santa Rosa. I was sleep deprived, exhausted, and in a non-drug-induced high.
Yes, that’s odd. Santa Rosa was at that time barely 90 minutes north of San Francisco. Why fly? God knows. It was kind of a lark. I guess I had enough money for a cheap ticket because I’d been paid for Unalayee and during those two months we had no way to spend money. So, it must have been miserable pay, but still, it was something in my pocket.
Mac was 21, so old. He had a real beard, and he owned a hot rod. Literally, a 1932 ford chassis over a 1954 Chevrolet engine, with the open engine and front wheels. That car was something I’d only dreamt of. At the time, as we took off for Santa Rosa, I hadn’t actually seen it. But I’d sure heard of it.
My plan was to accept Mac’s offer of a spare room in Santa Rosa, get a part-time job, and go to Sonoma State College. I didn’t care about college at Pomona College, paid by parents. I was going to be truly independent.
And of course, none of that worked out. Not even the hot rod. He did own it, he had built it, and he took me out in it too. But it didn’t run. The transmission argued with the engine and both refused to work with the other. So, it would go about a block and then seize up. Mac would then spend 20 minutes convincing the two warring parties (engine and transmission) to make up and work together. Which would last about another block.
First, though, before settling in Santa Rosa, Mac and I went back to Haight Ashbury. Somebody related to Unalayee had access to an old house just a block from the historic corner of Haight and Ashbury. We were allowed to crash there, meaning spread a sleeping bag on the floor and sleep there, for free.
As I write this, hippie is a put-down to some, a Halloween costume to many, a cultural and historical anomaly for wikipedia. But in the summer, 1966 it was a worldwide movement centered in and born of San Francisco. It was an early head start to a wave of change that swept the globe. It was free love, free spirits, flower power, don’t trust anyone over 30, fight the establishment, tune out and turn on, LSD, marijuana, peace and freedom, the age of aquarius. The Beatles were hippies. All the rock stars were hippies. So was Timothy Leary, the SDS, etc. It was youth revolution.
Still, I am glad, and proud, that I was there. When you read about hippies, know that I was right smack in the middle of it all in 1966. I was a verified San Francisco Haight Ashbury hippy. I lived it. The Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco was the world center of the hippie movement, a vibrant young neighborhood full of you people with outlandish dress, outlandish ideas, and great music. There, in summer of 1966, was in many ways the roots of it all. Scott Mackenzie’s song “If You’re Going to San Francisco” was actually a year later; but it took a year for what we started to spread widely enough. the protests against the Vietnam War, the rise of a whole generation believing we would change the world for the better. Taking to the streets to protest the war, and, later, taking the administration building to protest the war.
Those days were like an all-day pageant. The neighborhood was all color and flare, odd stores selling odd used stuff, new age art, lots of rock music, locals (including me) with hippie hair and dress, and tourists driving through. It’s fun to be part of a pageant. We liked it when normal people pointed at us as if we were the animals in the zoo. We hung out in Golden Gate Park and around the neighborhood. We did nothing but sing, talk and breathe. Well, the more enlightened and slightly older ones among us did a lot of sex and drugs too … but that wasn’t me. I was only 18. I was afraid of the drugs. The girl I thought I loved was there, brightening every day, but also making it pretty clear pretty quickly that she loved everybody, not just me. And she was even younger than me, and, thank heavens, not having sex with anybody. I survived the blow, grieved for about 10 minutes, then went on with the pageant.
I wish I had pictures. But pictures were for straights, our equivalent of muggles. We were making history. We were going to change the world. I was full of the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, the San Francisco summer of love, Golden Gate Park. I had hair down to my shoulders and a two-month beard — so thin and downy that it only showed up in some lighting and some angles — but still. I was a prop in a tourist attraction. Straights drove by slowly in their cars to look at the hippy crowds in the Haight. I was one of them.
Looking back on it, fifty-some years later, I feel only loss and sadness. We thought we were changing the world forever. We didn’t. Some of us kept the ideals — I did — but most of us let go as we grew older. We changed a part of the world for a while. We broke up some stereotypes, we opened some minds, we opened some cracks in the power stronghold of older white men and the military-industrial establishment. The world was better for it, for sure. Maybe we pushed some things in the right direction, maybe even enough to make some stick even as the world pushed back. We were at the root of the green movement, concerns about raping the earth, pushing for diversity and civil rights, and gay rights, youth power, breaking up establishment power. But we saw so much pushing back on that later on. The people got old, power structures pushed it all down, and what we have left are mostly hopes and dreams.
Through August of 1966 I evolved from Catholic High School kid to the Trinity Alps to Haight Ashbury hippie. In September I devolved into Freshman at Notre Dame.
In my previous story, “1966: From High School to Haight Ashbury Hippie,” I hinted at what went wrong for me during that period. I was too young for free love and I feared drugs.
Once I’d moved in at the Haight, it took me just a few days to discover that there was a lot more love for generic people far away — the Vietnamese, the drafted soldiers, the vaguely downtrodden and oppressed — than there was for that actual human standing next to you.
And the “dance to your own music” idea came to mean “be different, but just like us, different the way we are.” And the worst, for me, was the pressure over LSD. LSD scared the hell out of me. I’d seen two different people, at two different times, temporarily trapped in a bad-trip hell of their own making, in complete terror, unable to escape, forced to wait until the chemical in their brain wore off. But some of me people pressured me to drop acid myself. They promised glorious visions, truth, benightment. I said hell no. But the pressure continued, nonetheless.
So, I gave up. I called home. I said I wanted to come back. I’ll never forget the long pause, as the parents left me in a phone booth, while they considered. “Yes,” came the answer, finally. “Of course you can come home. But you’re not going to Pomona College if you do. You are going to Notre Dame instead.”
The parents were right. They did the right thing for me. Like the kid I was, I was mad at them, and I went to Notre Dame determined to hate it. I did hate it for most of my first year, except for football Saturdays, the classes, and a few friends. But then came Innsbruck the second year, and I met Vange the third year, and was married the fourth year. I’m proud of Notre Dame and glad for my parents’ decision.
I am also proud that in the 54 years since then, my politics haven’t changed. I still believe now in the ideals we held that summer.
A California Hippy at Notre Dame
The Notre Dame campus is gorgeous in Spring and Fall. It still is now, but even more so in 1966. The golden domed administration building looked out to the north over a shady park-like main quad. Looking south from the golden dome, just to the right, the gothic cathedral with its huge spire. And then Sorin Hall, the oldest dorm, with a broad porch with white post railings. Across the quad from Sorin, to the left from the main dome building, stood the old theater and student union. That section opened up onto the huge south quad, 100 yards wide and 600 or more yards long, from liberal arts building O’Shaughnessy Hall at its east end to the old student gym at its west end. Between them, the quad lined with old beige brick college style buildings, very few postwar practical. The hallowed football stadium stood just south of O’Shaughnessy. The then-almost-new 10-story library was just north of it, with another park-like quad between the library and the stadium. The campus ended at the stadium, so student parking took up most of the newer areas that are now full of more modern buildings that extended the campus to the south. Behind the golden dome, two lakes, and a narrow road passing between them — the walk to St. Mary’s College, where the girls were.
However, I went there determined to hate it. And that was easy. The trip there helped me hate it. Temporarily stranded in O’Hare Airport in Chicago. With two big suitcases. Saved by a returning sophomore who identified us as would-be freshmen. He helped us two of us get a shuttle downtown and then the South Shore train into South Bend, and a taxi to campus.
The dorm helped me hate it. I was assigned to Dillon Hall, on the south quad. At least it was one of a few experimental dorms that mixed all four years together, instead of just a freshman dorm. I was glad for that. I got a very small room with just enough space for two bunk beds, two metal desks, and two metal “closets” with room for some hanging clothes and a couple of drawers. When my roommate asked me where I was from, he was not satisfied with “California.” So he asked “but from what kind of neighborhood?” I said suburban. So he asked, “no, but you know, Italian, Polish, Irish, what?” That was the first time I’d encountered that which-neighborhood mentality, which, I guessed, was common in New York. Joe the roommate was from a very Italian town on Long Island. He lived to play baseball. We entered a nine-month relationship best described as a truce. By the end of the year, after Joe didn’t make the baseball team and flunked out, the only thing we had in common was hating the place. We had a brief fist fight before the year ended. Joe won that, perhaps because I didn’t know it was happening until after it was over. One punch.
Dillon Hall, Notre Dame
The weather helped me hate it. The first two weeks hot humid, clothes sticking to skin at every step. Of course, without air conditioning. Then gray, cold, hostile, with increasing hostility into long bleak winter months. The first snow felt like weekends, skiing, good times, something delightfully different. That lasted about 10 minutes. And the winter took from November through March, followed by a day or two of spring, and then straight to sweltering summer.
That Notre Dame was still all boys helped me hate it. The messaging said men, but we were boys. Six thousand of us vs. a thousand St. Mary’s girls. That fall there were several panty raids. I joined one of them. It started in the dorm with excited shouts, followed by hundreds of us walking the mile to St. Mary’s. We stood outside McCandless Hall laughing and shouting. The girls inside threw panties down. Like most of my classmates, I managed not a single date my freshman year. The girls, favored by a 6-1 ratio, reserved themselves for the junior and seniors.
And so, I did hate it. A lot. For all of my first year. It was a very long, dreary year. But the nonstop cloudiness of it came with three silver linings.
The huge silver lining was signing up for Innsbruck. It was almost pure chance too. I hadn’t had the benefit of orientation or even any interest in it. But when I lined up at registration day to choose classes, I saw a checkbox marked “Innsbruck program.” That was barely two years after the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. So, Austria, mountains, and skiing. I had no idea beyond the box there, but I figured “what the hell” and checked the box. That changed my life.
Also, it was a bit of a kick being “the hippie” at Notre Dame that first year. That, despite an obligatory haircut and losing the wannabe beard while still at home. “There’s a hippie in Dillon Hall.” It was fun to be noticed, and particularly for that reason. I was proud of it. I wasn’t quite the only one. There was another guy with long hair in one of the other dorms, a sophomore I think, a drama guy. But still, I liked the label.
The there was also football. At first, I was going to boycott football because it was against all I stood for. Clearly an offshoot of the military industrial complex and the realization of everything wrong with Notre Dame. But then came the first football Saturday, on a gorgeous late September day, rock bands playing in several spots on campus, excited people everywhere, lots of girls, a day so charged that it felt like sparks might fly everywhere and anywhere at any time. And I did manage, with great difficulty, to not join the crowds that headed for the sold-out stadium in time for a 1:30 kickoff. And that, despite the fact that my numbered season ticket, seating along with my dorm mates, came with tuition. I lingered outside for about an hour, envying the crowds inside, lured by the cheers I couldn’t help hearing. But I couldn’t stand it. By halftime I was there, taking my seat, while dormmates razzed me, as in “look, the hippie decided to join us.” Before I sat down I addressed my group, with something like “I’m still a hippy, but I have my priorities.”
After that I was at my seat for every minute of every other game that year, and I watched the away games on TV. The season ended with an historic game against Michigan State on Nov. 19. They were 10-0, we were 10-0. We had Terry Hanratty, Rocky Blier, Alan Paige, Pete Duranko, among others. They had Bubba Smith. The game ended in a 10-10 tie. It appears on most lists of the greatest football games every. I saw it on a huge black-and-white projected screen on the basketball court, which was blurry, but enough to watch. We all hated that revered coach Ara Parseghian coached for a tie when it we had the ball and 1:10 to go. We ended up sharing the national championship with Michigan State.
My second year at Notre Dame wasn’t at Notre Dame at all. It was in Innsbruck, Austria, and that only after six weeks in Salzburg, Austria. Definitely the best year of my life before falling in love, marriage and kids. And one of the best ever. That feeling a kid gets just before seeing what Santa Claus left on Christmas morning? I had it just about every day for a full year. I’d wake up, remember where I was, and just be overwhelmingly glad to be me, there, at that time. The glow and the wonder never left. The novelty never wore off. But that’s a different story.
In early July, 1967, I sat at breakfast in the dining car of the Orient Express train from Paris to Salzburg, Austria. The train rolled rhythmically along a mountain river, with a lot of white water. Across the river, a narrow road lined by Swiss chalets, white stucco, brown roofs, red flowers hanging out of their windows. Above, rising behind, the alps with craggy and snowy peaks at the top. I floated, elated, the joy of that morning mixed with the realization that I had a whole year of it coming.
We’d arrived in Europe via the U.S.S. United States, an ocean liner. Notre Dame sent us on the ship because in 1967 the ocean trip was cheaper than flying. We’d met in New York to take the ship. We were 36 19-year-old Notre Dame boys, in second class, suddenly subjected to free beer and hard drinks, free movies, free food, free everything except girls. The few young eligible girls on that boat were subjected to constant attention from our group. So, no onboard romances for any of us. But we knew each other from German classes all the previous year, so there were always friendly Notre-Dame-group faces in any of the bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and on the deck and in the pool/gym. Like most of us, I failed to enjoy it fully because I just couldn’t wait for arrival in Europe.
The last night on the ship, we stayed up all night, in awe of what we were doing and where we were going, as the big ship unloaded passengers at Southampton first, then went on to Le Havre, where we arrived in the wee hours of the morning.
I spent the train ride from there to Paris struggling to stay awake and failing. Then we were in Paris; Notre Dame, Champs Elysee, Montmarte. I staggered through the sites, a few of us together, and barely survived the long day in Paris before crashing that night in a sleeper car of the Orient Express, which left Paris at 8 that evening.
So, it really hit me that next morning, waking up in Switzerland. It all seemed magic. Swiss Alps. Europe. The Orient Express. And that, just the first day of a whole year.
We spent the rest of the summer in Salzburg learning more German language. We lived in a reconfigured stable-turned-school. The school, all single story buildings including dorms and classrooms, was on the grounds of Schloss Klessheim, a 17th century baroque mansion that appeared as one of the sets of the movie The Sound of Music, set in Salzburg.
It was about a quarter mile or so downhill to a small village, with a single store and half a dozen houses, and a Gasthof beer place that became a favorite haunt very quickly. Where we lived was also about mile’s walk from the old-town view of the castle from the river. The walk took us through a long tree-lined street, then some village houses. It came up to the river and castle view as encountered one of our favorite beer places. That bier garden had an outside section under big shade trees, perfect for summer weather. An Austrian Schilling was worth four US pennies, and a two-liter beer stein came for 20 schillings, so, 80 cents. Welcome to Austria in 1967. As a 19-year-old kid.
The picture here is from Schloss Klessheim. I’m there with my shirt off.
These two are from the walk down town along the river:
And one final picture of Salzburg in 1967:
After eight weeks in Salzburg, before settling in Innsbruck, we had three weeks of vacation. Jim O’Connell and I took off hitchhiking, living the dream. “Hitchhiking in Europe” was something students did back then. It was considered safe. And “Europe on $5 a Day” was all the rage, an extremely popular travel book.
Jim and I discovered together that hitchhiking, although it worked, also meant a lot of time waiting around at the highway entrances outside the city. And $5 a day meant some pretty dreary youth hostels, generally dark, dirty, and dorm-like if dorms had been fixed up in 500-year-old crusty damp old cities.
We hitchhiked up the so-called “Romantic Road” in central Germany going north from outside Munich to east of Frankfurt. The highlight for us was Rothenburg am Tauber, where we ditched the youth hostel and rented an actual hotel room, with two feather beds, for about $3. It’s a gorgeous town completely surrounded by ancient medieval walls.
We did manage to take a boat up the Rhine river, from Frankfurt to Cologne.
We spent the school year in Innsbruck, taking classes in the university. Ten of us lived in a widow’s big home at Schmelzer Gasse 2, about a mile downriver from the university, a pleasant walk away, through the old town and along the river.
The picture here is the house we lived in:
And this next one is on a bridge over the Inn river, not the main bridge for which the city was named, but one just 100 yards from the house. The house was across the street from the church in the background. The guy in the middle is Jim O’Connell, my roomate. The one furthest from the camera lived across the hall. And yes, that’s me on the right:
In this picture I’m on the balcony of the room I shared with Jim:
The following are pictures of Innsbruck:
In November four of us took a train to Venice, and found it flooded, a common occurrence:
Over the Christmas break, a group of us took trains down to Florence, then Rome …
… and on to Brindisi, in the eastern tip of Italy, where we caught an overnight ferry to Corfu, in Greece. And on in trains to Athens, then Istanbul, and then two days on the train back from Istanbul through Bulgaria and Yogoslavia to Innsbruck.
Before the train ride, which took all night, all the next day, and then all the following night, we pooled our meager resources and gave our cash to Colm Gage, one of the group, to buy food and drink for the journey. Colm, however, arrived at the train with only apologies and reasons why not. That made for a very interesting trip, with only enough money for a few rolls. Some young men took pity on us in Yugoslavia, and shared some food.
February of that year I bought my Volkswagen, using Dad’s money, for way less than it would have cost in the US. The deal was that Europe was so cheap back then you could buy a new VW, use it for the year, ship it to the US, and sell it used in the US for considerably more than you’d paid for it new in Germany. I was the eighth in the group to do it, all the others having been quicker on the draw, which meant they got to use it all year, not just the last few months. None of us actually sold the cars to make the profit. We kept them. Mine sat at home for my third year at Notre Dame, and then my parents gave it to me for my senior year.
I picked the car up in Munich. Two days later, as I sat waiting for a red light in Innsbruck, somebody backed a car out of a diagonal parking space and dented the side. Insurance worked.
That car took me skiing every day. My friends counted 63 class days in a row that I missed class because I was up skiing, accompanied by different members of the group.
On the big spring break that year, that car took me and three friends through Germany, northern France, England, and Wales; and back.
That car also got me very close to jail for drunk driving. It was at a “green beer” (meaning fresh, just brewed, the first batches of the season) festival up the river from Innsbruck. I drove with friends. And, being young and foolish,
And it was 1968. We sat in the breakfast room together each morning, so we shared the news of Robert Kennedy being shot, and then, a few weeks later. Martin Luther King. We read about riots in the cities. We felt far away, but still, dismayed.
I spent my last two weeks in Europe alone in Paris. I’d failed to coordinate with friends. So I spent the days walking through a gorgeous summer in Paris; and the nights pretty much alone in a cheap hotel room on the West Bank, listening to windows breaking and tear gas pops and the other sounds of student riots. It wasn’t just Paris; it was also all over the US and major cities in Europe and Asia. I participated in student demonstrations in the US before and after, but in Paris, that time in 1968, I stayed inside, feeling very American. And that, in the days of the Vietnam War and police violence opposing integration, was not a good thing to be, in the left bank in Paris in the summer of 1968.
I didn’t just fall in love with journalism. I also fell out of love with literature. Well, the graduate level study of literature.
We’d moved to Eugene in September of 1970, just nine months married, for me to do a PhD track in Comparative Literature. I loved English Lit, but had lots of German Lit too after a year in Innsbruck, and then I’d fallen in love with Vange and learned Spanish. We were in Eugene because the University of Oregon had one of the better comparative literature programs on the west coast, second to Stanford (which hadn’t accepted me). They didn’t give me money, but they admitted me.
Two weeks into my supposed PhD lit courses, I found myself having to do a 10-page paper on Robert Herrick’s poem ‘The Altar’, notable for how its written form looked like an altar (long lines, short lines, long lines). In other words, boring, meaningless drilling down into the detail. 10 pages of it.
Meanwhile we’d just bought me a pair of shoes from a store clerk who brightened up, while helping me try on shoes, because he too had studied literature, and had the PhD. So I wanted out. But we’d moved to Eugene, moved into housing, paid tuition, taken a loan.
I spent an evening browsing the university catalog. The next morning I walked into the school of Journalism and waited until I could talk to the dean. As it turned out, he too had gone from PhD studies in Literature to Journalism. I switched that day. And Dean John Crawford found me scholarship money and helped me every way he could. And damn, what a difference! Journalism also cared about writing, but it was also living, changing the world, doing something that meant something. I found my home there and dove in. I did two years worth of class work in nine months, with straight As. I ended up getting the degree with honors, but that was four years later, after I’d finally done a thesis.
The switch was complete. I was very glad to identify as journalist, not poet, and much less lit professor.
June of 1971. We lived in the old Amazon married student housing that has long since been plowed over. It was a collection of old army barracks, left over from the second world war, with some two-story apartment buildings and a row of single story wooden houses, with curved roofs dating back to military use, which is where we lived. It covered several acres just east of South Eugene High School, west of East Patterson, north of 24th. Ave, across the street from the old YMCA.
Often on weekdays around noon I’d start popping out of the front door to look north along the row of identical houses, anxious for the mailman. When I did, I’d often see others doing the same. Our little house was one of the closest to the south end of the row of about 12 or maybe 14 little houses. The mailman would come from the opposite end of the row, walking, and leave the mail door by door. As I opened the door and looked out, I’d often see other people doing the same. Like prairie dogs in a Disney documentary.
Jobs were scarce in 1971. And jobs are always scarce for grad students looking for their first jobs. Of course there are other reasons to look for the mail, and not all of us were done like I was then, and looking for jobs. But it felt like that to me.
We were broke. And we were ready to leave Eugene and the University of Oregon and get into real life. I hadn’t finished my master’s in Journalism, but I’d finished the class work so all I needed was to do a thesis, which I could do from anywhere. We’d used up the $5,000 student loan and Vange’s meager earnings at the university weren’t enough. We needed to either get a real job or get another student loan.
I really wanted a real job in real journalism. I’d fallen thoroughly in love with the idea of it. My grad classes in Journalism were steeped in the lore, the traditions, the ethic, the meaning of it all. The great newspapers, the reporters, the scoops, the think pieces and investigative pieces, I wanted all of it. I’d sent resumes and applications all over Oregon, California, and Mexico City. Each of them was to me like a lottery ticket, a reason to hope, a reason to wait anxiously for the mail to arrive.
I’d not only fallen in love with Journalism; I’d also fallen into it. Literally. We’d moved to Eugene in September of 1970, just nine months married, for me to do a PhD track in Comparative Literature. I loved English Lit, but had lots of German Lit too aftr a year in Innsbruck, and then I’d fallen in love with Vange and learned Spanish. The University of Oregon had one of the better comparative literature programs on the west coast, second to Stanford (which hadn’t accepted me). They didn’t give me money, but they admitted me. Two weeks into that, I found myself having to do a 10-page paper on Robert Herrick’s poem ‘The Altar’, notable for how its written form looked like an altar (long lines, short lines, long lines). In other words, boring, meaningless drilling down into the detail. Meanwhile we’d just bought me a pair of shoes from a store clerk who brightened up, while helping me try on shoes, because he too had studied literature, and had the PhD. So I wanted out. But we’d moved to Eugene, moved into housing, paid tuition, taken a loan. I spent an evening browsing the university catalog. The next morning I walked into the school of Journalism and waited until I could talk to the dean. As it turned out, he too had gone from PhD studies in Literature to Journalism. I switched that day. And Dean John Crawford found me scholarship money and helped me every way he could. And damn, what a difference! Journalism also cared about writing, but it was also living, changing the world, doing something that meant something. I found my home there and dove in, doing two years of class work in nine months, with straight As (I ended up getting the degree with honors, but that was four years later, after I’d finally done a thesis).
Mexico City was a variation on the dream. Vange’s mom Eva connected us to a University of Oregon alum in Mexico City with a head-hunter business, and with his encouragement we allowed ourselves to dream the life of a foreign correspondent, with a lavish salary, company car, private school tuition for kids (not that we had any at that point). It turned out to be horribly unrealistic, by the way — but it fueled the dream.
By the time the envelope from the ‘Mexico City News’ came, I’d interviewed at AP in Portland (they’d said “not enough professional experience,” which was hard to argue, since I had none). And again at a weekly in Newport, Oregon (same story: only hiring experienced journalists).
The envelope was thicker than most. I opened it eagerly. And, to my amazement, it contained plane tickets! Back then plane tickets came as a booklet of several pages, with copies for boarding and so on, and a cardboard back, all of it sized to fit nicely in a standard letter envelope. The flights were ‘open’ so I could call and reserve. Mexico City and back, paid for by the News.
We were amazed, excited, deliriously happy. At that moment, we were living proof of the idea that real happiness is anticipation of happiness. There was the still-alive dream of the foreign correspondent living in luxury in a foreign capital. And for Vange, she was 23 years old, missed her mom and her siblings and life in Mexico City, and this meant going back there was married to her American husband. For me, also 23, this was not just the ticket to real actual Journalism, but also a ticket to move again (after the year in Innsbruck) away from the United States to another country, to live and work there. And to Mexico City, my wife’s home town, which I’d really liked in our visits.
So I went to Mexico City. Vange waited at home because it was an expensive round trip. Her mom Eva met me at the airport and treated me royally along with Laura her sister and Horacio her brother. We had a nice dinner that night, and a lot of encouragement. My Spanish had improved with each visit, and I’d gone from my first-year Spanish at Notre Dame to a Eva loaned me her car for the three day visit. And Vange waited with very little news, because back then, calls from Mexico City to Oregon were prohibitively expensive, like $20 per minute.
The next day, reality hit the dream. enjoyed driving Eva’s little Datsun bluebird through city traffic. I found a parking space, which was still possible in 1971. But then I arrived at the Novedades building.
The ‘Novedades’ was one of at least six daily newspapers in Mexico City. It was not the best (Excelsior), but it was a major player. ‘The Mexico City News,’ the only English-language newspaper in the city, was a Novedades property.
The Novedades building was on Avenida Morelos, near the corner of Balderas, in the heart of the newspaper district. Newspapers clustered together, within one or two blocks of each other, in downtown Mexico between Reforma and the old downtown district around the Cathedral and National Palace. The ornate but aged dark stone building was probably built in the 1920s, I guessed. It was six floors high, run down, but still working hard every day, the brain of a national network of newspapers and magazines.
‘The News’ newsroom included maybe eight desks, a water cooler, and a 10 by 20 editor’s office with a door and windows out to the desks. It was on the fourth floor. The editor, Jaime Plenn, was a small older bald man with a slight New York accent and no gift for small talk. He made no effort to hide his discomfort with what I discovered was me having been pushed on him by a then-vague power called “upstairs.” Somebody (he rolled his eyes as he said it) seemed to think that a Mexican wife and a grad degree made a journalist. That same somebody (eyes rolling again) thought they could build a new generation of news people for the news, people who weren’t nondescript oddballs and misfits.
And oddballs and misfits they were. Stereotypes as if from a bad situation comedy. The sportswriter had a foul mouth and the beer belly. The business editor was a fifty-something portly woman with short hair and a cloud of cigar smoke. The social editor was a well dressed late-thirties woman who seemed like she’d ridden a couple of decades on being good looking (and she still was). The main reporter came with a New York accent, a big sweeping mustache, long hair, a flower shirt and sandals.
I “interviewed” with all of them. All were generally welcoming to this 23-year-old American kid who looked like he was 17. They were mostly showing off, trying to play their character roles. Jaime Plenn made it clear, from the beginning, that the job was mine to take.
The dream crashed and burned when I got to the salary. The job was mine to take. The salary was $MN3,200 pesos per month. That translated to $267 per month. I took that with a straight face because I’d never actually lived in Mexico City; but it seemed like very little. And thus ended day one of the job visit. I was supposed to come back the following day to sign papers, and then to get my ass down to Mexico City as soon as I could.
Eva was shocked. “That’s impossible. You can’t live with that,” she said. She was so disappointed. She too had bought into the dream of the foreign correspondent, fed by her friend Craig Dudley, the University of Oregon alum. Craig, as it turned out, dealt with expat executives from major corporations. He had no idea how journalists lived. Eva had bought into the dream too.
That evening, as I sat at dinner with Eva, Laura, and Horacio at dinner, they were all shocked. Eva, who ached to have Vange back again in Mexico City, led the charge. She didn’t want me to make a mistake. She was never able to give bad advice on purpose.
“Tim, you have to tell them no. Go back tomorrow and tell them you can’t live on that.” She knew that I didn’t know costs and money in Mexico City. I hated to do what she said, because I had no job at all, I too wanted to move to Mexico City, and it was actual journalism. But I trusted Eva. I longed to talk to Vange about it, but I couldn’t, because we were that broke. And Eva clearly spoke for Vange too.
And so I did. I went back and told Jaime Plenn I wasn’t taking the job. Too little money. Which was a hard moment at first, and then an awkward moment, and then, as I sat and listened to a couple of calls, it became an appointment “upstairs.”
“Upstairs,” as it turned out, was the office of Guillermo Gutierrez, a wealthy Bolivian expat political exile, with a big desk in a big office of dark oak and deep green, and a secretary in an outer office. On the fifth floor. I didn’t know his history or even his position in the Novedades organization. To me he was a Mexican businessman dressed in an expensive business shirt, tie, and suspenders, with his suit coat on a rack. He was also very clearly the author of the idea of getting this young American with Journalism education and Mexican wife down to the Mexico City News. Upping the quality was his idea.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Guillermo Gutierrez said, leaning forward towards me, elbows on the desk, speaking softly. “You take the job for the 3,200 pesos. Take the paycheck along with everybody else on the fourth floor. But once a month, you come upstairs to my office, and I’ll hand you 5,000 more pesos in cash. And that will remain between you and me.”
So, victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. I said yes. The dream, downgraded from good money and luxury lifestyle to barely enough, survived. I called Vange to tell her, in three minutes, I’d taken the job and we were moving to Mexico City. I finished the details and flew home to a very happy young wife and eager anticipation. We packed up the 1968 Volkswagen I’d bought in Munich. We drove once again down to Mexico City, our second time, but this time to stay. Our nine years in Mexico City began.
However, the story doesn’t end there. The plot actually thickened. For several months I worked at The News, starting on the copy desk, doing cuts and edits and writing headlines, and then getting to go out and do reporting on stories. It was journalism, quirky or not. I liked my oddball coworkers and even Jaime warmed up a lot.
But then one day in November when I went upstairs for my monthly under-the-table payoff from Guillermo Gutierrez,he was gone. Gone for good, his secretary told me. Ya se fue para siempre. That’s when I learned he had been a political refugee from Bolivia, which meant nothing to me until then. Hugo Banzer had taken over Bolivia via military coup, and Gutierrez, a right-winger, had gone back to Bolivia to join the Banzer government. And that was that. Nobody knew (or admitted to knowing) about my arrangement, which had always been secret. He’d made me promise never to tell Jaime Plenn or coworkers, and I kept that promise. So I was stuck, badly.
Two months later I joined UPI, United Press International, as night editor for Mexico City. Full time. Paid in dollars via deposit into Citibank in New York, for $115 a week.
That’s me in 1972 in the UPI office at Avenida Morelos 110, in Mexico City.
June, 1972. I had turned 24. Vange was due with Laura, our first, in a month. I’d been Night Editor, Mexico City, fox six months. Denny Davis, the Mexico City bureau chief, decided to send me to cover the anniversary of the San Cosme riots of June 10, 1971. Also called El Halconazo, the Corpus Christi Riots … which were depicted in the 2018 Alfonso Cuaron oscar-winning film, Roma.
Denny was hard for me to like. He was a former military man, middle forties, dark brown hair with a brush cut, straight laced, impersonal. A dedicated journalist, though. He believed in the tradition and the value of what we were doing. Looking back from decades later, his off-putting manner may have been shyness. And an odd factor in a boss-underling relationship, for the setting of UPI in Mexico City, is that my Spanish was fluent and I was totally integrated into my Mexican family. Denny always sounded, looked, and acted like an outsider.
What he said, though, has stuck with me for life:
“You’re mainstream now. This is real journalism. It’s not ‘do it or have a good reason why not.’ It’s ‘do it or don’t come back.
“Go a day early if you want, check out the area, give somebody with a second floor apartment and a phone a hundred pesos in advance, and another hundred on the day, to let you watch from the second story with a phone in your hand.
“Or do something else. I don’t care. But do understand that you can’t just have a reason why you didn’t get the story. Reasons why not don’t matter. If you don’t get the story, don’t come back. You’re fired.”
It turns out that during the real riot, in 1971, my predecessor, Paul Wyatt, was late with the story. He didn’t get fired mostly because he stumbled into the office late wearing a white dress shirt covered in blood. He wasn’t wounded but a student protestor standing next to him was shot dead. Paul was covering it from the ground, mixed with the crowd. That was obviously traumatic in the UPI bureau. Denny didn’t make it about him, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t want me dead. So he wanted his advice taken seriously.
This story here isn’t about my riots, or my news report, or what happened to me on June 10 of 1972. There was no story. The protest fizzled out quickly, without making anybody’s news. I did go a day early and scope a second-story apartment, and paid the occupant 100 pesos. I did go before the announced demonstration and get settled in my watching post. I did call in the story. But it was a non-story.
The actual history of the 1971 event is shown very well in the movie ‘Roma.’ The Mexican government turned to the fascist playbook back then, after the riots of 1968, and trained a paramilitary force of young men who wore khakis and white shirts. Those men attacked the rioters, right-wing disguising itself as left wing, killing about 140 demonstrators.
And the nugget here is not what happened, but the fallacy of equivalence: too many people think they can get away with not getting things done if they have a reason why not, instead. I don’t. Denny Davis taught me that lesson and it stuck.
“Tim, can you get six weeks off, beginning next month? I want to send you around the world, as a tour guide for my next Orbis Nostrum group.” That was Raul, my brother-in-law, whose family business was Mexamerica, the largest Mexican-owned travel agency in the country. Raul had taken command from his father. It was in April of 1973. The Orbis Nostrum was Mexamerica’s high-end luxury tour around the world, going west from Mexico City to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New Delhi, Agra, Teheran, Isfajan, Jerusalem, Athens, Paris, and from Paris to Mexico City. In 31 days. And it happened that United Press International, my employer in Mexico City, had six-day work weeks and six-week vacations; and I was due a six-week vacation.
“And I’m sorry,” Raul added, “but I can only pay you $1,000.” I was earning $115 a week at UPI. And Vange was pregnant with Sabrina, our second. And we had no health insurance.
I said yes. I was 25, living in Mexico City, leading a group of 68 wealthy Mexican tourists around the world in 31 days. And getting paid to do it. And Vange, who could have objected, was all in favor. “Do it. What an opportunity.”
Three weeks later I met the group in a fancy meeting room in the Maria Isabel Sheraton, overlooking the Angel of Independence on Reforma, the Thursday before our Tuesday departure. I was buoyed by about two hours of Raul’s pre-trip training. For example, “tell them to bring strong luggage. Tell them the airlines butcher your luggage, so get new suitcases.” That, so they wouldn’t complain to me about damaged luggage, because I’d warned them. Also, “when in doubt, lie. Don’t ever let on you haven’t been there before. You have the local guides with you to help. Wing it.”
For the group of 68 I had two co-tour-guides, my mother-in-law Eva, and a pretty and amiable young woman from Mexamerica, Antonieta. The group split into two after Bangkok, with Eva and Antonieta taking 38 of them through Singapore and Hawaii and then back to Mexico City. I took 30 of them on to India and the rest of the round-the-world tour. If you haven’t read anything else I’ve written about her, you should know that Eva was a wonderful person, warm, always happy, and a delight to travel with. Our relationship was not like normal in-laws. We really liked and appreciated each other, always.
Japan
It started with a really long flight. Back in 1973, commercial airliners couldn’t get from Mexico City all the way to Tokyo. We took a Japan Air Lines flight, with great service, that had to stop in Anchorage AL to refuel. And then, Tokyo, Hotel Imperial, terrible jet lag and me up at 4 in the morning — it was already daylight outside — and I walked for miles around the heart of Tokyo before breakfast. That first day was one of the longest of my life. I’ve never had worse jet lag and never been so tired. But we loaded the bus at 9 am for the tour of the city, which I stumbled through like a zombie. Thank goodness the local guides did everything, and spoke Spanish too, so I didn’t have to translate. We visited markets, and temples with beautiful gardens. And stores. We had a meal in a market. Our tour guides, thoughtful as they were, went off the city tour agenda to accommodate my tourists who wanted to look at Japanese pearls and jewelry. I was surprised how nice they were about it, given their packed city tour. They helped the driver park the bus and everything. In my jet lagged stupor, I bought some pearls for Vange, who I missed terribly.
The day ended, finally, at about nine pm, after a long boring dinner with women in kimonos and what felt like 40 hours of endless Kabuki theater, all of which had me struggling extremely hard to not fall asleep.
I dressed for that first day. Does the jet lag show?
I got to the hotel, asked at the desk for my key, and picked up two envelopes that seemed stuffed with paper. Thank God I was alone at that point, not in a group. I stuffed the envelopes into my day bag and dragged myself into my luxury hotel room. The envelopes contained hundreds of dollars worth of Japanese Yen, in cash. They came from the two stores our tour guides had visited. And that’s where I learned about tour guide commissions in stores. Raul had failed to tell me in advance. “I wanted you to start out innocent,” he told me later. “Tour guides can get too greedy. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
And that’s how, as it turned out, that Orbis Nostrum trip was not only a great adventure; it also paid for Sabrina’s birth, a great Pentax Reflex camera, two tailor made Hong Kong suits, and a lot of jewelry and other gifts for Vange. The $1,000 that Raul paid me turned out to be just the first of two or three thousand dollars I made that month. The Japanese tour guides, long-time associates with Raul and Mexamerica, filled me in about commissions during the next couple of days. They were getting 10% and so were we, they told me. And at that rate, my tourists were paying not a single extra Yen. The stores were happy to offer normal pricing and pay 20% off the top because the buses were like gold to them, tourists in a hurry trusting in great values, and anxious to spend. In Japan, they told me, everybody stuck with the standard 10%. “But that’s not how it goes everywhere,” my Japanese colleague told me. “In most countries they’ll give you more if you ask for more, and add the difference to what your tourists pay in prices.”
Japan, to a California kid looking for exotic Asia, was a let-down. Despite the occasional costumes, the temples, and the dinner shows, it was modern.
I took this picture at dawn the first day, looking back from a Hibiya Park towards the Imperial Palace, our hotel.
That first morning, at dawn, my walk included the gates of the Imperial gardens.
She was one of our two Spanish-speaking tour guides in Japan. With my group around her listening.
This was from the balcony of a hotel outside of Tokyo, close to Mt. Fuji.
One of many temples.
A random street scene in Tokyo
And a shrine to Buddha, outside of Tokyo.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong, however, was, well, the teeming streets, the exotic smells, a forest of neon signs blazing over narrow streets, the Star Ferry back in forth through the harbor to Kowloon, very tall buildings and steamy hot moisture-laden air, a woman smoking a cigarette in a marina full of old Chinese boats, floating restaurants, Asia as I had always imagined it, but better.
Aberdeen, Hong Kong
A view from Kowloon back at Hong Kong
Hong Kong. From my hotel room.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
The tour guide shuffle.
Much of the tour was predictable: tour bus times, city tours, monuments and temples, managed mealtimes, and store visits, always the store visits. Dinner theater of the worst kind, all of it supposedly typical and drenched in stereotypes. Chinese acrobats, Thai dancers in ancient costumes. Indian ceremonies. They faded into each other. I wondered if there was a tour group on the planes with us, changing costumes.
Bangkok
Another crowded third-world city, full of traffic. It struck me as a lot like Mexico City. And more buses, and more city tour, and more costumed folkloric dancing.
The royal palace in Bangkok showed the odd mix of millennia tradition with aspirations of 19th century Europe, as in the musical and movie ‘The King and I.’
And this picture from the Bangkok royal palace is about me showing off my brand-new Honk Kong suit. Really comfortable very light fine cloth, and of course, bell-bottom pants. It was, after all, 1973. My hair was not particularly long, for me; I’d had a hair cut before we left.
India
We got to Delhi at night. The other side of the world. Honking, crowded streets, crowded sidewalks, livestock, smog, and oppressive heat. The smells of exhaust, livestock, feces, charcoal, spices, and struggle, all mixed. As far from suburban California as I’ve ever been.
Outside a monument in New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi
However, the Taj Mahal. They left us there for hours that seemed like minutes, It was so hot the tourists ran from shade to shade, literally. Beggars were everywhere. But the Taj Mahal is as majestic as El Capitan and Half Dome, huge, a proof of some kind of higher being, just as it stands there.
I’m told that the Taj Mahal is now blocked off. The last person I know who visited, maybe five years ago, said it was walled off, with admission severely limited. And outside the mobs of tourists and local people selling to tourists were horrible.
The Taj Mahal, below, is one of my better pictures. It’s impossible to understand from a picture how big it is.
It opens in the back to a dream landscape of ancient India, halfway around the world. The next picture below is the back side of the Taj Mahal. What you see here is heat. Like 110 degrees. Some of my group ran from shade to shade, like people do from shelter to shelter in a rainstorm.
The Taj Mahal in the distance, from the hotel. Hot, hot, hot. Well over 100 degrees.
Iran
Iran was still controlled by the Shah. There were US fighter jets in the airport, and US business logos everywhere. Teheran was shopping centers surrounding mosques. Lots of Americans, a whole population of US oil expats. And lots of Americanization. This was six years before the Muslim government took over and kicked Americans out. We visited Teheran and Isfajan.
A view in Teheran:
Isfajan
Isfajan
Isfajan
Isfajan
Jerusalem
In Jerusalem we ended up with a couple blocks of hours, and I wandered through ancient history, very narrow ancient streets, even the stations of the cross, the wailing wall, history alive. Tensions were high and security tight in May of 1973, just five months before the Yom Kippur War.
One immediate impression was about security. On arrival from Teheran, the security check to enter the country took two hours. Agents went through every suitcase. They checked ever toy, ever bottle, every box. Wrapped packages were unwrapped. We were all suspects.
One evening after dinner several of my tourists came to the beautiful hotel we stayed in, with a gorgeous view of the walls and the city, excited and full of their story. They’d taken a taxi down into the valley of the Dead Sea, which bordered on territory controlled by Palestinians. They walked out onto flats near the dead sea, apparently disoriented. They were captured by an armed car of Israeli soldiers and taken to a military installation, where they were treated like hostiles. Tension grew as the soldiers grew frustrated with their disoriented reactions. Only three of the five spoke English. Being Mexican, they were dark of complexion like Palestinians, but they weren’t. “Jews,” the soldiers shouted, asking whether they were Jewish tourists. “Jews,” they insisted, repeatedly, growing steadily angrier.
“Thank you, tomato,” answered the one in the group who was completely hopeless with English. There was a pause, and then laughter. The soldiers ended up driving them the hour’s drive back up out of the Dead Sea area to their hotel in Jerusalem.
The horse is a view from my hotel room in the Intercontinental Hotel, on a hill looking over the old city. The camel and jeep are from a parking lot in the hotel.
This is from the old city, along the route of the stations of the cross. By this time, two third of the trip gone, I was getting used to finding time to get away from the group and take long walks on my own.
Another view from the hotel.
Outside of Jerusalem, on the road to the Dead Sea.
Istanbul
Istanbul, as we neared the end of the trip, was the first place of all of them where I had actually been before, and, therefore, I wasn’t forced to fake it.
And that made it even easier for me to escape more on my own, take more long walks, and enjoy the travel more. I was a journalist, I’d taken a couple of courses on photo journalism, I had a brand new beautiful SLR camera, so on my walks I’d look for photos. And in the mornings, and evenings.
Istanbul
Why do I find the water, and ships on the water, so interesting? In Istanbul we had a hotel outside of the main city, along the Bosporus, with a view of the ships going by.
I took lots of pictures of the view from my room.
Istanbul
Istanbul
A small harbor outside of Istanbul.
Athens.
I was so young, at 25. So much in love with my wife and missing her and my baby, Laura. Athens started to feel like the last stretch, finishing the trip. A gorgeous place, so again, I got off on my own for pictures.
By the way, the Parthenon was still accessible. It’s now completely blocked off to normal tourists. But in 1973 we could walk around at will.
Athens
Athens
Paris
And then, finally, Paris. My third visit to Paris. And from there, back home to Mexico City.
And then, a long flight home. As I look back, 40-some years later, I’m sheepish admitting that during my first trip around the world, I missed Vange and home. But that was the 1970s, we were young, with young kids, and Mexico City and all; life was really good.
