As I age, I find a little nap–siesta–before dinner most enjoyable. Depends on whether you’re Texan or Mexican, of course, when you nap before dinner. Briggs Todd told me this cross-the-border story back in the 1960s. Briggs was president of the state bank in Abilene, also the district governor of West Texas Rotarians. In that capacity he led a delegation to dine with Rotarians in Mexico. In the chosen ciudad, Rotarians met each week for
Category: Travel
Taverna
In the late 1970s, Margaret and I enlisted Austin married couple, Lela Jane Akin and Bob Tinsman, as crew. We joined other Flying Scot skippers to charter 30-foot sloops and cruise the Grecian Islands. Because Greece and Turkey were at odds, the charter company proscribed that we sail similar routes that ended each night at the same dock. A Greek restaurant was always located near the pier. We were invited to their kitchens to see
Martha’s Vineyard
Remember times we sailed our 36-foot sloop into Martha’s Vineyard. Many memories: — when 12-year-old Grandson Travis Darwin ate his first lobster. — when the lady in the nearby sailboat yelled “I want to see you get that big dog (85 -pound Golden Retriever named Captain Jack) into that dinghy.” — when by telephone Doyle Guthrie asked “just where are you?” I answered by describing an auto ferry coming
Triple E Mining
“There’s gold in those hills” has sent many a prospector to the mountains of Arizona. Including the three Elams. Dad explained to this nine-year-old that I was staying in a Wickenberg ‘tourist court’ most of the summer because “Dickie” was the third member of the Triple E Mining Company. “Winnie” was the second member. And “Red” was the developer with some knowledge of mining from his years near Kentucky coal mines. Mom got a golden nugget
Penguins
World’s Fair, Chicago, 1932. Four-years-old, I saw my first penguins. Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic explorers had brought the birds—penguins jump, more than fly—to the fair grounds erected on the edge of Lake Michigan. The penguin house was cooled. Home air-conditioning was also arriving. Magellan Strait, Patagonia, 2009. Eighty-two–years-old was the last time I saw penguins. In lower South America, the penguins are smaller and colored differently from Emperor penguins in even lower Antartica. I know first hand.
Dana’s Inferno
California may be having a ‘heat wave”’ at this writing, but things were mostly windy and temperature pleasant when I stopped there. Hollywood Beach, Oxnard California was my home for the four months Pepperdine University hired me as a visiting professor. Nearly a century and a half before, Seaman Richard Henry Dana Jr sailed by our beach. I decided to reread his Two Years Before the Mast. Found out strong winds in California were not uncommon when
Volcano
An essay–okay, really I’m just writing a blog–entitled Been There suggests I might have been there. At this writing there’s a volcano erupting 30 thousand feet in the air on St. Vincent Island, Windward Caribbean Islands. Been there. Sometime in the last century we were flying from Puerto Rico in a charter twin Beech. My five crew and I were going sailing for a week in a 40-foot sloop we had chartered. Don’t remember any
Lake Baikal
May, 1995. For four months I spent U.S. Information Service taxpayer’s money advising on journalism curriculum for Ural State University, 24 miles west of where Siberia begins. Headed back home, Margaret and I rode the Trans-Siberian Railroad west from Yekaterinburg, Russia to Peking, China. In between, we detrained at Irkutsk in Siberia. Met with journalism teachers who insisted we make an overnight visit to nearby Lake Baikal–the world’s deepest lake, with a fifth of the
Historic Winter
Fog rose on the lake in Heath, outside Dallas, this Sunday Valentine’s morning. Reminded me of Weatherman C. E. Sitchler. “Stitch” ran the weather bureau located at the Abilene Airport. We private, single-engine pilots hung out there waiting for the fog to lift. Especially we Visual Flight Rule (VHF) amateurs who weren’t trained to fly ‘blind’ using instruments. That morning I wanted to fly to New Orleans. Then navigate on to Key West. Where Maxine
London via Elham
Christmas Eve 1978, I drove from Elham in Kent north to London and saw the Queen. Elizabeth and I were teenagers during World War II. I worked part time on the local daily newspaper. The Princess assisted London nurses. My historical fiction research also tells me she collected President Truman’s autograph in 1945. Margaret and I were in England to spend the holidays with her daughter Margo and Margo’s roommate, a girl named Sue. Both