T Is For...

Travel.  Just because I'm root bound now doesn't mean that was always the case.  Any excuse was a good one for my parents to pack up for a road trip.  How Times have changed.  Radios were optional in cars and reception was iffy.  Air conditioning meant you opened the windows.  The gear shift was on the steering column; there was no automatic.  We entertained ourselves on long empty stretches by singing.  My dad was born in the late 1800s and my mother in 1904...they had a wealth of songs from their past, as well as the then-current hits in the forties.  Larger cities had hotels, but we mostly stayed in little cabins in tourist camps, the precursor to motels.  If not by car, we traveled by steam engine trains.  Those were the days when a porter would come down the aisle, ringing a gong to announce mealtime.  The tables in the dining car were set with white linen and heavy silver.  It was wonderful to fall asleep in the fold-down bed to the rocking of the train and clickety-clack of the wheels, watching the stars fly by out in the night.  We traveled by train from southern California to Louisiana and later to Mexico City.  We drove all over the United States, except for the northeastern-most coast.  I drove before I had a license to Canada and back with my mother.  We took the boat to Catalina Island, and the plane to San Francisco.  Air travel then was certainly different.  My mother had become enthralled with airplanes as a girl when a barnstormer came through their town and she got to ride in an open biplane.  Our flight to San Francisco was in a very small plane and my dad was scared spitless.  He didn't fly again until he was in his late seventies.  I've since flown countless times and even learned to fly a single-engine Cessna.

I've been to Alaska and Hawaii, to Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, France, and England.  I put forty thousand miles a year on my car when I was a consultant.  I'm happy to stay put now.