Travels Through the Years

The 85-year old author reviews his life with humor and thought-provoking reflections on life and history. Excerpts from the book; Youth: “Ego te absolvo . . .” were the words I heard from a Catholic priest as a Doctor’s hands were in my mouth attempting to stop the hemorrhage of blood resulting from a botched tonsillectomy. I did not understand the Latin words nor at age 7 did I understand the meaning behind the Last Rites of the Church. In 1943 I was in a Catholic hospital in Long Beach, California and the priest came into the room and asked if I was Catholic. I was afraid to say “No” and so answered his question with a “Yes” and heard the above words. Broken shards of imperfect memory, such as these, aspire to tell of the joys and sorrows experienced by one man as he lived his only life.” High School: “As I listened to the long-forgotten commencement speaker at my graduation from Narbonne High School in 1954 I was uncertain about what I should do next. I liked high school and wanted to continue learning but also wondered how I could pay for college since I didn‘t want to be a financial burden on the parents? I toyed with the idea of going into the Army so that I could attend college on the GI Bill but as I listened to the speaker there was one thing of which I was certain: the whole world was out there to be discovered and I couldn’t wait to shake the dust of small-town Lomita, CA from my shoes.” Europe: “I’m not serving you” loudly yelled a “red neck” behind a lunch counter at a bus stop somewhere in segregated Oklahoma as he pointed at a middle-aged black woman. I was angered by this personal humiliation and to Mother’s discomfort I went to the black woman and offered to buy her something to eat. She declined. Mother and I were on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip to New York City in 1956 from where I would fly to Europe to enroll in a French language program at L’Universite d’Aix in the south of France.” Before registering for school the author hitch-hiked through Scandinavia and in what he describes as “the night I became an adult” he made a “life-changing decision” to continue hitch-hiking through Europe. Descriptive stories of his travels and the people he met -- and the odd-jobs he worked -- conclude with the lessons he learned in his year of wandering. College: “One weekend in spring 1959 I borrowed the car from Dad and Peg, my future wife, and I drove to San Francisco. On the way back to Los Angeles the car blew a radiator hose in the small farming town of King City about 300 miles north of Los Angeles and pretty much in the proverbial middle-of-nowhere. I called Dad to ask what to do. He enquired where I was. “King City”. “What the HELL are you doing in King City?” In the 1950’s it wouldn’t do to tell him that I was returning from a wonderful weekend with a beautiful woman where we had explored Chinatown, and each other, and ridden cable cars and talked about a future together”. Army: “You college?” yelled the black Sergeant standing in front of me as we were in formation at Ford Ord, CA in January 1960. “Not me, Sergeant” I responded (“And the cock crowed the first time”: Matthew 26). Those who admitted they were “college” were marched to a large, malodorous, pile of fertilizer to shovel it into gunny sacks while the rest of us were dismissed to barracks. I learned an Army lesson early!” The author describes life as a Foreign Service Officer becoming Assistant to the Secretary of State, service with a U.S. Senator and then on to the business world where he achieved his personal goal of becoming President of a company by age 40. With his descriptive, and oftentimes humorous, writing you travel along with him in his travels in 86 countries. Grief: The author’s wife died at age 62 of a stroke after 40 years of marriage and one year into their retirement. He wrote: “I found myself feeling as Dante in The Inferno: “Midway through the road of life, I found myself in a dark wood on a lost road”. In the temporary insanity that goes by the name of “grief” -- that the sane can barely imagine -- I seemed a stranger in a strange land and I wrote: Peg, Now you sleep Alone And I await Sleep like yours.” Grief struck again when his 48-year old son was killed in 2014 and he remembers: “Mr. McGee? This is Sergeant Gallagher of the Stamford Police Department . . . began the unthinkable call, that no parent wants to receive, advising of the death of a child. When parents die a child is termed an orphan and I wondered what is the term used to describe a parent who has lost his child? Certainly an orphan of a different type -- one who grieves and whose sense of loss is all-encompassing as he ponders the promise of a lost life and the incomprehensible suddenness with which normalcy can be taken.” Rebirth: He, a 10-year widower, met an 11-year widow at the community swimming pool and he wrote: “A second love came to me late in life but I would not compare the two; I just feel lucky that the magic of love could still happen to me at my age and I marveled at the capricious nature of life.” The author concludes by writing: “Even with the premature deaths of a wife and son I feel profoundly lucky in my life and as I think back upon memories I ask myself, can this really have been my life? Or are these lines only the imaginings of a fevered dream?”