Summer is a great time to travel, but not for me. I’m not much of a traveler. I prefer to stay close to home. The number of times I have ventured far from my humble abode can be counted on two hands. My son, on the other hand, thinks nothing of hopping on a plane and flying to California or Las Vegas to visit friends and attend a wrestling match or two. Not my thing.
My first flight was an adventurous one, it was on a small, six-passenger Learjet. It was a business trip to meet with a client in Philadelphia. I was in my twenties and, still being a country bumpkin at heart, I was naturally apprehensive. Little did I know that planes of this type take off pretty much straight up, much like my breakfast which was heading in the same direction.
Once we leveled off and, being saved from embarrassment, my companions suggested we all have a stiff drink from the mini bar. I was beginning to think this might not be a bad way to travel.
The pilot informed us that we were flying at 41,000 feet when suddenly he turned the plane 90 degrees so we could get an unobstructed view of a commercial jet flying 10,000 feet below us. Try explaining a Bordeaux stain on your suit in a meeting with an important client.
It was a while before I flew again, preferring ground-level travel.
Even a road trip can be an adventure. Back in college, three friends and I drove to Canada for Expo 67, an international exposition in Montreal. We all squeezed into my friend Bob’s Corvair. Somewhere in Vermont, we had a flat tire while going at 120 mph. We might have gone to college, but clearly, we were not very bright. But I digress.
Luckily, it was a rear tire, so we survived. We made it to Montreal, where we had reservations at the Hotel Bonaventure, which turned out to be a hole in the ground! They had barely started construction. We had been scammed! (What did I say about not being too bright?)
We spent the first day in Montreal looking for a place to sleep, finally finding a rooming house with a vacancy sign. They had only one small room available because of the Expo, but the very nice landlady with a keen profit motive let all four of us stay for three days.
On the way home, we had to go through customs, where they did an inspection. Luckily, they did not find the license plate Bob stole (for what reason I don’t know). I guess, because of the volume of tourists, they weren’t as thorough as the agents you encounter now. Today you can’t get over the border without a passport and giving up your first-born child. The Hotel Bonaventure is now a four-star hotel near downtown Montreal. Wonder if they still have our reservations.
Sometimes travel can be weird. After my bride and I were married, friends invited us to join them on a road trip along the Maine coast, where we arrived at the town of Bucksport. Our friends had an ulterior motive for inviting us. They were chasing a ghost and were afraid to go alone. It seems the town’s namesake, one Colonel Jonathan Buck, was cursed by a witch whom he had burned at the stake. When the good colonel died, an image of the witch’s foot appeared on his gravestone, an image that kept returning despite efforts to remove it. Our friends insisted on visiting the monument. Seeing the stain … ’er footprint … without incident, took about 30 seconds.
Naturally, I have traveled since, but no trips were as “exciting” as that.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on …
By Dick Morgado