I grew up wanting to travel the world, and for inspiration I had both history and literature.
Learning about Ferdinand Magellan in elementary school introduced me to the term, “circumnavigating the world,” but soon afterwards I read Phileas Fogg’s adventures, courtesy Jules Verne, and knew one day I’d find a way to follow.
Travel stories of all sorts captivated my imagination, from the real to the more creative: Amelia Earhart; Ernest Shackleton and his ship, Endurance; Twain’s mock-up of Verne’s writing in his own book, Tom Sawyer Abroad.
Anything about other cultures and other countries captured my eye, a hunger partially fed by the fact that we always had the latest issue of National Geographic lying around the house. You see, my Mom longed to travel too—only she never got the chance. It was something my dad regretted later in life, never having taken her anywhere, taken her when they were young and fit.
It was a sad regret, since they could never have afforded it in those early years, anyway, not with nine mouths to feed. No, their plan had been to travel once they became empty-nesters, travel after retirement like lots of folks do. Thing was, by then, Mom had fallen ill and was on oxygen.
I think Mom had an inkling those dreamed-of traveling days would never come. She was already forty by the time I was born, and she often told me while I was growing up that I should travel while I’m young, before having a family of my own would make if unaffordable or old age would make it impossible.
I liked that she encouraged her kids to get out in the world, and by golly, I planned to take her up on it. In a way, I think she lived vicariously through the later travels many of her children eventually undertook. The early travels, perhaps not so much, though: sons into a war zone called Vietnam.
Mom’s own dream of travel was surely the primary reason I got the opportunity to be a foreign exchange student in high school. That, and the thankful existence of scholarships. You see, there was no way my folks could pay for the AFS program to France I wanted to participate it as a senior. They would let me go, yes, but I’d have to come up with the bulk of the money myself.
Travelling in high school whetted my appetite for seeing more of the world, and that opportunity came my way, big time, in college—again, thanks to the existence of scholarships.
I saw the announcement one fall on a bulletin board in Lowe Hall at Seton Hill College, back when I was a sophomore theatre major. The board was one I passed daily and lingered at regularly. It contained all sorts of opportunities to study abroad. Since youth the ability to spot the word abroad in 12-pt font from a hundred yards had been one of my superpowers.
Well, there it was, the queen of all study-abroad opportunities whispering my name: Semester at Sea.
I knew I had to try, even though it was out of my financial reach, so just like in high school I applied for a scholarship. There were a limited number available, and the winners would become work-study students with job assignments onboard the ship, the SS Universe. Even the name of the ship made my mouth water. The Universsssse!
The scholarship application was simple. It didn’t require proof I was poor, so I didn’t even have to involve my folks with lots of financial documentation, etc. All I had to do was write a convincing essay about why I was the student who deserved it.
Okay, I thought. I got this. I can write. Even in college I considered myself a writer, having penned two novels in high school and written hundreds of poems. Write an essay, win a trip around the world? YESSS! That was my kind of writing assignment.
The Semester at Sea program was run at that time by the University of Boulder at Colorado, and the day I received an envelope from the school I gripped it in trembling fingers, visions of Verne and Earhart and Shackleton crisscrossing my mind at the speed of atoms racing through a hadron collider. It felt like one of those all-or-nothing moments in life.
Either I was destined to live a life of adventure and exploration, or dissolve into the morass of millions who sink into collegiate mediocrity and never emerge. At least, that was the way I saw it when I was twenty.
Of course you already know when I opened that envelope my heart and mind took flight. I was transported, in the Electra with Earhart and Noonan, crashing through the arctic aboard the Endurance. I had won one of the scholarships, and I was going to sail around the world!
THE JOURNEY WEST
The journey of a lifetime would begin in Los Angeles. Problem was, I was stuck in Pennsyltucky and poor. How was I going to get there?
It just so happened that at the time I had a sister living in California—Seven of Nine. Seven had enlisted in the Air Force and was barracked at Monterey, learning Russian at the Language Institute so she could become a spy. She’d just reached some milestone unknown to me that allowed her to have a car on base, and—lo and behold—her car had been left behind with our family in Pennsyltucky.
“Hey,” she said, thinking it was probably a futile suggestion, “would someone care to drive my car to California?”
Timing, they say, is everything, and the timing could not have worked out more perfectly—except for one glitch: my folks weren’t too keen on me driving solo across the United States. Sure, they’d already let me live in France and were fine with me about to go sail off round the planet galleystomping with 800 strangers, but somehow driving to California was a bridge too far.
Enter another sister.
Seven and I were separated in age by Fame-in-the-Offing, the three of us comprising the tail end of the tornado, so to speak, as the youngest third of our parents’ progeny. And even though Fame was just one year my senior, her offering to come along across country and then fly home after we delivered the car mollified everyone.
I’m not even sure where the money came from for Fame’s flight home. I assume Seven paid for it, but then again, maybe Fame had more dough squirreled away than I did even though she was also a Seton Hill college student—a senior, whose graduation I would miss, slated as I was to be crossing the Atlantic along about then.
Heck, I can’t even recall how we afforded the gas money, the food, the motels along the way, but for some reason it was either a more affordable option than flying to California at the time, or wholly based on Seven wanted her car. Little sisters sure can be clueless sometimes.
So anyway, off we went, two kids in a 70’s Plymouth Arrow with manual transmission, headed for adventure. Heading west In the middle of Winter. What could possibly go wrong?
Tune in next week and find out!
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Thank you for visiting and sharing a bit of you day with me. What were your earliest, big adventures in life? Feel free to share some of your thoughts in comments, below. I’d love to hear them. Then come back next week to continue Around The World in 80 Days 1980.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll get a copy (and maybe an extra to share) of my debut kidlit adventure, Shay the Brave.
And I’d love for you to participate in one or both of my current giveaway promos, which you can read about it here. By simply posting a hash-tagged photo on any social media platform, you can win a copy of my forthcoming Shay the Brave companion journal, Share with Shay, or even a copy of Shay the Brave for every kid in your favorite classroom!
How about that?!
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Catching up on your travels…fun pictures of Seven and Eight…
…Number Four