My last two days had been pretty mellow, just hanging out here at the Clay’s with whoever was home. That is except for a trip to the village pub last night with Kevin, Madge, Bill, and Nana, where they took turns treating me to pints of Watney’s for my final sendoff, each with a toast. Kate was out studying with her friends. Before heading out she had found a moment with me when the others were out of earshot to say goodbye and say that Mackenzie wanted her to pass on a big thank you to “her cousin Spike”.
At the pub, Kevin had done the first toast, having us all rise, except Nana. “To one of my mates. See you next in the States!”, pleased with himself to be able to rhyme and envisioning his own future travels taking him across the ocean. For the second round it was Madge, insisting that we stay seated, raising her glass to, “Good family, friends, and lots of love, plus a kiss for your mum!”. For the third Bill, wishing me, “More adventures ahead!”
Even Nana, pretty inebriated by her three pints, bought Kevin and me one last round, Madge and Bill declining. When she began to conjure up hew own toast, I realized that after three days with the family this was the first time I had really looked into her eyes. They were gray like her wispy hair, and as she recalled and recited each phrase of each line, I could see the wheels of recollection turning in her mind. She managed to remember and stumble through what seemed like a traditional toast to a young single man like myself, but one delivered by another male comrade…
Here’s to a long life and a merry one
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and a true one
A cold bottle and another one
Nana’s family members were a bit taken aback by her toast and her ability to remember and deliver it. Madge and Bill tried to contain a spontaneous urge to laugh, Madge finally failing followed by Bill, with Kevin joining in boisterously and calling out “Bravo Nana!” I could see the gears turning again behind those old gray eyes, a scowl on her face that they were patronizing her, and finally a vocalized, “Sod it!”
Pretty “wankered” at that point myself, I stood up at our table at the Queen’s Head pub, and with the remnants of my fourth pint of Watney’s conjured my own toast in response to the others. “To an amazing adventure indeed”, and to the four of them for being there for the beginning and the end. I could feel the tears well up under my eyeballs and the alcohol aided fatigue growing behind them. It was that same play of thoughts and emotions that filled my mind five days ago as I had stood alone on the stern of the big ship headed out across the North Sea watching the Dutch coast disappear astern. The places would still be there if I ever returned, but almost all the people I had encountered and the circumstances that brought us together would not. It was past and gone, except in my memory and hopefully theirs as well.
But again, there were things that I could take home with me beyond the Christmas presents and the other contents of my backpack. I would take back that pluckier persona I had developed, that helped me keep my equilibrium, reframing what initially had felt like an ordeal into the adventure it was meant to be. I would take back a commitment to use that pluck in a stronger engagement with my circles of family and friends, to give to them all my love, support and good energy. And perhaps most importantly, I would take back the understanding that, as I had here in Europe, that I would be the designer of my own life going forward – the who, what, where, when, how and why. I would no longer have it designed by other people for me, well intentioned though they might be!
That past Sunday morning, Bill, Madge, Nana and Kate had all gone to church. Kevin stayed home with me, admitting once the others had left that he wasn’t much for church anyway, and my being there was a perfect excuse for him not to go. He made us hot cocoa with little marshmallows floating on top. We sat at the kitchen table and sipped our steaming sweet beverages, smelling the roasted chickens and potatoes Madge was keeping warm in the oven for Sunday dinner after they returned from church.
Kevin continued his ongoing ruminations about whether to buy a car or move into his own apartment, citing again for me all the pros and cons of one versus the other. I think the rest of his family had given him their advice and were tired of hearing about it. But I, a fellow young male type like himself he figured would appreciate the gravity of the decision and the need to revisit it and get it right. If he got his own apartment, it would have to be nice enough to bring his girlfriend home to it. And there would be no coming back to live at home, that would feel like defeat. Likewise, if he bought a car of his own. And the car couldn’t be “some old banger”, but a nice sporty, most likely new one, that would impress his friends, particularly his girlfriend, and expressed who he was. Given his anticipated salary at the new job, at least for now, he couldn’t see affording both.
He had been keen to get my point of view on his dilemma. I told him that I was living at home, didn’t have a girlfriend, and had a car that was “indeed an old banger”. It was technically mine, but I shared it with my mom because the old one she had had had finally broken down and was sold for junk because it was too expensive to fix. For me, cars were “just a means of transportation”, not part of who I was. My hometown was easily traversed on foot or by bicycle. So my choice would probably be to get my own apartment or more likely, share one with one of my friends, though I had no plans to do so when I got home.
Given his own obsession with what was next for him, that had led him to ask what was next for me, presuming a similar obsession on my part, which wasn’t really the case. I said I would go home, enjoy the Christmas holiday with my family, maybe New Years Eve with my friends, and then in the new year find some sort of a job to make money until I went back in September for another year of college, a hundred miles west of Ann Arbor in Kalamazoo. I knew he had made the decision not to go to college, but his sister Kate was intent on being the first person in the family to do so.
The others returned from Church, and after the big midday meal, when I continued to regale them with my travel stories, Kevin’s mates Nick and Steve had come over along with his girlfriend Nellie. The three of them were an exuberant bunch, like Kevin, and they all got along well with Bill and particularly Madge. So much so that Madge was invited by the four of them to join in the games of Monopoly and Risk we all played. Madge actually won the Risk game, grabbing the Australian continent early, while us guys were fighting it out with each other for North and South America. Madge allied with Nellie to defeat the rest of us, and then eventually, with great apologies, took Nellie out as well.
Nellie was quite the character, more force of nature than puny human. Short, slight and feisty, with Little Orphan Annie curly red hair and freckles, she was full of opinions on everything that she was eager to voice to whomever would listen. She had apparently moved into town with her family a year and half ago and found her way into Kevin’s circle of friends, but only recently transitioned to being his girlfriend. I was used to guys pursuing young women they were interested in romantically, but seeing Nellie in action that afternoon I wondered if it was she who had pursued him. She knew everything that was going on with everybody – Madge’s church volunteer work, Bill’s woodworking hobby, Kevin’s friend Steve’s obsession with heavy metal music, and of course Kevin’s own car versus apartment quandary. It was like she kept dossiers on everybody and studied them before she came over. She had a recipe she thought, no knew, Madge would like. Classes for seniors she thought Nana would enjoy. She even quizzed Madge on how Kate was doing studying for exams.
You could see she was attracted to Kevin, but she also had an entire detailed strategy on how be could both get a good car and his own apartment. They argued back and forth about it until someone in the group started teasing them. I was jealous of Kevin for having a girlfriend, even though she would have driven me crazy with her in your business style. I did not like people even making suggestions about how to run my life, and that would extend to even my girlfriend, if I had one.
Yesterday was Monday, and it had been a much different day. Bill and Kevin were off at work all day. Kate was at school and then after school at her friend T.J.’s studying. Madge took Nana to a doctor’s appointment in town and dropped me off so I could do some final shopping with the four pounds I had left in my “reserve”. That was beyond the four that were pegged for the buses this morning to Heathrow and buying booze on the plane flight home. In the afternoon I had hung out in the kitchen with Madge and Nana.
Madge was interested in every detail about my mom’s life, having gotten to know her quite well three years ago, and feeling a sort of sisterhood with her. I was happy to spill the beans – my mom and dad’s divorce, her bouts with depression and even suicide. Then more in the good news vein, transitioning to a better place emotionally with various new projects, like her local political work, her budding feminism, and her growing friendship with my “feminist aunts”.
But now all that was in the past as I tried to clear the haze from my mind. I put on my clothes I had specifically planned for my trip home, to look the part of the now veteran and storied traveller. The nice, new, not yet worn Heineken Brewery t-shirt with the big red star on a white shirt with green lettering. My bell-bottom hippie-esque jeans, recently washed even. My orange down jacket. And finally, my big clunky hiking boots. I had wanted to wear my heels, but there was no way my boots would fit in my backpack.
Madge was up in the kitchen and had made us some breakfast – ham, eggs and toast. Bill was in the shower and Kate and Nana were not up yet. When she saw me she grinned and shook her head, saying that she was sure my “mum” was going to be so pleased to see me and have me back. She reminded me, yet again, that I had to give my mom a hug and a kiss and say specifically it was from “her friend Madge”. I promised on my honor to do so, and was enough on the ball to be a proper houseguest and thank her again for all the hospitality, these past three days plus those days back in September, when Angie and I and just arrived in England.
Steve drove me into town to the bus station in his dad’s VW Bug. He was still all about his quandary over whether to buy a car or move into his own apartment. I suggested that maybe he buy a used car, even one he could fix up with his mechanic skills, then also get an apartment with his friends and share the rent. Maybe even Nellie could chip in to that deal, sharing a bedroom with him. He rolled his eyes, sighed, but then shook his head, saying that her parents would never let her do that. He said that if, “They found out we even shagged, they’d kill me!”, with the implication that he and Nellie had not had sex yet.
He asked me if I had a “girl you’re sweet on” back home. I immediately replied with an, “Actually…”, followed by a long pause while I struggled with how to answer that question. I had a bit of a thing still for Angie but figured based on the whole parting company thing ten weeks ago that was probably not going anywhere. I still had a thing for Angie’s best friend Lane, but god only knows what she was up to now in her first year of college, though she was still living in Ann Arbor. And Natasha, who I had had the total hots for all through the last year and a half of high school was still off going to school at Berkeley in California. I rattled off those three young women and the current situations of each and he listened. “So Lane maybe?” he noted, trying to fit me into his view of what was important for young men like he and I to be focusing on, that is girlfriends, cars and apartments. I replied with a shrug and a tepid, “Yeah… possibly”, and the conversation moved on to other areas.
At the Oxford bus station he walked me in but then apologized profusely that he could not wait for my bus to board because he had to get back home to take his scooter to his morning shift at the garage. I told him that was fine and thanked him for “taking care of me” while I was there. I was tempted to give him a hug, but hesitated, and he stuck out his hand and shook mine briskly. I gave him my address and phone number in Ann Arbor and he said he would look me up when he made it to the States. Then he was off, and I sat with a handful of other local looking types waiting for the bus to London.
The bus ride was uneventful. I half expected, better hoped, that Stacey, Jeanie and Mitzi might be on it, headed off to work at their jobs in London, and maybe Mitzi remembering me and giving me some sort of showy goodbye kiss on the lips. Ah fantasy! Not sure she was sober enough to remember much of anything, though I certainly remembered every bit of her, including that body ensconced in her black dress and black panties. I fantasized about her one last time as I watched the wintry scenes out the window on the motorway into London.
It was after nine when we got into the London Victoria Coach Station, and I walked across the street, my pack on my back for one very last time as I crossed the street to the BOAC office and checked my pack in as luggage. Separated from it for the first time in eleven weeks, I boarded the shuttle bus to Heathrow.
When the bus entered the airport, it was sobering to see machinegun emplacements, surrounded by sandbags and staffed by soldiers in helmets and full battle gear, on top of the various airport terminals. I had been reading in the International Herald Tribune that the “provisional wing” of the Irish Republican Army, in their armed effort to push the British out of Northern Ireland, had moved their campaign of bombings from Northern Ireland to England. This change in strategy by the IRA came after the failure of talks with the British government in 1972. I had read of several bombings in London and Yorkshire earlier this year, plus one in Birmingham the day Angie and I arrived in London eleven weeks ago.
I had been inspired to embrace at least the wannabe fantasy of radicalism in 1968 when I was just thirteen, watching the young activists demonstrating and challenging the police outside the Chicago Democratic convention, and the black power salutes of American sprinters on the medal podium of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. I saw myself as a budding radical, above and beyond but related to my embrace of the whole hippie ethos. I was supportive of, sometimes even idolized, or was at least intrigued by, various more leftist radical groups and movements.
In my last year of high school I had taken an elective class in Modern Russian History, taught by a teacher who was an avowed communist himself. We studied the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions, including the life and efforts of Lenin and Trotsky, but also the story of the Russian anarchists and nihilists who plotted to and eventually succeeded in killing the Russian Czar. I had developed a particular interest in anarchist thought, and had read with great interest works of some famous Russian anarchists, particularly Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin.
In our contemporary world, I was intrigued by various radical leftist groups. The Black Panthers and the Weather Underground in the States. My hometown radical group, the White Panthers, formed as a means for white people to support the Black Panthers, that my friend Avi’s older brother was a key leader of. In a similar way I was intrigued by the IRA and their campaign to liberate Northern Ireland from British control, as part of a larger historic effort for Irish independence from England. My embrace of the hippie ethos of “peace, love and joy” and “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, also included a healthy dose of “damn the Man”, and challenging the existing establishment order of my parents’ generation.
Indeed there were logical inconsistencies in my belief in “peace” and “antiwar” and my fascination with groups like the Weather Underground and the IRA, who were committed to using violent means, bombings in particular, to achieve their liberationist ends. The Panthers were more about defending the black community, with guns as needed, from what they saw as the violence of institutional racism, as often enforced by the police. From my wannabe point of view, I fantasized about being a freedom fighter or insurgent myself, as I had fantasized about and played at being a soldier as a young boy, after having heard my dad tell stories about his participation in World War II. I wanted to be part of a revolution, or “the revolution”. It certainly seemed much more glamorous than my mom’s community organizing as a Democratic party precinct chair, supporting local candidates and getting people out to vote for them in local elections.
All that was running through my mind as I stood in line waiting to show my ticket and get my boarding pass for the flight home. It was BOAC flight BA523, scheduled to leave London Heathrow at 11:15 AM Greenwich Mean Time and arrive at Detroit Metropolitan at 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, eight hours and forty-five minutes later. Once I had that boarding pass in my hand, and I found my place in the waiting area of my plane’s gait, my mind, though feeling that headachy cloudiness from lack of good sleep, started buzzing with different thoughts. Thoughts that in some ten hours from now I would actually be home. Rejiggering the Beatles lyric in my head to my own situation…
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.S.A.
Every little milestone in the pre-flight process from that point was loaded with excitement and significance for me. The boarding call on the PA. Giving my boarding pass to the blue uniformed BOAC attendant and entering the jetway to the plane. Stepping through the hatch onto the plane. Finding my seat and sitting in it, a window seat as I had requested, sitting next to two men, both in business attire but flying separately from each other. Fastening my seat belt. The plane jerking into motion as it started its slow journey out to the runway. Engines revving and the plane beginning to move again from a dead stop down the runway. Wheels separating from the ground, I was no longer on European soil, if still in its airspace. The plane gaining enough altitude that we were above the clouds and I could no longer see the ground below us.
In that state of purgatory between earthly realms time for me seemed to stop. When the flight attendant came around for the first time, I noted she had the short coiffed hair and cute little blue cap like the young woman who printed out my ticket at the BOAC office in Amsterdam, when I and my comrades were totally stoned on hashish. From my four remaining pounds, now bills in my pocket rather than stashed in my money belt, I purchased headsets for 10p and she asked me if I wanted something to drink, preemptively placing a little cocktail napkin on my open tray table.
I had already been pondering what alcoholic beverage to buy. I recalled that on the flight over it had been screwdrivers, vodka and orange juice. I decided this time I wanted something that was sophisticated, decadent and potent. In honor of Madge and my mom I ordered a “Scotch on the rocks”. The flight attendant responded with that practiced modulation and not missing a beat, listed about four different Scotch whiskies including Cuttysark and Chivas Regal. Regular mixed drinks, like a screwdriver, were 30p. But Cutty was 40p and Chivas a whopping 50p. My first thought was to go with Madge and my mom’s favorite, but I decided in this one last purchase decision, to throw thrift completely to the wind and get the good stuff.
“Chivas,” I said with my big hair, Heineken t-shirt, bell-bottom jeans and big hiking boots. The flight attendant with the little blue cap gave a perfunctory nod as she dug in her cart drawer for my booze, but also cracked just the slightest smile.
Lunch was next and I was given a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on a croissant with little packets of mayonnaise and mustard on the side, also with a bag of “crisps”, potato chips to us Yanks, plus fruit compote for dessert. Then with her next visit another Chivas. Now a bit deliciously buzzed, I watched the first in-flight movie, Live and Let Die, which I had not seen. It was the now familiar to me realm of James Bond, though notably for the first time with Roger Moore rather than Sean Connery. Comparing the former’s work to the latter’s, as I sipped my Scotch chilled from the ice cubes, I thought both renditions of the Bond character were duly suave, but Moore’s a more bombastic suave than the more familiar, underplayed Connery.
Inspired by the movie, I thought maybe I’d ask for a martini for my third drink, but I thought that the attendant would be laughing at me behind her measured smile, me still with my timidity kicking in. So it was a third Chivas instead. Dinner was a choice of beef, chicken or fish, I choosing the former. It was roast beef au jus with grilled potato wedges and julienned green beans, a creme puff for dessert.
The second movie was Paper Moon, which I had also not seen, about a con man who gets hooked up with a precocious nine-year-old girl, Addie, and the two become a team of petty swindlers. I felt immediate kinship with the Addie character, played with great pluck by Tatum O’Neal.
As the movie continued, I could feel the plane starting to descend, which finally dragged me from that purgatory outside time back to the reality that I was now flying over my home continent and would soon be on the ground. I ordered a fourth Chivas, breaking a third pound note giving me a nice pocketful of British coins. I had stashed away in my pack a small bag of coins I had collected from all the countries I had visited, looking forward to sharing them with my family and friends.
Finally the seatbelt light came on and the pilot announced we were beginning our final descent to Detroit. My body shivered with excitement, goosebumps up and down my arms as I clicked the lap belt into place, and stowed my little tray table. The first verse of the little ditty I had thought up leaving Rome went through my head again…
I want to see those faces glad
I want to see my mom and dad
To feel accomplishment and then
The mellowness of home
I looked out the window but could see nothing but clouds which our big descending plane submerged itself into, shuddering slightly. I felt the slight jolt and mechanical growl of the landing gear deploying below me. As I continued to look out the window the ground began to appear through the haze, gray and wet with highlights of melting white snow here and there. Then we crossed a road and the runway was now below, and with great anticipation I felt the landing gear engage the pavement and then heard the air breaks low howl as we decelerated to taxiing speed and turned off the runway and headed to our gate.
It was not a full plane but a big one, and it seemed to take forever standing in the aisle before the line of deboarding passengers in front of me moved forward. Traversing the jetway we were immediately routed down stairs to a special baggage claim area for international flights where we would get our luggage and then proceed through customs. Around the baggage carousel I noted other long haired young adults like myself waiting. And several other backpacks appeared on the conveyor from above and dumped onto the carousel before my red Kelty pack appeared. I looked at each of my fellow backpackers as they shouldered their pack and wondered if any of them were trying to smuggle any hashish into the country. I wasn’t of course, but it sparked my imagination, and Arlo Guthrie’s song played in my mind’s jukebox…
Coming into Los Angeles
Bringing in a couple of keys
Don’t touch my bag if you please
Mister customs man
My “customs man” took my passport then opened and rummaged through all the compartments of my backpack, plus asking me to empty my own pockets. To his queries I told him I had been in Western Europe for the past eleven weeks and I was coming home. He welcomed me home as he handed the passport back to me.
I stowed my down jacket that I had worn on the plane into its spot in my pack. I had on my hiking boots but my poor toes felt numb from sitting in the plane with them on for eight hours. I found a place to sit and took off the boots, my feet throbbing with the sudden freedom. And I noted with irony that these boots, purchased just before my European odyssey and never properly broken in, were still stiff and uncomfortable, even after my eleven week journey.
I dug in my pack for my two-inch heels, now dirty and stained. It hit me that I had probably logged more miles walking in them than my hiking boots. When my boots had given me painful blisters, my heels had provided relief. They had also added to my stature physically, adding two inches to my height. But more subtly and profoundly, they had added to my stature metaphorically, giving me a strut that with my lean body and big frizzy hair had become my sort of trademark. In Rome, my backpacker comrade Jen had called me “the Coopster” and complimented me on my shoes making a reference to “the Coopster’s low spark”. She was referring of course to Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi’s hit song, “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”. Later in Amsterdam my comrade Butch had picked up on the same theme, referring to me as the “low spark manster Coopenstein”. So it was only fitting that the shoes that had sustained and somehow transformed me should be on my feet for my grand reentrance. My big black hiking boots would just have to dangle from my pack and clunk against each other in protest to their secondary status.
I had left so many compelling places and even more compelling comrades behind in Europe, but that new persona that Jen and Butch had intuited in me was still with me, smuggled back through customs where no “customs man” could find it!
My old persona of little “Clubius” was fading away. That nickname my mom and dad had given me as a shy, diffident, precocious little kid with delusions of grandeur. That made up noble Roman emperor that my parents had fantasized humorously that I was the contemporary incarnation of. Another silly nickname they had given me at the time, “Zuper”, was a play on my last name Zale and the word “super”. The two nicknames, “Clubius” and “Zuper” had combined somehow into their third and more palatable nickname for me, “Cooper”. That was the name I chose for myself at age four when I had gained a full measure of my sentience. The name going forward I would tell people was mine when asked rather than my official first name of Jonathan.
I was ready to try on that new persona of “The Coopster” that Jen had christened and others of my backpacker cohort had seconded. All that went into being “The Coopster” was still to be worked out, but it was somewhere along the lines of my own incarnation of the Tarot deck Fool, always ready to journey to explore new realms with all I owned slung over my back, going over cliffs and plunging into new deep ends, whatever was necessary to push forward life’s adventures.
Now in my heels, bell-bottom jeans and brand new Heineken Brewery t-shirt, “the Coopster” indeed, I shouldered my pack and strode out of customs and emerged into the main terminal area a big grin plastered on my face. My mom was already waving at me when I caught sight of her and my brother standing behind the stanchions and rope. She had a huge smile and her big blue eyes sparkled in her round face. My brother nodded and grinned knowingly. They looked both familiar and strange to me, memories from some past life.
The three of us navigated the crowd and the barriers to reach each other. My mom put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my soul in that uniquely intuitive way of hers and said, “You did it, Sweetie, you really did it!” I tried to reply but couldn’t, feelings welling and a bit choked up I managed to nod as I hugged her. I really had done it.
This was great. My favorite part is you loading up on Chivas during your plane flight back and the movies (I note the Tarot card being a big part of “Live and Let Die” though I don’t think you included it for that reason :)). And I remember the Heineken shirt so well.
You do a good job of infusing the piece with anticipation and suspense, even though you’re simply just waiting to get on a plane. You can feel your sense of anticipation, excitement and sadness at what you’re leaving behind. It’s so odd having seen you come back all those years ago and never knowing all the depth that was behind who you were when you came back. I suppose that’s true in other aspects of your and our lives, but this one stands out.
Peter… Thanks for your words… made my week!
I saw “Live and Let Die” so long ago I had forgotten the Tarot card bit. Was it really about the Fool card? That would be so synchronistic!
Though you and I have shared so much of at least our young lives together there are intense experiences we both had that probably remain unshared.
Cooper, many thanks for the story. I’m going to reiterate what Peter said above, that was great! I like writing that “puts me there”. This story did just that. What an adventure, one i would have liked to take myself, though that California trip in 1976 had it’s highlights…the Mardi Gras adventures are pretty cool too.
I’ve proofread three or four books, i think this one’s ready to publish…and the music lyrics help make the story. I’m hearing a soundtrack in my head the whole time as i make it thru to another day…then get to play it on the radio once a week, sometimes including John Sinclair who i met when he lived in New Orleans, my favorite radical for sure.
Thanks again for the story, best one i’ve read in a good while. Rock on brother, rock on.
Thanks Bill… your comment made my day! I definitely do want to publish it though I think it needs one more rewrite before I do so. But before I do it would be nice to hook up with an agent and/or publisher who might be interested! Still have not done that research yet.
Yeah it was quite the adventure and the music of the 1960s and 1970s was my “Greek chorus” as I indicated in many of my chapters. It helped define and reinforce that whole hippie and Motown ethos!