Time it was and what a time it was...it was...
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you...
— Paul Simon
Alrighty, here we are one week PBW (post Brad-o-Ween). To those of you who took the time to stop by and comment and to those I've spoken with on IM, to the new folks I met and the 'old' pals I saw who made me feel most welcome last weekend - back atcha! It can't be said enough, you are an awesome group of people...
Cross fade...
Reading Pauly's itinerary for the next few months brought back a flood of memories for me. Time for another stroll.....
I was 17 years old and embarking on six week "study tour" that could have been six years for the level of change that occurred in that brief time. An experience worthy of a "coming of age" flick if only I had the talent to write it.
The trip included four weeks in Oxford, England attending classes that would
enhance our current education (coff) with one week prior and one week post traveling
to Scotland and Ireland; Amsterdam and Paris respectively. We arrived in England
in the midst of some sort of strike, if memory serves. We were to wait a long
12 hours or so at King's Cross Station before being able to board a train for
Edinburgh. Plenty of time to seek out trouble... and his name was JJ Thoburn.
A small snapshot of June-July, 1968:
There was a small cohort of us who, if the group went right, we went left.
On day trips, if we went at all, we routinely would split from the main group and go explore on our own.
We became regulars at the Dew Drop, a pub in Oxford where I learned all about Lager-n-Lime.
Sitting up in our room with a loaf of bread, jar of organic peanut butter, bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes learning to inhale.
I fought off an amorous Italian who stuck his tongue down my throat and did his best getting to second base and attempted wholeheartedly to round third and head for home. I played a strong defense and he was tagged out before he knew what hit him.
My friend Linda's Italian hit a home run. She yielded up that prize of womanhood to her Italian (unbeknownst to me until after we arrived back home).
I was little more yielding to JJ and we were more than once admonished by the Hyde Park bobbies to sit up and act right. The late-night train ride from London to Oxford would have been a very different memory had it been longer...
Kissing JJ goodnight in the lobby of the boys 'dorm' on Banbury Rd., I experienced my most embarrassing moment (if not embarrassing at the time, the morning after) - peeing unceremoniously and unabashedly all over the carpet. I was very inebriated after a day in London and several pub stops along the way.
The
weekly dance in the rose garden - psychedelic disco and a super hot DJ.
Me, an American, dining with a Frenchman who didn't speak English, in a Chinese restaurant in Oxford, England.
A couple of our group were introduced to the weed, mary-j. I was spared this transgression, exactly why, I never discovered.
Edinburgh & Dublin - Scotland, dear Scotland, home of my ancestors and completely captured my heart. Ireland, cold and not friendly to Yanks. I kissed the Blarney Stone.
Amsterdam & Paris: getting lost and rescued in the land of tulips, canals, and legalized prostitution; getting pinched on the ass in the metro and seeing the aftermath of the Paris '68 student riots. The Louvre.
It was a summer I said farewell to childhood and opened the door to my future - my future to be defined by every choice I made from then on, because I had learned I had a choice.
And, oh what a time it was to make that discovery....
