I guess I furst got the travelling bug as a boy growing up on the shore of Pensacola Bay in Florida in the 1950's.
It was a Navy town, of course, and I was constantly hearing of distant lands. Sailors would return with strange tattoos and stories of Pacific ports. One custom was to have dragons and other oriental symbols embroidered on the inside cuff of their uniforms. Hidden while aboard the base, when the sailors were on shore leave, they would turn their cuffs inside out to display the colorful needlework.
Of course, in the event of the appearance of the Shore Patrol, these would be rapidly hidden as their display was against uniform regs.
About 1961, I got to go on a bus trip to Dallas, Texas (oddly enough as it turned out, where I now live). This was the first time in my life I had gone anywhere of size other than Atlanta, Georgia, where the bulk of my family lived.
In 1963, my sister married a young man from Long Island, New York, and, in 1965, my parents and I drove to Long Island to visit them, and I not only got my first taste of New York City and Manhattan, but also the Beatles (appearing there at that time), and the New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows.
I was hooked. I could no longer live in one town or even, as I was to learn, endure the 9 to 5 existence of the average person.
In 1966, I joined the U.S. Army.
After Basic Combat Training on Tank Hill, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, I was sent all the way across the country to study German at the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, California. Ever since the first day I walked down the hill from the language school and out on Old Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey has been my second favorite place to be, after Pensacola, where I grew up.
To tell the truth, sometimes I think it's a tie!
One of the benefits of being in Monterey, of course, was its proximity to that den of iniquity...San Francisco!
This was the early part ot Hippies, Sexual Freedom, and Topless Dancers.
As a member of the army, it was hard to be a hippie. As a naive Catholic kid from the sticks, I did not really get into the sexual freedom thing. However, it was easy to hop a bus to San Francisco and actually watch performances by "performers" such as Carol Doda and Yvonne D'Angier.
In fact, while wandering around North Beach, I nearly tripped over Carol Doda as she came out of the "Off Broadway" club, followed by a bevy of reporters.
I then got sent to Germany (twice for a total of six years), and since have wandered around Europe, and the U.S., mainly as a soldier and as an Over-the-Road truck driver.
Soon, my wife and I will be leaving to go to Italy (my wife's family came from Sicily), where we will visit Rome, Florence, and Sicily, with a stop in London, which I last visited over 20 years ago.
I love to travel and have not had the opportunity to go all the places I would like to go, but, now that I am retired I intend to make up for that! If I cannot go there, I will read or write about it. Almost every day, my wife and I watch Rick Steves, Samantha Brown, Burt Wolfe, and any other show about the many interesting and intriguing destinations around the world.
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CITIES OF THE WORLD
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