Yes, folks, it's that long awaited yearly Grimm Christmas letter - prized by all. I imagine years from now collections of these letters will be auctioned off at one of the world's great auction houses. On the other hand, you may find them so boring that you don't bother to read them. Oh well, I'm only doing as instructed - "Yes dear, I'm writing the Christmas letter."
It hasn't been all that exciting a year and most of you will have received other Grimm tales this year, so I won't go into great detail. Other than our trip home last Christmas, our only other vacation was one week in Adelaide in April. I enjoyed seeing an old friend and his family who moved from Alice two years ago. We also saw a friend of Toby's who moved to Adelaide~ visited a poet whom we had met here in Alice, did some shopping and went to Kangaroo Island where we saw some Australian wildlife. It was a nice break, but too short. As I have said before, Alice is nice, but when you are 1000 miles from anywhere you need to get away occasionally.
Dwight came home for his summer break and found a lot of work her. He worked a good many hours at the newspaper, managed a clothing store for quite a few weeks and also worked on call for a photographer in town. One week he spent a lot of time on assignment at the Sheraton photographing some of the senior Sheraton VIPs from al over the country. He even got a fully paid trip to Ayers Rock’s down, plane back) accommodations and incredible meals down there to photograph this group. He grumbled a bit about how many hours he was working (and there were a number of weeks when he had some work all seven days), but he had a few weeks of no work before he left and he soon got bored. He did get to play some golf with a friend and I even went out with them once. It was good he found all of that work and since Australia pays well for part time work, he was able to make quite a bit of money (and saved most of it). He's about finished the first term of the sophomore year and I think was suffering the sophomore slump (if there is such a thing). But he says he's found ways to break out of it (including looking into getting back into ice hockey - which he hasn't played for 10 years). He went to the home of the grandparents of a friend for Thanksgiving and is going with his roommate to Mexico when he visits his aunts at Christmas. Dorothy asked him to fly home, but he declined saying it was too far and too expensive for only three weeks.
Dorothy grumbles about the mob at the newspaper - and most of her complaints appear to be justified (from what I can tell). However, she continues to put a lot of hours in and is appreciated by all of the arts and crafts and musically oriented people in town and the people connected with the schools. Much to my dismay at times (especially when she'S late for a meal or when people call at all times of the day or night) she doesn't say no to any request to cover an event. Even though the Advocate has two photographers, Dorothy takes many pictures to go with the stories she is covering. Once in three consecutive issues of the newspaper, she had 50 photos. A number of her pictures have been on the front page of the paper. Not bad for a non-professional.
Dorothy was also contacted by a national crafts magazine to do an article on crafts in Alice Springs. She not only wrote an article but took her own color photos as well and the article and pictures appeared in the magazine in September. The Arts and Crafts people both here and in Darwin were delighted.
Toby's interests haven't changed this year. He's still very much interested in table tennis, tenpin bowling, and of course comics. I don't even want to know how many comics he currently has, but it must be over 4000. They are organized and even catalogued to a certain extent. He has a list of those issues he's missing and has sent the list to his grandparents. Since there are over 3500 he's looking for (though not completely realistically since Batman *1 and other issues worth thousands of dollars are listed) - I would have liked to have heard the reaction on receiving the lists. I can't criticize too much since I collect books, although I'm very particular about buying any now - there's too many in the house.
Toby is currently involved in practices for a school play that will finally be performed the end of November (the practices have been going of for months.) Speaking of the play, Dorothy and I recently took the 45-minute nurse in how to usher at the Araluen Arts Center. So now that we are on their roster, we can usher for shows and we will each usher one night for the school play. The usher system is that any group who uses the theatre at Araluen either has to pay $30 per usher or supply their own. Those people who do usher don't get paid but can work for a group or give their credits to one of the music or art groups so they aren't charged.
The ushering - whenever I do it - is really the only thing I am currently involved in. Our local Australian-American Association decided to call it quits. Since the pilots' strike last year, there has only been one of the American tour groups come though which we used to host. Since that was our principal pastime, people began to lose interest. Also, quite a few left town and we couldn't recruit any new members so we folded our tents. I also decided for a number of reasons to drop out of the writer's group (Fellowship of Australian writers). So I guess other than the occasion ushering job, I'll play hermit.
We had some visitors from the U.S. a month ago. I believe they liked Central Australia, although I'm always curious how people will react to the isolation. Anyway, their visit prompted one funny incident and one rather amazing act on the part of Dorothy, the city girl. The morning after they arrived Jim and Martha got up before us and went out for a walk, according to Martha's son, Mike, who was also here. Well, they were gone a long time and I asked Dorothy if I should go to look for them. She asked me which direction I would go and since I really didn't know I gave up that idea. As I was sitting at the dining room table looking out of the window I saw a police van pull up in front of our house. Guess who got out. They had walked a long ways and finally had no idea how to get back to our house so when a police van drove past, Martha flagged it down. In her very southern accent she explained to the officers that they were tourists. "No kidding, lady," was the reply. She asked if they could give them a ride to their friends' house. It turned out they were only three blocks away but the police complied - probably to give them a new "tourist story."
Now to Dorothy's amazing act. We had originally bought a 4-wheel drive van with the idea of going back (and taking visitors) to a spot we really liked our first tour, called Palm valley - about 85 miles from Alice. However it soon became evident that my van was not a true bush vehicle because it rides fairly low. So, we never went back and I would have been apprehensive about trying. However, Dorothy had been there recently during one of her trips to a nearby Aboriginal community and found that the road was improved. So this lady, who screams at me as soon as the van's wheels touch a dirt road when I'm driving, took her friends over the dirt, rock-strewn 13-mile road from the main road to Palm valley. I was concerned about my van. But I'm glad to say, people and vehicle all survived. Martha though it was truly the end of the world, but I assured her that 85 miles from Alice, at a tourist attraction is not the end of the world.
The one interesting event that occurred recently in town was a visit by the Darwin Symphony Orchestra. The group itself was not the best, but they chose to perform on a specially constructed stage in the dry Todd riverbed on the grounds of the Old Telegraph Station, a national park. It was held at night (a necessity at this time of the year when daytime temperatures are usually over 100 degrees F). The audience sat on the river bank with the orchestra sitting on the stage in front of a large hill containing many of the red rocks which mark this area. The lighting lit the orchestra and enough of the hill to create a rather spectacular scene.
Dorothy and Toby are going to the U.S. for a visit in January. I declined since I figure one way or the other I'll be returning in the June-August time period next year and two trips a year are too many). They'll stop and visit Dwight at Stanford and then reach the east coast in time for the big 3-day comic convention in New York City. Dorothy took Toby to it last year (only one day) and got hooked. She is looking forward to it as much as Toby. Incidentally they'll visit relatives and friends on the east coast.
My current tour runs out in August next year. I formally applied for a new tour and hope to hear in the next month whether I will be granted another 2-year tour. We all hope so. Wish us luck.
Well, I guess that brings me to the end of the 1990 Christmas letter. We hope that everyone has a great Christmas and wonderful New Year.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
July 1990: 'Roos & Didgeridoos
Dorothy thought it might be time for me to bring forth another of my world famous reports on those strange beings - the Grimms and their adventures in the land of 'roos and didgeridoos. (Hey, that rhymes.)
I'd imagine most of you have gotten the trip report for our travels to the big city (Adelaide) in April, so I'll pick up the tale from there. I can't remember May, but then I can't remember what happened last week so I just placed a call to Lois Lane at her office. «I sometimes refer to Dorothy as Lois Lane, who was/is a reporter friend of Superman - Dorothy doesn't mind but retorts with "you sure aren't Clark Kent" - Superman's disguise)). She reminded me of a number of things - not necessarily in chronological order.
We all spent a lot of time one week at the Araluen Arts Centre for the annual Eisteddfod (a competitive festival of the arts).
Toby sang in three different choirs during the week. I really enjoy the Eisteddfod because the community has an incredible number of musically talented people ranging from the very young to people even older than me. If you enjoy music it's a real treat. There is everything from piano soloists, to rock bands, serious choral groups to a group of teachers from Toby's school dressed up in funny outfits and singing humorous songs. I commented to them that I shouldn't be surprised if there were a number of kids withdrawn after parents saw the types of people who were teaching their children. The Eisteddfod ran for 5 and a half days and only one adjudicator graded every entry. The event culminated in a concert on Saturday night in which the best performers from the entire week did a number, and the concert was sold out.
I finally went fossicking again - after a long lapse - and actually found some small zircons which I had faceted. That was enough to get me interested again. As soon as I get the chance I want to go again, maybe with Dwight.
A national craft magazine was looking for someone to do an article for them on crafts in Alice Springs and were given Dorothy's name. She not only wrote the article, but took her own color pictures as well and sent the article and pictures off to the magazine. I believe the article is to be in the September issue of the magazine. She is excited about it and I think it is neat. Dorothy still gets invited to attend a lot of activities in town (I comment that she occasionally makes a guest appearance at home) and once in a blue moon even invites me along. I often complain that it must be nice to get to go out to dinner - I never get to. However, I won't do that again for a while. I was invited to accompany Dorothy to the "turnover" (installation of new officers) dinner of the Lioness club. I can't begin to tell you how exciting it was. I will gladly forego the free meal for anymore such excitement. The one nice touch was that they presented Dorothy with a certificate of appreciation for all of the work that she had done for them by covering many of their activities. It is nice to know that people in town appreciate how hard Dorothy works for the community - unfortunately the sorry excuse for a staff at the newspaper doesn't. Once recently after she spent eleven hours putting together the community arts page, the management pulled the entire page because they needed the space (probably for more sports)
and didn't tell her. She didn't know it until the edition came out. To give you an example of the importance of sports - in a paper of about 30 pages (more or less), one page a week is devoted to community arts, six in each issue (two a week) to sports. Needless to say Dorothy was not happy and I think management is still reminded of it. That occurred on a Friday and on Monday all sorts of disasters struck the paper - computers went down for most of the day and pictures sent up to Darwin, where the paper is printed, were lost. Dorothy told them that some of her Aboriginal friends had used their influence with the spirits.
Fortunately, she did not invite me to go along to a couple of recent "male revues" which she reluctantly ‘covered" recently.
Speaking of Aboriginals, Dorothy knows quite a few of them, and has visited various of the areas outside of town on a number of occasions. Sometime back two of the senior elders were murdered in one of the communities - about 75 miles from town. Of course it was big news and there was a lot of discussion about it at the paper Dorothy didn't tell the staff until afterwards, but she went to the funeral for the two men and wrote a very nice article about it in the paper.
Dorothy has also done a number of things for the writer's group in town (the Fellowship of Australian Writers), including doing critiques of some of their writings. Recently the organization decided to collect a number of their stories and publish them, and they asked Dorothy to "launch" their book (formally present it to the public). The president of the local chapter wanted a lot of publicity and called every radio station in town, one of which interviewed Dorothy live. The launching was held at the library and was attended by 15 or 20 people. Dorothy gave a nice speech and at the end tossed (launched) the book to the librarian. I don't think any of the writers present were offended.
Another movie was recently shot in town. The title is "Until the End of the world" (now why did they pick Alice springs for a movie of that title?). It starred Sam Neil, William Hurt, Jeanne Moreau, and several aboriginal stars - Ernie Dingo (Crocodile Dundee), David Gulpillil (Storm Boy) and Justine Saunders (Fringe Dweller~). None of us got on the set, but Dorothy photographed a benefit concert, at which several of the stars showed up (Sam Neil even played the electric organ). She also had a number of dealings with Ernie Dingo. And all of us went to a local video shop (along with about 300 other people) to see the announcement of the kids who won the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Contest. Oh, and William Hurt made a guest appearance (I've suspected he is a bit weird, but showing up at that event in the outback of Australia should raise of few eyebrows even among the strange mob in Hollywood.) Toby and Dwight both got his autograph and he mentioned to Toby that he had a boyhood friend named Toby.
This was the fifth movie filmed in Alice Springs in the last four or five years: "Last Frontier" with Linda Evans; "Evil Angels" ("A Cry in the Dark" in the U.S.) starring Meryle Streep; "Quigly Down Under" with Tom Selleck; "Naked under Capricorn" with some English stars, and this one. Yessir folks, to get right up close to your favorite movie star - come to Alice Springs.
Dorothy wanted me to mention that while she was in town, Justine Saunders directed a play, called Sheerluck Holmes, for one of the high schools and Toby sang in a group which stood offstage mainly because they weren't all students at that school.
I have mentioned Dwight a couple of times - that is because he is here ("home") for the summer. We know he is home because: A. there is one less car available for use (affecting me as the "third" driver); B. our grocery bills are up significantly (due in part to one of Dwight's friends, Chris, who sort of lives at our place now); C. the big increase in laundry (how many sets of clothes tan you go through in one day?); D. there are often noises in the middle of the night that weren't there before (a voice out of the dark at.3 a.m. saying "Did Dwight come home?" - "Oh, please dear, let me jump up in the cold" - it's winter here - "and go check," I answer.); and E. I am washing a lot more dishes.
Dwight left San Francisco on June 14th, after a good year at Stanford, flew to L.A., where his plane left 5 hours late for Sydney. Fortunately, he called us so we didn't worry, but I knew he would miss his connection in Sydney for a direct flight to Alice and assumed he would have to spend the night in Sydney. However, the airlines put him on a flight through Melbourne and then on to Alice, arriving here at 4 p.m. That was Saturday, June 16th. He rested the next day, and caught up with friends, looked for a job Monday, had his first job (for the newspaper) that night, went for instructions on another job on Tuesday, and started work the next day and has only had one entire day off since. He worked several weeks full time in a clothing store (as manager since he was the only employee) and so far two weeks full time at the newspaper. In addition, he occasionally has assignments for the paper in the evening, taking "social pics" and covers sports on the weekend for them. He may start to have some free days soon, although a guy who owns a photographic studio in town wants him to fill in for him while he is away over the next month. So, Dwight may have more work, and I believe later on there is another full week at the newspaper. He should have enough money for incidental expenses at Stanford next year.
Toby just finished a month's vacation. He didn't do much except spend a lot of time with his mates. He did spend one day sorting his comic collection in the master bedroom. I came home from work and opened the door to the bedroom and gasped. Every square foot of flat space - floor, bed, dressers was covered with stacks of comics. Needless to say, I told him they would have to be returned to one of the numerous filing cabinets that he has for them before bedtime. I won't tell you how many he has except to say there are probably enough to start a used comic shop. Toby also spent a lot of time on the tennis courts, playing computer games, and watching videos on his vacation.
Toby's return to school resulted in a slightly embarrassing situation for his parents. He received the results of his exams shortly after the end of the term and we didn't tell him - they were quite good. I have to explain - when Toby was three he told me one day that he had helped the baby sitter clean up her house. I asked what he had done and he said he had swept the kitchen floor. The he asked for a reward. I asked what type of reward - figuring 25 or 50 cents. He immediately named a Star Wars toy that cost $15. So you have to be careful discussing "rewards" with Toby. Also we are on him all the time because of this casual approach to doing homework. So, we knew we were in for trouble when these grades came home and were so good. I didn't realize Dorothy had never told him about them, but the first day back at school he mentioned that he had never seen the grades and one of the teachers tore the office apart trying to find a copy of them and apparently never did. I had to call the teacher, who fortunately is la lot like Toby and apparently really likes him, and confess that we had not told Toby. I told him about the incident when Toby was three and he said "This lad is no fool." As Dorothy and I keep saying - how many more years until he goes off to university?
So what have I been doing exciting? Ha! The most exciting thing is trying to organize the family stamp collection, which involves thousands of stamps which have not been organized for about 10 years or so. On top of the stamps we have, someone in the stamp club left town and left bags and bags of stamps (big grocery size plastic bags) and Dorothy periodically brings several home for me to go through looking for some we don't have. I feel I have a never-ending task.
For my birthday, Dwight and his friend Chris decided to treat me to Mexican meal - prepared by themselves. There were four courses the first of which was nachos, which we started eating at 6:45. Those were followed by tacos, enchiladas (Old EI Paso brand), and finally, quesadillas, which we finished at 9:30. It actually wasn't a bad meal. Toby traded in four used comics at a used book store for a free book for me (last of the big time spenders) and Dorothy bought me two tickets to a performance of the Australian youth Orchestra (I asked her along - she wasn't enthusiastic but went and did not grump.)
I have been very busy at work filling in for my boss wh6 has been in the u.s. for two months (on home leave between tours) and doing my own job as well. He should be back at work next week and I am sure looking forward to that. I think as soon as he settles in I may take off a few days to spend some time with Dwight.
Our dog, Snickers, is still driving me crazy, Between running up and down along the side fence barking at the neighbor's dog, or along the front fence chasing anything that moves, and trying to get over my chicken wire addition to the low fence, the dog never stops. He is not vicious, but loves to herd anything - so he allows people to come into the yard, but tries to stop them from leaving so they will play with him. But the constant source of amusement for us is his attempt to get the cat to play by jumping up and down all around her until she (who is about 1/5 his size) gets tired of his antics and goes after him. Since he has seen her climb a tree to get away from him, he figures he can do the same, but he hasn't mastered it yet - he is not an especially bright dog.
Well, I have rambled on long enough and I have to get back to work, so I will stop here.
April 1990: Adelaide / Kangaroo Island
Well, we finally took another trip within Australia. Every since my best friend moved to Adelaide in January 1989 I have wanted to go visit him, and finally talked Dorothy into going during the week that the schools had a week's vacation.
We left Alice Springs Saturday afternoon, April 7th, and although the flight was uneventful, it didn't take long before the first incident. On the approach into Adelaide, the stewardess announced that they could make arrangements for car rental. I had made my own arrangements but suddenly realized that I had forgotten my driver's license. Let me explain - during the warm months in Alice I wear "Stubbies" - Australian shorts. They are quite short with only one small pocket on the back and one smaller pocket on the front. There is no space for a wallet, so I carry my driver's license in my van. This incident wouldn't have been so bad, except that I forgot both my Australian and U.S. driver’s licenses on our trip back to the U.S. less than four months ago. Needless to say, Dorothy was not amused. But as they say here, “No worries, Mate!" The rental car agent never asked for it.
We drove (rather I drove) to the flat where we were staying. The U.S. govt. rents flats in Adelaide for a variety of reasons. Years ago the only air route to Alice was through Adelaide, so when you moved here, most people had to stay overnight in Adelaide. Also, even today, if someone has a medical problem that needs treatment in Adelaide they are sent there and may use, or whoever accompanies them, may use the flats. If you are in Adelaide just for vacation and they are open, you may reserve one. There is a charge for them, but they are quite cheap compared to motels.
After settling in we went out to eat at (guess where McDonalds, of course). We had seen one downtown, but it happened to be on the busiest street in Adelaide on a Saturday night, and after driving around looking for a parking space, we gave up, returned to the flat, looked up McDonalds in the yellow pages and went to the next closest one. Since Dorothy is not a big McDonalds fan all of this effort to find one did not overly impress her.
When we were getting ready the next morning to drive to my friend's house, Toby went to get his cowboy boots out of the suitcase only to discover that I had mistakenly packed two left boots. We reached my friend's house mid-morning. Jeff and his family live in a nice older home set in a hilly secluded area about 15 miles south of the city center. The yard is about 1/3 of an acre and is covered with trees and shrubs. A winding path leads down a hill to a bench at the back of the property from where you can't see the house. There's no grass to mow. Since Jeff's wife wasn't home from work yet, he took us for a ride to the highest point in the area from where you can see all of Adelaide, then, after stopping at a restaurant which some of Jeff's friends manage (only to discover they weren't there) we ate lunch and then stopped at several flea markets in the area. We returned to Jeff's house, visited with Jackie for a while and returned to town to go see the movie The Hunt For Red october. Dwight had seen it and was so impressed that he sent his poor old father who has a son going to Stanford, 10 Australian dollars to see it. We all enjoyed it.
The next morning we went back to the airport to fly to Kangaroo Island. The roads are so bad· on the island that the rental car companies on the mainland won't let their cars be taken over (by ferry), so we flew over, returning one rental car in Adelaide and picking up another one on the island. The car I picked up there looked like a well-worn reject from the mainland, but it is understandable. The majority of the roads are dirt/gravel and the accident rate is supposedly very high. Maximum speed is supposed to be about 35-40 mph. I survived three days without going off the road. I wasn't so lucky when I rented the car, though. The lady asked for a license. I explained my predicament. No problem - she just wrote on the rental agreement, "Mr. Grimm assures me he has an N.T. driver's license," and sent me on my way (after a long spiel about the things to see and do on the island and admonitions about the roads - 65 cars had gone off the roads just this year so far).
That day we mainly spent wandering around Kingscote, the largest town on the island with a population of about 1400 (if you are looking for shopping malls, this is not the place to come.) We did drive to a beach and in the afternoon went to a boat ramp where a guy shows up every day at 4 p.m. to feed the birds. The seagulls and pelicans recognize his truck and are flying into the bed of the truck even before he stops. Toby stopped wading in the water long enough to feed some fish to the pelicans.
That night we tried to find some of the fairy penguins that nest allover the island. These small penguins (about a foot high) spend all day in the water and come onto land late in the evening to nest in the rocks and caves on the island. We did not have any luck seeing any.
We got up early Tuesday to take an all day trip down to the National Park at the other end of the island - the island is about 90 miles long. I asked the ranger at the park if it was possible to see some platypus and she said some had been sighted in a portion of the river that starts in the park. After driving about 10 miles down another dirt road, we walked a mile or so back through the woods to the river, but failed to see any platypus. We did see several kangaroos on the way to that spot. Then we drove to a place called Admiral's Arch. From the parking lot there, we walked past a lighthouse and downhill over a rough walk. Just before the walk or track turned to go on down behind the hill it was possible to stand and see many New Zealand fur seals sunning themselves on rocks at the base of the cliff and on a small island a short ways off the coast - plus some playing in the waves. We continued on down the track and rounding the bend carne on the phenomena which resulted in the name "Admiral's Arch." Under the hill that we had just walked down was a huge hole that had been worn away - the top an arch with rock formations resembling stalactites hanging down and the opening framed a beautiful scene on the other side of a portion of rocky coastline with crashing waves. It was pretty spectacular.
We next drove to another location in the park called the Remarkable Rocks, which are a group of granite boulders set on top of a hill right beside the water and the elements have worn them away into very odd shapes. We left the park and started back to Kingscote.
As I was driving down the road I saw an animal in the road and braked fairly hard which demonstrated the condition of the roads my front wheels ended up in the soft dirt on the shoulder, but thank goodness I was able to get back on the road. The animal turned out to be an echidna, a spiny anteater (the spines are similar but shorter to those of a porcupine). It was the first time we had seen one in the wild. Later, we stopped at a farm that had a colony of koalas in gum trees on their property. This is a good example of the lack of commercialization on the island yet. There is no charge, only a box tacked up on a tree for donations. We saw 10 koalas. We stopped at some caves, but missed the guided tours by about 3 minutes so continued on to Seal Beach. Park rangers are there to talk about the rare Australian sea lions, which are lying allover the beach, and to protect the sea lions. The ranger said they are not there to protect humans. There are hundreds of sea lions allover the beach and even over the sand dunes in among the plants. Visitors are not allowed in the dunes or within 10 feet of the sea lions, and the ranger said that their policy is only to keep humans from harming the them. They do not interfere with the sea lions even if they are injured. Our last stop of the day was at a marsh which is supposed to be a haven for many birds, but that day there were not many there, so we soon left and headed back to town.
That evening thanks to Toby's persistence, we saw a number of fairy penguins in the rocks by the water right in front of our motel. It is a wonder how those little awkward-looking animals manage to climb those rocks. They didn't show up until about 10:30 or so, so I guess we were ~here too early the day before.
The last day on the island, we drove to a place called American River, so called because the American ship the Independence was built there (I wondered how many Americans knew that). It is a beautiful place but not much is happening there - I figure the population is probably a couple of hundred. We drove on to the· other town, Peneshaw which is a bit larger than American River, but smaller than Kingscote. We were walking around looking at the half dozen shops when we bumped into some other Americans from Alice Springs. The man and his son were going fishing on a boat that afternoon from a wharf in American River. The boat trip was only four hours, returning before our plane left, it was inexpensive, and included use of fishing gear and bait. I declined going since our trip to the Great Barrier reef years ago when I got deathly seasick. But I was able to get Toby on and he thoroughly enjoyed himself - he knew the American boy who went so he had a friend and he caught the biggest fish of the day - something called a Blue Devil - about a foot long with a blue tinge to it, plus two Whitings. I probably could have gone since the boat never actually went out to the sea and the water in the bay (American River is more of a bay) was calm.
While Toby was gone, Dorothy and I drove over to a place where Gypsum-is loaded onto boats. On the dirt road back to the place, I blew a tire and ruined it, so with only the spare on the car we decided not to go anywhere else. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around American River, and finally resorted to sitting on the wharf for about an hour and a half where I took a nap in the back seat, Dorothy wrote letters and we both took turns feeding bread to seagulls. It was loads of fun. We flew back to Adelaide that evening- and once again the car rental agent didn't ask me for a driver's license.
Thursday we walked from the flat downtown and spent the morning and part of the afternoon shopping in the mall area - primarily we visited comic shops (see the last U.S. trip report), and a couple of stamp stores. We walked back to the flat and then drove out to a suburb looking for more comic shops. Toby found comics that day, but I did not find a lampshade that some friends had asked me to look for, or a wedding present for some other friends.
That niqht we visited a guy whom we had met in Alice Springs when he was here to read poetry. Geoff Goodfellow is a rugged individual who visits prisons reading poetry and teaching inmates how to write. I found out when he was here that he had visited and stayed with Ken Kesey when he visited the U.S. I've been interested in Kesey since I first read his renowned novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo'S Nest," and then a partial biography on him in a book called the "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Someone in the U.S. made a video documentary on Kesey, but according to Geoff, President Reagan had used his influence to make sure it wouldn't be shown on TV in the U.S. because of the emphasis on drugs (only because Kesey bad a long history of using various hallucinogenic drugs). Anyway, Geoff had a copy of the tape and offered to show it to us if we came to Adelaide. Geoff's wife, Sally, had prepared a delicious curry which Dorothy and I enjoyed. (Toby ate some plain rice, and a few molecules of curry, but was rescued by some delicious apple pie for dessert). Between having a nice chat with Geoff and Sally and seeing the video, it was an enjoyable evening.
Since Australia closes down for Good Friday, we were at loose ends the next day until we were to go back to Jeff and Jackie's for a barbecue. We drove over along the ocean and stopped in a suburb and walked around for a while - a few small shops were open. Finally, we went to Hawthorndene, where Jeff lives, and by coincidence, where a friend of Toby's also lives. Elizabeth is a real character and we all like her (as long as I don't have to raise her). I know Toby misses her - they were good friends until she left Alice Springs in December 1988 - but they have kept in touch. We took Elizabeth along to the barbecue. Although Jeff was a bit disorganized as usual, it was a good meal and nice evening.
The next morning we went to an arts and crafts fair at the Show Grounds. Fortunately, we got there early, found a place to park and were near the front of the line when it opened. The place was soon mobbed and even when we left an hour later, there was still a line to get in. We soon found out why - nothing else was open. The stores in Adelaide closed down for four days over Easter. None of us were impressed since we had looked forward to doing more shopping We drove south quite a ways to see if a mall in the suburbs had opened - no such luck - and to a wine, food, music and art fair at
a winery way out in the county. I took so many turns to get there that I was beginning to wonder if I should have dropped bread crumbs to find my way back. It was not all that exciting and we drove back to the city, stopping at any little shop we found open, and also stopped to say hello to the parents of some other friends here in town.
We had made arrangements to meet Elizabeth at the mall at 5:30, after which we ate, went back to the flat for awhile, then returned to the mall to meet Jeff and Jackie. The four adults went to the movies to see "Driving Miss Daisy" while the two teenagers (both of whom said they wouldn't be caught coming from a "G" rated movie) went to see "Tango and Cash." Jeff took Elizabeth home and we returned to the flat.
On Easter Sunday, I returned the rental car unscratched and we had an uneventful flight home to Alice Springs.
We left Alice Springs Saturday afternoon, April 7th, and although the flight was uneventful, it didn't take long before the first incident. On the approach into Adelaide, the stewardess announced that they could make arrangements for car rental. I had made my own arrangements but suddenly realized that I had forgotten my driver's license. Let me explain - during the warm months in Alice I wear "Stubbies" - Australian shorts. They are quite short with only one small pocket on the back and one smaller pocket on the front. There is no space for a wallet, so I carry my driver's license in my van. This incident wouldn't have been so bad, except that I forgot both my Australian and U.S. driver’s licenses on our trip back to the U.S. less than four months ago. Needless to say, Dorothy was not amused. But as they say here, “No worries, Mate!" The rental car agent never asked for it.
We drove (rather I drove) to the flat where we were staying. The U.S. govt. rents flats in Adelaide for a variety of reasons. Years ago the only air route to Alice was through Adelaide, so when you moved here, most people had to stay overnight in Adelaide. Also, even today, if someone has a medical problem that needs treatment in Adelaide they are sent there and may use, or whoever accompanies them, may use the flats. If you are in Adelaide just for vacation and they are open, you may reserve one. There is a charge for them, but they are quite cheap compared to motels.
After settling in we went out to eat at (guess where McDonalds, of course). We had seen one downtown, but it happened to be on the busiest street in Adelaide on a Saturday night, and after driving around looking for a parking space, we gave up, returned to the flat, looked up McDonalds in the yellow pages and went to the next closest one. Since Dorothy is not a big McDonalds fan all of this effort to find one did not overly impress her.
When we were getting ready the next morning to drive to my friend's house, Toby went to get his cowboy boots out of the suitcase only to discover that I had mistakenly packed two left boots. We reached my friend's house mid-morning. Jeff and his family live in a nice older home set in a hilly secluded area about 15 miles south of the city center. The yard is about 1/3 of an acre and is covered with trees and shrubs. A winding path leads down a hill to a bench at the back of the property from where you can't see the house. There's no grass to mow. Since Jeff's wife wasn't home from work yet, he took us for a ride to the highest point in the area from where you can see all of Adelaide, then, after stopping at a restaurant which some of Jeff's friends manage (only to discover they weren't there) we ate lunch and then stopped at several flea markets in the area. We returned to Jeff's house, visited with Jackie for a while and returned to town to go see the movie The Hunt For Red october. Dwight had seen it and was so impressed that he sent his poor old father who has a son going to Stanford, 10 Australian dollars to see it. We all enjoyed it.
The next morning we went back to the airport to fly to Kangaroo Island. The roads are so bad· on the island that the rental car companies on the mainland won't let their cars be taken over (by ferry), so we flew over, returning one rental car in Adelaide and picking up another one on the island. The car I picked up there looked like a well-worn reject from the mainland, but it is understandable. The majority of the roads are dirt/gravel and the accident rate is supposedly very high. Maximum speed is supposed to be about 35-40 mph. I survived three days without going off the road. I wasn't so lucky when I rented the car, though. The lady asked for a license. I explained my predicament. No problem - she just wrote on the rental agreement, "Mr. Grimm assures me he has an N.T. driver's license," and sent me on my way (after a long spiel about the things to see and do on the island and admonitions about the roads - 65 cars had gone off the roads just this year so far).
That day we mainly spent wandering around Kingscote, the largest town on the island with a population of about 1400 (if you are looking for shopping malls, this is not the place to come.) We did drive to a beach and in the afternoon went to a boat ramp where a guy shows up every day at 4 p.m. to feed the birds. The seagulls and pelicans recognize his truck and are flying into the bed of the truck even before he stops. Toby stopped wading in the water long enough to feed some fish to the pelicans.
That night we tried to find some of the fairy penguins that nest allover the island. These small penguins (about a foot high) spend all day in the water and come onto land late in the evening to nest in the rocks and caves on the island. We did not have any luck seeing any.
We got up early Tuesday to take an all day trip down to the National Park at the other end of the island - the island is about 90 miles long. I asked the ranger at the park if it was possible to see some platypus and she said some had been sighted in a portion of the river that starts in the park. After driving about 10 miles down another dirt road, we walked a mile or so back through the woods to the river, but failed to see any platypus. We did see several kangaroos on the way to that spot. Then we drove to a place called Admiral's Arch. From the parking lot there, we walked past a lighthouse and downhill over a rough walk. Just before the walk or track turned to go on down behind the hill it was possible to stand and see many New Zealand fur seals sunning themselves on rocks at the base of the cliff and on a small island a short ways off the coast - plus some playing in the waves. We continued on down the track and rounding the bend carne on the phenomena which resulted in the name "Admiral's Arch." Under the hill that we had just walked down was a huge hole that had been worn away - the top an arch with rock formations resembling stalactites hanging down and the opening framed a beautiful scene on the other side of a portion of rocky coastline with crashing waves. It was pretty spectacular.
We next drove to another location in the park called the Remarkable Rocks, which are a group of granite boulders set on top of a hill right beside the water and the elements have worn them away into very odd shapes. We left the park and started back to Kingscote.
As I was driving down the road I saw an animal in the road and braked fairly hard which demonstrated the condition of the roads my front wheels ended up in the soft dirt on the shoulder, but thank goodness I was able to get back on the road. The animal turned out to be an echidna, a spiny anteater (the spines are similar but shorter to those of a porcupine). It was the first time we had seen one in the wild. Later, we stopped at a farm that had a colony of koalas in gum trees on their property. This is a good example of the lack of commercialization on the island yet. There is no charge, only a box tacked up on a tree for donations. We saw 10 koalas. We stopped at some caves, but missed the guided tours by about 3 minutes so continued on to Seal Beach. Park rangers are there to talk about the rare Australian sea lions, which are lying allover the beach, and to protect the sea lions. The ranger said they are not there to protect humans. There are hundreds of sea lions allover the beach and even over the sand dunes in among the plants. Visitors are not allowed in the dunes or within 10 feet of the sea lions, and the ranger said that their policy is only to keep humans from harming the them. They do not interfere with the sea lions even if they are injured. Our last stop of the day was at a marsh which is supposed to be a haven for many birds, but that day there were not many there, so we soon left and headed back to town.
That evening thanks to Toby's persistence, we saw a number of fairy penguins in the rocks by the water right in front of our motel. It is a wonder how those little awkward-looking animals manage to climb those rocks. They didn't show up until about 10:30 or so, so I guess we were ~here too early the day before.
The last day on the island, we drove to a place called American River, so called because the American ship the Independence was built there (I wondered how many Americans knew that). It is a beautiful place but not much is happening there - I figure the population is probably a couple of hundred. We drove on to the· other town, Peneshaw which is a bit larger than American River, but smaller than Kingscote. We were walking around looking at the half dozen shops when we bumped into some other Americans from Alice Springs. The man and his son were going fishing on a boat that afternoon from a wharf in American River. The boat trip was only four hours, returning before our plane left, it was inexpensive, and included use of fishing gear and bait. I declined going since our trip to the Great Barrier reef years ago when I got deathly seasick. But I was able to get Toby on and he thoroughly enjoyed himself - he knew the American boy who went so he had a friend and he caught the biggest fish of the day - something called a Blue Devil - about a foot long with a blue tinge to it, plus two Whitings. I probably could have gone since the boat never actually went out to the sea and the water in the bay (American River is more of a bay) was calm.
While Toby was gone, Dorothy and I drove over to a place where Gypsum-is loaded onto boats. On the dirt road back to the place, I blew a tire and ruined it, so with only the spare on the car we decided not to go anywhere else. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around American River, and finally resorted to sitting on the wharf for about an hour and a half where I took a nap in the back seat, Dorothy wrote letters and we both took turns feeding bread to seagulls. It was loads of fun. We flew back to Adelaide that evening- and once again the car rental agent didn't ask me for a driver's license.
Thursday we walked from the flat downtown and spent the morning and part of the afternoon shopping in the mall area - primarily we visited comic shops (see the last U.S. trip report), and a couple of stamp stores. We walked back to the flat and then drove out to a suburb looking for more comic shops. Toby found comics that day, but I did not find a lampshade that some friends had asked me to look for, or a wedding present for some other friends.
That niqht we visited a guy whom we had met in Alice Springs when he was here to read poetry. Geoff Goodfellow is a rugged individual who visits prisons reading poetry and teaching inmates how to write. I found out when he was here that he had visited and stayed with Ken Kesey when he visited the U.S. I've been interested in Kesey since I first read his renowned novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo'S Nest," and then a partial biography on him in a book called the "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Someone in the U.S. made a video documentary on Kesey, but according to Geoff, President Reagan had used his influence to make sure it wouldn't be shown on TV in the U.S. because of the emphasis on drugs (only because Kesey bad a long history of using various hallucinogenic drugs). Anyway, Geoff had a copy of the tape and offered to show it to us if we came to Adelaide. Geoff's wife, Sally, had prepared a delicious curry which Dorothy and I enjoyed. (Toby ate some plain rice, and a few molecules of curry, but was rescued by some delicious apple pie for dessert). Between having a nice chat with Geoff and Sally and seeing the video, it was an enjoyable evening.
Since Australia closes down for Good Friday, we were at loose ends the next day until we were to go back to Jeff and Jackie's for a barbecue. We drove over along the ocean and stopped in a suburb and walked around for a while - a few small shops were open. Finally, we went to Hawthorndene, where Jeff lives, and by coincidence, where a friend of Toby's also lives. Elizabeth is a real character and we all like her (as long as I don't have to raise her). I know Toby misses her - they were good friends until she left Alice Springs in December 1988 - but they have kept in touch. We took Elizabeth along to the barbecue. Although Jeff was a bit disorganized as usual, it was a good meal and nice evening.
The next morning we went to an arts and crafts fair at the Show Grounds. Fortunately, we got there early, found a place to park and were near the front of the line when it opened. The place was soon mobbed and even when we left an hour later, there was still a line to get in. We soon found out why - nothing else was open. The stores in Adelaide closed down for four days over Easter. None of us were impressed since we had looked forward to doing more shopping We drove south quite a ways to see if a mall in the suburbs had opened - no such luck - and to a wine, food, music and art fair at
a winery way out in the county. I took so many turns to get there that I was beginning to wonder if I should have dropped bread crumbs to find my way back. It was not all that exciting and we drove back to the city, stopping at any little shop we found open, and also stopped to say hello to the parents of some other friends here in town.
We had made arrangements to meet Elizabeth at the mall at 5:30, after which we ate, went back to the flat for awhile, then returned to the mall to meet Jeff and Jackie. The four adults went to the movies to see "Driving Miss Daisy" while the two teenagers (both of whom said they wouldn't be caught coming from a "G" rated movie) went to see "Tango and Cash." Jeff took Elizabeth home and we returned to the flat.
On Easter Sunday, I returned the rental car unscratched and we had an uneventful flight home to Alice Springs.
January 1990: an Ominous U.S. Xmas
A GRIMM MINI-SERIES
The story you are about to read is true and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent. WARNING: the authors suggest reading this in installments to avoid eye-strain or insufferable boredom.
Episode 1 - Ominous start
Even before the trip began, there were indications this would be no ordinary Grimm trip. Although I had contacted Australian Airlines overseas travel as usual, my agent was relatively new at handling international travel and hence the arrangements were not the best. (Inexperienced clerks were the norm as most of the regular employees had left when the Australian domestic pilots had resigned in August causing a virtual shutdown of air travel in Australia for some time.) I did not receive our itinerary for a couple of days before we left and noticed that the agent had us going through Chicago on our return trip from the east coast to the west coast. I told her you try not to go through Chicago in January because of the chance of snow. It didn't matter in the end but that comes later. We also wanted to leave Friday and fly direct to Sydney: but because of the continuing pilots strike, we had to leave Thursday instead. So we missed the awards night at Toby's school (more on that later). I also received a lot of kidding at work because I was one of the few people who were allowed to take off over Christmas. Following the events of our trip I have not been kidded since I returned to work.
A few days before our departure I called home to give my mother our finalized plans and learned my Dad was having some medical problems and tests were being run. During Dorothy's call to her family, she learned her father was being operation for a dislocated elbow as a result of a fall during which he had also broken a couple of ribs.
On the night before we left we learned from the headmaster at Toby's school that Toby was to receive awards on Prize Night. Upon hearing that we would not be able to attend, he asked us to come to school the next morning. When we arrived he told Toby that he was receiving the Dux award, which meant he was the top of his class, and also that Toby had been given an award for "The Pursuit of Excellence" in striving in all areas. Since this is the first year that this school has operated as a day school and the first year that this award is being presented, Toby's name will be the first on the plaque, which will hang in the school for years to come. Toby was speechless (which doesn't happen often). We were very pleased.
After a frantic bit of pacing while Dorothy waited to get her holiday pay, our good friends, the Browns, once again took us to the airport and we had an uneventful flight to Sydney. Since we had to stay overnight to make connections, the airline put us up in a downtown motel - however, they didn't tell us that no transportation was provided to that hotel. We got there using a service that provides transportation to any hotel. En route we passed a hand-printed sign which read, "No wonder there is so much trouble in Australia, the wise men are under the Christmas tree instead of in Canberra." Our room was actually a suite in a high-rise hotel in the downtown section. As soon as we were settled we left to find used bookstores and comic shops. I am on a quest to find books by an Australian mystery writer named Arthur Gask who wrote in the 30's and 40's. As it turns out his novels are almost impossible to find - none were to be found in any of the stores I checked in Sydney. Toby, however, did find some comics to buy -an appetizer for the rest of the trip.
Dorothy called a friend who lives in Sydney and he met us at the hotel and we walked to Darling Harbor, which is the location of a shopping mall, convention facilities, museums, a carnival, etc. Dorothy and I had a few words along the way about where and what to eat. Since it was summer I assumed it was going to be warm so I went out in short sleeves. Bad idea. It was cool enough that with a strong wind it was quite chilly. We returned to the hotel and the next day went back to the same area to go into the Powerhouse Museum (so called because an old power station was salvaged and turned into a museum). It has many "hands on" exhibits and was quite interesting. We returned to the hotel and waited for the transportation to take us to the airport. We had ordered it for noon and it finally arrived at 12:30. I had left plenty of time to get to the airport, but I was still pacing.
The trip across the Pacific was uneventful. We did get to see three movies instead of the usual two. As soon as we arrived at L.A., I called my parents to tell them we had arrived in the U.S. My mother told me at that point that a mass had been found on my father's colon, while Dorothy learned that her father had survived arm surgery and was expected to leave the hospital in a day or two. After a 5-hour layover, we flew to Washington D.C. where we landed during a snowstorm, though the snow may have stopped before we actually touched down.
Dwight was to fly out of San Francisco and arrive at the same' airport about 30 minutes before we did. However, we couldn't find him when we got there. I finally checked with United Airlines and was told that his plane had been diverted to Columbus Ohio. (Actually, Dwight told us later that they had been in the holding pattern at Washington, and had been sent back to Columbus because they were low on fuel.) So, I asked the lady at the counter what was going to happen to the plane. She thought that the plane would be coming on it to Washington but she wasn't sure when. She also wasn't sure that Columbus was set up to handle a DC10, including whether they had de-icing equipment that would handle a plane that big! Finally, an announcement was made that the plane would arrive at 11:30. That time passed, and it got later and later and no announcement. I went back to the counter only to find that everyone had gone home. Finally another parent waiting for her college student went down to the baggage area and found someone that told her that the plane had landed on time but the ground was so slippery that they were having trouble getting up to the gate at the mid-field terminal. Dwight finally arrived at the main terminal at about 12:45.a.m. After getting his bags about 1:15, we caught a cab to Alexandria, arriving at our friends' house at 2 a.m.
Part 2 - Visiting
Our visits to the Washington area would not be nearly as nice if it were not for the warm hospitality of our neighbors the McDonalds. They treat us as part of the family and we all really enjoy our stay with them. The first couple of days we took care of a number of things in the area, like taking 2 1/2 hours to straighten out some problems with our bank (caused when a bigger and better" national bank took over a competent local one), meeting with an engineer who is in charge of a county project which will result in curbs, drains and sidewalks on our street in the next year, and re-registering my car which is still sitting in our driveway~ I left it there when I was under the assumption that we would only be overseas two years. We also did some shopping, visited come comic shops, called and visited some friends, and Mr. McDonald took us on a tour of the Washington Post building (he works there).
On the 19th, we drove to my hometown, Hagerstown Maryland, to see my parents. On the way we stopped at a small used bookstore in Frederick Maryland and I found two of the Arthur Gask books - the only two I have found anywhere. A biopsy-was-performed on my father on the 21st, the results of which were not known until the 27th and confirmed that he had a malignant tumor on his colon. We also learned that my brother had lost his job. We left on the 21st to drive to New Jersey to try and beat the worst of the holiday traffic:
We spent Christmas with Dorothy's parents, her father home from the hospital with his right arm in a cast and sling. We did more shopping and visiting used book/comic shops.
Dorothy's parents live in a one-bedroom apartment and they tend to have things. So things get a little tight when all of us are there with all of our luggage. There is very little space in the dining room to pull the table out from the wall so the boys have to crawl over the chairs to get to their place. Dwight labeled this maneuver the "Stanford Crawl" since he went the farthest down the table. Then we 1 lined up our suitcases in front of the bed that Toby slept in and he had to do the "luggage leap" each night to get into bed.
Christmas night Dorothy and her mother and I drove around looking at ~he Christmas decoration and also drove up to a park on top of a fairly high hill from where it was possible to see the entire New York City skyline. It was quite a sight from the lookout. Driving home we were stopped at a-traffic light when someone pounded on the window and told us we were leaking gas. Sure enough, gas was flowing freely from the tank allover the road. Panic! Where was I going to get that fixed on Christmas night. I pulled into a service station and a nice fast-thinking customer gave me a machine screw and loaned me a wrench and after screwing the screw into the hole as tightly as I could, the leak was basically fixed. Dorothy was apprehensive about driving back to Washington the next day with the gas tank in that condition so the next morning I got up early and drove down to the nearest Buick dealer. I lined up behind two other cars waiting for the service department to open. However, after about an hour it became evident that they were not going to open. An exhaustive search did not ~reveal any notice to that effect. I drove to the next closest Buick dealer and at least they had the decency to put up a notice that they were closed on the 26th.
After some agonizing, we decided to go ahead and drive back to Washington. Traffic on the Jersey turnpike was heavy but was moving until 11.1 miles before the toll at the end of the turnpike, where the traffic was backed up bumper to bumper all the way to the toll booths. Dorothy had to use a rest room and fortunately there was a rest stop in that stretch so we pulled off. She and one of the boys went into the tourist center. My son shortly returned and told me that it would be awhile because there was a long line for the ladies room. So I decided to take advantage of the delay and go to the men's room. As I approached the door, a lady dragging one kid by the hand and carrying another cut in front of me, saying, "This is ridiculous" and walked into the men's room ahead of me. Further on down the road there was another lO-mileback up at an area undergoing some construction, another short backup before we got to Baltimore, another one after we went through the Harbor tunnel, and finally one on the Washington beltway going from Maryland to Virginia. The trip which usually takes about 4 1/2 hours took 7 1/2 hours (Dorothy's comment: With "patient" Jack, it felt more like 7 1/2 days). In recounting the backup to Dorothy's brother he commented that if the gas tank leak had reoccurred in the backed up traffic, the only logical procedure would have been to remove passengers and luggage and throw a match on the gasoline lighting up the car as the ultimate protest to traffic jams.
During the next several days we did more shopping (buying things we can't get here in Alice Springs), went to more comic shops visiting friends and acquired a rental car since I wasn't sure how long the gas tank would hold up.
On Friday Dec. 29th, Dwight rode with a friend, in a Porsche out to a fancy house on the Chesapeake Bay to spend the night, while Dorothy, Toby and I went back to Hagerstown for a day. I spent the week after New Year's going to an office in the area while Dwight visited friends in the D.C. area. After some discussion as to the most painless way for Dorothy and Toby to return to N.J. for a few days~ Dorothy decided to take the train - enough 7 1/2 hour car trips for her~ plus there was the gas tank problem, the fact that traffic jams don't exist in Alice Springs nor do freeways or speeding cars, as well as driving on the wrong side of the road.
So early Tuesday morning, Dorothy and Toby proceeded by metro to Union Station (D.C.), train to Penn Station (NYC), walked to the Port Authority bus station, and finally bus to Montclair N.J., where Dorothy's mother picked them up. Union Station has been remodeled again - in addition to going back to the train station appearance, there are lots of little shops and boutiques providing a lot of merchandise for the shopper as well as the window shopper. A sign welcomes people to train travel as "the only civilized way to go" and after the crowds at airports and traffic jams on the freeways, there is something to be said for that. Toby could barely remember his previous train trips (to N~J. in 1979 with his father and brother, and on the Ghan to Alice Springs in 1983). As he sat down, he said, "Look Mum, no seat belts." The trip - 3 hours - went smoothly, quickly and pleasantly - indeed civilized.
I finally found out that Dad was going to be operated on the 10th, - the day we were to leave for the west coast, so I asked for an extension to our stay, and got it. The hard part was getting the airline reservations changed, some of which were non-refundable. The govt. managed to do it without any penalty although it took until the following Monday. There was some problem getting our reservations changed on the plane from L.A. to Sydney - all flights were full for several days. We were put on a· waiting list for the 20th and eventually got on it.
Toby enjoyed visiting his grandparents again and narrowly beat his grandfather in an ongoing chess match 5-4. Toby called me on Thursday night and asked if I'd mind if they waited until Saturday to come back. It turned out he and his mother wanted to attend a comic book convention at a hotel just across from the train station in New York City. They had a great time - Dorothy didn't want to leave and would have liked to have gone back the next day. Many of the artists were there and she met Tom Gill, who had drawn the "Silver" and "Fury" comics (about horses) back when she was reading comics. Comic book conventions are held regularly allover the U.S., most only bring a number of comic book dealers and maybe a token illustrator, but this one not only featured dozens of dealers with lots and lots of stock, but also 50 or more illustrators, writers and editorial staff from many of the big name comic publishers such as Scott McFarlane (Spiderman) and the editorial staff of the Archie Comics. The convention took up a whole floor of the block long Penn Hotel on 33rd and -7th Ave and thousands and thousands of people waited in line for more than an hour to attend. Though Toby would have been happy "shopping until he dropped, or the well ran dry, Dorothy's goal was to interview as many of the artists as possible, asking where they went to school, what kind of training, did they like their jobs, and so forth~ Those she talked to were quite pleasant, well trained and polite and enthusiastic people.
Toby got a number of autographed copies, but elected not to stand in the long line for Scott MacFarland's autograph who is obviously the who's who of comic book illustrators at the moment~ Evidently the thing for collectors to do to enhance their collection's value is to take issues to illustrators at these conventions and have them autographed. Another neat aspect of the convention was the panel discussions and films going on in various rooms - from developing story lines to including new characters. A comic book historian (no joke) interviewed the creator of MAD on a short-lived publication entitled HELP. Unfortunately, the organizers had trouble keeping this part of the convention on schedule and Dorothy was disappointed that she could not attend more before they caught the 3:30 p.m. train ~ to D.C. so that they could see Dwight off to Stanford the next day.
She said the convention was so good that it would be worth a special trip up from D.C. each year to attend.
The train trip home was not uneventful. A short ways from Philadelphia, the train came to a screeching lopsided stop. Kids had left car wheels and tires allover the tracks causing the train to almost derail when it hit them. After a 20-30 minute delay, while train personnel assessed and fixed the damage, the train resumed its trip and reached D.C. without further incident.
That Saturday evening, all four Grimms were once again gathered at the McDonalds. The next day we went to visit Dorothy's uncle Dwight (the first of four Dwights in the family) and then took our Dwight on to the airport to fly back to Stanford.
I went to Hagerstown on the 9th and the next day spent several tense hours in the hospital-while Dad was being operated on. The initial report was good - there were no visible signs that the cancer had spread, but the pathology report was not as good - cancer was found in a number of lymph nodes. He will require 25 radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Dad is 74 and still plays golf when he can. He seems to have recovered well from the surgery. He is concerned about his condition, but says he is going to do whatever the doctors recommend. I can only hope for good results at this point.
While I was in Hagerstown, Dorothy and Toby did more comic book shopping in Washington, mailed boxes to ourselves here, and visited some friends in Pennsylvania, where Toby beat both his friend, and his friend's father in table tennis. They also attended two small comic shows - one in Arlington, VA and one in Harrisburg, Pa. Meanwhile Dwight went with about 75 other kids in his dorm to the ski slopes in Lake Tahoe and spent two days skiing. They stayed in two houses that were designed to sleep 18 people each! Dwight was in charge of the meals in one place.
Finally it was time to leave the east coast. That morning my stomach did not feel just right and I hoped I wasn't getting the flu, which was prevalent in the area. We drove out to Dulles airport. I had a rental car that I had sot ten from the National Airport office, so didn't know where the return was at Dulles. I naturally assumed it was off the road marked "Rental Car Return." Wrong! It pays to have one of the main brands, which I didn't, and there was no place for "Thrifty" there. I got some directions to their office and still had problems finding it. We got to the airport, checked in and finally got onboard our plane. The plane taxied out onto the runway but then the pilot announced that we were holding because the corridor between Washington and Chicago was full. All of a sudden I was not feeling well. Dorothy told me I was "cold and clammy" all over and extremely pale. She tried to start a fight and when I didn't respond she knew I was sick and called the stewardess. I guess I came very close to passing out. The stewardess said there was no way she was letting me fly, so she had the pilot take the plane back to the gate. I was able to walk to the door, where an ambulance was sitting" The medic asked me if I was usually that pale. Dorothy told him I looked better then than I had several minutes earlier. It was decided (not by me) that I should go to the hospital and be checked out. After checking me out, including an EKG, the diagnosis was that I was probably coming down with a flu or virus and that was coupled with the stress surrounding my father's illness.
The doctor said I was fit to travel and gave me a note that the airline actually asked for when we got back to the airport. They put us on another flight which was leaving immediately bound for Dallas, where we were to make connections for San Francisco. When we arrived there was some confusion about which gate the connecting flight was to depart. When I checked the TV monitor, much to my dismay, I saw that the important part of the information was not the gate number, but the four letters CANX in the departure time. The flight had been canceled! We were put on a waiting list for the next available flight, which left an hour later than the original flight. While waiting to catch that flight, Dorothy made repeated attempts to reach Dwight by phone but, wouldn't you know it, that was the afternoon of the AT&T snafu which did not allow any long distance calls to go through. We made it onto the flight and landed in San Francisco about 4 1/2' hours after we were originally scheduled to arrive.
Dwight was in a bit of a panic - he hadn't known what time exactly we were to arrive but knew it-was mid-late afternoon and we didn't arrive until about 6:30.
We enjoyed our brief 2-day stay in S.F. Dorothy and I stayed with a friend of mine who has worked in S.F. for 15 years. He has been great about picking Dwight up at the airport on a couple of occasions and having dinner with him from time to time. It was nice to spend time with Roy again after a long time. Some time ago Dwight had told Toby that he could sleep in his dorm room, and Toby was very excited about the prospect. He spent both nights there and had a ball. We all went in Dwight's dorm to see his room and received a big welcome from a lot of the kids on his floor. They seemed like a good bunch of individuals.
Dorothy, Toby and I flew on to L.A., landing about mid-day. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get the rental car (1 was not impressed), and I drove south to spend a couple of hours with a contractor who does some work for the U.S. Govt. here in Alice. While I met with him, Dorothy and Toby spent several hours at a huge mall. After I finished we ate supper and decided to start driving to San Diego. I had no idea how bad the traffic would be so I did not expect to go the while way that evening. Well, the freeway was moving at about 70-75 mph, so we made San Diego in about 2 hours. I had no idea where ~o go once 1 had gotten there. There was a typical Jack-Dorothy shouting match about not planning ahead, etc., etc. Finally, Toby suggested we go down this one road, and I finally pulled into a service station to ask for help. I asked where I was, and the guy showed me on the map, and said where did 1 want to go and
I said I wasn't sure. I got a funny look. I did tell him that the next day I wanted to go to the zoo. He said there weren't any places to stay around the zoo, that it might be best to stay in that area and drive on in the next day. So we stayed in a motel just beside the water where a lot of pleasure and fishing boats were anchored. Also we were less than a mile from the San Diego Yacht Club, which took the America's Cup away from Australia.
The next day, we visited the world famous San Diego Zoo. It is not as large a zoo as I expected, and while it is beautifully landscaped, I truthfully didn't think it was any better than the Washington National Zoo, or the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. After we left there we drove down to a national reserve where an old lighthouse still stands. The view from the hill where the lighthouse is located is spectacular. The entire city of San Diego and the harbor area is visible. We also drove down a winding road to the water line to look at the tidal pools there.
The next morning we stopped at a flea market, which was supposed to open at 7, but many of the" stalls were still being set up when we returned at9. We drove back to L.A. quickly got settled in a motel, and went to Disneyland. Unfortunately, since it was a winter weekday, it closed at 6 p.m., but since there were so few people there we were able to do about everything we wanted to do at least once. I should mention that in addition to this entire time period was not the usual tourist season, it was fairly cold in southern California. We wore coats until the last day we were there.
The next morning, the day we were to leave for Australia, Dorothy called her parents in N.J. to say goodbye. Her mother told her that her father had been taken very ill, had been transported to the hospital and was undergoing an emergency operation, and there was some question whether he would survive. While Dorothy stayed at the motel, T6by and I went out to mail some final packages to ourselves. When we returned Dorothy was on the phone again and told us her father had died. While she continued to talk to her mother I went to comfort Toby and laid my glasses on the bed. After Dorothy got off the phone she came over and sat down on the bed - on my glasses and snapped off the earpiece. I was in a bit of a panic - I can't function without my glasses. Fortunately, I had my prescription sun glasses. I knew I would have to get my other glasses fixed, but the first order of business was to change Dorothy's reservations (again) and get her a flight back to the east coast. I got her one which left at 10 p.m., with the idea that she would get into New York early in the morning, rather than late at night as she would have to take one bus from the airport to the bus station, and then another bus out to N.J. The airline agent also told me that there was some possibility that our plane to Australia would be delayed or canceled due to mechanical difficulties. Thank goodness, when I checked back later in the afternoon, I was told the plane would leave as planned.
After dealing with the airlines I went out into Anaheim California to try and find an optician. After following three different sets of directions from different people I finally found one and fortunately they had a pair of frames that my lens would fit. I returned to the motel and picked up Dorothy and Toby. We spent the remainder of the day meandering through L.A., stopping to play miniature golf checking out one comic shop and a number of stores for refunds for Dorothy and finally a mall. But we had lost our enthusiasm for shopping so finally headed for the airport. We had to kill some time at the airport ("as always" - Toby's comment), but fina11y Toby and I got on the plane bound for Sydney at 8:20 p.m., while Dorothy had another hour and half to wait before catching her "red eye” f1ight to JFK airport in New York City ~
Our plane made very good time and landed early 6:15 a.m.) in Sydney. The first plane to Alice Springs, on which had reservations, was not until 3:30 p.m., so after checking our bags, we took a bus into Sydney. On arriving downtown, I called up a friend a of Dorothy's who lives in town and he said he would take a "sickie" and keep us company. We had gotten into town about 7:30, and we met him at 9, and we spent the next four hours walking around downtown Sydney. Ross went home, and I told Toby I could not walk another step. I really had not gotten any real sleep on the plane and I was exhausted. We took the bus back to the airport, finally got on the plane to Alice, and arrived here three hours later. The temperature was 38 degrees C (about 102 degrees F), which felt great after all of the cold.
Meanwhile, Dorothy's flight landed smoothly, despite the fog and rain, at 6 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 21st. She caught a bus to the Port Authority Bus Station, which is a very scary place at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Homeless people find its many nooks and crannies, stairwells and bus stops ideal places to sleep. Few "ordinary" people are about and the total effect is like a scene from some scary police show. She finally reached her mother's at 9 a.m. and began a week of helping her mother to make arrangements. Her brother (Dwight #2) and his wife Sue arrived in N.J. from North Carolina later in the day. Services were held Tuesday while Dwight and Sue left Wednesday because they had a non-refundable airline trip to Florida planned for Thursday. During the week, Dorothy and her mother took a trip into New York where they encountered a saxophone player busking in the tunneled corridors of the NY subway and were serenaded by a 73-year old former choir singer on a subway platform. Meanwhile her brother was being helped off an airplane and into a wheelchair in Atlanta following a bad case of air sickness.
Dorothy's return trip to Alice Springs was surprisingly uneventful. and she arrived in 44 degree C heat (about 110 degrees F) where a mountain of mail awaited her - including a very wet box of food stuffs mailed in a dry u.S. Post Office several weeks previously.
Once again we thank everyone for their Christmas cards and letters. We continue to enjoy mail and hope people will write whenever they can.
We hope 1990 is a good year and best wishes for a good decade.
The story you are about to read is true and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent. WARNING: the authors suggest reading this in installments to avoid eye-strain or insufferable boredom.
Episode 1 - Ominous start
Even before the trip began, there were indications this would be no ordinary Grimm trip. Although I had contacted Australian Airlines overseas travel as usual, my agent was relatively new at handling international travel and hence the arrangements were not the best. (Inexperienced clerks were the norm as most of the regular employees had left when the Australian domestic pilots had resigned in August causing a virtual shutdown of air travel in Australia for some time.) I did not receive our itinerary for a couple of days before we left and noticed that the agent had us going through Chicago on our return trip from the east coast to the west coast. I told her you try not to go through Chicago in January because of the chance of snow. It didn't matter in the end but that comes later. We also wanted to leave Friday and fly direct to Sydney: but because of the continuing pilots strike, we had to leave Thursday instead. So we missed the awards night at Toby's school (more on that later). I also received a lot of kidding at work because I was one of the few people who were allowed to take off over Christmas. Following the events of our trip I have not been kidded since I returned to work.
A few days before our departure I called home to give my mother our finalized plans and learned my Dad was having some medical problems and tests were being run. During Dorothy's call to her family, she learned her father was being operation for a dislocated elbow as a result of a fall during which he had also broken a couple of ribs.
On the night before we left we learned from the headmaster at Toby's school that Toby was to receive awards on Prize Night. Upon hearing that we would not be able to attend, he asked us to come to school the next morning. When we arrived he told Toby that he was receiving the Dux award, which meant he was the top of his class, and also that Toby had been given an award for "The Pursuit of Excellence" in striving in all areas. Since this is the first year that this school has operated as a day school and the first year that this award is being presented, Toby's name will be the first on the plaque, which will hang in the school for years to come. Toby was speechless (which doesn't happen often). We were very pleased.
After a frantic bit of pacing while Dorothy waited to get her holiday pay, our good friends, the Browns, once again took us to the airport and we had an uneventful flight to Sydney. Since we had to stay overnight to make connections, the airline put us up in a downtown motel - however, they didn't tell us that no transportation was provided to that hotel. We got there using a service that provides transportation to any hotel. En route we passed a hand-printed sign which read, "No wonder there is so much trouble in Australia, the wise men are under the Christmas tree instead of in Canberra." Our room was actually a suite in a high-rise hotel in the downtown section. As soon as we were settled we left to find used bookstores and comic shops. I am on a quest to find books by an Australian mystery writer named Arthur Gask who wrote in the 30's and 40's. As it turns out his novels are almost impossible to find - none were to be found in any of the stores I checked in Sydney. Toby, however, did find some comics to buy -an appetizer for the rest of the trip.
Dorothy called a friend who lives in Sydney and he met us at the hotel and we walked to Darling Harbor, which is the location of a shopping mall, convention facilities, museums, a carnival, etc. Dorothy and I had a few words along the way about where and what to eat. Since it was summer I assumed it was going to be warm so I went out in short sleeves. Bad idea. It was cool enough that with a strong wind it was quite chilly. We returned to the hotel and the next day went back to the same area to go into the Powerhouse Museum (so called because an old power station was salvaged and turned into a museum). It has many "hands on" exhibits and was quite interesting. We returned to the hotel and waited for the transportation to take us to the airport. We had ordered it for noon and it finally arrived at 12:30. I had left plenty of time to get to the airport, but I was still pacing.
The trip across the Pacific was uneventful. We did get to see three movies instead of the usual two. As soon as we arrived at L.A., I called my parents to tell them we had arrived in the U.S. My mother told me at that point that a mass had been found on my father's colon, while Dorothy learned that her father had survived arm surgery and was expected to leave the hospital in a day or two. After a 5-hour layover, we flew to Washington D.C. where we landed during a snowstorm, though the snow may have stopped before we actually touched down.
Dwight was to fly out of San Francisco and arrive at the same' airport about 30 minutes before we did. However, we couldn't find him when we got there. I finally checked with United Airlines and was told that his plane had been diverted to Columbus Ohio. (Actually, Dwight told us later that they had been in the holding pattern at Washington, and had been sent back to Columbus because they were low on fuel.) So, I asked the lady at the counter what was going to happen to the plane. She thought that the plane would be coming on it to Washington but she wasn't sure when. She also wasn't sure that Columbus was set up to handle a DC10, including whether they had de-icing equipment that would handle a plane that big! Finally, an announcement was made that the plane would arrive at 11:30. That time passed, and it got later and later and no announcement. I went back to the counter only to find that everyone had gone home. Finally another parent waiting for her college student went down to the baggage area and found someone that told her that the plane had landed on time but the ground was so slippery that they were having trouble getting up to the gate at the mid-field terminal. Dwight finally arrived at the main terminal at about 12:45.a.m. After getting his bags about 1:15, we caught a cab to Alexandria, arriving at our friends' house at 2 a.m.
Part 2 - Visiting
Our visits to the Washington area would not be nearly as nice if it were not for the warm hospitality of our neighbors the McDonalds. They treat us as part of the family and we all really enjoy our stay with them. The first couple of days we took care of a number of things in the area, like taking 2 1/2 hours to straighten out some problems with our bank (caused when a bigger and better" national bank took over a competent local one), meeting with an engineer who is in charge of a county project which will result in curbs, drains and sidewalks on our street in the next year, and re-registering my car which is still sitting in our driveway~ I left it there when I was under the assumption that we would only be overseas two years. We also did some shopping, visited come comic shops, called and visited some friends, and Mr. McDonald took us on a tour of the Washington Post building (he works there).
On the 19th, we drove to my hometown, Hagerstown Maryland, to see my parents. On the way we stopped at a small used bookstore in Frederick Maryland and I found two of the Arthur Gask books - the only two I have found anywhere. A biopsy-was-performed on my father on the 21st, the results of which were not known until the 27th and confirmed that he had a malignant tumor on his colon. We also learned that my brother had lost his job. We left on the 21st to drive to New Jersey to try and beat the worst of the holiday traffic:
We spent Christmas with Dorothy's parents, her father home from the hospital with his right arm in a cast and sling. We did more shopping and visiting used book/comic shops.
Dorothy's parents live in a one-bedroom apartment and they tend to have things. So things get a little tight when all of us are there with all of our luggage. There is very little space in the dining room to pull the table out from the wall so the boys have to crawl over the chairs to get to their place. Dwight labeled this maneuver the "Stanford Crawl" since he went the farthest down the table. Then we 1 lined up our suitcases in front of the bed that Toby slept in and he had to do the "luggage leap" each night to get into bed.
Christmas night Dorothy and her mother and I drove around looking at ~he Christmas decoration and also drove up to a park on top of a fairly high hill from where it was possible to see the entire New York City skyline. It was quite a sight from the lookout. Driving home we were stopped at a-traffic light when someone pounded on the window and told us we were leaking gas. Sure enough, gas was flowing freely from the tank allover the road. Panic! Where was I going to get that fixed on Christmas night. I pulled into a service station and a nice fast-thinking customer gave me a machine screw and loaned me a wrench and after screwing the screw into the hole as tightly as I could, the leak was basically fixed. Dorothy was apprehensive about driving back to Washington the next day with the gas tank in that condition so the next morning I got up early and drove down to the nearest Buick dealer. I lined up behind two other cars waiting for the service department to open. However, after about an hour it became evident that they were not going to open. An exhaustive search did not ~reveal any notice to that effect. I drove to the next closest Buick dealer and at least they had the decency to put up a notice that they were closed on the 26th.
After some agonizing, we decided to go ahead and drive back to Washington. Traffic on the Jersey turnpike was heavy but was moving until 11.1 miles before the toll at the end of the turnpike, where the traffic was backed up bumper to bumper all the way to the toll booths. Dorothy had to use a rest room and fortunately there was a rest stop in that stretch so we pulled off. She and one of the boys went into the tourist center. My son shortly returned and told me that it would be awhile because there was a long line for the ladies room. So I decided to take advantage of the delay and go to the men's room. As I approached the door, a lady dragging one kid by the hand and carrying another cut in front of me, saying, "This is ridiculous" and walked into the men's room ahead of me. Further on down the road there was another lO-mileback up at an area undergoing some construction, another short backup before we got to Baltimore, another one after we went through the Harbor tunnel, and finally one on the Washington beltway going from Maryland to Virginia. The trip which usually takes about 4 1/2 hours took 7 1/2 hours (Dorothy's comment: With "patient" Jack, it felt more like 7 1/2 days). In recounting the backup to Dorothy's brother he commented that if the gas tank leak had reoccurred in the backed up traffic, the only logical procedure would have been to remove passengers and luggage and throw a match on the gasoline lighting up the car as the ultimate protest to traffic jams.
During the next several days we did more shopping (buying things we can't get here in Alice Springs), went to more comic shops visiting friends and acquired a rental car since I wasn't sure how long the gas tank would hold up.
On Friday Dec. 29th, Dwight rode with a friend, in a Porsche out to a fancy house on the Chesapeake Bay to spend the night, while Dorothy, Toby and I went back to Hagerstown for a day. I spent the week after New Year's going to an office in the area while Dwight visited friends in the D.C. area. After some discussion as to the most painless way for Dorothy and Toby to return to N.J. for a few days~ Dorothy decided to take the train - enough 7 1/2 hour car trips for her~ plus there was the gas tank problem, the fact that traffic jams don't exist in Alice Springs nor do freeways or speeding cars, as well as driving on the wrong side of the road.
So early Tuesday morning, Dorothy and Toby proceeded by metro to Union Station (D.C.), train to Penn Station (NYC), walked to the Port Authority bus station, and finally bus to Montclair N.J., where Dorothy's mother picked them up. Union Station has been remodeled again - in addition to going back to the train station appearance, there are lots of little shops and boutiques providing a lot of merchandise for the shopper as well as the window shopper. A sign welcomes people to train travel as "the only civilized way to go" and after the crowds at airports and traffic jams on the freeways, there is something to be said for that. Toby could barely remember his previous train trips (to N~J. in 1979 with his father and brother, and on the Ghan to Alice Springs in 1983). As he sat down, he said, "Look Mum, no seat belts." The trip - 3 hours - went smoothly, quickly and pleasantly - indeed civilized.
I finally found out that Dad was going to be operated on the 10th, - the day we were to leave for the west coast, so I asked for an extension to our stay, and got it. The hard part was getting the airline reservations changed, some of which were non-refundable. The govt. managed to do it without any penalty although it took until the following Monday. There was some problem getting our reservations changed on the plane from L.A. to Sydney - all flights were full for several days. We were put on a· waiting list for the 20th and eventually got on it.
Toby enjoyed visiting his grandparents again and narrowly beat his grandfather in an ongoing chess match 5-4. Toby called me on Thursday night and asked if I'd mind if they waited until Saturday to come back. It turned out he and his mother wanted to attend a comic book convention at a hotel just across from the train station in New York City. They had a great time - Dorothy didn't want to leave and would have liked to have gone back the next day. Many of the artists were there and she met Tom Gill, who had drawn the "Silver" and "Fury" comics (about horses) back when she was reading comics. Comic book conventions are held regularly allover the U.S., most only bring a number of comic book dealers and maybe a token illustrator, but this one not only featured dozens of dealers with lots and lots of stock, but also 50 or more illustrators, writers and editorial staff from many of the big name comic publishers such as Scott McFarlane (Spiderman) and the editorial staff of the Archie Comics. The convention took up a whole floor of the block long Penn Hotel on 33rd and -7th Ave and thousands and thousands of people waited in line for more than an hour to attend. Though Toby would have been happy "shopping until he dropped, or the well ran dry, Dorothy's goal was to interview as many of the artists as possible, asking where they went to school, what kind of training, did they like their jobs, and so forth~ Those she talked to were quite pleasant, well trained and polite and enthusiastic people.
Toby got a number of autographed copies, but elected not to stand in the long line for Scott MacFarland's autograph who is obviously the who's who of comic book illustrators at the moment~ Evidently the thing for collectors to do to enhance their collection's value is to take issues to illustrators at these conventions and have them autographed. Another neat aspect of the convention was the panel discussions and films going on in various rooms - from developing story lines to including new characters. A comic book historian (no joke) interviewed the creator of MAD on a short-lived publication entitled HELP. Unfortunately, the organizers had trouble keeping this part of the convention on schedule and Dorothy was disappointed that she could not attend more before they caught the 3:30 p.m. train ~ to D.C. so that they could see Dwight off to Stanford the next day.
She said the convention was so good that it would be worth a special trip up from D.C. each year to attend.
The train trip home was not uneventful. A short ways from Philadelphia, the train came to a screeching lopsided stop. Kids had left car wheels and tires allover the tracks causing the train to almost derail when it hit them. After a 20-30 minute delay, while train personnel assessed and fixed the damage, the train resumed its trip and reached D.C. without further incident.
That Saturday evening, all four Grimms were once again gathered at the McDonalds. The next day we went to visit Dorothy's uncle Dwight (the first of four Dwights in the family) and then took our Dwight on to the airport to fly back to Stanford.
I went to Hagerstown on the 9th and the next day spent several tense hours in the hospital-while Dad was being operated on. The initial report was good - there were no visible signs that the cancer had spread, but the pathology report was not as good - cancer was found in a number of lymph nodes. He will require 25 radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Dad is 74 and still plays golf when he can. He seems to have recovered well from the surgery. He is concerned about his condition, but says he is going to do whatever the doctors recommend. I can only hope for good results at this point.
While I was in Hagerstown, Dorothy and Toby did more comic book shopping in Washington, mailed boxes to ourselves here, and visited some friends in Pennsylvania, where Toby beat both his friend, and his friend's father in table tennis. They also attended two small comic shows - one in Arlington, VA and one in Harrisburg, Pa. Meanwhile Dwight went with about 75 other kids in his dorm to the ski slopes in Lake Tahoe and spent two days skiing. They stayed in two houses that were designed to sleep 18 people each! Dwight was in charge of the meals in one place.
Finally it was time to leave the east coast. That morning my stomach did not feel just right and I hoped I wasn't getting the flu, which was prevalent in the area. We drove out to Dulles airport. I had a rental car that I had sot ten from the National Airport office, so didn't know where the return was at Dulles. I naturally assumed it was off the road marked "Rental Car Return." Wrong! It pays to have one of the main brands, which I didn't, and there was no place for "Thrifty" there. I got some directions to their office and still had problems finding it. We got to the airport, checked in and finally got onboard our plane. The plane taxied out onto the runway but then the pilot announced that we were holding because the corridor between Washington and Chicago was full. All of a sudden I was not feeling well. Dorothy told me I was "cold and clammy" all over and extremely pale. She tried to start a fight and when I didn't respond she knew I was sick and called the stewardess. I guess I came very close to passing out. The stewardess said there was no way she was letting me fly, so she had the pilot take the plane back to the gate. I was able to walk to the door, where an ambulance was sitting" The medic asked me if I was usually that pale. Dorothy told him I looked better then than I had several minutes earlier. It was decided (not by me) that I should go to the hospital and be checked out. After checking me out, including an EKG, the diagnosis was that I was probably coming down with a flu or virus and that was coupled with the stress surrounding my father's illness.
The doctor said I was fit to travel and gave me a note that the airline actually asked for when we got back to the airport. They put us on another flight which was leaving immediately bound for Dallas, where we were to make connections for San Francisco. When we arrived there was some confusion about which gate the connecting flight was to depart. When I checked the TV monitor, much to my dismay, I saw that the important part of the information was not the gate number, but the four letters CANX in the departure time. The flight had been canceled! We were put on a waiting list for the next available flight, which left an hour later than the original flight. While waiting to catch that flight, Dorothy made repeated attempts to reach Dwight by phone but, wouldn't you know it, that was the afternoon of the AT&T snafu which did not allow any long distance calls to go through. We made it onto the flight and landed in San Francisco about 4 1/2' hours after we were originally scheduled to arrive.
Dwight was in a bit of a panic - he hadn't known what time exactly we were to arrive but knew it-was mid-late afternoon and we didn't arrive until about 6:30.
We enjoyed our brief 2-day stay in S.F. Dorothy and I stayed with a friend of mine who has worked in S.F. for 15 years. He has been great about picking Dwight up at the airport on a couple of occasions and having dinner with him from time to time. It was nice to spend time with Roy again after a long time. Some time ago Dwight had told Toby that he could sleep in his dorm room, and Toby was very excited about the prospect. He spent both nights there and had a ball. We all went in Dwight's dorm to see his room and received a big welcome from a lot of the kids on his floor. They seemed like a good bunch of individuals.
Dorothy, Toby and I flew on to L.A., landing about mid-day. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get the rental car (1 was not impressed), and I drove south to spend a couple of hours with a contractor who does some work for the U.S. Govt. here in Alice. While I met with him, Dorothy and Toby spent several hours at a huge mall. After I finished we ate supper and decided to start driving to San Diego. I had no idea how bad the traffic would be so I did not expect to go the while way that evening. Well, the freeway was moving at about 70-75 mph, so we made San Diego in about 2 hours. I had no idea where ~o go once 1 had gotten there. There was a typical Jack-Dorothy shouting match about not planning ahead, etc., etc. Finally, Toby suggested we go down this one road, and I finally pulled into a service station to ask for help. I asked where I was, and the guy showed me on the map, and said where did 1 want to go and
I said I wasn't sure. I got a funny look. I did tell him that the next day I wanted to go to the zoo. He said there weren't any places to stay around the zoo, that it might be best to stay in that area and drive on in the next day. So we stayed in a motel just beside the water where a lot of pleasure and fishing boats were anchored. Also we were less than a mile from the San Diego Yacht Club, which took the America's Cup away from Australia.
The next day, we visited the world famous San Diego Zoo. It is not as large a zoo as I expected, and while it is beautifully landscaped, I truthfully didn't think it was any better than the Washington National Zoo, or the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. After we left there we drove down to a national reserve where an old lighthouse still stands. The view from the hill where the lighthouse is located is spectacular. The entire city of San Diego and the harbor area is visible. We also drove down a winding road to the water line to look at the tidal pools there.
The next morning we stopped at a flea market, which was supposed to open at 7, but many of the" stalls were still being set up when we returned at9. We drove back to L.A. quickly got settled in a motel, and went to Disneyland. Unfortunately, since it was a winter weekday, it closed at 6 p.m., but since there were so few people there we were able to do about everything we wanted to do at least once. I should mention that in addition to this entire time period was not the usual tourist season, it was fairly cold in southern California. We wore coats until the last day we were there.
The next morning, the day we were to leave for Australia, Dorothy called her parents in N.J. to say goodbye. Her mother told her that her father had been taken very ill, had been transported to the hospital and was undergoing an emergency operation, and there was some question whether he would survive. While Dorothy stayed at the motel, T6by and I went out to mail some final packages to ourselves. When we returned Dorothy was on the phone again and told us her father had died. While she continued to talk to her mother I went to comfort Toby and laid my glasses on the bed. After Dorothy got off the phone she came over and sat down on the bed - on my glasses and snapped off the earpiece. I was in a bit of a panic - I can't function without my glasses. Fortunately, I had my prescription sun glasses. I knew I would have to get my other glasses fixed, but the first order of business was to change Dorothy's reservations (again) and get her a flight back to the east coast. I got her one which left at 10 p.m., with the idea that she would get into New York early in the morning, rather than late at night as she would have to take one bus from the airport to the bus station, and then another bus out to N.J. The airline agent also told me that there was some possibility that our plane to Australia would be delayed or canceled due to mechanical difficulties. Thank goodness, when I checked back later in the afternoon, I was told the plane would leave as planned.
After dealing with the airlines I went out into Anaheim California to try and find an optician. After following three different sets of directions from different people I finally found one and fortunately they had a pair of frames that my lens would fit. I returned to the motel and picked up Dorothy and Toby. We spent the remainder of the day meandering through L.A., stopping to play miniature golf checking out one comic shop and a number of stores for refunds for Dorothy and finally a mall. But we had lost our enthusiasm for shopping so finally headed for the airport. We had to kill some time at the airport ("as always" - Toby's comment), but fina11y Toby and I got on the plane bound for Sydney at 8:20 p.m., while Dorothy had another hour and half to wait before catching her "red eye” f1ight to JFK airport in New York City ~
Our plane made very good time and landed early 6:15 a.m.) in Sydney. The first plane to Alice Springs, on which had reservations, was not until 3:30 p.m., so after checking our bags, we took a bus into Sydney. On arriving downtown, I called up a friend a of Dorothy's who lives in town and he said he would take a "sickie" and keep us company. We had gotten into town about 7:30, and we met him at 9, and we spent the next four hours walking around downtown Sydney. Ross went home, and I told Toby I could not walk another step. I really had not gotten any real sleep on the plane and I was exhausted. We took the bus back to the airport, finally got on the plane to Alice, and arrived here three hours later. The temperature was 38 degrees C (about 102 degrees F), which felt great after all of the cold.
Meanwhile, Dorothy's flight landed smoothly, despite the fog and rain, at 6 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 21st. She caught a bus to the Port Authority Bus Station, which is a very scary place at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Homeless people find its many nooks and crannies, stairwells and bus stops ideal places to sleep. Few "ordinary" people are about and the total effect is like a scene from some scary police show. She finally reached her mother's at 9 a.m. and began a week of helping her mother to make arrangements. Her brother (Dwight #2) and his wife Sue arrived in N.J. from North Carolina later in the day. Services were held Tuesday while Dwight and Sue left Wednesday because they had a non-refundable airline trip to Florida planned for Thursday. During the week, Dorothy and her mother took a trip into New York where they encountered a saxophone player busking in the tunneled corridors of the NY subway and were serenaded by a 73-year old former choir singer on a subway platform. Meanwhile her brother was being helped off an airplane and into a wheelchair in Atlanta following a bad case of air sickness.
Dorothy's return trip to Alice Springs was surprisingly uneventful. and she arrived in 44 degree C heat (about 110 degrees F) where a mountain of mail awaited her - including a very wet box of food stuffs mailed in a dry u.S. Post Office several weeks previously.
Once again we thank everyone for their Christmas cards and letters. We continue to enjoy mail and hope people will write whenever they can.
We hope 1990 is a good year and best wishes for a good decade.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Nov. 1989: Earthquakes & Cheeseburgers
Good Grief! Here it is the middle of November and time for another Grimm (or grim) Greeting. My "form letters" have dropped off this year since we, at least as a family, have not gone anyplace since we returned from the u.s. last January. However, everyone but me (all together now - pooor Jack) has been someplace.
The big news this year was Dwight leaving home to go off to Stanford University. (That's another reason why it's pooor Jack). He left here in mid September to fly back to California and the funny part is that from the time he was notified that he had been accepted I kidded him about being in San Francisco for the "next big one." One day I told him I wanted him to wear a life jacket while he was going to school and he looked at me as if I were nuts and asked why. I told him so when the big one hit and California slid into the ocean that he'd be prepared. Stanford had a lot of orientation courses for incoming freshmen and we told him one of those should be "earthquake survival." So, we all, including Dwight, saw some humor in the fact that the quake hit less than a month after he arrived. I guess Dwight was chuckling about it during the day and when asked by his fellow students why, he explained that his nutty father had warned him about that happening and it did. Stanford is between San Francisco and Santa Cruz (which I think was the center) but there was apparently no major damage. All of the buildings survived though Dwight heard that every book in the library (5-7 million books) fell off the shelves. We have a satellite dish at work on which we can get CNN news, so I watched the news for sometime that day and since I heard no reports of any damage at Stanford, we were not panic-struck. However, it was a relief when Dwight called that night. Just before he called us, some of the staff 'from the newspaper called him and interviewed him and then ran the interview and his picture on the front page of the paper. We sent Dwight a copy, which is now posted in his dorm to the amazement of other students.
Dwight is studying hard and is doing OK - maybe not great, but he has a heavy load and at least one hard subject (Calculus). I expect maybe next term will be a bit easier. He does have a little time for fun - he plays coed touch football! and inner-tube water polo went on a scavenger hunt into San Francisco (pre-quake) and has gone to some of the Stanford football games. Dorothy doesn't think you are supposed to have fun at college, but I told her that her experiences were not realistic. Her first two years were at an all-girls college in the deep south in the early 60's and her last two years were at George Washington University in Washington D.C. while she lived at home. So she has a distorted view of what university life is like. It's probably just as well for Dwight that he's 10,000 miles away.
Speaking of distances, Alice seems a lot further away from civilization thanks to a nationwide pilot's strike that started in early August. When the government and the airlines threatened legal action, all 1600 domestic pilots resigned. Since then the airlines have refused to deal with the pilots federation since in effect the pilots no longer work for them. This situation continues. The airlines are slowly hiring pilots on a contract basis and we now have a few regularly scheduled flights, but nothing like it used to be and in the 3 1/2 months this has been going on the tourist industry in this country has been devastated. Some estimates are that it will require five years for the industry to rebuild. When Dwight left town he had to take the train to Melbourne to catch a plane. Even a month from now when we come back to the U.S., again, for a visit, I couldn't ~et the flight out of Alice Springs that I wanted. It'll be next year before the flights get back to something approaching normal.
So Dwight had a big trip even if it was one way. Toby is in a children's choir here called the Alice Springs Junior Singers, and during a one-week school break in October they chartered a bus and went to South Australia where they put on a number of concerts and did some sightseeing. Toby's two goals were to eat as many McDonald cheeseburgers (we don't have a McDonalds here) as possible and to look for comic book shops in Adelaide. He did have some McDonald cheeseburgers and someone was nice enough to get him to a comic book shop where he stocked up. It worked out well - he bought enough to keep a late of kids absorbed for many hours during the long bus ride back to Alice Springs (about 18 hours).
Toby is doing reasonably well at school - without overextending himself. His main pastimes otherwise are bowling, collecting comics, and this year we was on a table tennis team with a friend of Dwight’s. Their team won 1st place, so Toby was pleased about that.
He doesn't seem to miss Dwight, I suspect in large part because the 1ate end of June, his best friend in the world, returned to Alice Springs and is living directly across the street. For the first couple of months I rarely saw him. This boy was the first kid that Toby met the day we arrived in Alice in 1981 and took Toby to school the first day and they have been best friends ever since, no matter where they are in the-world.
As for Dorothy's trips, during the early part of the pilot's strike, the Northern Territory govt. came up with this scheme to subsidize tour packages for Territory residents in order to save some of the tour groups that were about to fold. Dorothy got one of the vouchers that the govt. was circulating and took a trip to a place called King's Canyon. The tour involved a lot of uphill walking and Dorothy thought she might die, but survived it. She wasn't overly impressed and said she didn't have to go back. She had a better trip recently when she got to fly to Ayers Rock on a new air service that Australian Airlines is starting. She left Saturday, was treated to accommodations and meals that night and flew back the next day. She said she really enjoyed seeing Yulara, which is the community that is growing about 10 miles from the Rock, after all the tourist facilities were disbanded in the immediate vicinity of the Rock itself. She had a very good dinner and some very interesting discussions with some of the other people who had been invited on the tour.
Otherwise Dorothy continues to cover numerous art exhibits, plays, fashion shows, school activities, etc. She still occasionally makes a guest appearance at home. She is on call more than a doctor. I sometimes threaten to unhook the phone because people think nothing of calling her at home at all hours to ask her to cover something. I had thought about a telephone answering service, but would hate our parents or Dwight to reach that.
I too was an indirect victim of the pilot's strike. After worrying and making plans for months to hold the Federal Conference of the Australian-American Association here in October, we had to cancel it because I didn't think the people from Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, etc, would ride a bus or train, or drive here to attend. The planning had caused me a lot of distress, and finally when it seemed that we had our act together and the conference might be a success, the pilots pulled their stunt. It was very disappointing.
The furthest I have been since last January was to a tourist lodge called Glen Helen, about 100 miles from town. Dorothy and I were invited to a wedding here in town after which everyone was invited £0 go to Glen Helen for a reception and then everyone was planning to spend the night. It turned out to be very good timing, because that week the restaurant there had won the top award in a nationwide competition with other tourist restaurants. When the newspaper found out that Dorothy was going there anyway, she was asked to do a feature on the restaurant, so it all worked out well. The restaurant is not something you would expect in the outback of Australia, with china and silverware and very exotic dishes actually too exotic for us. But it was an interesting experience, we had a nice e~ening, spent the night and drove back to town the next day. Dorothy did a very nice feature for the Lodge, and in particular the restaurant. That has been the big event on my social calendar this year.
For the third year in a row, we will be returning to the U.S. for "rest and relaxation" over the Christmas holidays, to see our parents on the east coast, and Dwight, who will meet us there. Oh boy, I can hardly wait for those 5-mile backups on the Jersey Turnpike waiting to pay tolls, or maybe another snowstorm like 1 drove through last year to get to my parents' house, or maybe some sub-zero weather like we had the year before. Too much of that kind of R&R could kill you. This is more like an endurance test/giant shopping trip.
That's it for now. If anything exciting beyond those things I already mentioned happen on our trip home, you may be lucky enough to get another of these letters in the near future.
The big news this year was Dwight leaving home to go off to Stanford University. (That's another reason why it's pooor Jack). He left here in mid September to fly back to California and the funny part is that from the time he was notified that he had been accepted I kidded him about being in San Francisco for the "next big one." One day I told him I wanted him to wear a life jacket while he was going to school and he looked at me as if I were nuts and asked why. I told him so when the big one hit and California slid into the ocean that he'd be prepared. Stanford had a lot of orientation courses for incoming freshmen and we told him one of those should be "earthquake survival." So, we all, including Dwight, saw some humor in the fact that the quake hit less than a month after he arrived. I guess Dwight was chuckling about it during the day and when asked by his fellow students why, he explained that his nutty father had warned him about that happening and it did. Stanford is between San Francisco and Santa Cruz (which I think was the center) but there was apparently no major damage. All of the buildings survived though Dwight heard that every book in the library (5-7 million books) fell off the shelves. We have a satellite dish at work on which we can get CNN news, so I watched the news for sometime that day and since I heard no reports of any damage at Stanford, we were not panic-struck. However, it was a relief when Dwight called that night. Just before he called us, some of the staff 'from the newspaper called him and interviewed him and then ran the interview and his picture on the front page of the paper. We sent Dwight a copy, which is now posted in his dorm to the amazement of other students.
Dwight is studying hard and is doing OK - maybe not great, but he has a heavy load and at least one hard subject (Calculus). I expect maybe next term will be a bit easier. He does have a little time for fun - he plays coed touch football! and inner-tube water polo went on a scavenger hunt into San Francisco (pre-quake) and has gone to some of the Stanford football games. Dorothy doesn't think you are supposed to have fun at college, but I told her that her experiences were not realistic. Her first two years were at an all-girls college in the deep south in the early 60's and her last two years were at George Washington University in Washington D.C. while she lived at home. So she has a distorted view of what university life is like. It's probably just as well for Dwight that he's 10,000 miles away.
Speaking of distances, Alice seems a lot further away from civilization thanks to a nationwide pilot's strike that started in early August. When the government and the airlines threatened legal action, all 1600 domestic pilots resigned. Since then the airlines have refused to deal with the pilots federation since in effect the pilots no longer work for them. This situation continues. The airlines are slowly hiring pilots on a contract basis and we now have a few regularly scheduled flights, but nothing like it used to be and in the 3 1/2 months this has been going on the tourist industry in this country has been devastated. Some estimates are that it will require five years for the industry to rebuild. When Dwight left town he had to take the train to Melbourne to catch a plane. Even a month from now when we come back to the U.S., again, for a visit, I couldn't ~et the flight out of Alice Springs that I wanted. It'll be next year before the flights get back to something approaching normal.
So Dwight had a big trip even if it was one way. Toby is in a children's choir here called the Alice Springs Junior Singers, and during a one-week school break in October they chartered a bus and went to South Australia where they put on a number of concerts and did some sightseeing. Toby's two goals were to eat as many McDonald cheeseburgers (we don't have a McDonalds here) as possible and to look for comic book shops in Adelaide. He did have some McDonald cheeseburgers and someone was nice enough to get him to a comic book shop where he stocked up. It worked out well - he bought enough to keep a late of kids absorbed for many hours during the long bus ride back to Alice Springs (about 18 hours).
Toby is doing reasonably well at school - without overextending himself. His main pastimes otherwise are bowling, collecting comics, and this year we was on a table tennis team with a friend of Dwight’s. Their team won 1st place, so Toby was pleased about that.
He doesn't seem to miss Dwight, I suspect in large part because the 1ate end of June, his best friend in the world, returned to Alice Springs and is living directly across the street. For the first couple of months I rarely saw him. This boy was the first kid that Toby met the day we arrived in Alice in 1981 and took Toby to school the first day and they have been best friends ever since, no matter where they are in the-world.
As for Dorothy's trips, during the early part of the pilot's strike, the Northern Territory govt. came up with this scheme to subsidize tour packages for Territory residents in order to save some of the tour groups that were about to fold. Dorothy got one of the vouchers that the govt. was circulating and took a trip to a place called King's Canyon. The tour involved a lot of uphill walking and Dorothy thought she might die, but survived it. She wasn't overly impressed and said she didn't have to go back. She had a better trip recently when she got to fly to Ayers Rock on a new air service that Australian Airlines is starting. She left Saturday, was treated to accommodations and meals that night and flew back the next day. She said she really enjoyed seeing Yulara, which is the community that is growing about 10 miles from the Rock, after all the tourist facilities were disbanded in the immediate vicinity of the Rock itself. She had a very good dinner and some very interesting discussions with some of the other people who had been invited on the tour.
Otherwise Dorothy continues to cover numerous art exhibits, plays, fashion shows, school activities, etc. She still occasionally makes a guest appearance at home. She is on call more than a doctor. I sometimes threaten to unhook the phone because people think nothing of calling her at home at all hours to ask her to cover something. I had thought about a telephone answering service, but would hate our parents or Dwight to reach that.
I too was an indirect victim of the pilot's strike. After worrying and making plans for months to hold the Federal Conference of the Australian-American Association here in October, we had to cancel it because I didn't think the people from Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, etc, would ride a bus or train, or drive here to attend. The planning had caused me a lot of distress, and finally when it seemed that we had our act together and the conference might be a success, the pilots pulled their stunt. It was very disappointing.
The furthest I have been since last January was to a tourist lodge called Glen Helen, about 100 miles from town. Dorothy and I were invited to a wedding here in town after which everyone was invited £0 go to Glen Helen for a reception and then everyone was planning to spend the night. It turned out to be very good timing, because that week the restaurant there had won the top award in a nationwide competition with other tourist restaurants. When the newspaper found out that Dorothy was going there anyway, she was asked to do a feature on the restaurant, so it all worked out well. The restaurant is not something you would expect in the outback of Australia, with china and silverware and very exotic dishes actually too exotic for us. But it was an interesting experience, we had a nice e~ening, spent the night and drove back to town the next day. Dorothy did a very nice feature for the Lodge, and in particular the restaurant. That has been the big event on my social calendar this year.
For the third year in a row, we will be returning to the U.S. for "rest and relaxation" over the Christmas holidays, to see our parents on the east coast, and Dwight, who will meet us there. Oh boy, I can hardly wait for those 5-mile backups on the Jersey Turnpike waiting to pay tolls, or maybe another snowstorm like 1 drove through last year to get to my parents' house, or maybe some sub-zero weather like we had the year before. Too much of that kind of R&R could kill you. This is more like an endurance test/giant shopping trip.
That's it for now. If anything exciting beyond those things I already mentioned happen on our trip home, you may be lucky enough to get another of these letters in the near future.
July 1989: Visitors to Alice
Well, I wish this were a trip report, but the only thing to report for now are all of the exciting (!) things happening in Alice Springs.
Our pup still is making life interesting. He is now 4 months old and weighs 30 lbs. Regardless of the fact that his mother was supposed to be a Blue Heeler, this dog has a lot of kelpie in it, plus, apparently a larger dog. A kelpie is an Australian sheep dog and this dog needs sheep to play with. He learned to jump the front fence last Friday, so I spent the weekend extending the fence upwards using steel rods and chicken wire. Saturday while I was working on the fence the dog jumped the fence and before I could get him he got sideswiped by a car. It was a glancing blow and he doesn't seem the worse for wear. Maybe it will have an effect on him to stay out of the street. Meanwhile, I have finished the fence and hopefully that will discourage him. Dwight said the addition to the fence gave the place a real outback look. I hope the housing office won't find it offensive. The other problem is the female blue peeler pup that lives next door. She likes to come to visit, under the fence, and our dog is only too willing to help her by digging on our side. I keep hoping that she will soon be too large to squeeze under the fence, but so far that is not the case.
We had some visitors from the U.S. a couple of weeks ago. I was able to take some time off work and - show them around. However, I had to go to work on Sunday, so Dorothy took them to a tourist lodge at Glen Helen about 100 miles from Alice, to a book launching. The book, which is relatively small, is about local history. Anyway, they had lunch there and on the way back to town, Dorothy started back to one of the gorges, but after 5 km decided that the road was too rough and turned back. That was enough for our visitors. They had no real desire to get off the sealed highways after that.
I took them to see the new structure marking the Tropic of Capricorn, the Old Telegraph Station (site of the original Alice Springs- a permanent water hole), some Aboriginal rock paintings,
a number of shops (for opals and Australian wool yarn), and also stopped to see some friends who are serious rock collectors. Their house looks like a museum with all of the different rock specimens and also the numerous semi-precious stones that the man has cut himself. In addition; these people are now providing a foster home for a baby kangaroo and he has just acquired hair and had just learned to hop the day before so- we all enjoyed watching him out on the front lawn.
Dave, one of the visitors, had brought a radio scanner with him, so for several days we lost Dwight while he listened to the airport communications and the police channel. Dave is also an avid trivia buff, so he and the boys had a great time asking each other questions out of Trivia pursuit.
We took our visitors to the Araluen Arts Center to a performance marking the 5th anniversary of the Center. It was an interesting event. The show was done in the style of a big party with the whole cast either staying on stage or coming and going during the evening. Most of the amateur performers in town, including Toby, were in the production in some form - singing or dancing or playing a musical instrument. At least Dorothy and I enjoyed the show. I think our visitors did, as well.
The other thing we took our friend to was a performance by some Siberian Cossock dancers. This event proved to be rather controversial. There was nowhere in town to hold it which would have seated the size crowd they hoped to have. The Araluen theater only holds 500 people and the promoters had hoped to have 1500. So they set up a stage outside. I had expressed my reservations to Dorothy about the admission price and the fact that it gets cold here in June. She persisted, saying it would be a nice event to which we could take our guests. I started grumping that morning when I found out that after paying a considerable amount, there were no chairs provided - you were expected to provide your own, and then to sit out in the cold (at night); By the time of the performance you could say there was a 'cold war' taking place between Dorothy and myself. It not only was cold, the wind was blowing extremely hard. Unfortunately for one of the dancers, but fortunately for at least those of us who don't like cold weather (one of the reasons I like Alice springs is it is warm most of the time) one of the main dancers injured himself and two dances were cut so that the show only lasted about an hour and a half. To top this whole thing off, that day was Dorothy's and my 19th anniversary!
[Notes: Dorothy pointed out she and I had free tickets; but since the kids went also, we still spent money. Also, she said the wind was not really blowing hard - I guess someone near me was just breathing real hard.]
By coincidence, an American tour group (Williams College Alumni) were in town on July 4th, so the Australian-American Association hosted them at a dinner at the Araluen Bistro. We usually have barbeques for these tour groups, but as I mentioned above it gets cold this time of the year (how cold - it was in the 20's F several nights in the last couple of weeks). It was still very nice. We roasted pork, lamb and beef on a big covered cooker outside on the patio and then brought the meat in so we could eat in the warmth.
I think the tourists enjoyed themselves.
Toby is on school holidays for a month - they only get two months in the summer, and then a month in the winter. Things worked out very well for him. His best friend, who he met here in 1981, has just moved back here from the U.S. and is living right across the street, so we haven't seen much of Toby lately - he is either there or the boys are in our 'computer room.' I think it's great that John was able to return just at this time, because I think Toby will miss Dwight when he goes off to school.
Well I guess that is all I have for now, so I will stop here.
Our pup still is making life interesting. He is now 4 months old and weighs 30 lbs. Regardless of the fact that his mother was supposed to be a Blue Heeler, this dog has a lot of kelpie in it, plus, apparently a larger dog. A kelpie is an Australian sheep dog and this dog needs sheep to play with. He learned to jump the front fence last Friday, so I spent the weekend extending the fence upwards using steel rods and chicken wire. Saturday while I was working on the fence the dog jumped the fence and before I could get him he got sideswiped by a car. It was a glancing blow and he doesn't seem the worse for wear. Maybe it will have an effect on him to stay out of the street. Meanwhile, I have finished the fence and hopefully that will discourage him. Dwight said the addition to the fence gave the place a real outback look. I hope the housing office won't find it offensive. The other problem is the female blue peeler pup that lives next door. She likes to come to visit, under the fence, and our dog is only too willing to help her by digging on our side. I keep hoping that she will soon be too large to squeeze under the fence, but so far that is not the case.
We had some visitors from the U.S. a couple of weeks ago. I was able to take some time off work and - show them around. However, I had to go to work on Sunday, so Dorothy took them to a tourist lodge at Glen Helen about 100 miles from Alice, to a book launching. The book, which is relatively small, is about local history. Anyway, they had lunch there and on the way back to town, Dorothy started back to one of the gorges, but after 5 km decided that the road was too rough and turned back. That was enough for our visitors. They had no real desire to get off the sealed highways after that.
I took them to see the new structure marking the Tropic of Capricorn, the Old Telegraph Station (site of the original Alice Springs- a permanent water hole), some Aboriginal rock paintings,
a number of shops (for opals and Australian wool yarn), and also stopped to see some friends who are serious rock collectors. Their house looks like a museum with all of the different rock specimens and also the numerous semi-precious stones that the man has cut himself. In addition; these people are now providing a foster home for a baby kangaroo and he has just acquired hair and had just learned to hop the day before so- we all enjoyed watching him out on the front lawn.
Dave, one of the visitors, had brought a radio scanner with him, so for several days we lost Dwight while he listened to the airport communications and the police channel. Dave is also an avid trivia buff, so he and the boys had a great time asking each other questions out of Trivia pursuit.
We took our visitors to the Araluen Arts Center to a performance marking the 5th anniversary of the Center. It was an interesting event. The show was done in the style of a big party with the whole cast either staying on stage or coming and going during the evening. Most of the amateur performers in town, including Toby, were in the production in some form - singing or dancing or playing a musical instrument. At least Dorothy and I enjoyed the show. I think our visitors did, as well.
The other thing we took our friend to was a performance by some Siberian Cossock dancers. This event proved to be rather controversial. There was nowhere in town to hold it which would have seated the size crowd they hoped to have. The Araluen theater only holds 500 people and the promoters had hoped to have 1500. So they set up a stage outside. I had expressed my reservations to Dorothy about the admission price and the fact that it gets cold here in June. She persisted, saying it would be a nice event to which we could take our guests. I started grumping that morning when I found out that after paying a considerable amount, there were no chairs provided - you were expected to provide your own, and then to sit out in the cold (at night); By the time of the performance you could say there was a 'cold war' taking place between Dorothy and myself. It not only was cold, the wind was blowing extremely hard. Unfortunately for one of the dancers, but fortunately for at least those of us who don't like cold weather (one of the reasons I like Alice springs is it is warm most of the time) one of the main dancers injured himself and two dances were cut so that the show only lasted about an hour and a half. To top this whole thing off, that day was Dorothy's and my 19th anniversary!
[Notes: Dorothy pointed out she and I had free tickets; but since the kids went also, we still spent money. Also, she said the wind was not really blowing hard - I guess someone near me was just breathing real hard.]
By coincidence, an American tour group (Williams College Alumni) were in town on July 4th, so the Australian-American Association hosted them at a dinner at the Araluen Bistro. We usually have barbeques for these tour groups, but as I mentioned above it gets cold this time of the year (how cold - it was in the 20's F several nights in the last couple of weeks). It was still very nice. We roasted pork, lamb and beef on a big covered cooker outside on the patio and then brought the meat in so we could eat in the warmth.
I think the tourists enjoyed themselves.
Toby is on school holidays for a month - they only get two months in the summer, and then a month in the winter. Things worked out very well for him. His best friend, who he met here in 1981, has just moved back here from the U.S. and is living right across the street, so we haven't seen much of Toby lately - he is either there or the boys are in our 'computer room.' I think it's great that John was able to return just at this time, because I think Toby will miss Dwight when he goes off to school.
Well I guess that is all I have for now, so I will stop here.
May 1989: Eisteddfod
Once again I put finger to keyboard (not as poetic as "take pen in hand") to bring you up to date on adventures in the outback.
Does anyone want a dog? I will even pay the airfare to send him to you. This new puppy is doing his best to drive me even further "around the bend." His cattle dog instincts are very apparent in a couple of ways - he loves to chew. He has been pretty good about not chewing furniture, but about anything else is fair game. He loves shoes, and people. If you don't know, cattle dogs control cattle by nipping them on the backs of their legs. Dorothy also thinks that he has the herding instinct. I was afraid if I let him run loose, I will end up with a yard full of animals he has herded into it. Actually, he is also pretty good about staying in the yard, but I am afraid that is only a matter of time. The thing though, that may shorten his life span is waking me up at 4:30-5:QO a.m. I hate mornings anyway (one of the things I like about living here is being able - prior to the dog - to sleep until 6:15, instead of getting up at 5:15 like I did in Alexandria.) I don't mind getting up to let him out at 5 a.m., it's the fact he wants to play when he comes back in. This is our third dog and I believe it will be the last.
Last week was very hectic and very interesting. An annual music event called an Eisteddfod was held at the Araluen Arts Center. The event had over 500 participants and ran from 8:45 a.m. until after 10 each night. An Eisteddfod is a Welsh competitive festival of arts. There were many categories of vocal and instrumental competitions and for the first time this year, readings, and even a debate. The participants ranged from the very young to older individuals. One man adjudicated all of the events, which was a huge job. Not only did he select the best performer or group in each category but he wrote a critique on each performer or group as well. Dwight was only in the Alice Springs Youth Band, while Toby was in a number of categories with the Alice Springs, Junior Singers, as well as performing on his own in two reading categories (prepared and impromptu-) and guitar. I heard the prepared reading and thought he was by far the most expressive reader. However, he lost his place a couple of times, so lost points. He did get a "high commendation" for the-impromptu reading (there is only one prize - 1st).
The community is extremely lucky to have a number of very talented and dedicated individuals who work with the kids in the community. The number of kids that participated was really impressive. One lady spends a lot of time training several choirs, as well as giving umpteen music lessons a week. Another lady, who also gives music lessons has numerous flute ensembles. A third lady has a number of high school vocal groups. Finally, the guy who directs the Youth Band has to be given credit. I can't stand the guy. He is an arrogant, despotic so and so, but he is a fantastic musician, and even though he rants and raves at the kids, he has done wonders with a group of kids, some of whom are barely competent on their instruments. At least the first night they performed, they sounded as good as many high school bands I have heard in the U.S., and those bands normally practice several days a week at school.
This band only practices once a week after school.
This week things have returned to the normal hectic, chaotic pace of life at the Grimms, including orchestrating the comings and goings of the cat and dog, which still can't co-exist. Dorothy has been a lot busier lately and is out of the house a good part of the time. I'm not sure we ever ate a meal together last week. In addition to the Eisteddfod, she went to a large fairly elaborate fashion show, which was held outside. At this time of the year, the evenings can be quite cool and she was pretty cold when she got home. She attended several other functions (brunches, etc) related to promoting the fashion show. We both have also continued to follow the research balloon launches and when one of the scientists called me at 5 a.m. one morning to tell me they were going to launch, Dorothy went to watch it, took "some pictures and ran an article and pictures in the paper. Both of us got to see the third launch in the series another night. That research package was put together by a group of Italians. There are still two payloads waiting to be launched - one by the U. of Cal. at San Diego (which includes a French experiment), and another Italian experiment.
Dwight continues to have interesting experience9 as the newspaper photographer. He recently photographed the Australian Penthouse "Pet of the Year" while she was in town - she remained clothed for his pictures. He also flew with one of the well known journalists from here down to Ayers Rock one day when the Sheraton had to clear many of their customers from their rooms to repair water damage. Speaking of the Sheraton, he went to the one here in Alice Springs one day to take some publicity ph6tos for them, but they weren't ready for him, so treated him to anything he wanted to eat in their Bistro. I should be so lucky.
Toby continues to enjoy bowling and is carrying about a 135 average, and I believe his high league game was a 191. He is also on the school debating team, and is not a bad speaker, but is not fast enough on his feet yet to do a good job offering rebuttals to the opposing team. But I think he is learning and some of the teachers have commented on his delivery (somewhat dramatic).
I am still pulling my hair out over the Australian-American Association. It got to the point that the secretary wasn't talking to the president, so I am now acting as the secretary. In addition, as with most organizations, we have trouble getting people to attend meetings (most of them manage to struggle to the "social" functions, however). Oh well.
I guess the only other news is that at least the site management has approved another 1-year extension (which means we will be here until at least July-Aug 1991). The extension has to be approved by offices in the U.S., but I expect it will be.
I guess that is all of the news I have at the moment.
Does anyone want a dog? I will even pay the airfare to send him to you. This new puppy is doing his best to drive me even further "around the bend." His cattle dog instincts are very apparent in a couple of ways - he loves to chew. He has been pretty good about not chewing furniture, but about anything else is fair game. He loves shoes, and people. If you don't know, cattle dogs control cattle by nipping them on the backs of their legs. Dorothy also thinks that he has the herding instinct. I was afraid if I let him run loose, I will end up with a yard full of animals he has herded into it. Actually, he is also pretty good about staying in the yard, but I am afraid that is only a matter of time. The thing though, that may shorten his life span is waking me up at 4:30-5:QO a.m. I hate mornings anyway (one of the things I like about living here is being able - prior to the dog - to sleep until 6:15, instead of getting up at 5:15 like I did in Alexandria.) I don't mind getting up to let him out at 5 a.m., it's the fact he wants to play when he comes back in. This is our third dog and I believe it will be the last.
Last week was very hectic and very interesting. An annual music event called an Eisteddfod was held at the Araluen Arts Center. The event had over 500 participants and ran from 8:45 a.m. until after 10 each night. An Eisteddfod is a Welsh competitive festival of arts. There were many categories of vocal and instrumental competitions and for the first time this year, readings, and even a debate. The participants ranged from the very young to older individuals. One man adjudicated all of the events, which was a huge job. Not only did he select the best performer or group in each category but he wrote a critique on each performer or group as well. Dwight was only in the Alice Springs Youth Band, while Toby was in a number of categories with the Alice Springs, Junior Singers, as well as performing on his own in two reading categories (prepared and impromptu-) and guitar. I heard the prepared reading and thought he was by far the most expressive reader. However, he lost his place a couple of times, so lost points. He did get a "high commendation" for the-impromptu reading (there is only one prize - 1st).
The community is extremely lucky to have a number of very talented and dedicated individuals who work with the kids in the community. The number of kids that participated was really impressive. One lady spends a lot of time training several choirs, as well as giving umpteen music lessons a week. Another lady, who also gives music lessons has numerous flute ensembles. A third lady has a number of high school vocal groups. Finally, the guy who directs the Youth Band has to be given credit. I can't stand the guy. He is an arrogant, despotic so and so, but he is a fantastic musician, and even though he rants and raves at the kids, he has done wonders with a group of kids, some of whom are barely competent on their instruments. At least the first night they performed, they sounded as good as many high school bands I have heard in the U.S., and those bands normally practice several days a week at school.
This band only practices once a week after school.
This week things have returned to the normal hectic, chaotic pace of life at the Grimms, including orchestrating the comings and goings of the cat and dog, which still can't co-exist. Dorothy has been a lot busier lately and is out of the house a good part of the time. I'm not sure we ever ate a meal together last week. In addition to the Eisteddfod, she went to a large fairly elaborate fashion show, which was held outside. At this time of the year, the evenings can be quite cool and she was pretty cold when she got home. She attended several other functions (brunches, etc) related to promoting the fashion show. We both have also continued to follow the research balloon launches and when one of the scientists called me at 5 a.m. one morning to tell me they were going to launch, Dorothy went to watch it, took "some pictures and ran an article and pictures in the paper. Both of us got to see the third launch in the series another night. That research package was put together by a group of Italians. There are still two payloads waiting to be launched - one by the U. of Cal. at San Diego (which includes a French experiment), and another Italian experiment.
Dwight continues to have interesting experience9 as the newspaper photographer. He recently photographed the Australian Penthouse "Pet of the Year" while she was in town - she remained clothed for his pictures. He also flew with one of the well known journalists from here down to Ayers Rock one day when the Sheraton had to clear many of their customers from their rooms to repair water damage. Speaking of the Sheraton, he went to the one here in Alice Springs one day to take some publicity ph6tos for them, but they weren't ready for him, so treated him to anything he wanted to eat in their Bistro. I should be so lucky.
Toby continues to enjoy bowling and is carrying about a 135 average, and I believe his high league game was a 191. He is also on the school debating team, and is not a bad speaker, but is not fast enough on his feet yet to do a good job offering rebuttals to the opposing team. But I think he is learning and some of the teachers have commented on his delivery (somewhat dramatic).
I am still pulling my hair out over the Australian-American Association. It got to the point that the secretary wasn't talking to the president, so I am now acting as the secretary. In addition, as with most organizations, we have trouble getting people to attend meetings (most of them manage to struggle to the "social" functions, however). Oh well.
I guess the only other news is that at least the site management has approved another 1-year extension (which means we will be here until at least July-Aug 1991). The extension has to be approved by offices in the U.S., but I expect it will be.
I guess that is all of the news I have at the moment.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Jan 1989: Visit Home (Again)
ANOTHER GRIMM ODYSSEY TO THE U.S.
Since we are now scheduled to stay in Alice Springs until the summer of 1990, we made another odyssey back to the U.S. over the Christmas holidays to visit friends and relatives. As incredible as it seems, there are some people who at least pretend to find my trip reports interesting (actually they may be a break from some of the terrible TV shows we caught glimpses of during our stay). Anyway, here is the tale of our latest adventure. I will try to be brief during the boring parts.
We left Alice Springs December 16th and by choice decided to catch the United flight to the U.S. from Melbourne, instead of Sydney. No matter which city you use, or which domestic airline, it is impossible to make connections so it is necessary to stay overnight. The Melbourne airport is less crowded than Sydney and it is easier to get to hotels. Also, I had hoped to see a friend the evening we spent in Melbourne, but he was sic~ and unable to meet us. So, the first part of the trip was Alice to Adelaide to Melbourne, then go to Sydney the next day. The only hitch there was a brief (15-20 minute) delay because the guys who drive the trucks that push the planes backwards away from the terminal suddenly went on strike, then just as suddenly went back to work. This occurred as we were sitting on the plane and had they not gone back to work I was prepared to organize the passengers to physically push the plane!"
About 13 hours later, we landed in L.A. and after a break of several hours flew on to Newark, NJ. I got lost leaving the airport (I panicked) but eventually arrived at Dorothy's parents. The next couple of days we rested and shopped, then drove to visit my parents in Hagerstown, Maryland, before returning to N.J. The trip is 250 miles each way and wasn't too bad on the way down but we encountered a 7-mile backup on the way back to N.J. due to construction causing one of the lanes to be closed (for some unexplained reason the shoulder, which was paved, was not being used - I was not amused). The speed limit in NJ and Maryland is still posted as 55, but the average speed in many places is 65-75.
During one of our shopping expeditions we did see something worth mentioning. At a Toys R Us in NJ, we saw a guy doing his Xmas shopping wearing a floor length white fur coat with a matching fur hat. If that wasn't enough to catch your eye, the hat also had the head of the animal (fox?) centered squarely in the front.
While in N.J. Dwight found and bought a used Hasselblad camera at a shop where we have done a lot of business. This camera, which is a top professional brand, appeared to be in excellent condition for an older camera and should serve Dwight well while he works as a photographer in Alice Springs (and hopefully help get him through college). Dwight is one of those people that even when he makes a mistake, he comes out of it in good shape. He got an extension tube (which fits between the camera and the lens) stuck and couldn't get the lens off. (The lens unscrews for adding other pieces or to put different lens on the camera.) The result was that the camera had to be returned to the national service center to have the tube removed. I had visions of incredible complications - wrong. The service center was only 20 minutes from Dorothy's parents. Unfortunately, this occurred on the Saturday before Christmas, and we were not able to get there until Tuesday, when they reopened. In the meantime, Dwight was in a panic mode. Since both boys like to write they still write humorous notes to "Santa Claus" on Christmas eve. I think they enjoy the humorous responses they sometimes get. This year, all Dwight wanted for Christmas was a Hasselblad technician. The first thing Tuesday morning I took him to the service center. The National Service Manager removed the lens, told Dwight what he had done wrong, showed him how to solve the problem if it happened again, gave him a new strap and some spare rubber parts that sometimes wear out, gave him a fistful of brochures on using the camera, and also an assessment of the camera (it's old but in excellent shape and should serve him for many years) and there was no charge! Dwight was sure happy.
Toby and I spent many hours in a couple of used book stores. I bought quite a few used paperbacks that had come out in the last several years and are unavailable or extremely expensive here (a new paperback book here costs $9-15). Toby ended up buying a couple of hundred used comics on this trip, many in bulk packages.
The only other item which Dorothy wanted me to mention was the flocks of Canadian geese we saw just off several extremely busy highways in N.J. Apparently they can tolerate the traffic better than I can.
Our trip to Washington D.C. two days after Christmas was not pleasant. On the Garden State Parkway, for reasons that escaped us, the highway department decided to close two of four lanes, five miles before the actual construction. That would have been bad enough, but the lane closures began just beyond a toll plaza, which meant that the 12 lanes exiting the tollbooths had to merge into two lanes instead of four. It took 45 minutes to break free of this bottleneck. Then we had to wait in a 5-m~l~ backup to pay the toll at the end of the N.J. turnpike.
We had a good time in Washington D.C. thanks to the hospitality of our neighbors in Alexandria ("Mac" and "McGrandma" as our boys nicknamed Mrs. McDonald last year) and to friends who had us to dinner. We enjoyed our visits but wish there was a way to reciprocate. I have promised that if I suddenly become rich, I will charter a plane for all of our friends to come visit. A plane load of "friends of the Grimms" arriving in Alice Springs should certainly cause a sensation.
Other than visiting friends and shopping in the Washington area, we also all visited the dentist, Dorothy called her horse riding instructor and was invited to attend a lesson. She survived the lesson and the jumps (No worries, mate), but not the removal of the boots. When she took them off, she suffered severe 'charley horses' and barely made it home to the great amusement of a number of people. I was also able to get my Buick fixed so that it is road worthy. Had I known I was going to end up in Australia so long, I probably would have sold it rather than leaving it at my house (and ask the very patient "Mac" to start it for me occasionally)
Before we left, I had promised Toby that he could visit his best friend who lives in Laurel, Maryland, north of Washington/Alexandria, so we dropped him off New Year's Eve. I had made arrangements to visit my parents in Hagerstown, northwest of Washington, on New Year's Day, which meant I had to detour to Laurel to pick up Toby. Although it added a number of miles to our trip it wouldn't have been so bad except it started to snow as we left Alexandria, the snow was coming down hard by the time we got to Laurel and the roads were getting real slippery by the time we reached the Baltimore beltway. The trip got a little tense from then on because Dorothy doesn't like to be on snowy roads and the drivers in that area have not improved any over the years. - We kept listening to the radio for weather updates, only they continued to be out of date. No snow in Laurel the radio said, as we made our way through an inch or so. We didn't see a snow plow for 2 1/2 hours - they seemed to be heeding the radio's advice to stay home.
The next 8 days were characterized by fog, fog and more fog, plus a bit of snow and rain. This meant driving in fog from Hagerstown to D.C., from D.C. to Elizabethtown, PA. and from there to NJ. The boys caught up with some of their friends and even spent a couple days at their former school in Alexandria. Toby "arranged" so that he got to visit school for 1/2 hour before it was closed due to snow and he was able to spend the rest of the day playing with one of his friends.
We left Washington to return to N.J. on Jan 7th, stopping in Hagerstown to say goodbye to my parents; then staying overnight with some friends in Elizabethtown, Pa. These were the friends that had egged me into going into the hot tub in their back yard last year in-the very cold weather. I think Toby had regretted not doing it so be was looking forward to trying it this year and all of the boys got in the tub the next morning before we left for N.J. As I said, there was a lot of fog, which made driving very tedious.
Back in N.J. we did more shopping, mailed stuff to ourselves, had lunch with one of Dorothy's aunts, and Dorothy visited a friend in New York City. Finally, we left for the west coast, but not before I got lost on the way to the Newark airport. (I hate that airport.)
At one point I got so frustrated I tried to drive across a median strip, but the car bottomed out on the curb, so I changed tactics.
We arrived in San Francisco at 9:30 p.m., and I asked Hertz if I could get a car then. They said I would have to wait until midnight so I checked with Budget and got a car immediately.
The next day we visited the Stanford University campus. That is Dwight's first choice for college. The campus is large for the number of students (13,000). Dwight did not have a formal interview, but did meet with a lady in the undergraduate admissions office who answered questions for him. Seeing the campus only strengthened Dwight's desire to go there. Although we are realistic enough to realize his chances are slim, Dorothy says "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
We left the campus and drove to an area where the movie "A Cry in the Dark" was playing. This is the movie, titled "Evil Angels" here in Australia, in which Dwight and I were extras when part of it was filmed here in Alice Springs in November 1987. It is a terrible movie and really biased in favor of the woman who was accused of murdering her baby, but we had to see it to see if we showed up.
We did not see Dwight, but I appeared briefly in a scene in which the forensic specialist was shown on TV as he entered the courthouse.
The next day we visited and had lunch with a good friend from our days in Colorado and then headed south on the coastal highway.
We turned off the main highway to drive through Carmel, to see if we could spot Clint Eastwood (he used to be mayor there), then continued south. I had read somewhere that this was the time of the year that whales can be seen off the coast, and had alerted the rest of the family, but when Dorothy said, "There they are!" we did not believe her. But, sure enough, there were quite a few plumes in the air as the whales surfaced to breathe, and from time to time, even though they were far away, we could just make out parts of the whales as they broke the surface of the water.
We stayed the night in San Simeon, and the next day took a tour of the famous Hearst Castle, the fabulous estate, built by the journalist William Randolph Hearst in the 20's and 30's. It was turned over to the state of California some years ago, which now runs it as a tourist attraction. The Hearsts still own the 100,000 acres that surround the castle. The estate includes three guest cottages, and at least the one we walked through has 3000 sq. feet of space.
We also toured a part of the main house and the main room is impressive for its size and some of the art objects (400-500 year old tapestries among other things). Hearst supposedly spent $1 million a year for 20-some years on art objects. The large dining room was impressive for its collection of silver. It's impossible to remember all of the details and statistics that the guide was throwing at us, but I believe that she said Hearst had the largest silver collection in the world in those days. There was a loft for musicians at the end' of the dining room which looked perfect for a string quartet, but the guide said that Hearst; who considered the place his ranch, would hire country and western bands, including Roy Rogers, to play in this very European-style room. Much of the place (fireplaces, carved ceilings, tapestries, etc. were bits and pieces brought from Europe. There is an impressive outdoor “Neptune" swimming pool, which I have seen numerous pictures of over the years. It is a quite large pool surrounded by Roman columns and statues. The large indoor pool, located under the tennis courts is just as impressive. The entire room is covered with a glass mosaic. We also saw the billiard room and theater. During the time Hearst lived there he also had his own private zoo and some of the animals - zebra and deer - still roam the area.
After the tour, we continued down the coast and on into L.A. I experienced one of the famous bumper-to-bumper (for 10 miles or so) freeway traffic jams. We finally got to Hollywood where we stayed for the night. We did not get to drive through the fashionable section. I drove-down Hollywood Blvd. and up Sunset Blvd. looking for motel. The area was a bit seedy, but we found a fairly decent motel for the night. We walked over the Hollywood Blvd. to see the famous Chinese theater where the movie stars have put their hand and footprints in concrete. Toby wanted to see the footprints of R2D2, C3PO, and Darth Vader, from Star Wars.
The next morning we stopped by the post office to mail two packages (the last of the~5 we mailed to ourselves) and then went to Universal Studios. The tour there is a two-part event. They take you on a 1 1/2 hour tram tour of the back lot. This includes taking you through a sound stage and demonstrating special effects, and driving into a building, which has a set of a city street. At one point in that set the tram stops alongside a huge working model of King Kong. His massive head was within feet of Toby, who was duly impressed.
The tram drove through a number of city sets that have been used and continue to be used for a number of movies. Dwight and I especially got a kick out of driving past the house from "Psycho." We did not see any working sets.
The second part of the overall tour is a theme park in which you visit various shows throughout the day. One of our favorites was a "Miami Vice" style set. Here a 20-minute show is set up with lots of action and special effects including burning and exploding buildings and gunshots everywhere. The other show we will remember is one using a "Star Trek" set in which volunteers from the audience participate in making a short movie. Toby was selected and was dressed in a Star Trek officers uniform and took his place at the console of the U.S.S~ Enterprise. (For anyone who knows Star Trek, he was playing Kr. Sulu.) The short show is taped and turned into a short video with scenes from the real star Trek interspersed. This results in a nifty racket to sell copies of the video to the participants. Naturally, we bit.
We finally left and drove to Anaheim where we stayed for the night. The next day, we visited Disneyland from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. I could barely walk out of the park. We went on most of the old favorites~ the submarine ride, the Haunted House, etc. Toby and I went with Dwight and Dorothy on one of the high-speed rides - Space Mountain - but declined to ride any of the others. We almost missed the best one, apparently a fairly new one, called "Star Tours" because we thought it was a ride. However, Dwight and Dorothy went on and came out and said it was all-simulated and was absolutely fantastic, so we went later in the evening after the crowds thinned out. This attraction is a combined creation of Disney and George Lucas (Star Wars) and is extremely effective. You sit in a cabin which is designed to simulate a passenger spaceship and through a very realistic movie, plus apparent hydraulics under the room you appear to take a journey through space. The simulation is incredible and I'll admit I had to shut my eyes once or twice as the ship appeared to weave through a winding ice cave. We also went to see a 3-D movie starring Michael Jackson. Even for those of us who had seen the original 3-D movies back in the dark ages, it was a fun experience and the kids were impressed.
The next day we started for the L.A. International Airport at about 9:30 a.m. You have to realize that we weren't scheduled to leave until 8:30 p.m. but I thought we'd drive the 30 or more miles across the city and check out bookstores and grocery and drug stores (for Dorothy to look for more refund offers). Although we did some of that, the traffic started to get to me and I seemed to have the knack for selecting ugly light-industrial areas to drive through instead of shopping areas. We finally reached a beach area I wanted to check out - Venice - where people roller skate on a paved path. Dorothy was not impressed with the area or my lack of planning once we got there so I drove to the Marine Del Ray area where we had a slight altercation (spending basically 24 hours together was apparently wearing thin by this point). After driving around for a while we finally headed fo~ the airport. Dorothy was not amused that we had "wasted the day" and now were heading for the airport 3 hours before flight time. However, I figured I'd get lost and there would be numerous delays at the airport. The only hitch was finding where to turn in the Budget rental car. I finally had to follow one of the Budget busse which they use to pick people up at the airport and take them to where the cars are parked.
The flight back was uneventful until about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney at which time the pilot explained that there was bad weather in Sydney and they were going to have to divert to Brisbane to pick up more fuel. The flight from L.A. to Sydney (7-8000 miles) is the longest nonstop in the world. While they had enough fuel to reach Sydney they didn't have extra fuel to hold in a pattern or reach-an alternate airport. The result of this was that we missed our connection to Alice Springs and there were no other flights or routes that would allow us to get to Alice: So we had to stay overnight in Sydney. United Airlines found and paid for the accommodations plus our meals. The irony of the situation was that united had too many people for the flight to begin with and asked us if we would switch to the flight which flew from L.A. to Honolulu to Auckland, N.Z to Sydney. Since it would arrive 5 1/2 hours later than our flight, they dangled a $500 travel voucher for, use on future united flights. I turned it down because of the addition flights, additional time in the air, and because we would miss our connection in Sydney. However, the result was the same staying in Sydney overnight, except we didn't have the $500.
Although some of us were groggy (mainly me) we took a cab into Sydney to a new shopping/entertainment area called Darling Harbour. We walked through the shopping center and then went through the new Aquarium. If you are interested in marine life, it's a fantastic exhibit.
The next day, without any complications we flew back to Alice Springs~
One last thing - I've had a number of people tell me that they don't write because they have nothing to say - life is dull compared to my "trip reports." I understand that, but we still like to hear from our friends even if it is "dull." As exciting or busy as life here sounds, we stop at the APO every day hoping to get mail. We like to keep in touch with the friends we have made over the years. It is important to all of us. So, please, drop us a line from time to time.
Since we are now scheduled to stay in Alice Springs until the summer of 1990, we made another odyssey back to the U.S. over the Christmas holidays to visit friends and relatives. As incredible as it seems, there are some people who at least pretend to find my trip reports interesting (actually they may be a break from some of the terrible TV shows we caught glimpses of during our stay). Anyway, here is the tale of our latest adventure. I will try to be brief during the boring parts.
We left Alice Springs December 16th and by choice decided to catch the United flight to the U.S. from Melbourne, instead of Sydney. No matter which city you use, or which domestic airline, it is impossible to make connections so it is necessary to stay overnight. The Melbourne airport is less crowded than Sydney and it is easier to get to hotels. Also, I had hoped to see a friend the evening we spent in Melbourne, but he was sic~ and unable to meet us. So, the first part of the trip was Alice to Adelaide to Melbourne, then go to Sydney the next day. The only hitch there was a brief (15-20 minute) delay because the guys who drive the trucks that push the planes backwards away from the terminal suddenly went on strike, then just as suddenly went back to work. This occurred as we were sitting on the plane and had they not gone back to work I was prepared to organize the passengers to physically push the plane!"
About 13 hours later, we landed in L.A. and after a break of several hours flew on to Newark, NJ. I got lost leaving the airport (I panicked) but eventually arrived at Dorothy's parents. The next couple of days we rested and shopped, then drove to visit my parents in Hagerstown, Maryland, before returning to N.J. The trip is 250 miles each way and wasn't too bad on the way down but we encountered a 7-mile backup on the way back to N.J. due to construction causing one of the lanes to be closed (for some unexplained reason the shoulder, which was paved, was not being used - I was not amused). The speed limit in NJ and Maryland is still posted as 55, but the average speed in many places is 65-75.
During one of our shopping expeditions we did see something worth mentioning. At a Toys R Us in NJ, we saw a guy doing his Xmas shopping wearing a floor length white fur coat with a matching fur hat. If that wasn't enough to catch your eye, the hat also had the head of the animal (fox?) centered squarely in the front.
While in N.J. Dwight found and bought a used Hasselblad camera at a shop where we have done a lot of business. This camera, which is a top professional brand, appeared to be in excellent condition for an older camera and should serve Dwight well while he works as a photographer in Alice Springs (and hopefully help get him through college). Dwight is one of those people that even when he makes a mistake, he comes out of it in good shape. He got an extension tube (which fits between the camera and the lens) stuck and couldn't get the lens off. (The lens unscrews for adding other pieces or to put different lens on the camera.) The result was that the camera had to be returned to the national service center to have the tube removed. I had visions of incredible complications - wrong. The service center was only 20 minutes from Dorothy's parents. Unfortunately, this occurred on the Saturday before Christmas, and we were not able to get there until Tuesday, when they reopened. In the meantime, Dwight was in a panic mode. Since both boys like to write they still write humorous notes to "Santa Claus" on Christmas eve. I think they enjoy the humorous responses they sometimes get. This year, all Dwight wanted for Christmas was a Hasselblad technician. The first thing Tuesday morning I took him to the service center. The National Service Manager removed the lens, told Dwight what he had done wrong, showed him how to solve the problem if it happened again, gave him a new strap and some spare rubber parts that sometimes wear out, gave him a fistful of brochures on using the camera, and also an assessment of the camera (it's old but in excellent shape and should serve him for many years) and there was no charge! Dwight was sure happy.
Toby and I spent many hours in a couple of used book stores. I bought quite a few used paperbacks that had come out in the last several years and are unavailable or extremely expensive here (a new paperback book here costs $9-15). Toby ended up buying a couple of hundred used comics on this trip, many in bulk packages.
The only other item which Dorothy wanted me to mention was the flocks of Canadian geese we saw just off several extremely busy highways in N.J. Apparently they can tolerate the traffic better than I can.
Our trip to Washington D.C. two days after Christmas was not pleasant. On the Garden State Parkway, for reasons that escaped us, the highway department decided to close two of four lanes, five miles before the actual construction. That would have been bad enough, but the lane closures began just beyond a toll plaza, which meant that the 12 lanes exiting the tollbooths had to merge into two lanes instead of four. It took 45 minutes to break free of this bottleneck. Then we had to wait in a 5-m~l~ backup to pay the toll at the end of the N.J. turnpike.
We had a good time in Washington D.C. thanks to the hospitality of our neighbors in Alexandria ("Mac" and "McGrandma" as our boys nicknamed Mrs. McDonald last year) and to friends who had us to dinner. We enjoyed our visits but wish there was a way to reciprocate. I have promised that if I suddenly become rich, I will charter a plane for all of our friends to come visit. A plane load of "friends of the Grimms" arriving in Alice Springs should certainly cause a sensation.
Other than visiting friends and shopping in the Washington area, we also all visited the dentist, Dorothy called her horse riding instructor and was invited to attend a lesson. She survived the lesson and the jumps (No worries, mate), but not the removal of the boots. When she took them off, she suffered severe 'charley horses' and barely made it home to the great amusement of a number of people. I was also able to get my Buick fixed so that it is road worthy. Had I known I was going to end up in Australia so long, I probably would have sold it rather than leaving it at my house (and ask the very patient "Mac" to start it for me occasionally)
Before we left, I had promised Toby that he could visit his best friend who lives in Laurel, Maryland, north of Washington/Alexandria, so we dropped him off New Year's Eve. I had made arrangements to visit my parents in Hagerstown, northwest of Washington, on New Year's Day, which meant I had to detour to Laurel to pick up Toby. Although it added a number of miles to our trip it wouldn't have been so bad except it started to snow as we left Alexandria, the snow was coming down hard by the time we got to Laurel and the roads were getting real slippery by the time we reached the Baltimore beltway. The trip got a little tense from then on because Dorothy doesn't like to be on snowy roads and the drivers in that area have not improved any over the years. - We kept listening to the radio for weather updates, only they continued to be out of date. No snow in Laurel the radio said, as we made our way through an inch or so. We didn't see a snow plow for 2 1/2 hours - they seemed to be heeding the radio's advice to stay home.
The next 8 days were characterized by fog, fog and more fog, plus a bit of snow and rain. This meant driving in fog from Hagerstown to D.C., from D.C. to Elizabethtown, PA. and from there to NJ. The boys caught up with some of their friends and even spent a couple days at their former school in Alexandria. Toby "arranged" so that he got to visit school for 1/2 hour before it was closed due to snow and he was able to spend the rest of the day playing with one of his friends.
We left Washington to return to N.J. on Jan 7th, stopping in Hagerstown to say goodbye to my parents; then staying overnight with some friends in Elizabethtown, Pa. These were the friends that had egged me into going into the hot tub in their back yard last year in-the very cold weather. I think Toby had regretted not doing it so be was looking forward to trying it this year and all of the boys got in the tub the next morning before we left for N.J. As I said, there was a lot of fog, which made driving very tedious.
Back in N.J. we did more shopping, mailed stuff to ourselves, had lunch with one of Dorothy's aunts, and Dorothy visited a friend in New York City. Finally, we left for the west coast, but not before I got lost on the way to the Newark airport. (I hate that airport.)
At one point I got so frustrated I tried to drive across a median strip, but the car bottomed out on the curb, so I changed tactics.
We arrived in San Francisco at 9:30 p.m., and I asked Hertz if I could get a car then. They said I would have to wait until midnight so I checked with Budget and got a car immediately.
The next day we visited the Stanford University campus. That is Dwight's first choice for college. The campus is large for the number of students (13,000). Dwight did not have a formal interview, but did meet with a lady in the undergraduate admissions office who answered questions for him. Seeing the campus only strengthened Dwight's desire to go there. Although we are realistic enough to realize his chances are slim, Dorothy says "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
We left the campus and drove to an area where the movie "A Cry in the Dark" was playing. This is the movie, titled "Evil Angels" here in Australia, in which Dwight and I were extras when part of it was filmed here in Alice Springs in November 1987. It is a terrible movie and really biased in favor of the woman who was accused of murdering her baby, but we had to see it to see if we showed up.
We did not see Dwight, but I appeared briefly in a scene in which the forensic specialist was shown on TV as he entered the courthouse.
The next day we visited and had lunch with a good friend from our days in Colorado and then headed south on the coastal highway.
We turned off the main highway to drive through Carmel, to see if we could spot Clint Eastwood (he used to be mayor there), then continued south. I had read somewhere that this was the time of the year that whales can be seen off the coast, and had alerted the rest of the family, but when Dorothy said, "There they are!" we did not believe her. But, sure enough, there were quite a few plumes in the air as the whales surfaced to breathe, and from time to time, even though they were far away, we could just make out parts of the whales as they broke the surface of the water.
We stayed the night in San Simeon, and the next day took a tour of the famous Hearst Castle, the fabulous estate, built by the journalist William Randolph Hearst in the 20's and 30's. It was turned over to the state of California some years ago, which now runs it as a tourist attraction. The Hearsts still own the 100,000 acres that surround the castle. The estate includes three guest cottages, and at least the one we walked through has 3000 sq. feet of space.
We also toured a part of the main house and the main room is impressive for its size and some of the art objects (400-500 year old tapestries among other things). Hearst supposedly spent $1 million a year for 20-some years on art objects. The large dining room was impressive for its collection of silver. It's impossible to remember all of the details and statistics that the guide was throwing at us, but I believe that she said Hearst had the largest silver collection in the world in those days. There was a loft for musicians at the end' of the dining room which looked perfect for a string quartet, but the guide said that Hearst; who considered the place his ranch, would hire country and western bands, including Roy Rogers, to play in this very European-style room. Much of the place (fireplaces, carved ceilings, tapestries, etc. were bits and pieces brought from Europe. There is an impressive outdoor “Neptune" swimming pool, which I have seen numerous pictures of over the years. It is a quite large pool surrounded by Roman columns and statues. The large indoor pool, located under the tennis courts is just as impressive. The entire room is covered with a glass mosaic. We also saw the billiard room and theater. During the time Hearst lived there he also had his own private zoo and some of the animals - zebra and deer - still roam the area.
After the tour, we continued down the coast and on into L.A. I experienced one of the famous bumper-to-bumper (for 10 miles or so) freeway traffic jams. We finally got to Hollywood where we stayed for the night. We did not get to drive through the fashionable section. I drove-down Hollywood Blvd. and up Sunset Blvd. looking for motel. The area was a bit seedy, but we found a fairly decent motel for the night. We walked over the Hollywood Blvd. to see the famous Chinese theater where the movie stars have put their hand and footprints in concrete. Toby wanted to see the footprints of R2D2, C3PO, and Darth Vader, from Star Wars.
The next morning we stopped by the post office to mail two packages (the last of the~5 we mailed to ourselves) and then went to Universal Studios. The tour there is a two-part event. They take you on a 1 1/2 hour tram tour of the back lot. This includes taking you through a sound stage and demonstrating special effects, and driving into a building, which has a set of a city street. At one point in that set the tram stops alongside a huge working model of King Kong. His massive head was within feet of Toby, who was duly impressed.
The tram drove through a number of city sets that have been used and continue to be used for a number of movies. Dwight and I especially got a kick out of driving past the house from "Psycho." We did not see any working sets.
The second part of the overall tour is a theme park in which you visit various shows throughout the day. One of our favorites was a "Miami Vice" style set. Here a 20-minute show is set up with lots of action and special effects including burning and exploding buildings and gunshots everywhere. The other show we will remember is one using a "Star Trek" set in which volunteers from the audience participate in making a short movie. Toby was selected and was dressed in a Star Trek officers uniform and took his place at the console of the U.S.S~ Enterprise. (For anyone who knows Star Trek, he was playing Kr. Sulu.) The short show is taped and turned into a short video with scenes from the real star Trek interspersed. This results in a nifty racket to sell copies of the video to the participants. Naturally, we bit.
We finally left and drove to Anaheim where we stayed for the night. The next day, we visited Disneyland from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. I could barely walk out of the park. We went on most of the old favorites~ the submarine ride, the Haunted House, etc. Toby and I went with Dwight and Dorothy on one of the high-speed rides - Space Mountain - but declined to ride any of the others. We almost missed the best one, apparently a fairly new one, called "Star Tours" because we thought it was a ride. However, Dwight and Dorothy went on and came out and said it was all-simulated and was absolutely fantastic, so we went later in the evening after the crowds thinned out. This attraction is a combined creation of Disney and George Lucas (Star Wars) and is extremely effective. You sit in a cabin which is designed to simulate a passenger spaceship and through a very realistic movie, plus apparent hydraulics under the room you appear to take a journey through space. The simulation is incredible and I'll admit I had to shut my eyes once or twice as the ship appeared to weave through a winding ice cave. We also went to see a 3-D movie starring Michael Jackson. Even for those of us who had seen the original 3-D movies back in the dark ages, it was a fun experience and the kids were impressed.
The next day we started for the L.A. International Airport at about 9:30 a.m. You have to realize that we weren't scheduled to leave until 8:30 p.m. but I thought we'd drive the 30 or more miles across the city and check out bookstores and grocery and drug stores (for Dorothy to look for more refund offers). Although we did some of that, the traffic started to get to me and I seemed to have the knack for selecting ugly light-industrial areas to drive through instead of shopping areas. We finally reached a beach area I wanted to check out - Venice - where people roller skate on a paved path. Dorothy was not impressed with the area or my lack of planning once we got there so I drove to the Marine Del Ray area where we had a slight altercation (spending basically 24 hours together was apparently wearing thin by this point). After driving around for a while we finally headed fo~ the airport. Dorothy was not amused that we had "wasted the day" and now were heading for the airport 3 hours before flight time. However, I figured I'd get lost and there would be numerous delays at the airport. The only hitch was finding where to turn in the Budget rental car. I finally had to follow one of the Budget busse which they use to pick people up at the airport and take them to where the cars are parked.
The flight back was uneventful until about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney at which time the pilot explained that there was bad weather in Sydney and they were going to have to divert to Brisbane to pick up more fuel. The flight from L.A. to Sydney (7-8000 miles) is the longest nonstop in the world. While they had enough fuel to reach Sydney they didn't have extra fuel to hold in a pattern or reach-an alternate airport. The result of this was that we missed our connection to Alice Springs and there were no other flights or routes that would allow us to get to Alice: So we had to stay overnight in Sydney. United Airlines found and paid for the accommodations plus our meals. The irony of the situation was that united had too many people for the flight to begin with and asked us if we would switch to the flight which flew from L.A. to Honolulu to Auckland, N.Z to Sydney. Since it would arrive 5 1/2 hours later than our flight, they dangled a $500 travel voucher for, use on future united flights. I turned it down because of the addition flights, additional time in the air, and because we would miss our connection in Sydney. However, the result was the same staying in Sydney overnight, except we didn't have the $500.
Although some of us were groggy (mainly me) we took a cab into Sydney to a new shopping/entertainment area called Darling Harbour. We walked through the shopping center and then went through the new Aquarium. If you are interested in marine life, it's a fantastic exhibit.
The next day, without any complications we flew back to Alice Springs~
One last thing - I've had a number of people tell me that they don't write because they have nothing to say - life is dull compared to my "trip reports." I understand that, but we still like to hear from our friends even if it is "dull." As exciting or busy as life here sounds, we stop at the APO every day hoping to get mail. We like to keep in touch with the friends we have made over the years. It is important to all of us. So, please, drop us a line from time to time.
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