United States of America: Chapter Three - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

South Carolina in the seventies sold fireworks at roadside stands, a huge business, all year round.

To a Canadian, that didn't make sense. Fireworks were for July 1st, Dominion Day, once a year.

South Carolina advertised Myrtle Beach on the Atlantic Ocean as a vacation destination for the week around Easter, when kids were out of school and springtime made people restless to get out there and have some fun.

Myrtle Beach was not exactly warm, but 65 degrees F was better than 50 degrees F, and if you packed the kids into the family car before dawn, and drove like crazy, nonstop all day, you could touch your bare toes down onto the sand that very night. Or get a brain and do it in two easy days.

Leaving the freeway of colorful firework stands and the first palm tree I had ever seen for real, the car headed southeast toward the beach. That stretch of road seemed to take longer than the entire trip, because I had seen a real, live palm tree, as short and scruffy as it may have been, and therefore the beach had to be a mere stone's throw away, in my mind.

There's nothing like the atmosphere of a beach on the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. If you like saltwater, you're hooked.

Back then, motels were few and small, the amusement strip had only a few rides and games, but was open every night, lit up like a handful of those firecrackers for sale back on the freeway.

There were a few shops along sandy lanes, and nice people, who loved their little village-town, worked behind the counters or owned the merchandise.

A tiny post office sold stamps and didn't mind at all the sand tracked in on people's sandals.

The whole place had a vacation atmosphere. You could wander the streets in peace, and check out all the different kinds of palm trees that grew beside houses and cars.

Going to Myrtle Beach was my first taste of American pie, and I hated to leave without knowing I'd be back. So we made a vow to go again the next year, and we did.

But after that, we went even further south, all the way to Florida, and that opened up a whole new world to me.

I got hooked on the incredible state of Florida, as a vacationer.

Living year-round here is a different story altogether. It's probably why so many people come and go, if they weren't born here.

If you don't have the attitude of the happy vacationer who goes back home after awhile, the place loses its luster after a few years.

To some people. A lot of people, actually.

The United States of America: Chapter Two, Detroit Zoo, Michigan

In our village school back in the 50's, the school rented a bus to take the kids to Detroit, Michigan, so we could go to the zoo.

The two teachers went, of course, and several parents volunteered as well, mothers who could spare the time and who had no small children at home.

Such a big trip didn't occur very often because of the cost. I guess I was about nine when I went.

I was used to long drives with my parents, but not a long drive in a school bus, an uncomfortable and foreign ride at that.

It wasn't much fun for me. I wasn't relaxed and my stomach had nerves and I knew that the driver would take us across the Detroit River by way of the under-river tunnel.

One of my aunts was terrified of that tunnel. She swore she saw water leaking through the walls on one trip, but my dad said that would be too unsafe and the city would never allow that.

I didn't like the tunnel because of my aunt. And I wasn't too crazy about tall and long bridges either, so getting across the river made me nervous when I was a kid.

We all loved the zoo. What kid wouldn't? The Detroit Zoo was the first place most of us ever saw wild animals from around the world.

I remember the excitement of seeing the exotic peacocks, more than the elephants and zebras. Today, I have peacocks coming to my front and back doors, asking for seed and displaying their trains. They are friendly, though wild, but it took time for them to relax around me.

Detroit back then was an older and bigger city than any we had where I grew up, so it held mystery and grime and exhaust fumes.

But the people were like us, so it was fun. The food was like ours too.

Border crossing was easy in those days.

When people talk about the good old days, they're probably remembering how easy things were then, compared to their present lives, especially in my parents' generation, but also in mine.

I probably enjoyed the Detroit Zoo that first time more than any of the other times I went with my parents after that.

Probably because I was going to the United States.

Cuba In 1981: Log Three - Ice Cream

Before I travel anywhere, I study up on all the things to see and do, especially the little things that people never even know about. Somewhere, in a book, there are always lists of wayward information that catch my eye.

One of those in Havana was the ice cream carousel, an open-air place, where ice cream in all shapes and sizes and flavors is served at a huge booth that is laid out in a circle in the middle of nowhere, meaning a small park.

Of course, everything was written in Spanish on the huge boards, and the servers, all older women, spoke only Spanish. And of course the place was crowded with mothers and children and the odd teenager looking mighty guilty on a school day.

I believe that my friends and I were the only tourists, the only English-speaking people there. And we didn't speak or read Spanish. Lovely.

So we ogled what people were coming away with in their hands to see if it was what we might want. But nothing, and I mean nothing, looked familiar. We had no idea what was in the ice cream, and there were many to chose from and many ways in which to buy them.

Cookies, cones, fruited, you name it.

The servers weren't too keen on messing with us, wasting precious time with us when we didn't have a clue what to say or to order.

Several attempts at the counter to different servers failed, so finally in frustration, we crowded up to a server for one last try. As soon as she handed the mother in front of us a tray of different ice creams, we pointed at the tray and said, "Seis, por favor," with ridiculous gigantic smiles on our faces, as if that could possibly help.

She frowned, once again, so we said it louder. Right. Good move.

I guess she figured that she'd never get rid of us obnoxious people if she didn't put something together, because all the servers were sick of us by now, sick of our feeble attempts to make ourselves understood.

She nodded, turned around and went to work.

We were practically high-fiving each other. Well, we would have been if we'd heard of it, because high-fiving wasn't even invented back then.

Instead, we giggled (the girls did) and the guys looked mighty pleased with themselves.

Oh yes. We were getting the famous Cuban ice cream at last.

When the tray was ready and we had paid, one of the men grabbed it and we all said "gracias," in awful accents and even bigger grins than before, then we went and sat down at one of the tables in the sun, and looked longingly at what we'd just bought.

We had no clue what it was.

So we just chose one each and tried it.

Now, I was the only one of us who had studied up on this. I was the one who insisted we should go there and try it. And I loved ice cream.

But I was the only one who couldn't eat the ice cream because the flavors made no sense to me at all and I didn't like any of them.

But they all loved them.

So there I sat, watching them gorging on the colorful concoctions while I sat in the heat, sweltering and feeling like a loser.

And then it hit me.

None of what the server gave us looked one bit like what was on that mother's tray. She'd just given us whatever she felt like giving us. Six buckets of whatever.

"Hey," I said. "We didn't order this."

"Who cares?" they all said. "It's great."

"I might have liked what we ordered, you know," I said.

They just laughed and kept right on eating.

Kittens: Evidence That They're Human

As soon as she found her way around the house, Mitsy treated her home like it was an outdoor playground, twenty hours a day.

Sure, she had naps, but they were short-lived compared to play time.

Why is it that kittens always do what they're not supposed to do on their playgrounds, like bratty little boys or something? And don't think they don't know when they're being naughty, because that gleam in their eyes, when you scold them, speaks volumes.

My sofa wasn't a basketball court. My upholstered dining-room chairs weren't little ice rinks. And the backs of those chairs weren't the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. She didn't have to claw her way up the woven wicker backs and cling to the tops like a mountain goat in Tibet. Couldn't she have used the stairs to the second floor for that?

Whenever I was peaceful reading the paper, she'd come flying at me in one mighty leap, landing on the paper and crashing onto my lap, scaring me half to death and destroying the sheets I was reading.

When I wrote a letter, she'd jab at my pen and poke at my hand as if she could do a better job than me.

At the typewriter, she ruined copy by plunking the keys when I was otherwise distracted.

Playing the piano, she'd come from nowhere, lifting herself through the air like a weightless feather, and march up and down the keyboard like some little protege from another world.

She never did all those things if I wasn't already doing them.

So what does that reveal?

Uh huh. She was competitive. With me, of all things.

As a kitten, even.

Mediterranean Cruise, Log Six: Catacombs

From Tunis, we sailed across the Strait of Sicily and docked at Palermo on the island of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and belonging to Italy.

I remember how cheerful the Sicilians were, happy to see a shipload of eager tourists arriving at their main seaport.

We were basically left on our own to do what we wanted, because the only tour offered was to the catacombs, and I had zero percent interest in seeing them.

One of my friends went with a group of women who came back later looking green and refusing to talk. Of course. That's why I didn't go.

Catacombs are underground tunnel rooms used as graves by early Christians and as refuges from persecution.

My friend said there were skeletons hanging on walls and mummified shapes, and the whole place went on forever and smelled strange and gave all the women the creeps.

He also said I was smart not to go.

What I did do was walk the streets of Palermo and talk to anyone who could speak a little English.

So I came away with fine memories, while the others who took the tour?

My friend said he never forgot the smell.

I never forgot the Sicilian friendly smiles.

Mitsy's Baby: A Cat's Final Dream

She loved babies, human babies, and would watch them for hours on end.

When new neighbors moved in next-door, they brought with them a six-month old baby boy. They would sit in their backyard with the baby and Mitsy would hide in the bushes by the wire fence, and watch.

So I knew that getting a baby at her ripe old age of seventeen would make her the happiest cat in the world.She curled up next to the newborn and slept the peace of cat heaven. She never got too close to him because she knew that wasn't right.

The first time he focused on her old, sagging face, he couldn't figure out what she was.

When he had hand coordination, he reached out and touched her soft ginger fur, and fell in love.

Mitsy stayed with him when he played and when he ate baby cereal in a carrier on the floor.

He belonged to her, and we all respected that.

She only lived ten months after we got our baby, but she must have died happy, even though she was old and sick, because having a baby was as precious to her as it was to me.

 

American Idol Save

Tonight, the judges used their solo save to keep sixteen year old Jessica Sanchez on the show as a contestant.

The judges were shocked that Elise Testone, Joshua Ledet, and Jessica were all in the bottom three.

Phillip Phillips, Skylar Laine, Holly Cavanagh, and Colton Dixon were all in the saved and safe group.

Add Jessica Sanchez to that group and these are the contestants who will compete next week.