Travel Times

When I was a boy, I never dreamed that world travel would advance so fast. I used to read in comic books about space ships and ray guns. The man who wrote this was not too far off from what eventually happened. We thought of it as only fiction at the time, but it must have started some young minds thinking how they could make it happen.

I have told you about some of the travels we did as a family when my children were growing up. Now I would like to tell you a few stories about other travel that we have done.

The first airplanes that I remember seeing were single engine biplanes. (two wings). They did not have electric starters. They were started by taking hold of the wooden propeller and pulling it down to start the engine. It looked dangerous. There were very few people who could afford to fly one, and not many people knew how.

In World War I, they had a few quaint fighter planes that they used in combat. After this war, they made rapid improvements to airplanes.

As I stood out in the garden or field, I sometimes saw one of those little biplanes fly over. It never occurred to me that I would see some wondrous places by using an airplane to get there. I believe that someday one of my descendents will be riding in a rocket ship.

The first ride I had in an airplane was when I was building the Fox Lake prison. This was in the early 1960’s. The state roofing inspector flew out to my job to inspect the roofs. I had to go over to a cow pasture and pick him up with my pickup truck. When I took him back to his single engine plane, he said, “How about taking a ride up to look at your job from the air.” I took the ride. It was cool, as my grandson, Kevin, would say.

My next airplane ride was in a jet to Miami, Florida for a vacation. That was just the beginning of our travels. We flew to Hawaii twice on vacation and had a great time.

When I was working for J. P. Cullen, I used to have to get up at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning to drive to a job in Iowa. I nearly fell asleep while driving many times. The roads were slippery sometimes, and also it could be foggy.

One morning, two of the young men that worked for me were both killed while driving to Iowa in the fog. That accident made Mr. Cullen think that he should buy an airplane to fly us back and forth. The first plane they bought was a push and pull plane. It had an engine in the front and another engine in the rear, called the pusher engine. The plane was still able to fly if one of the engines quit.

The next plane they bought was a twin engine that could hold up to 9 people, including the pilot. It was much faster. When I had to go out of state to work or look at a job, they flew me back and forth.

 

In 1983, the first year after I retired, Helen and I took a trip to Italy. When I was studying history in school, I never would have believed it if someone said this would happen someday. It was great. We visited the ruins of Rome, Pompeii, and Venice and saw many other things that I had read about in history books.

It was sure nice to see how the Romans built their cities. I am sure it would be more interesting to me than to most other people. With my occupation in construction, it was a puzzle to me how they could erect the heavy stonework. They did not have big cranes like we use now. They must have used gin poles and slave labor to pull the large stones up into place.

When we arrived in Venice, it was hard for me to visualize how they could drive in all the wooden piles to hold up the buildings over water. We use big pile drivers, but I am sure they did not have machines like this. The buildings did not show many signs of settling even after the hundreds of years that they have been there.

The trip to Italy was very educational for me. We stayed in nice hotels and had good food. One of the funny things for us was, when they served dinner, the only drink you could have at the table was wine. Wine was very cheap. If you wanted coffee, you had to go to the bar. You could not take the coffee from the bar back to your table to have with your meal. Water, too, was only available at the bar.

 

In 1986 and 1987 our son, Hal, was living and working in Tokyo, Japan. Helen and I visited Hal and his family for a month in 1987. Visiting Japan was like going to the other side of the world (which I guess you could say it is). My son and family lived in a real nice house with lots of room. We learned to ride the subway trains. They covered every area of Tokyo. We saw so many interesting things while in Japan.

I never have seen, and probably never will see again, the incredible variety and number of fish at the Tsukiji fish market. It was a huge warehouse-type of building with a concrete floor. The floor was cover by huge piles of freshly caught fish. The most unusual thing that I remember about the market was that it did not smell real fishy. It was so clean, and they used water hoses to keep the floor clean. We did not buy any fish, but we sure looked.

Helen and I became very brave. Japan seemed so safe to us. My son would ride a bicycle to the subway and leave it parked all day long laying in a huge pile of other bicycles. At the end of the day, when he got off the subway, his bicycle would still be there where he left it. Some of the riders would leave helmets or jackets with their bikes and no one stole them. You can not do that in the USA.

  We were treated very good by all the Japanese people. We took a side trip to Hiroshima where we visited Peace Park to see all the damage caused by the atomic bomb. To our amazement, we were the only Caucasians there. We thought that the Japanese might show hatred to us for dropping the bomb, but they did not.

Another interesting thing was the way they run their railroads. You have to have reservations and you had better not be late. If you are one minute late, you lose your ride. The trains run on schedule - not like our Amtrak System.

We really enjoyed our visit to Japan.

 

The next major trip was to Hong Kong. It was a complete surprise to us. For Christmas, we received tickets and an invitation to visit our son and family in Hong Kong, where they had moved after leaving Tokyo. I think they showed us every inch of Hong Kong.

A major thing we did was to go golfing in China. Hal arranged the trip. It was an experience of a lifetime. We rode on a hydro-jet boat over to Macao, which was then a Portuguese colony. We had to pay $35 each to enter China. A girl from the golf course met us in an old bus, similar to our old school buses. She drove us several miles to a beautiful golf course in Zhuhai, China. I still have not seen a clubhouse as nice as the one there in China.

We had lady caddies to carry our golf bags. The fairways were narrow and long. Along each side of the fairways was very rough terrain. If you did not hit the ball straight, you went out of bounds and lost a ball. Ask my son, Hal, about this, if you ever get a chance. He lost quite a few balls, but we really had fun.

After playing the 18 hole course, you could have a Japanese-type bath. Shucks, we did not have time. We had to get back to the dock to catch our boat back to Hong Kong.

While visiting in Hong Kong, Helen and I bought an 11 day tour to China. It was very nice. We stayed in nice hotels and had delicious food. Some of the food was made from different things that we had never tasted before and probably never will again. We were served warm orange soda and a warm Chinese beer. They were not very good.

When I was a boy, I never imagined that someday I would walk on the Great Wall of China. Well I did. It was amazing to be there – to look at that great wall and try to figure out how they built it years and years ago. It would be almost impossible today. Our leaders would say it cost too much and shelve the proposal. I hope each and every one of you who reads this story will get to walk that same wall someday.

China is a great country, but is way behind in just about everything. When we were there, the guide told us that only 2O% of the people had refrigeration. The people traveled around on millions of bicycles. The young people tried to sell us something every time the tour bus stopped.

I   feel that if China ever gets their people educated, like Americans are now, they will be the major force in the world.

 

The next trip was a tour to Alaska. We bused across Canada and caught a ferry boat up through the inside passage. After bussing around Alaska and the Yukon, we flew home from Anchorage to Madison, Wisconsin.

The last trip I’ll tell you about was done by Amtrack in the USA. Helen and I boarded the train in Chicago and took a Northern route through the Midwest and West to Portland, Oregon. We stayed two days in Portland and toured the city.

We boarded the train again and went down to San Francisco. While there, we rode every foot of the cable car track. We enjoyed our stay there, but boarded the train again and proceeded to Elko, Nevada to play the slot machines. I was a winner. I had $100 more when we left Elko.

I will say that all these trips were really wonderful but the greatest were the trips to Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong.

When I was a boy, I never thought that I would see so much of the world. To date, I have been to most every state in the USA including Hawaii and Alaska, Canada, Okinawa during the War, Italy, Hong Kong before it reverted to China, Japan, and China. I hope I can see more.

 

I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.