Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 1

Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 1

Can’t thank Avi enough as he drops me at the curb under the departures sign of JFK International airport. I sling my pack on my back, make my way inside and, ticket in hand, locate the Icelandic Airway check-in counter.

Our first descent out of JFK is Reykjavík for a short stop over before carrying on to Luxembourg. And to think, just 4 months earlier, Bobby Fischer was here beating Boris Spassky to win the World Chess Championship.

I'm craning my head all around the inside of the airplane window, you know, the ones that only allow you about a 10 degree aspect of your surroundings, trying to take in as much of what I can of my first glimpse of the world outside of North America. The Iceland skyline is veiled in an eerie shroud of low lying clouds, blanketing the bleak snow capped horizon in a haunting haze. My heart is pounding in eager anticipation as the plane screeches onto the Keflavík runway.

A brief layover in the transit lounge and we’re off again. Land masses come in and out of view, another meal is served and before too long we’re soaring over multi green patches of forested hills and farm meshed plains stretching to the horizon as far as I can see, forming a cobweb matrix emanating in and out and to and from the towns and villages that speckle the landscape outlined by roadways and waterways like the erratic patchwork of a psychotic quilter on Quaaludes with the Alps towering in the distance.

The plane touches down at Luxembourg Airport - My heart is throbbing wildly somewhere in the vicinity of my throat as I take my shoulder bag down from the compartment overhead and proceed to disembark with a confident swag. In the immigration cue for foreign passport holders, I fumble for the necessary documents to enter the country - Yeah, I got my passport, my boarding pass - Uh, what's this - I dunno, oh, yeah, my arrival card - I present them all to the immigration officer and after a scrutinizing body scan and a further scrutinizing scan of my passport, there really wasn't much to scrutinize since this was the first time it had ever been used, he gives me another scrutinizing nod, and I'm officially in Europe. I wait for my knapsack to arrive at the baggage conveyor then out through customs and into the strange and mysterious reality of, "What the fuck do I do now?"

Standing outside the Luxembourg Airport, pondering that thought, I fumble for my smokes, light one up and make my way to the nearest beer. I sit down, order a Diekirch, open my Arthur Frommer's "Europe on 5 Dollars a Day", smoke my cigarette, sip my beer and begin envisioning all the wondrous adventures and misadventures about to be had – all the sights to be seen, sounds to be heard, people to meet and places to go – Damn, life doesn’t get better than this.

They say the difference between a tourist and a traveler is that a tourist always knows where he's going, but never knows where he's been - where as a traveler always knows where he's been, but never knows where he's going. I have no fucking idea where I'm going.

Now, my two greatest ambitions and desires in Europe are to spend the upcoming winter skiing the Alps - the Matterhorn in particular, probably due to a 1959 Disney movie I had seen as a kid about climbing the Matterhorn - and a Viewfinder slide reel I get for my 9th birthday with all sorts of exotic pictures of cool places around the world – the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Pyramids, the Sphinx and more – all of which I vow to see firsthand. These, I’m sure, are also instrumental in nurturing my worldwide wanderlust - those and the 1961 Ricky Nelson song "Traveling Man", which I lip-sync to in a 3rd grade stage performance at Wheeler Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, and remains my theme song to this day - and spend the summer, if at all possible, sailing the Mediterranean.

Come to think of it, a lot happened when I was in the 3rd grade. How old are you in the 3rd grade anyway – 7 - 8 – 9 years old – Perhaps, not only a pivotal point in any ones’ adolescence, mine, for sure, but for an era as well – the turn of a decade – 1959 – 1960 – the Cold War is at its height, Fidel Castro arrives in Havana flanked by a frothing bear brandishing a hammer and sickle, Meyer Lansky flees Cuba for the Bahamas, "Bozo the Clown", "Rawhide" and Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" premiere on TV, Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as the 49th and 50th U.S. states, Texas Instruments requests the first Integrated Circuit patent, and Motown Records is founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. Alas, a chartered plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper crashes on their way to a concert near Clear Lake, Iowa, recording sessions for the album "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis take place in New York City, the Marx Brothers make their final television appearance, and the Barbie doll goes on sale. NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first U.S. astronauts, the original Mini is launched, the Soviet probe Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to crash on the Moon and Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon. The Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas is brutally murdered, inspiring Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Pantyhose and the iconic 1959 Cadillac are introduced, "Weird Al" Yankovic is born and the first known human with HIV dies in the Congo as do Cecil B. DeMille, Lou Costello, Billie Holiday and Blind Willie McTell (not of AIDS nor in the Congo).

It hasn’t been long since the sound barrier has been broken and is tested every day by the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo fighter bombers, capable of carrying nuclear payloads, flying in and out of Davis–Monthan Air Force Base just outside Tucson, Arizona. With sonic booms going on overhead, our president advocating the building of nuclear fall-out shelters in our backyards while the Premier of the Soviet Union is banging his shoe on a U.N. podium, I come home from Wheeler Elementary School one afternoon, home alone – hey, good name for a movie, and I know the perfect actor, wait a minute, he won’t be born for another 20 years, never mind - and turn on the radio. “GAS WAR!!! GAS WAR!!! Prices slashed.” Another sonic boom explodes over head, I hear, “GAS WAR!!! GAS WAR!!!” belting out of the radio and dive under the nearest coffee table for shelter. I’m imagining being engulfed in a mushroom gas war cloud and coming out a character in a George A. Romero film. What do I know? I’m 8 years old, at the height of the Cold War, living next door to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base just outside Tucson, Arizona – and there’s a “Gas War” going on. The good news is, I notice petrol prices go down to 19 cents a gallon.

I was in my first movie when I was in the 3rd grade - Sam Peckinpah’s directorial début with Maureen O’Hara, Brian Keith and Chill Wills, "The Deadly Companions". I don’t actually know the director’s name at the time, let alone that it’s his directorial début, not until years later while on the set of the "Vertical Limit" in New Zealand having a yarn with Martin Campbell (but that’s another story).

So, I’m sitting in my 3rd grade classroom at Wheeler Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, minding my own business (if you believe that, then, I’ve got some swamp land in Florida to sell you), when the class is interrupted and I’m summoned to the principal’s office.

“Oh, Christ,” I’m thinking, “What the fuck did I do now?”

So, I’m summoned to the principal’s office and suddenly whisked away to "The Deadly Companions" movie set in Old Tucson where I am interviewed by Sam Peckinpah himself for the lead (child’s) role in the film. The story’s about Maureen O’Hara’s son (possibly me) getting gunned down accidentally by Brian Keith during a holdup of the local bank in Old Tucson. Brian Keith apologizes profusely to Maureen O’Hara, as one would after shooting their only offspring, but she’s not having it - so they get romantically involved instead.

We don’t hear back from the film producers for some time until one evening while having diner in Nogales, Mexico, we happen upon Chill Wills and some other members of the film crew having diner in the same restaurant. My mother gets up, goes over to their table, introduces herself and asks if they had finished casting for the film. Chill Wills tells her, “Yes,” and, since we hadn’t heard back from them for some time now, the next day I’m taken to the barber and have my hair, which Sam Peckinpah himself specifically requests them not to cut, cut to a butch, which is all the go in 1959.

The following day we get a response back from the film producers informing us that I had been cast for the part of Maureen O’Hara’s dead son. Terrific. Sam Peckinpah calls us back in, takes one look at me and my bald head and tells my folks, “What the fuck? I specifically requested you not to cut your son’s hair. Fuck off then,” and I end up sword fighting down the dusty Old Tucson film set with  a cap pulled down low over my shaved head, instead, going, “Meade, Meade, gone to seed - Meade, Meade, gone to seed,” poking fun at Meade, Maureen O’Hara’s dead son, who, obviously, wasn’t dead at the time, nor was he very well liked by the other kids on the block, otherwise we wouldn’t be poking fun at him. That was mainly due to him being Maureen O’Hara, the local party girl’s, supposed bastard son, and to prove them wrong, insists on transporting Meade’s corpse across ruthless Apache country and all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking characters along the way to be buried alongside her deceased ex in the next town (actually, they just go out into the desert a hundred meters or so, do a bit of filming and back to the other end of Old Tucson – made me lose faith in the film industry).

I do get to be naked with Maureen O’Hara though. I’m in the changing room changing into my cowboy clothes, butt ass naked, and Maureen O’Hara breezes in. She says, “Hello, sweetie,” pats me on the head like a dog and breezes out – and me, butt ass naked, legs crossed, going, “What the fuck?” Meanwhile, Chill Wills is in the saloon next door getting tanked – I smell the Scotch on his breath as he says, “Hello,” to me on his way to his next scene. All that, about a week or so out of school and a check for 100 dollars that I deposit in my first ever bank account - Damn, life doesn’t get better than this. Seriously, folks, how many eight year olds do you know who have been naked with Maureen O’Hara, have 100 dollars in their bank account and have survived a gas war outside of Tucson, Arizona?

I also have another near death experience in the 3rd grade – Not mine actually, well, I suppose it could have been, but my mother’s – you know, the Bohemian, 1940’s era American Airlines stewardess turned kindergarten teacher – It’s the summer of 1959 and we’re on our way to Guaymas, Mexico for our summer vacation, my sister Gae, my brother Gary, his friend Eddie, my mother and me. It’s the middle of summer, the middle of the hottest part of summer, in the middle of the Sonora desert, in the middle of Northern Mexico, in the middle of the afternoon and it’s hot. We’re rambling down the highway just this side of Hermosillo in our 1957 Rekord Opal. I’m curled up on the backseat floorboard of the car, my sister is stretched out across the backseat, my brother sitting in the middle of the front seat and his friend, Eddie, riding shotgun, when the next thing I know, there’s a sudden jolt, the blood curdling squeal of tires screeching out of control and I’m flung against the car’s roof with magnum force, back to the floorboard, back up to the roof, back down to the floorboard and back to the roof again before coming to an abrupt halt upside-down in the middle of the Sonora desert somewhere just this side of Hermosillo.

Dazed and confused, I crawl out of the backseat window which has been shattered and strewn half way across the highway along with the remnants of our 1957 Rekord Opal and see my mother laying spread eagle on the blistering highway in the midst of the shattered debris. A Mexican farmer in his rattletrap pickup stops, helps scrape her up off the molten asphalt, wraps her limp body up in a bloody beach towel, throws her into the back of the pickup and takes us all to the nearest hospital in Hermosillo.

My mother’s out, in a coma - My sister and I not a scratch. My brother’s a bit beaten and bruised and his friend Eddie ends up with a head injury. The hospital stitches my mother back together with, apparently, the equivalent of fishing line, and remains in a coma with infections, fractures and 3rd degree burns over most of her body. Through translators and interpreters we eventually manage to contact our father back in Tucson who immediately arranges an emergency medical evac to Hermosillo and we’re all flown back stateside, and none too soon. Following extensive skin grafting, a metal pin inserted in her kneecap to hold her leg together and a permanent dye to conceal her blood clotted hair, my mother makes a lengthy recovery. Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 1.