When the trickle slows down to a stop, then what to do? I like to start a mental word association game and usually it gets the flow going. See? I have said nothing but have already put together two paragraphs… It's a way to get the juices flowing. Eventually it brings me back to the subject at hand and then it begins. The Title above? Many years ago, for those of you who remember black and white TV, there was “The Palladin”. A gunslinger (good guy, of course!) who had a business card which read: “Have Guns, Will Travel”. This was an allusion to the fact he was for hire and would go anywhere there was a job to be done. So… in my case, for lack of guns, I have buns. They have sat on the seats of many airplanes, buses, trains and cars over many years of traveling around the world, literally. Wherever the job would take me.
With this trip on which we were now embarking, our new life was truly beginning. Even though we had been at a camp in Miami for some months and away from our home, country and families, the environment in camp was about as “Cuban” as those in charge could make it. Rather, by being themselves Cuban, they were just doing what they knew how to do best. We spoke primarily Spanish, we ate Spanish, we played in Spanish and we did all things in Spanish. And not just any Spanish; Cuban Spanish. It has been said that Latin America is composed of 17 countries divided by a language and, after having visited and worked in all but one of them, I can attest to this fact. So when I say Cuban Spanish it was like we never left home insofar as the daily routine, the language, the yelling, the chaos, the food, etc…
In going to the other physical extreme of the country where most people did not know where Cuba was or, for that matter what it was, we were really leaving all the old issues behind and venturing into the Brave, New World (I know this phrase is taken already, but I use it with all due respect Mr. H.). Camp Matecumbe had accomplished its mission: to allow us to spend some time in the middle, a limbo of sorts which allowed each of us to slowly come to grips with a reality that was too crushing to handle all at once.
We arrived at the airport in Miami very early in the afternoon, for a flight that left around 2pm. We were flying non-stop to Portland, Oregon and, from there we would board a smaller, local flight into the city of Yakima in the State of Washington. There, we would each be united with our foster family, who would then drive each one of us into what would be our new home and family for at least the next 2 years.
The afternoon flight started on time and without many problems or issues. Just the normal panic attacks when we learned this flight would take some 6-7 hours (remember… most of us had spent all of 45 minutes on a plane before this) and that, by the time we were to arrive in Yakima, “if all went well” it would be around 10:30pm.
-“Qué quieres decir con ‘si todo va bien’?”. - “What do you mean ‘if all goes well’?” I asked the guy in charge. –“Well, it is just a figure of speech” he answered. We looked at him and said -“at 25,000 feet up (we had learned this much) we would rather you choose a different way of putting things into words”. At that, we all laughed. It just showed that everyone’s nerves were right at skin level. It did not take much to bring them out.
The flight was actually so unremarkable that I do not remember much about it. We were tired, so we slept some and we looked a lot out the windows. Not that we knew what we were looking at… that was too much to be expected. Eventually, we arrived in Portland sometime around 7:30pm. It was already dark and this, being the beautiful Pacific Northwest and deep into fall, meant that it was dark, windy and rainy. We all went into the airport building, and there some of the people from the group were taken into a separate room. It turns out that they would stay in Portland, while the rest of us went on to Washington State. After we had something to eat and stretched our collective legs, we were herded into a side room, from which we could not only see the plane (much smaller twin engine DC-3) which would take us, but we could also see that the weather had taken a turn for the worse and now was truly raining hard… and there was lightning.
Have you seen an old black and white suspense movie, in which the hero was trying to make a getaway in a stormy night with lots of lightning and thunder?, and every time a bolt would come down, there was this puny silhouette of a plane which was lit up in the foreground, sitting all by itself in a lonely, almost abandoned tarmac? Well, if you have, you know now what we were looking at that night.
We thought for sure that the flight would be delayed, postponed, cancelled, bewitched or something; there was no way we, normal people, should be flying in these conditions. But, in the end, we were piled on to the plane much against our judgment and desire. To this day I remember that the collective knuckles on that plane almost came through the collective skin in the back of our collective hands. Literally, we picked up speed from the very end of the strip and, finally, left the ground with not too much space to spare at the other end.
Of course we made it into Yakima, albeit after a somewhat rough flight. By the time we arrived, the rain had actually stopped. But it was also 11:30pm; we were an hour late. All of us were taken into an interior room where, after a long day and rough travel, the “PIC of TT” (Person in Charge of Tired Travelers) started to talk to us about our obligations and, you guessed it, to remind us that we should not chew gum in public.
Eventually, one of the families who were waiting for us knocked on the door to find out if we could all get going and, at that time, we were each introduced to the family heads (husband and wife) who would serve as our foster families.
I came into a side room, looked around and saw this 5’2” sprite lady who came up to me and starting at my shoes, slowly looked all the way up to the top of my head (actually, my forehead, she could not see the top of my head!!). She cocked her head to one side and said:
-“My, my… no one told me they grew them this tall down there”
At that, we both laughed, and that was my introduction to Mrs. Lenore (Lee) Crowley, one of the sweetest, most loving ladies I have ever met.
More on her, Hobe (Mr. Crowley), the rest of the family and my introduction to Richland tomorrow…
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