{"id":14537,"date":"2017-04-30T23:03:12","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T03:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=14537"},"modified":"2021-10-07T00:20:37","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T04:20:37","slug":"2021-parental-wanderlust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=14537","title":{"rendered":"2021 – Parental Wanderlust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 7, 2021)<\/span><\/p>\n

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So I\u2019m going through yet another box of STUFF and sitting on top of everything in it is this very large envelope that contained a TON of photos:<\/span><\/p>\n

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I knew my parents went on trips to various places, but I had no idea it was a yearly event for almost a quarter-century (I was long out of the house for most of this).<\/span><\/p>\n

I remembered that my mother had annual Daily Planners in another box, but they were from the 50s and 60s. However – buried beneath them – were 25 little hand-sized notebooks dated from 1970 to 1995. These contained every detail of every trip: every plane takeoff and landing time, the temperature of the destinations, EVERYTHING she and Dad did, when and where she ate, what time she woke and what time she went to bed. In the backs of these books was a ton of photo information (she may have inherited that trait from me).<\/span><\/p>\n

So here are the 25 little notebooks with the year and vacation destination written on the cover:<\/span><\/p>\n

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In case they\u2019re not readable\u2026\u2026\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n

1st row: 1970 – Rome, 1972 – Hawaii, 1973 – Majorca, 1974 – Rio, 1975 – London<\/span><\/p>\n

2nd row: 1976 – Acapulco, 1977 – Russia, 1978 – SF, LA, Vegas, 1979 – Greece, 1980 – Caribbean Cruise, Disney World (she wrote \u201cDisneyland\u201d on the cover, but not inside)<\/span><\/p>\n

3rd row: 1981 – Scandinavia, 1982 – World\u2019s Fair (Knoxville, TN), Opryland (Nashville, TN), Denver, CO, 1983 – Italy, 1984 – Europe, 1985, The Far East<\/span><\/p>\n

4th row: 1986 – West Coast Canyons, Parks, 1987 – Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, 1988 – Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida tour, 1989 – Scotland and Ireland, 1990 – Canadian Rockies, British Columbia and Seattle<\/span><\/p>\n

5th row: 1991-1994 – It doesn\u2019t appear that they went to too many places, though I do have a 1993 photo of them on a boat in NY harbor with the towers of the World Trade Center behind them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dad had Alzheimer\u2019s and it really started manifesting itself around this time. He looks slightly stooped and a bit unsure and doesn\u2019t have his arm around Mom as he usually did. Perhaps the harbor photo shows a final trip. It was around this time he entered a Veterans\u2019 Home where he was cared for until he left us in 1998.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t stop Mom. Also in that 5th row are two notebooks that show her 1994 trips to Colorado and California. The last two notebooks show that she finished her global travels in a blaze of glory when she went to Australia and New Zealand in 1995.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I have a bunch of photos to show you from most of these adventures, but not necessarily sequentially. Fortunately, that doesn\u2019t make them any less enjoyable (and you\u2019ll LOVE this first group).<\/span><\/p>\n

Did you ever get so excited that you were \u201ctickled to pieces\u201d? Mom did in Hawaii:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the front cover of the photo folder:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s what was inside:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Whaddaya think of THAT?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Think it had any lingering effect on Mom?<\/span><\/p>\n

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She was very involved with the Woman\u2019s Club of Teaneck. Here\u2019s a poster for one of their events a year later:<\/span><\/p>\n

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I’d say that the effect lingered a bit. Wouldn’t you?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Actually, she was kind of used to unusual things like this happening on vacation. For instance, check out the front, back and inside covers for the photo folder of an Acapulco cruise she and Dad took in 1976:<\/span><\/p>\n

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The pictures inside it:<\/span><\/p>\n

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She looks mildly disturbed about Dad being held up.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In this one, the soon-to-be-widow looks overjoyed as Dad pays the price for his bad acting:<\/span><\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t their first encounter with violence. Five years earlier, they decided to settle a disagreement they had in Canada with that old marriage counselor remedy – open warfare:<\/span><\/p>\n

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They had the artillery, but no ammo, so Mom posed seductively and won the argument.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I have NO idea what they (and sister Geri) did when they visited her in Colorado in 1982 to merit being detained in Denver:<\/span><\/p>\n

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They escaped the next day and somehow made it to the US Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs where they commandeered this nondescript jet (Geri\u2019s in the cockpit):<\/span><\/p>\n

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Prior to their life of crime, they\u2019re seen here meeting the captain (and a disembodied hand) aboard a ship during a Caribbean cruise:<\/span><\/p>\n

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They\u2019re seen here the following year in Italy in St. Peter\u2019s Square in the Vatican and in Venice:<\/span><\/p>\n

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The photographer in me is quite annoyed that a much-wider lens wasn\u2019t used in that bottom photo to capture much more of the musician and the top half of the gondolier. It\u2019s a really nice photo, but it would be magnificent if it was complete.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Royalty in Singapore:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Group shots at Germany\u2019s Heidelberg Castle and in Bangkok:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Why are Mom and Dad not together in both<\/em> shots?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Zooming ahead to 1995\u2019s Australia\/New Zealand trip, animal-lover Mom – the one who told us we could never have a dog – sidles up to some rams and rides a camel on her last big trip without Dad:<\/span><\/p>\n

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(Good for her!)<\/span><\/p>\n

NOTE: That wasn’t her only adventure Down Under. SOMEWHERE, I know I have photos of helmeted-Mom riding a jet-boat. I was sure they’d have to be in this bunch, but they’re not. I’m afraid they may have been already packed away in a previous box. But if I ever<\/em> find them……………….<\/span><\/p>\n

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Zooming back 25 years, Eunice (\u201cI don\u2019t drink\u201d) samples the local product somewhere in Spain (possibly Majorca)<\/span><\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t think Dad was on this trip. It seems that it was a group of women and the \u201cAITS\u201d ribbon on Mom may stand for AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL SERVICE.<\/span><\/p>\n

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That same year (1970), Mom shows some leg somewhere in Algeria:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pretty daring to do that in a Muslim country – something that could possibly get her in big trouble.<\/span><\/p>\n

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MULTIPLES TIME<\/span>\u2026\u2026..as Mom and Dad alternate, starting with four of Mom:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mom in Brazil in 1974, in the Coliseum in Rome in 1971, with a friend in Brienz, Switzerland in 1984 and saying \u201cI\u2019ll take one of each\u201d in Spain in 1987.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dad looks lost in both Sweden and Hong Kong in \u201981 and \u201985 and gets a new job somewhere in 1980:<\/span><\/p>\n

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He always DID like to play the ponies (though I\u2019m not sure if that included picking up after them).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mom with a new friend in the USSR in 1977, tilting at windmills in Amsterdam in 1984 and had the forethought to buy a frame for the previous pic of her lovely new shoes (for swollen tourists’ feet) somewhere in June of 1972:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Since her 1972 trip to Hawaii took place months before, I think this one was taken at a US garage sale.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Three VERY diverse pictures of Dad taken in \u201989, \u201975, and \u201976 in Ireland (sitting on sacks of \u201cMolassed Beet Pulp\u201d\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026yum!), London at Madame Tussaud\u2019s (maybe his friend is why he smoked Winstons for so many years) and in\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..Hackensack, NJ! The old Army guy was trying to work his way through the USS Ling – a WWII submarine that\u2019s still docked here in the Hackensack River (but not for long):<\/span><\/p>\n

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1982 found Mom and Dad in Tennessee visiting the World\u2019s Fair in Knoxville (not pictured), the Grand Old Opry AND an eatery in Nashville that you won\u2019t find anywhere else in the US :<\/span><\/p>\n

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I have lots of pictures of them standing in front of various large sites that make them seem minuscule, so I skipped all that to show a few where they look more recognizable. You\u2019ve seen some of them already, but I have a couple more to show before I close their lives\u2019 journeys.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Mom seems like she\u2019s looking out for purse-snatchers, I like this one across the Thames from Parliament in London:<\/span><\/p>\n

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This may be my favorite later-in-life photo of them. Mom took it in a mirror somewhere on the streets of Seattle in 1990 before Dad\u2019s illness began to take hold. They both look great:<\/span><\/p>\n

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This is the photo I mentioned earlier – the 1993 photo of them on a boat in NY harbor with the towers of the World Trade Center behind them when Dad was\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..well, you know what I wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s appropriate that I finish up with a photo of Mom taken in July, 1996, on what I\u2019m guessing was her last trip – albeit a very short one. She appears to be atop the Empire State Building in Manhattan, where the view looks south towards the World Trade Center:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Four months later, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and eight months after that, she was gone. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m happy she was able to satisfy her wanderlust with a loving partner for such a long period of time. <\/span><\/p>\n

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How many people get to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 7, 2021)   So I\u2019m going through yet another box of STUFF and sitting on top of everything in it is this very large envelope that contained a TON of photos:   I knew my parents went on trips to various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14537"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14583,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537\/revisions\/14583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}