Sunday, July 30, 2017

Six Month Leave ...continued

We were on an Empress ship, the Empress of Canada most probably.  We took a train across north America, stopping in Long Beach for a few days.  We stayed in a high rise hotel, with lush tropical vegetation surrounding an azure pool.  I had never seen anything like this before, and it left an indelible memory.  My mother had a friend who lived in the area, so we went to visit her house.  I think she might have been my godmother, the Mrs. Rich who sent me wonderful Christmas and birthday presents.  One day we got into a car with a rumble seat where I sat with my mother, (my father up front with the driver,) and we drove through miles of orange groves to the Hollywood Bowl.
The Bowl at that time had no electronic enhancements, but the acoustics were extraordinary.

We took the train to San Francisco where we stayed in a hotel overlooking a courtyard that had a pigeon's nest I could look down on. There were babies in the nest.  We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, just a few years old at that time.  My father read me "Heidi".  I celebrated my 7th birthday.

We stopped at the Grand Canyon, looking out over the rim.  I also remember stopping at a place called Medicine Hat, because the name delighted me.  Then miles and miles of prairie on the four day train trip across the continent. I remember the black porter, making up the berth at night, and climbing up the ladder to my cosy little retreat.  I must also have slept in a lower berth with a window, because in the middle of the night, looking out, the vastness of the land awed and frightened me.

In the morning we would hdve breakfast in the dining car, returning to find our berths had been magically transformed by the porter into regular train seats.  We sat and watched the endless spaces of the West go by.

Alas, when we got to Montreal we learned there was no passage for civilians across the Atlantic.  We could not visit my grandmother, or my mother's brother, Norman Parry, and his wife, Cora and  daughter, Susan.  My father had family in England as well.  Two sisters, Bess and Belle, and a brother Leyland, whose son, David, was the first in the family to go to university.   I never met them, though we corresponded, and later sent them 'care packages' since their meat, sugar, and other food items were rationed.

So we went back to Vancouver, and my mother and I settled in a little apartment in English Bay.  My father, wanderlust unabated, was able to get passage on the Orangi to Australia and back, while my mother sat on the beach and I played happily with newfound friends.  We made airplanes consisting of  three pieces of driftwood bound together.  My mother made a pinwheel of stiff paper which, when attached to the front of the plane, spun rapidly as we ran along the beach, diving and banking our fighter planes.  Although Nevil Chamberlain had declared 'peace in our time' it was not to be.