Bitten by the Bug

Many people have asked me when I had been bit by the travel bug. My patented answer has always been "before I can remember". As lame as that answer is, it's the truth. One of my two earliest memories includes a snapshot quick vacation. I remember standing inside the gates of Disneyland in the summer of 1969 attempting to line up a picture of Cinderella's castle with my Brownie camera. The summer was abuzz with astronaut excitement. Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were a week away from walking on the moon. My father, a photographer, decided to take his young family to California for a short vacation before a Life Magazine assignment in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I was 4 years old.

Even though, I don't recall exactly when I had been bit, I do remember the moment I realized I had been infected by the bug's powerful toxin. Early June 1974. In the early days following the graduation of third grade, I had been called home by the "neighborhood alert system". We middle-aged folks raised in the 60's and 70's understand the the powers of the NAS. It was how your parents called you home, before cell phones. They would stand out on the front porch and yell. Even if you were out of earshot, someone would hear the call and pass it along if they knew the direction the neighborhood children had run. All children knew not to ignore the NAS.

I was in the creek behind the Fire House catching crayfish with my best friend. I never understood why we captured these pinching mudbugs. We always released them after one of the prehistoric-looking monsters brought blood to our waterlogged fingers...it was probably a rite of manhood. I'll have to ponder that a while.

Anyway, the NAS found me quickly and I knew to run. It wasn't anywhere near dinnertime and I had not been issued any edicts, which only meant one thing, something was wrong. Though muddy water and trepidation weighted down my legs, I knew not to dally. My dad, who spent as many as 280 days a year on the road, was home. And he despised childish loitering.

I walked headlong into a buzzsaw and, as long as I live, I will never forget the next few hours. It went down like this.......

"Where have you been?" My dad asked the question as he examined my sodden legs and bloody fingertips. It was easy to sense something bad had happened. My stomach was churning bile. I suddenly felt very ill and my father noticed the immediate change in my demeanor. I could see a familiar glare in his eyes. I was guilty of...something.

"In the creek by the Fire Station. The firemen feed scraps to the crawdads. Some of them get this big." I held out my fingers four inches apart.

"How long have you boys been in the creek?" My father was interrogating, but I was sure I had already been convicted. I knew the routine all too well. My heart sank.

"Uh," I looked at my fingertips trying to judge the pruning against my many hours in the pool. "Maybe two hours or, Uhhh, a little less." I wasn't sure. It could have been 45 minutes or 4 hours.

"Well, I have my doubts about 2 hours." His eyes bore into me.

"I'm not exactly sure about the time." Faltering before even before the accusation.

"Don't you have something to tell me?"

"Uh, Uh, Uh...no?" The stuttering answer came out like a question. My son must be lying my father reasoned or he wouldn't be so apprehensive to answer. He asked me several more times and my responses became less and less convincing. I was crying and begging forgiveness in less than five minutes. I still didn't know my crime. Admittedly, I was no angel as a child and could be a headstrong handful. Everyone else, my brothers, mother and the nosey neighborhood waited out by the gallows hoping to see a hanging.

In an effort to shorten the story, I was accused and convicted of throwing a baseball through a window across the street. I denied the crime vehemently which caused the bigger problem for me. In the opinion of the neighborhood, I was lying. And in my household, this was a crime punishable by death. I wore that "Scarlet Letter" for the duration of my adolescence.

You may ask, what does this have to do with the travel bug? Well, while the crime didn't turn out to be earth "shattering." The punishment was. My dad forbade me to travel with him that summer. That was the moment I knew had the disease. The punishment crushed me.

He was a freelance photo journalist about to leave on a photo shoot for National Geographic. Walter Cronkite of CBS had stirred up renewed interest in the UNICEF mission and their struggle with poverty-stricken children in eastern Africa. He was going to take me along. I had traveled with him the year before to some harsh, wind-blown ports of the North Sea. He photo documented some grotesque whaling practices. For three weeks, I couldn't breathe. Horrified, terrified and loving every second. Being the eldest son and in Texan parlance, I had just been denied a birth right.

It took a year to figure out that Roger, a younger kid who lived around the corner, broke the window. My family never understood how much the accusation, conviction and punishment affected me. I became a different person...cynical, suspicious and addicted to travel.

Have a great day!

Al, the Travel Valet