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Travel
Dell was the party animal. He
had
installed a dance floor and a juke box in the entry room of his
apartment,
painted the walls black and used black lights to illuminate posters on
the
walls. His whole bedroom was a bed built in steps. He had an outside
corner
apartment and it was the place to be. You really wanted to be Dell’s
friend.
I had never been to Europe; so
this was the biggest adventure of my life. We got charter flight
tickets that
were cheaper than dirt. We packed our polyester wardrobe in canvas back
packs
and bought Eurail passes that gave us first class rail transportation
to
anywhere we wanted to go. We slept in youth hostels, sailing ships, and
train compartments. We saw Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo,
Brussels,
Frankfort, Cologne, Geneva, Paris, Mt. San Michelle, Rome,
Venice, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Granada, Seville, and
Toledo. In Seville, I
met John Fulton, the Fort
Bliss GI artist who had become the first American
matador in Spain. I bought four of his prints and his partner’s book Bulls of Iberia. I
was in Seville when Spain won the World Cup in soccer
and went to the great fiesta
in the park. In the park was a huge
semicircular Greek-style
temple structure where local bands were playing,
sometimes three at a time due to the size of the park. There was a pop
Flamenco
group that played percussion on blacksmith anvils and there was a
Boogie Woogie
band playing very hip swing. I was ‘chaperoning’ a group of American
girls from
the Midwest, that I had met
in Madrid and then again in Seville,
that wanted me to offer some safety while they partied with the local
Spanish
waiters they met. I was paired up with one of them and she turned out
to be a
great dancer. We put on a jitterbug show at one end of the park while
there was
pop Flamenco dancing at the next bandstand. The crowd moved back and we
became
the entertainers for the Spanish celebrants. The party started at
midnight and
we walked back to the hotel in morning light. Big Linda and I agreed to split up temporarily while I experienced Spain and chased after Toulouse Lautrec art in southern France. We met again in Rome before we started for the airport in Brussels. It was a great summer! My company hired me back. They did not want me to take a leave of absence so early so I had to quit my job to go to Europe. I guess they really liked me. |
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