Cathedral towns and rural countryside, grand manors and famous gardens: a ribbon of  beauty and history, it unrolled ahead of the Austin Mini, Sherrill at the wheel, Simone in the pint-sized back seat.  At Sissinghurst Castle, we climbed the medieval tower in which Vita Sackville-West wrote her books and strolled in the gardens she created among the castle's ruins, even in a moat.  We admired the art collection that filled 17th-century Chatsworth House and were dazzled by the gardens surrounding it.  We stayed in hotels and inns that were old when Shakespeare was writing, their floors as wavy as the sea. 
            At Warwick castle, a tall, cadaverous guide out of a 1930s black and white horror flick took us along corridors, up and down many flights of stairs, through vast chambers and medieval rooms, explaining  the spectacular interiors we were seeing.  At the end of the tour, he delivered us back to a host who said, "I'm sure you enjoyed George's tour.  Nobody knows Warwick Castle as well as he does.  Remarkable, isn't it, considering that he's blind?"
            At Stonehenge, I photographed three year-old Simone next to a peace symbol someone had spray-painted on a fallen stone.  We wandered through historic university buildings and grounds at both Oxford and Cambridge and at Stratford-on-Avon explored where Shakespeare romped as a kid, Simone running along the banks of the river to see the snowy, long-necked swans.  Somehow, Sherrill coped with the challenge of driving on the narrow, twisting country roads and lanes, despite hedges that obscured the views ahead and the ditches that often lined what passed for a road.  Twice the jolting, bumping, sudden bending of the roads made Simone sick to her stomach, once on my jacket shoulder, but she was a good sport and usually a good traveler. 
            The cliff-top cathedral at Lincoln with its three towers clawing at the sky above the bend in the river seemed magically unreal and the half-timbered buildings in the walled city of Chester could have been out of an old storybook.  However, it was in Chester where we heard that Bobby Kennedy had been murdered after winning the California primary in the 1968 presidential campaign.  
            "What is it with you Americans?" people asked us.  "Why do you shoot each other?"
            The next evening at our hotel in York, we watched a British television special about the epidemic of violence in the United States.  We were glad to be in northern England, but were embarrassed to be Americans.  
            Sherrill and I were ready for the tranquil beauty of the Lake District, especially the quiet charm of Hilltop, Beatrix Potter's seventeenth century home.  Simone recognized the wisteria-draped stone house without being told as we walked up the path.  The moment we passed through the front door, she rushed over to the wall near the bottom of the stairs.   
            "Here," she said, pointing at the wainscot and skirting board, "this where they hid, the rats, Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria.  Tom Kitten was here, too!"
            Every place she looked as we walked through the old house brought new memories from Beatrix Potter's stories and drawings.  When we finally left, one of the staff admired her pinafore.
            "It's a pinny,"  Simone explained.
            Sherrill and the Austin Mini eventually got us to the remains of Hadrian's Wall, where we stomped around in soggy turf, admiring the moss-covered Roman stones.  Driving north into Scotland after a night in a medieval inn near the border, we encountered a more rugged land, a world so doggedly picturesque that it was tempting to linger, however, we made our way north to Edinburgh, the city of Robert Louis Stevenson and A Child's Garden of Verses, a beautiful city whose hills and sprawling bays reminded us of San Francisco.  Then, in a day or two, it was west across Scotland to Glasgow, where both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were born.  After overnight in Scotland's largest city, we rode a car ferry to Belfast in Northern Ireland, then enjoying a period of peace. 
            Dublin, the city on the Liffey, was the goal of this librarian and writer.  Sometimes, in our travels Sherrill and I felt and acted like tourists, other times we wanted to downplay all that.  We did see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, but otherwise allowed ourselves to mostly just wander in this city that Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Synge, O'Casey, Wilde, and especially Joyce, knew so well.  We strolled along the old streets, hesitating from time to time to read historical markers on pubs and other buildings.  When Simone's legs wore out, I hoisted her up against my shoulder, where she could gaze at this strange old world or doze. 
            "Bruce," Sherrill told me the next morning, "one thing more you have to do before we leave here."
            Back in the Austin Mini, we found our way to the old Martello Tower just outside the city, the tower described so precisely in the opening pages of Joyce's Ulysses.  Then, we'd be able to say goodbye to Dublin without regrets later. There also was one more thing she wanted to do before we left Ireland.  On our way south to Wexford, where we'd get the ferry to Wales, we stopped at the Waterford factory, so she could buy sherry glasses to match ours, without the retail prices and taxes.  However, they told us that they didn't have any to sell because everything they made was exported, mostly to America.
            Sherrill drove our little car onto the ferry and parked in the lower level with the other vehicles making what turned out to be a ten hour crossing to Swansea.  We hadn't realized that the trip was this long or that we could've booked a room, so we had to sit up in a lounge the whole time.  Eventually, I carried the exhausted little girl below to our car and sat with her while she slept. To keep out fumes and stink, I kept the windows closed, turning the mini into a steam bath, but Simone did get a good sleep.
            The next day at our Swansea hotel, when we went downstairs to breakfast, Simone took the goblet with her orange juice and bit a chunk out of it.  Sherrill snatched away the goblet, pulled the piece of glass from our daughter's mouth, and checked to make sure no pieces stayed behind and that Simone hadn't swallowed any. 
            "You don't give a three year-old juice in a goblet!" she told the waiter, displaying the hunk of glass.
            "We've never had a three year-old before," he stammered.  

To be continued....

            If you enjoy these posts, you might enjoy exploring the rest of my website, too. Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.

           May and June: what better time of year to wander around Great Britain, visiting gardens, grand estates, and historic cathedral towns and discovering at first-hand places we'd read and dreamed about all our lives?  With the help of a travel agent (remember those?), we put together a perfect trip.  We developed the itinerary and chose the hotels, but she made all the reservations, no small job, since we stayed in 24 hotels. This was still the era when you either wrote letters, sent telexes, or called long distance. 
           On a beautiful May afternoon, my parents took the three of us to San Francisco International Airport to fly nonstop to London (a big deal in 1968) on a Pan-American clipper. My mother and father were terrified, although they tried not to show it, because we were taking their grandchild over the north pole to another continent.  We dressed appropriately for our transcontinental flight, Sherrill in a handsome but comfortable suit and I in a tweed sport coat and knit tie with gray slacks. Three year-old Simone, wearing a pinafore (copied by Sherrill from illustrations in English children's books) over her dress, sat between us. The plane was two rows of three seats, one aisle down the center. 
            We had plenty of room to stretch out—and this was coach class. If there was a first class, it was only a few rows in front. Nobody was closed off from anybody else. Good meals and all beverages were, of course, included.  The Pan Am stewardesses were smart, efficient, and friendly.  We even were given Pan Am clipper stationery. Simone got her first pair of wings and wore them proudly on her pinny.
            London in 1968 still was not fully recovered from the War, although it was a generation back. Many buildings still showed war damage and soot and from time to time we came across a block with a house or building missing, like a smile with one tooth knocked out, maybe a few loose bricks to suggest what had been there. The hotel we stayed in, an ornate turn-of-the-century red brick pile near Buckingham Palace, needed major spiffing up. A week or two into our trip we began to wonder if the British liked old paint and threadbare upholstery, as well as breakfasts of cooked tomatoes, fat-oozing bacon and sausages, and fried bread, but they just didn't have the money to clean and repair and replace. After several days sightseeing and a couple of plays (taking turns staying at the hotel with Simone), we picked up the rental car Sherrill was going to drive for three weeks.
            The first car they put her in was small and cheap, as we'd asked, but had a stick shift. After three minutes, it was obvious that it wouldn't do, especially with right-hand driving on the left side of the road. Even in the lot, she nearly drove into two other cars. Finally, they located an Austin mini with an automatic shift and we were off to Rochester and Canterbury near the Channel coast.   
            "Ancient" began to have a new meaning for us as we explored two of the oldest cities on the island, both going back to before the Romans. Climbing the tower in Rochester castle, we got a view of not only the 11th century cathedral but also of how near the coast of France is.  In Canterbury, we saw from empty lots still around the cathedral how furiously the Nazis had tried to destroy this symbol of Britain.
            We used Arthur Frommer's England on $5 and $10 a Day, but occasionally indulged in his "splurges." Our biggest splurge was the Gravetye Manor, an Elizabethan country house thirty miles south of London—famous for its gardens--but even this elegant hotel needed new plumbing, upholstery, and fresh paint. Our bedroom was huge, but the furniture showed wear. Our bathroom, at least the size of the bedroom, was across the hall, with a tub a sumo wrestler could have used, but no ladder to get in or out. We also discovered that deadly piece of plumbing the British use to heat towels.
               "They should put warning signs on it!" Sherrill moaned, showing her bright red palm.
            At the end of dinner, the waiter asked if we wanted coffee and port. Trying to be sophisticated, we agreed. He hovered nearby so long that we assumed we'd given the wrong answer.
            Finally, he spoke: "The lounge is down the hall," he said.
            "Thank you," I replied.
            "We'll bring it to you there, sir.  Madam."
            Obviously, this trip was going to be one long learning experience.
            We'd read Vita Sackville-West's account of growing up in the largest house in England, but couldn't really picture it until we walked through some of the 365 rooms of the ancient maze known as Knole House. 
            "This place," Sherrill said as we hiked down a hall lined with enough suits of armor to outfit an army, "would give a normal kid nightmares."
            "Maybe that says something about Vita."
            From the ridiculous to the sublime? The same day, we continued on to picture perfect Bodiam Castle, small as castles go, standing pristine inside its moat.  After crossing the draw bridge and exploring the castle, we stopped at the tea shop back across the moat. The teenage girl who served us was astonished that we came from California. She'd never been to London, she said,  just 50 miles away. 
            "Do you want to go to London?" Sherrill asked her.
            The girl shrugged. "Maybe."
 
            Traveling with a three year-old required some accommodation, now and then.  Simone had the idea that the Banbury Cross of the old nursery rhyme was a carnival and wanted to go there.
            Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross,
            To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
            With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
            She shall have music wherever she goes.
            When we chanced on a traveling carnival in a small town, it became "Banbury Cross." She rode a carousel, went with me in the bump cars ("Daddy is a bad driver," she confided to Sherrill afterward, "he kept crashing into other cars."), played several games, and quite enjoyed her "Banbury Cross."
​
            When we came to the town of Gloucester, parts of it were remarkably like the illustrations in Simone's favorite Beatrix Potter book, The Tailor of Gloucester.  She recognized the medieval gate at the end of one street and the shop she was sure belonged to the tailor, himself.  We stopped at a small, old-fashioned tea shop for a snack (cookies and milk for Simone, tea for Sherrill and me).  When Simone wasn't looking, Sherrill turned over an empty teacup in a saucer.  
            "It's upside down!" Simone declared, when she noticed the flowery, gilt-edged cup.
            "Like in the book," Sherrill commented, matter-of-factly.
            Simone's hand hesitated over the tea cup, then lifted it, revealing a small, handmade mouse sitting on the saucer.
            "A mouse!" she squealed!
            "Like in the book."
            Somewhere Sherrill had bought this miniature cotton-stuffed mouse dressed in a blue suit.  Simone carried the little mouse with her through the rest of the trip—usually in her pinafore pocket.  

To be continued....
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            These trips we took early in our marriage were possible because of the sales of my first book, THE NIGHT ACTION.  Nobody could have predicted then that now, fifty years later, it would be available in an entirely new kind of of format—as an e-book from Automat Press.

           Expo 67 in Montreal was going to be the biggest, best world's fair in memory. Everybody said so. Sherrill and I agreed that we should go -- and why not explore the U.S. and Canada on the way?  
            Our little Rambler station wagon would carry us up the West Coast to Vancouver and Victoria, across Canada to Chicago, and then to the East Coast by way of the Great Lakes, Niagara Falls, Quebec, and finally Montreal. Coming home, we'd drive south into the U.S. and eventually across the country back to Berkeley. My sister, Carol, almost twenty, would come along, help drive, and see some of  the world. My primary jobs were to plan the route and keep two and a half year-old year old Simone entertained. We didn't know exactly how many miles we'd cover in a day, so we didn't bother with hotel reservations.
            "Do you have the traveler's checks?" Sherrill asked as we approached the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.  Oops!
            Another outdated concept today, but then we needed them, so back we went, only a few miles, fortunately.  At least, we'd remembered Simone's little Beatrix Potter books and favorite doll, "green man," a soft, cuddly version of the Jolly Green Giant.
            Sherrill loved working her way through a list until she completed it. Her first year as a children's librarian, she got a list of the hundred best children's books by grade and age and read them all.  As we continued traveling outside the U.S., she declared that we should visit every country in Europe. Eventually, we got to all but two, not so easy with some of them breaking up, creating new ones. We had plans to finish with Norway and Andorra, but didn't make it.
            This trip created new lists for us: the U.S. states and their capitals, the provinces of Canada and theirs.  We didn't get to all the states and provinces this trip, but did pretty well seeing the capital cities of the ones we did pass through. How Sherrill enjoyed checking them off: Victoria, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Toronto, Quebec. Salem, Olympia, Madison, St. Paul, Albany, Providence, Hartford, Boston, Trenton, Richmond, Nashville, Oklahoma City (oil wells pumping on the state capitol grounds), and on to Santa Fe and Phoenix. Then there were lists of historic cities and sites: Washington DC, of course (where I took one of my favorite photographs of Sherrill and Simone), New York City, Philadelphia, and all those New England Revolutionary War sites, Niagara Falls, Mississippi River, Carlsbad Caverns, Petrified Forest, and more. And the famous homes along the way: Hyde Park, Mt. Vernon, The Hermitage, Monticello, The Little House on the Prairie.... And as we explored Expo 67, Sherrill announced that we might as well go to every World's Fair from then on.  We didn't achieve that, but we did get to one more.
            As we covered the miles, I read the Beatrix Potter books to Simone until we all had them memorized.  When she wanted me to start reading, she'd reach from her car seat to flip my earlobe. Each time we stopped for the night, she put Green Man to bed, usually in a drawer. One morning, however, we left the motel without checking all the drawers and left Green Man hundreds of miles behind, someplace in Canada. Simone was very sad, but we promised we'd get her a replacement.
            In Chicago, my high school and college friend, Don, joined us for as far as Montreal.  In motels and restaurants, people seemed to assume that he and Carol were a couple, just as Sherrill and I obviously were.  In Quebec, the hotel wanted to give the pair of them a separate room. As I recall, that night Don and I camped in a small room. The next evening, we all splurged on the best restaurant of the trip, French gourmet in Montreal's Old Town, with prices to match. While we were eating, for no reason we could figure out,  two year-old Simone began crying and couldn't stop. Since we'd ordered a splendid meal, we took turns taking her into the hall so she wouldn't disturb other diners..  
            When we reached the vast Expo 67 grounds, we didn't always stay together. The most popular pavilions had waits of hours to get inside—the Czech pavilion with its vast array of fine art, especially.  (The 50 million visitors to Expo 67 is still an expo world record.) The Soviet and U.S. pavilions, close together, seemed to be challenging each other. The sleek glass Soviet building was set off at its side by a monster silver-gray hammer and sickle celebrating 50 years since the 1917 revolution. The neighboring U.S. transparent geodesic dome presented a very different message. I was fascinated by Moshe Safdie's Habitat  at one end of the expo, in which prefabricated concrete forms created 146 apartments, all with private terraces and gardens. It seemed to me like a perfect model for a commune. However, of all the exhibits, Simone liked best the cascading display in the U.S. pavilion of scores of all-American Raggedy Ann and Andy rag dolls.  Sherrill and I liked it, too.
​
            Gazing over the years, I'm amazed by how much we saw and did on this road trip across the continent and back, but we were young and enthusiastic and always ready for more.
To be continued....

Bruce Douglas Reeves, Author of THE NIGHT ACTION, new ebook edition by Automat Press 
            

​            To everyone's surprise, my first novel sold well enough that Sherrill and I could indulge our yearning for travel and adventure.  We started modestly with baby Simone, visiting family in Utah and Yellowstone National Park. Later, we traveled in our new 1966 American Motors Rambler to Death Valley and Joshua Trees National Monument.  The two monuments turned out to be more exciting than we expected. While posing for a photo in front of a field of spiky thorn-haloed golden cholla cactus, Sherrill backed too close to one, prompting it to reach for her, attracted by the moisture in her body.  When she pulled away, the back of her hand was covered with golden thorns.  I had to get pliers from our emergency kit in the car.
            "At least, it wasn't Simone," Sherrill kept saying, as I yanked out the thorns.
            At Death Valley, we detoured along a dramatically narrow canyon road between steep orange cliffs.  When we reached the end, we found a sign warning about the danger of flash floods in the canyon, but there had been no sign at the end where we'd started.  As we drove back onto the main park road, Sherrill noticed that something was wrong with the tires.  We limped to the nearest service station.
            "All four tires have been shredded by rocks," the mechanic told us.  "They all need to be replaced."
            Luckily, Sherrill had brought her one and only credit card.  It was a learning experience we told each other, but weren't entirely sure what we'd learned--other than to avoid golden cholla and rock-covered roads.
            After a few months back home, we decided it was time to take Simone to Hawaii to meet Sherrill's mother, who had moved there a few years before. Nervous about flying with a child not even two years old, we elected to sail both ways on the aging Matson liner, the Lurline.
            The voyage from San Francisco started quietly enough, Simone in a crib on the floor of our room. When we took her on deck, we put her in a leash designed specifically for toddlers, so she wouldn't slide under a railing into the Pacific. Sometimes, she wasn't too happy wearing that contraption, but most of the time trotted along contentedly.
            One evening at dinner, we sat in a banquette facing out toward the dining room, Simone between us. We didn't notice that she was being unusually quiet . Then Sherrill realized that she was standing on the banquette seat, busily scooping handfuls of dirt from the planter behind us, building a pile by her toes. Years later, we told Simone about this.
            "My love of gardening, " she replied, "started early."
            Then, as we steamed into the Pacific, the floors began tilting.  Dishes slid across tables.  Water in the swimming pool sloshed from side to side, splashing over the deck. Passengers were begging for sea sickness medicine. The voyage turned out to be one of the worst crossings between the mainland and the islands ever. Simone in her crib may have been the only passenger not violently ill. One night, Sherrill and I lay writhing on the floor next to her—occasionally, as the ship rocked and tossed, reaching into the crib to pat her.
            All was calm again before we arrived at Honolulu's Aloha Dock, where Pat, Sherrill's mom, was waiting in a flowery red and black muumuu  with orchid leis for the three of us. Pat and little Simone quickly fell in love with each other.  She asked Simone to call her Tutu, the Hawaiian name for grandmother. The child enjoyed saying that funny-sounding word over and over. Soon, we were off to the beach, where Simone discovered the joy of running with her naked feet in the surf. At the nearby zoo, she was astonished by the spindly-legged pink flamingos, even brighter than her own little pink muumuu. 
            The voyage back to San Francisco was calm, but we went through the usual drill, meeting on deck with our life jackets.  Simone's miniature life jacket made her resemble a pint-sized Michelin Man. When she saw herself reflected in a glass door she decided that it was funny. Over all, she was easy to travel with and seemed to think that wherever the three of us were together was home.  
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To be continued....