Getting Away

ROUTE ONE INTO THE DEEP SOUTH—JANUARY 1955

When I was ten years old, I left New Jersey to hit the open road in the back seat of my grandfather’s gray Buick Special. Whenever we visited my mom’s parents in Glen Cove, Long Island, my “Zayda” took us for Sunday drives. But this was different—this was big.

My mom Rose and my little brother Stuart would fly down to meet us in Florida the next week. My dad Julius, a machinist, couldn’t get enough vacation time to join us. My mother convinced the principal to let me miss a week of school if I brought my homework assignments along.

I kept a small address book to log in all the gas station stops, tolls, and other travel expenditures. Grandpa told me I was the official navigator, but really, it was a straight shot for the entire 1200 miles.

Grandma Rifka packed a portable kitchen with her pots, pans, utensils, meat and dairy dishes, and a one burner hot plate to cook kosher meals. After we finished the thermos of chicken soup and prepared meals on the first day, she bought sweet butter and fresh eggs at the farm stand and scrambled them for breakfast.

Then, she made coffee for Grandpa in the aluminum percolator, pouring it into his plain ivory porcelain mug with the rounded bottom. For the longest time, I thought that all grandfathers drank out of this special kind of cup.

We stayed at six dollar per night cottages, all with warnings forbidding use of electrical appliances. But cooking kosher meals was a matter of unbreakable faith for my grandparents.

We traveled on Route One for the entire trip, the superhighway of the time. I stared out the car window all day, looking for Sunoco gas stations, Grandpa’s favorite brand. I took in the sights along the way, the fields with crops lining the highway, the shacks set back in the middle of the fields, families visible on front porches if closer to the road. When the big interstates were constructed soon after and cut through the farmlands and small towns, all of that would disappear.

We started from New Jersey, but my memory only brings back the highways of the deeper southern states, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, then the endless drive through the length of Florida.

The post-war southern Florida coastline was changing rapidly into a middle-class dream of vacation paradise. I remember the sight of Miami Beach in the distance with its tall white hotel towers rising into the cloudless blue sky, a vision like no other I had ever seen, more magical than the Fantasyland created by Walt Disney for Sunday night TV.

My grandparents rented a garden apartment, a low-rise complex of four white stucco buildings surrounded by bright green grass underfoot and Royal Palms at the entrance. Grandma had a full kitchen to prepare kosher meals.

In the evening, we visited the fancy hotel lobbies—the Saxony, Algiers, Fontainebleau, Eden Roc, Sans Souci, Casablanca—the exotic nomenclature of the kitschy resorts emerging one after the other from the glistening sands.

Later in the week, I was awakened during the night by doors opening and closing, whispering voices, lights in the hallway—my mother and my brother had arrived on Eastern Airlines.

Next day, first thing, Grandma made us egg salad sandwiches and filled a thermos bottle with apple juice. Grandpa drove us to the beach of soft and sugary sands, Miami’s treasure. My brother and I ran into the water, jumping the waves and feeling the receding tide pull tiny pebbles out from under our feet.

I jotted down figures for the four day journey into the little address book: gas $23.73; bridge tolls $2.15; motels $24.50; extras $5.39—grand total $55.77

To this day, my fifteen cousins on my mom’s side express their good-natured envy at my good fortune, the privileged grandchild who accompanied our grandparents up and down the East Coast.

My brother was equally happy with the round trip aviation adventure. And my patient dad, he was just happy when he got his family back, tanned, spilling shells onto the kitchen table, and full of stories of new places in the big, wide world.

THIRTY YEARS LATER—WINTER 1985

I adored the Captain of our Pan Am flight to Martinique thirty years ago. A distinguished older man, he walked up and down the aisles before the flight in full dress whites, asking our names and chatting amiably.

After takeoff, he switched on the loud speaker from the cockpit and announced:

“This is Captain Hunter speaking, welcome aboard your Pan American World Airways flight to the beautiful Caribbean.”

“I just met Mr. and Mrs. Flynn from Boston, they’re on their honeymoon, let’s give them a round of applause.”

“The Werner family is on school vacation and will go on a scuba-diving adventure for the first time.”

“I enjoyed talking to Dr. and Mrs. Jordan, they’re on their way to their daughter’s wedding, with our best wishes.”

And so on, for about a dozen passengers, including us, the Levines, on our way to Club Med.

When deplaning from the flight, we shook hands with the eloquent Captain, thanking him for guiding us over the calm blue waters.

Classiest pilot ever!

ON ANOTHER VACATION, I MET AN AUSTRALIAN BODY BUILDER AT THE FIUMICINO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

In summer of 2015, my lawyer friend Neila and I were headed to Tuscany for a friend’s week long birthday celebration at a private villa. Our van driver at the Rome airport didn’t know his way around the city and kept stopping to get directions for the small hotel destination of one passenger. No one in the entire city had heard of it. This went on for four miserable hours after our eight-hour red eye flight from Boston.

Two hours into the ordeal, one of the passengers asked to be dropped off to get a cab but the driver refused. Another got sick from going in circles through Rome. It got weird as the driver’s affect became more intense as he became more determined to find the obscure cul de sac. He ignored all pleas to deliver us to the known hotels first.

During the harrowing ride, we befriended Adele, a stunning fifty year old bodybuilder who had just won a competition in Dubai. We exchanged contact info and met for dinners and tours during our stay, recounting the Ride from Hell.

Neila and I left for Florence and Adele was on her way to Venice. It turned out we all had tickets to Paris for the week after and reunited there for more good times together. This time, my cousin Sherry and her husband Udoh met us at the airport with Metro passes and escorted us to our hotel in Square de la Republique.

On our way to the Jean Pierre Gaultier exhibit at Le Petit Palais, Adele found a vintage Gaultier belt at a flea market. Neila had already found the fashion object of her dreams in Florence, a buttery-colored soft leather tote that happened to match her nail polish that day. No better reason to go for it, I say.

When we were at DeGaulle waiting for our flight home, she chastised me, “You didn’t buy anything for yourself in Paris, Florence or Rome. What’s the matter with you, my friend!”

We found a Longchamps duty-free store and it didn’t take much to persuade me to buy one of their classic totes in a rich terra cotta red color, a choice she approved with enthusiasm.

On the flight home—the van ride of three weeks ago long forgotten—we savored the memories of the antiquities of Rome, the exquisite art of Florence, the romance of Paris.

Toting my Longchamps bag around the globe, I am powered by the irrepressible spirit of adventure ignited in the ten-year old girl who first set out with a little notebook on her road trip in 1955.

💗This story is dedicated to my beloved friend and colleague Neila Straub (1948—2017)