For me, the attraction of travel always has been not so much the sights seen but the people met. And just as an author remembers the people who helped with his book, a traveler looks back at all those who, often unwittingly, made his journeys more memorable.
For me, 1991 began with the Key West literary seminar on travel writing. I interviewed the doyenne of travel writers, Jan Morris, and learned, among other things, that because of an old climbing injury she loses one of her big toenails every few months.
”Just like the Archbishop of Canterbury,” she told me cheerfully.
Cruises are not the venues for exotic encounters that trans-Atlantic crossings used to be. And yet . . . from the cruise ship Norway I remember Marina, who stood out from the rest of her Single World fellows with her ill- fitting swimsuit, hopelessly pale skin and sad expression. It was her first vacation since emigrating from Leningrad.
Only once did I see her brighten up-playing Ping-Pong with such skill and joyful abandon that she beat all comers. After a week at sea, she was not eager to return to her nursing school and supermarket job in Brooklyn.
”I could have stayed on that ship for months,” she said wistfully.
The Norway`s captain, Tor Dyrdal, possessed a gruff Nordic charm. Before becoming, as he said almost derisively, ”a sunshine sailor,” he was in the business of towing icebergs.
One night in the Club Internationale, one of the ship`s officers improvised on his accordion with blues singer Jane Powell. Dyrdal interrupted applause to comment: ”We have a saying in Norwegian: `You do not have more pleasure than that which you can create yourself.` ” Which still seems excellent advice for travelers.
Springtime in the Smokies brings to mind the owner of the Captain`s Bookshelf, a used book store in downtown Asheville, N.C. After ringing up my total, he added a small paperback of eccentric aphorisms free of charge.
”This,” he said, taking the intrusive tone of an interior decorator,
”you`ll need for your guest bathroom.”
New Orleans is a mime in a bridal gown off Jackson Square who, bowing to give thanks for the latest donation, revealed a man`s hairy ankle.
Say Tarpon Springs, Fla., and I see George Billiris standing in his warehouse with sponges all around and the phone to his ear, taking an order from Paris.
South Dakota is a blur of rocks and trees-with more buffalo (even between the hamburger rolls) than people. But I still recall the legs of the Badlands waitresses, lumpy and red with mosquito bites.
From Disney World, I remember no people, just a disembodied voice saying, ”A better world for tomorrow.”
Europe is usually good for chance meetings on a train. My most recent trip produced Gizelle, a teenager from Buenos Aires who was taking a year to travel the continent. It was her answer to college. We were midnight travelers stranded at a station in a small town in France and her lively conversation kept me awake.
One of the nicest sounds I heard while traveling was the early morning singing of my chambermaid in Genoa.
I remember with fondness all the honest cab drivers, the cheerful receptionists, the silent seat companions on long flights.
I thank all the head waiters who, on hearing ”table for one,” did not flinch in horror.
I drink a toast to the young man in Memphis who bought me a beer and the barmaid at my hotel in Santo Domingo who tried to teach me the merengue, the national dance. (It was a slow night.)
And I probably will never forget, from that poor Caribbean capital, the sight of the barefoot boy staring into a shop window of bright Christmas toys.
