Memoirs of a Tracy Kid
Last month’s column was my 52nd column in this series of columns covering my experiences growing up in Tracy during the 1950s and ‘60s.
After 52 columns, I’ve run out of ideas for new columns regarding my life in Tracy. After I graduated from the old Tracy central high school in 1967, I moved to Ames, Iowa to attend Iowa State University. While I had many interesting experiences attending ISU to pursue a degree in electrical engineering, I doubt that most readers from Tracy would find them quite that interesting. However, I do recall one event during that era which I think many readers and especially younger readers might find intriguing.
During the fall of 1970, I was on a date with my girlfriend who I had been dating for the past year and recently had her 19th birthday. We had become quite close and had become a couple of wanderlust lovers talking about how much fun it would be if we went backpacking together through Europe the next summer. The only problem was that she said her parents would never approve of her traveling with a guy. I thought about that for a few moments and then spontaneously said “well, what if we were married?” She incredulously said, “are you proposing to me”? I responded, “I guess so”. (Wasn’t I romantic?) She immediately said, “I’ll think about it.” After a few seconds of silence, she put her arms around me and said “yes” after almost squeezing my neck so hard I thought it would break.
Thus began 54 years of marriage to date. We announced our engagement over the Christmas holidays and agreed to get married the following summer, just before I was to graduate from ISU. After the Christmas break from college, we immediately started planning for the wedding and honeymoon, the honeymoon being a backpacking trip all over Europe for six weeks.
Following is a series of columns on what it was like to travel to a then “exotic” destination that few people of our age had even considered a possibility at that time.
The next thing we did was to begin planning for our big adventure. But first, let me describe what tools were available to plan for such a trip.
In 1971, for those readers that might not be familiar with the technology of the time, understand that the latest telephone technology available then was the recent introduction of the Princess pushbutton telephone, available in several different designer colors developed by Bell Labs to replace the black rotary telephones of the time.
Cellphones were science fiction and called personal communicators, used by Captain Kirk and his crew in the latest episodes of Star Trek. Personal computers hadn’t been invented and the internet as we know it today was 30 years into the future. Man had just recently landed on the moon and GPS mapping devices weren’t even a dream. Paper maps and a compass were the only tools available for navigating outside your immediate home town area, let alone trying to find your way in in some distant land. Research for a trip to an unfamiliar destination was limited to your local library or if you were a AAA insurance member, you could get free paper maps and paperback books describing various popular destinations within the United States. But if you were planning on a trip to Europe, it was recommended that you find a good travel agent and plan on spending a lot of money which as college students we didn’t have.
Heck, I could barely afford the tuition and room and board in the dorms at that stage in my life. I was living on parttime jobs and student loans.
The first thing we did was to go to the Iowa State University library and start checking out travel books about Europe. We soon learned that if you wanted to tour Europe on the cheap, the best guide was a new book authored by Arthur Frommer, Europe on $5 Dollars a Day. Frommer was a GI stationed in Germany during the early 1960’s who spent a lot of his time on leave touring all over Europe.
As a GI, he wasn’t rich and developed a knack for finding cheap places for meals and lodging all over Europe. After several years of traveling, he started writing a newsletter for American GI’s stationed in Europe listing inexpensive places for meals and lodging while on leave throughout Europe.
After Frommer was discharged from the army, he expanded his “tour guide” newsletter into a paperback book which became very popular with people who wanted to tour Europe on a budget. Europe on $5 Dollars a Day became the bible for those wishing to travel throughout Europe on the cheap. We purchased a copy of this paper back for $4.95 and this became our primary source of information for our travel plans.
After doing our initial research, we started to make a list of the tasks we needed to do before starting our trip a week after we got married on July 10, 1971. First on the list was to get a U.S. passport. Since we were unmarried at that time, all the documents for my soon to be wife were in her maiden name.
We knew that this could potentially be a problem traveling and staying together in various hotels and hostels so we planned to take a copy of our marriage license. Guess what, no one ever raised an eyebrow or even asked if we were married throughout our honeymoon trip. Next, we got plane tickets on TWA traveling from Chicago to London non-stop and returning from Zurich, Switzerland to Chicago for $250 each. We also purchased two student Euro Rail passes for two months of unlimited 2nd class train travel throughout all of Europe, except for the UK, for $135 dollars apiece. Then we purchased back packs, sleeping bags, and other essential travel necessities – most of which from an Army Surplus store in Des Moines, Iowa.
Finally, we each obtained International Student ID cards which allowed free or reduced fees to many museums and historical sites, and we sent for American Youth Hostel passes which allowed us to stay in very inexpensive youth hostels throughout Europe.
Our total budget was $2,000 in savings my wife to be had saved from working during her high school years. My contribution was zilch, as I was spending every penny I had on college costs. As I told her at the time, I was marrying her for her tremendous wealth!
We decided that we had to save $1,000 dollars to cover my last quarter’s tuition plus 3 months of lodging in ISU married student housing. Then I would graduate and find a good paying engineering job. By the way, this luxurious married student housing amounted to living in WWII surplus Quonset huts brought back from US Army outposts in the south pacific.
This left $500 to cover six weeks of meals and lodging while backpacking in Europe – what could go wrong with this plan? We went to the bank and purchased $500 of $20 American Express travelers checks to cover our expenses as we didn’t want to carry cash on a trip like this, and at that stage in our lives, we didn’t have a credit card.
Now, with all this planning, there is one important fact that you should understand regarding the trip itinerary. That is, we only knew we were going to land in London and depart from Zurich, Switzerland. We had no reservations for lodging or specific rail stops at this point (or any point throughout the trip). We knew which countries we wanted to visit, and planned to travel around Europe in a counterclockwise route after leaving the UK via ferry and arriving in France. But beyond that, every other detail of the trip would be decided “on the fly.”
We did tell our families to send letters to us to be picked up at several central post offices along our route at major capital cities including Paris, Munich, and Rome. This was possible due to the “Poste Restante” system which means general delivery which was used throughout Europe during that era. We did receive mail from our parents and grandparents which was very welcome, especially towards the end of this long trip.
And you might be surprised to learn that this system of mail is still available today in most European countries.
Next month: Flying to our mother country, the United Kingdom
