Home

 40 years ago today, I woke up in Barcelona, Spain.  Everyone got up early in anticipation of going home.  We had been on the road for three weeks.  We had been with each other for the three weeks.  It would be nice to get home to my own bed and not have to live out of a suitcase for a while. 
  One of the unwritten rules I had to live by for the three weeks was not to take any pictures of the girls without makeup.  I broke that rule that morning, as I had to take pictures of Sandra and Talula without makeup.  They weren't thrilled, but my main reason for doing it was I had to use up the film in my camera, so that I could guard it from being exposed by any x-ray machine. 
  We got to the airport and onto the Pan Am plane to take us home.  We didn't know that there was going to be one more stop before the trans-Atlantic flight.  The plane stopped in Lisbon, Portugal.  We wanted to get off of the plane and go into the airport to say we had visited Portugal, but the flight attendants wouldn't let us.  They did let us go out on the tarmac briefly.  So, in the three weeks, we had visited England, Italy, Israel, West Germany, East Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Portugal.  9 countries in 21 days.  We were exhausted.
  The flight home was long and boring.  We tried our best to entertain ourselves.  I watched the Sid Caesar film "Ten from Your Show of Shows".  It was very funny.  From where I was sitting in the plane, I could also watch the film "1776" which was being shown in another cabin.  I also wrote music to a poem that I had written in Israel called "Save the World for the Children".  Many years later, it was blessed by Pope John Paul II.  The Pan Am plane landed at JFK in New York. 
  When we got to customs, the guy searching the bags found my rose that had been given to me in Switzerland.  He got upset and started asking me a bunch of questions as to where it came from.  They called a guy with the Department of Agriculture to look at my rose with a magnifier to see if there were any bugs on the rose.  They didn't want anything strange to be brought into this country.  The scanner saw nothing, but to be on the safe side, he broke off the flower, and handed the stem back to me.  I was not pleased.  I still have the stem to this day.
  It was not long before our next plane took us back to Greenville.   Most of us got a little sleep.  Talula's head rested on Sandra's shoulder, and Sandra's head rested on my shoulder.  I had a pillow. 
  One of the things we found, when we got home, were a lot of yellow ribbons.  The song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" was very popular at that time.  In fact, we had re-written the song while on the trip changing the line "It's been three long years" to "It's been three long weeks".  Our families didn't know about that, but they got yellow ribbons to welcome us home. 
  Upon getting home, there was still some unfinished business.  We all said goodbye to our fellow travelers.  I made arrangements with Sandra to stop by her house in a few weeks and pick up some pictures she had taken and wanted to get some that I had taken.  And then, there was the History course.  I had to write a term paper on what I had seen.  So, I wrote about the people and the experiences.  The professor gave my paper back to me ungraded, and said I needed to write about the historical things I had seen.  So, I went to the library and looked at a bunch of books and figured out what I had seen.  It had been a blur.  I got an A, but I couldn't swear in court that what was in the paper was what we actually saw. 
  It was a memorable experience.  They say travel broadens one.  I guess that is true.  Although, I would like to go back and actually see the sights without fear of death.  Talula, Sandra and I remain friends to this day.  Many of the tour members are dead now.  I sort of lost touch with them.  40 years is a long time.  I pray they are okay.  As for Sam, Omar and Sam?  Well, you would have to ask them.