Random Public Thoughts #6 - Evergreen Memories #1
I worked hard in high school and got into my first choice school: an excellent, well-run, & very tough place, Swarthmore College. However, after a year and a half I was restless and dissatisfied. What was all of this for? Was this all there was to life: study study and more study... (Swarthmore was a very intellectual school - no mindless alcoholic parties there!?!) And then...?
I hooked up with another dissatisfied Swattie, and we decided to become college dropouts and to learn about Real Life. This being 1971, Cathy and I decided to head out to San Francisco, home of Haight-Ashbury (spelling?) and everything that was cool. We started out at Berkeley, thanks to the kindness of my easy-going and loving friend, Keala (we were freshmen floor-mates at Swarthmore, but she missed CA and transferred to UC Berkeley after one year), and then Cathy & I found a room in an overcrowded apartment in Oakland and we then started job-hunting in earnest.
Lesson learned: it ain't easy beating the streets looking for work. I was very lucky and got a bookkeeping job at a bookstore in downtown SF. I LOVED my job and the people I worked with! Cathy got a job as a bicycle messenger and then in a lab making crowns and dentures. She did not like her jobs and she decided that school wasn't such a bad thing, after all.
I got minimum wage, $1.65/hour, but I was paying only $30/month for rent. Cathy and I scrounged in the garbage bins of the local Safeway to get cast-off but still good veggies and bread (past pull date), and I would buy chicken necks and backs for 19 cents/lb and make big pots of soup. For entertainment, we would hitchhike up and down the CA coast, bringing our sleeping bags for weekend "camping" (but with no tent) trips. We had no furniture - my "bed" during the week was my trusty sleeping bag, and I kept my possessions in a cardboard box. Cathy found an old mattress but sleeping on the floor didn't bother me. Looking back, I can't believe we lived like that, but we were young, very poor, and just happy to be in CA and SF! I found great joy in crossing the Bay Bridge every morning, watching the sunrise, soaking in all the water and fog and birds and morning colors. I had a perfect job - autonomous and challenging. My boss left me alone, I worked very hard and smart and came up with all kinds of process improvements, and my boss was so pleased that she gave me two extra weeks of pay after I left! Our weekend hitchhiking ventures were adventures - we'd just carry our sleeping bags and some sandwiches (made with the "free" bread) and go wherever our thumbs would take us. The CA coast was interesting and beautiful - at that time it was still wild, undeveloped, and accessible to all (no longer the case!?!).
Not only did we survive and thrive, but over my four months in San Francisco, I actually managed to SAVE money - enough to pay for a trip to Europe!?! A Swarthmore acquaintance, Gretchen, happened to visit, and she mentioned that she was going to bicycle around Scotland with her sister that summer - a graduation gift from her parents. I asked if I could come and she didn't object, so...I decided to go!
I was able to get a RT ticket for $200. However, the catch was that the ticket left from NYC, and I was in Oakland. However, I was able to get a ride across the country back to Swarthmore - that was quite a trip for a girl that grew up on an island! We even stopped at Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest Nat'l Parks! And all I had to do was chip in for gas and tolls, and in those days that wasn't much at all. I then hitchhiked from Philly to NYC (that was quite a story which will have to await another blog!) and miraculously got to the airport in time for my flight to Glasgow.
That trip to Europe would fill many more blogs, but here's a summary of what happened that summer: I started out bicycling around Scotland with Gretchen and her sister. However, I was MISERABLE. The weather was awful - it was always raining and cold. I HATE to exercise and the long bike rides were torture for me (Gretchen and her sister were very sporty people and they LOVED tough bike marathons). Thus, one evening, when we were at a youth hostel in Gairloch (in the middle of nowhere!) and the youth hostel warden asked if any of us would like to volunteer to stay and paint the kitchen, I jumped at the chance to stay indoors and not bicycle for awhile!?! I'm sure Gretchen and her sister were glad to get rid of me - I really was a third wheel and she was undoubtedly sorry that she OK'd my tagging along. However, we made plans to meet in some other city - Aberdeen? - on a certain day and parted amicably.
This led to a new twist in my life: I gradually made a friend, Raymond, while helping with the kitchen painting. He was a student at the University of Aberdeen, from a poor family but very smart and shrewd. Our friendship grew very slowly, but once Raymond accepted me, he introduced me to his friends, and they introduced me to their friends - there was a web of them all across Scotland. They were tough, frugal, smart, practical, artistic - just incredible people. I loved all of them so much. I ended up staying in Scotland for five months. It was a tough but truly intense and life-defining experience.
My takeaway? Education isn't such a bad thing after all. Education can be your tool to do what you want in life. The Real World is a tough place and minimum wage doesn't buy you much. College is a magical time when you are still being taken of, and you can LEARN so many things which will expand what you see and understand even more. It can make your life so much richer. I could see this with the Scottish university students that I met. I walked with a Glasgow geology student who pointed out the fossils that I had been walking past every day and never noticed. An architecture student turned me on to Scottish domestic architecture and the beauty of well-designed urban environments that are on a human scale.
So, I wanted to go back to school again! I wanted to do one more semester at Swarthmore, and then I decided that I would study Tropical Agriculture at the University of Hawaii so I could use my college degree to take me to someplace exciting such as South America or Africa. I took a roundabout way home, eventually taking a train across Canada to Vancouver, stopping in Seattle to stay for a week with my Swarthmore friend Cathy who was now living there with another Swarthmore friend, Georgia. I then returned to Hawaii for Xmas, then went back to Swarthmore in January to complete one more semester there.
I wish I'd kept a journal of those 7 months, but if I had, it would be a novel. I truly was living life very, very intensely, meeting all kinds of people, seeing all kinds of things, going to all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things.
Travel is like that. Every day is different. And traveling alone is very hard but potentially very rewarding. I still cannot get over that network of people that I met in Scotland. I would never have met them if I hadn't broken away from Gretchen and her sister. They taught me things that they do not teach in school, including the power we can have over our bodies and our lives. Many other people come to my mind when I think back over that period. There are many very rich lives and personalities that intersected with mine briefly... Then we went our separate ways and never saw each other again. Carpe diem.
One more lesson learned: most people are good and decent and kind. There were SOOOO many people that helped me. I was 19 and very poor, but once Raymond and I became friends and he introduced me to his friends, I always had a free place to sleep in Scotland. I occasionally had to hitchike alone - it was a kinder, gentler period then! There were so many people that picked me up because they wanted to keep me safe before some "bad person" got me. I have many, MANY more tales of total strangers that went above and beyond to help me but that will be another blog!
So, with much aloha for the world, for all those good and kind strangers, I shall close this blog for tonight!
I hooked up with another dissatisfied Swattie, and we decided to become college dropouts and to learn about Real Life. This being 1971, Cathy and I decided to head out to San Francisco, home of Haight-Ashbury (spelling?) and everything that was cool. We started out at Berkeley, thanks to the kindness of my easy-going and loving friend, Keala (we were freshmen floor-mates at Swarthmore, but she missed CA and transferred to UC Berkeley after one year), and then Cathy & I found a room in an overcrowded apartment in Oakland and we then started job-hunting in earnest.
Lesson learned: it ain't easy beating the streets looking for work. I was very lucky and got a bookkeeping job at a bookstore in downtown SF. I LOVED my job and the people I worked with! Cathy got a job as a bicycle messenger and then in a lab making crowns and dentures. She did not like her jobs and she decided that school wasn't such a bad thing, after all.
I got minimum wage, $1.65/hour, but I was paying only $30/month for rent. Cathy and I scrounged in the garbage bins of the local Safeway to get cast-off but still good veggies and bread (past pull date), and I would buy chicken necks and backs for 19 cents/lb and make big pots of soup. For entertainment, we would hitchhike up and down the CA coast, bringing our sleeping bags for weekend "camping" (but with no tent) trips. We had no furniture - my "bed" during the week was my trusty sleeping bag, and I kept my possessions in a cardboard box. Cathy found an old mattress but sleeping on the floor didn't bother me. Looking back, I can't believe we lived like that, but we were young, very poor, and just happy to be in CA and SF! I found great joy in crossing the Bay Bridge every morning, watching the sunrise, soaking in all the water and fog and birds and morning colors. I had a perfect job - autonomous and challenging. My boss left me alone, I worked very hard and smart and came up with all kinds of process improvements, and my boss was so pleased that she gave me two extra weeks of pay after I left! Our weekend hitchhiking ventures were adventures - we'd just carry our sleeping bags and some sandwiches (made with the "free" bread) and go wherever our thumbs would take us. The CA coast was interesting and beautiful - at that time it was still wild, undeveloped, and accessible to all (no longer the case!?!).
Not only did we survive and thrive, but over my four months in San Francisco, I actually managed to SAVE money - enough to pay for a trip to Europe!?! A Swarthmore acquaintance, Gretchen, happened to visit, and she mentioned that she was going to bicycle around Scotland with her sister that summer - a graduation gift from her parents. I asked if I could come and she didn't object, so...I decided to go!
I was able to get a RT ticket for $200. However, the catch was that the ticket left from NYC, and I was in Oakland. However, I was able to get a ride across the country back to Swarthmore - that was quite a trip for a girl that grew up on an island! We even stopped at Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest Nat'l Parks! And all I had to do was chip in for gas and tolls, and in those days that wasn't much at all. I then hitchhiked from Philly to NYC (that was quite a story which will have to await another blog!) and miraculously got to the airport in time for my flight to Glasgow.
That trip to Europe would fill many more blogs, but here's a summary of what happened that summer: I started out bicycling around Scotland with Gretchen and her sister. However, I was MISERABLE. The weather was awful - it was always raining and cold. I HATE to exercise and the long bike rides were torture for me (Gretchen and her sister were very sporty people and they LOVED tough bike marathons). Thus, one evening, when we were at a youth hostel in Gairloch (in the middle of nowhere!) and the youth hostel warden asked if any of us would like to volunteer to stay and paint the kitchen, I jumped at the chance to stay indoors and not bicycle for awhile!?! I'm sure Gretchen and her sister were glad to get rid of me - I really was a third wheel and she was undoubtedly sorry that she OK'd my tagging along. However, we made plans to meet in some other city - Aberdeen? - on a certain day and parted amicably.
This led to a new twist in my life: I gradually made a friend, Raymond, while helping with the kitchen painting. He was a student at the University of Aberdeen, from a poor family but very smart and shrewd. Our friendship grew very slowly, but once Raymond accepted me, he introduced me to his friends, and they introduced me to their friends - there was a web of them all across Scotland. They were tough, frugal, smart, practical, artistic - just incredible people. I loved all of them so much. I ended up staying in Scotland for five months. It was a tough but truly intense and life-defining experience.
My takeaway? Education isn't such a bad thing after all. Education can be your tool to do what you want in life. The Real World is a tough place and minimum wage doesn't buy you much. College is a magical time when you are still being taken of, and you can LEARN so many things which will expand what you see and understand even more. It can make your life so much richer. I could see this with the Scottish university students that I met. I walked with a Glasgow geology student who pointed out the fossils that I had been walking past every day and never noticed. An architecture student turned me on to Scottish domestic architecture and the beauty of well-designed urban environments that are on a human scale.
So, I wanted to go back to school again! I wanted to do one more semester at Swarthmore, and then I decided that I would study Tropical Agriculture at the University of Hawaii so I could use my college degree to take me to someplace exciting such as South America or Africa. I took a roundabout way home, eventually taking a train across Canada to Vancouver, stopping in Seattle to stay for a week with my Swarthmore friend Cathy who was now living there with another Swarthmore friend, Georgia. I then returned to Hawaii for Xmas, then went back to Swarthmore in January to complete one more semester there.
I wish I'd kept a journal of those 7 months, but if I had, it would be a novel. I truly was living life very, very intensely, meeting all kinds of people, seeing all kinds of things, going to all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things.
Travel is like that. Every day is different. And traveling alone is very hard but potentially very rewarding. I still cannot get over that network of people that I met in Scotland. I would never have met them if I hadn't broken away from Gretchen and her sister. They taught me things that they do not teach in school, including the power we can have over our bodies and our lives. Many other people come to my mind when I think back over that period. There are many very rich lives and personalities that intersected with mine briefly... Then we went our separate ways and never saw each other again. Carpe diem.
One more lesson learned: most people are good and decent and kind. There were SOOOO many people that helped me. I was 19 and very poor, but once Raymond and I became friends and he introduced me to his friends, I always had a free place to sleep in Scotland. I occasionally had to hitchike alone - it was a kinder, gentler period then! There were so many people that picked me up because they wanted to keep me safe before some "bad person" got me. I have many, MANY more tales of total strangers that went above and beyond to help me but that will be another blog!
So, with much aloha for the world, for all those good and kind strangers, I shall close this blog for tonight!
posted by Gaye Marasaki | 7:00 PM
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