Tag: Scott Hamilton

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Musings

Living London’s Life – 1978

The brass rubbing from an Oxford cathedral and a photo of me by Anne Biege.

While traveling through Europe that year I’d set a tight budget: $10 per day, excluding travel.  In London, this tiny allowance would be tested.  The first night I tramped about Kings Cross station looking for economical accommodations.  Most were at prices that fully consumed my budget goal.  I chose the cheapest of the lot and the next day scoured classifieds looking for something under $5 per day.  I avoided hostels,  to be free of Americans with Eurorail passes moving about in herds.  There were a hundred too many young Yanks, each backpacking through Europe with indeterminate plans to some day attend grad school when back home.  They simply didn’t interest me.  I wanted to live among locals.

A boarding house in northeast London at  Highbury & Islington at £2.50 a night caught my eye.  The exchange rate of $1.85 per pound was favorable, so the room came to a frugal $4.65 per night.  It also included a full English breakfast, so that would cut down on food costs.  I had a private room with a free-standing tub, sink, high ceilings, and water chamber down the hall.

I kept the 1978 map of the London Underground.

The building was a sprawling Victorian affair, a bit shabby and nearly a mile from the tube stop, which meant there were no tourists in sight.  In fact, the boarding house only accepted men, mostly tradesmen and laborers. Breakfast was served from 5:30 to 7:30 am in a drab, low-ceiling basement. We sat on benches at heavy wooden tables hunched over our hot breakfasts.  It was the same every day: runny baked beans, greasy bacon, stewed tomatoes, bread toasted on one side, butter, marmalade, cornflakes, tea, juice, and coffee, all served cafeteria style.  There was little conversation.  Men of all ages sat sullenly contemplating another day’s labor.  It was fine by me.  I rose early, ate the hearty fare, and was out the door for my day’s adventure.

Soon after arriving, I read about a free concert at Victoria Park in east London.  There were expected to be 80,000 fans to march from Trafalgar Square to Rock Against Racism, as the event was known.  After observing the masses at Trafalgar I’d hopped the tube to the park.  In early 1978, punk music was pretty new.  I considered England’s biggest act, the Sex Pistols to be dreadful.  But, the Clash were different – talented musicians with inventive lyrics, good melodies, and two front-men, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones who rocked with the best of them.

The Clash performing in Victoria Park before 80,000 on April 30, 1978.

I sidled my way up front near the stage.  When the Clash performed mobs of young men jumped up and down some with violent intent.  From its resemblance to a pogo stick, Pogo-ing soon became a verb.  I joined along, but the most rambunctious of the pack swung heads and fists so violently that I beat a quick retreat to safer spaces along the edge.   Also on the Rock Against Racism program that day were: the Tom Robinson Band (political rock); Steel Pulse (reggae) and X-ray Spex (punk), with only TRB being any good.

During most days, I’d visit museums, galleries, historical monuments, fashionable squares, parks, and vibrant districts.  Hyde Park, Speaker’s Corner was always a hoot, like the half-bearded wit who entertained the crowd for an hour.  Towards early evening I’d gravitate to areas with cheap restaurants to peruse menus, looking for the best prix fixe value for a multi-course meal.  Those deals were usually found in immigrant districts so I often dined in Indian, Pakistani, or Middle Eastern joints.

This witty, half-bearded guy entertained the crowd at Speaker’s Corner for nearly an hour.

I typically planned an evening’s entertainment and often joined the London Walks around famous neighborhoods.  These walks had names like Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street or the Secret World of Jack the Ripper.  You’d meet the guide at a pub.  Then a dozen or so tourists followed a well-spoken Brit who guided us through the streets of London relating topical stories with anecdotal stops at key points.

At the end of the typical 90-minute tour, most of the crowd topped off their evening with a pint or two in the pub where we’d first met.  Some nights I’d catch a music performance, some freely presented in a club or church.  I saw a bit of theater, the one to remember being Agatha Christies’ “Mousetrap,” the world’s longest-running play  having been continuously performed since 1952.  I’d hope to have seen more theater, like my literary hero, Somerset Maugham did when he was a youth 80 years earlier, but ticket prices were far higher than those days when Maugham paid pennies for a show.

Afterward, I’d catch the tube back to Islington & Highbury station for the long walk home under lamp lights to my boarding house. Sometimes the station was filled with festive, red-garbed Arsenal soccer fans, as the football stadium was a 15-minute walk.  Sometimes one’s thoughts conjured dire images of walking home alone at night in a foreign city.  But fortunately, this area hadn’t much cause for concern as few people were out late, and the ones that were had work in the morning.  Still, I stayed alert as getting jumped was never far from my mind.

One night whilst on a London Walk, I met a young Brit about my age who told me Queen was playing at Empire Pool (now Wembley Arena).  The thought of spending a night at the opera with Freddy Mercury and Brian May was enticing so plans were made to meet at a certain time and place outside the arena.  The bloke never showed so I bought a ticket (£2.50) and found myself witnessing one of the greatest performing bands of all time.  Queen rocked most all their hits, including eight songs from “Night at the Opera” and some lesser-known personal favorites like “39” and “Love of My Life.”

I kept my Queen ticket stub. At then exchange rates, £2.50 came to about $4.65.

My favorite hobby was reading London newspapers. Newsstands were everywhere, and it was easy to find discarded copies at any rail or subway station.  I read them all: Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, London Times (a tad too dry), and page 3 of the Sun (aficionados will understand).  There were also the weekly music rags like Melody Maker and New Music Express filled with stories about rock and pop groups of the day with a listing of nightly happenings at hundreds of music venues scattered through town.   Rare but welcome was the International Herald-Tribune, a joint-venture daily by the New York Times and Washington Post, bringing news of home, especially U.S. sports which weren’t often covered abroad.

Anne Biege in her Oxford dorm room, May 1978.

I made one brief sojourn from London to Oxford to see a hometown friend, Anne Biege who was studying there.  She showed me about the storied campus and we had a pint at the Eagle and Child, the pub made famous by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and fellow inklings.  Anne found me a bed in her friend Tim Gallagher’s room.  He was an English major with a fascination for Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene.”  In an ancient cathedral, I made a brass rubbing from an armored knight.  I still have it.

My rubbing of a knight in Oxford’s cathedral.

My two-month visa to the United Kingdom was set to expire in a few days.  I’d spent a month in Wales (including one week traveling with a rugby team up the Irish coast) and nearly a month in London.  Soon it was time to head back to Paris and join my sister, Danica for her birthday, then head for Spain.

Here’s the postcard I wrote home to the folks towards the end of my stay in London.

May 8, 1978

Dear Mom & Dad,

Well, I’m here in London and have been about a week and a half now.  It’s a great city though I now have a much different perspective of it than I had 10 years ago.  I’ve been trying to go out every night and have so far seen three plays, four movies, five rock groups (all in one day at a free open-air, Anti-Nazi concert in Victoria Park), one classical concert, and innumerable pubs.  I’m living in a nice ‘dump’ in the suburb of Highbury, northwest of the city.  It’s kind of a working-class boarding house for those single people on the lower end of the economic ladder.  Quite comfortable, yet unremarkable, though its cheapness compensates adequately.

I’ve been really active touring and such, having taken in many of the main and not-so-main sights of London.  Among the more notable with short descriptions:

  • House of Commons – where I heard the Rhodesia problem debated.
  • Old Bailey – where I saw a real live murder trial.
  • Hyde Park – where the better part of yesterday’s sunny Sunday was spent listening to all sorts of weirdos at Speaker’s Corner.
  • Tower Hill, a Chelsea pub walk, a Dickens’ Oliver Twist walk, most of the major art museums, the London Stock Exchange, and several assorted churches.

I wrote to Anne Biege and will call her Wednesday in hopes of going to see her in Oxford.  Tonight I plan to go to the Marquee Club for a rock concert in the same club the Rolling Stones frequently played in the early Sixties.

Oh, by the way, this postcard represents my favorite picture from today’s visit to the gallery listed below (Edouard Manet, The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881 – Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London). I’ve been doing that with each visit to a gallery lately.  I still haven’t written to Barry.  Ahhh . . . tell him I lost his address. I’ve written Jean a couple of times though I just got a letter from Dana the other day.  Also, got Scott Hamilton and his English sheepdog, Gretchen off at Heathrow Airport okay.

As they say here, “All the best.”  – Bill

My post card to Mom & Dad – I’m still amazed at my tiny cursive script, even more that it was kept legible.  Above portrait by Edouard Manet – The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881 – Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London.
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Musings Uncategorized

Back in the Summer of ‘69

Banner image by Oliver Kombol - clockwise from upper left: Bob, Corcoran ruler, author's sophomore photo, Woodstock logo, chess board, Mr. Hanson, Henry Gillespie

I didn’t get my first real six-string.  And Enumclaw’s five-and-dime was the last place this teenager wanted to be.  The allure of candy cigarettes and cheap toys had long since passed.  They may have been the best days of Bryan Adams’ life, but for me the Summer of ’69 was a middling byway on a slow road to adulthood.

Summer started off with a bang!  Literally! A Fourth of July bag of fireworks exploded on the front hood of my parent’s Ford LTD after an errant firecracker found its way in.  The following Monday, the Ltd with tarnished hood traveled three blocks to Enumclaw City Hall for my driver’s test.  Scoring 100 on the written and 96 in the car, I went home two days after my 16th birthday with a license to drive.

Woodstock Music Festival logo.

The summer of ’69 sounds so moving in retrospect – astronauts on the moon, hippies at Woodstock, Charles Manson in L.A, Kennedy on Chappaquiddick.  That wasn’t my summer.  Mine was frankly boring.  I didn’t have a full-time job.  Well, I actually had two part-time jobs: Office boy at Palmer Coking Coal manning the telephone and scale earning the princely sum of $5 for my five-hour shift. The second gig, as high school sports reporter for the Courier-Herald, I inherited from my brother, Barry.

I worked on July 5th, my 16th birthday earning $5, the cash receipt signed by my dad, Jack Kombol. It would mark the last time I ever worked on my birthday.

In the slow months of July and August, that second job meant little more than tracking down the two Franks of Enumclaw’s summer sports: Manowski and Osborn, for league scores and standings. That took all of a couple hours before Monday’s deadline.   During the rest of the week, tedium oozed.

I do remember going to the drive-in movies once at the recently opened Big ‘E” in Enumclaw and another time at Auburn’s Valley 6.  We rode in Wayne’s car.  I didn’t really see many buddies as most had jobs or played summer baseball, a sport I’d left two years prior. A very special thing did happen – one night Dad and I walked to the Roxy to see the film: “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” It was likely the only time I went to a movie, just Dad and me.

That summer our family’s traditional vacation of one week in Grayland, and a second at Beacon Point on Hoods Canal ended.  The old-fashion cottage resort at Beacon Point shuttered and our joint vacations with the Cerne family were no more.  Those trips were the highlight of every summer since I could remember.  Barry graduated in June and headed to Alaska seeking his fortune. He returned soon enough finding out, that even in Alaska jobs don’t grow on trees.

Jeanmarie shipped out to Wilsall, Montana with her good friend, Cindy Johnson to help at her aunt’s cattle ranch.  Jeanmarie’s stay was cut short when Cindy’s grandpa died suddenly.  So the four remaining Kombols packed up and drove to Yellowstone retrieving Jean, coupled with a short tour of the park.  It seemed anticlimactic compared to our summer vacations of yesteryear.  The times they-were-a-changing.

Bill, Jack, Jeanmarie, Dana at Yellowstone, July 1969.  Mom as always was taking the picture.

I clearly remember the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 24th.  I remember not watching it.  It was an overcast day.  I bandied about the neighborhood, over at Jim Olson’s home, then here and there.  In the living room, Dad and Henry D. Gillespie, our Australian foreign exchange student sat transfixed on the sofa absorbed for hours.

Popping in that evening, I glanced at the TV then headed back outside.  I wasn’t slightly interested and had no appreciation for the magnitude of that moment – to me it seemed little more than a grainy television experience that went on for hours.  It turned out that Neil Armstrong’s one small step was viewed by more than 500 million across the globe.  In retrospect, my lack of interest was one giant failure to leap.

Henry D. Gillespie was a foreign exchange student from Australia who lived with our family for a year, from Dec. 1968 through Nov. 1969. This photo was featured in the 1969 Enumclaw High School yearbook.

Nationally, the Manson cult murders were a minor headline in the Seattle P.I., the newspaper I studiously read each morning.  Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick high-jinx was a much bigger story, which I earnestly followed.  I’d become a news junkie, with alternating subscriptions to Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report.  But, my perusal of the news was cursory – Woodstock in mid-August?  It didn’t register for me.  It wasn’t until the following year when Steve McCarty and I saw the movie that I even grasped what a music festival was.

What did register was a peevish, late-night, television personality named Bob Corcoran.  He hosted a channel 13 talk show.  Corcoran was the prototype for a mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore character, later seen in “Network.”  Half his audience was bored teenagers listening to drunken adults who called in to converse with Bob.  When teens placed a call – you could always tell – they’d make rude remarks, before the inevitable kill button and dial tone.  Between callers, Corcoran offered screeds on controversial issues, then ceaselessly promoted Tacoma’s B & I Circus store.

Bob Corcoran, our late-night TV fascination in the Summer of ’69.

That summer, our family friends, the Hamiltons were staying with us, having just moved back from London.  Their oldest son, Scott was a year older and we took over Barry’s bedroom in his absence.  There Scott and I watched Corcoran, howling at the inanities Bob spewed forth each night.  We giggled mindlessly at the mere mention of his name.  His show was so bad it made perfect sarcastic sense to our teenage-addled brains.  We even tried calling his show once but hung up after waiting on hold too long.

Corcoran later parlayed his quirky television stardom into politics by running for Congress in 1972.  His shtick was rabble-rousing, stick-it-in-their-face, populist rant, but in the primary, he was soundly defeated by Julia Butler Hansen.  How I ended up with the Elect Bob Corcoran to Congress ruler, I’ve long since forgotten.*

Corcoran used his television notoriety to promote a run for Congress, but failed miserably.

Night after night we tuned into Bob and played chess.  I’d taken up the sport during my just-ended sophomore year after reading an article in the Hornet student newspaper announcing formation of a new chess club.  My game improved quickly, landing me one of the top five boards.

The student newspaper, Hornet announcement in the Sept. 28, 1968 issue that changed my high school trajectory.

Scott Hamilton was a decent chess player who desperately wanted to win.  Late each night, we played game after game, again and again – 49 straight losses before Scott finally won.  But playing chess was just a way to pass time. Our real goal was to laugh at Bob Corcoran.

Scott Hamilton in 1967, one-year earlier when our family visited theirs in West Byfleet, a suburb of London

Amazingly, those memories are the most poignant of my summer of ’69.  The summer I turned 16, during one of the most dynamic times of the Sixties, when all the world’s charms lay before me – staying up late to watch a goofball TV talk show host and playing chess were my highlights.

All the same, everything turned out fine.  Returning to high school as a junior, my driver’s license landed me behind the steering wheel of the family’s second car, a 1965 Renault.  Our winning chess team became an important cog in my developing personality.  That semester I took an Economics class from Wes Hanson that ultimately directed my life (B.A., Econ, U.W., 1975).  Second semester I joined the Hornet staff and learned how to write.

Mr. Hanson at the lectern, a typical pose for the teacher whose Econ class led to my college major.

Another favorite, English lit was taught jointly by Miss Thompson and Mrs. Galvin.  Novels like “Catcher in the Rye” and “A Separate Peace” jolted a new sense of existential feelings through my all-to-logical heart.  “1984” and “Lord of the Flies” called into question what that heart was made of.  We read “Romeo & Juliet” out loud in class.  Franco Zeffirelli’s movie version had recently captured the nation’s attention, so our whole class attended a special showing one night at the Roxy.

Life accelerated.  The following summer, I worked 12-hour days selling popsicles, fudgesicles, and ice cream sandwiches.  High school life gave way to feelings of liberation and control.

Looking back on things, that summer of ‘69 was a quirky way station on the road through life – no longer a boy, but not yet a man.

* One day a few weeks before writing this essay, I ruffled through my desk drawer and grabbed for a straight edge.  Out came a Bob Corcoran for Congress ruler.  I have little idea how it landed there.  It came decades past from a Corcoran campaign booth brimming with swag at the Puyallup Fair.  Only serendipity can explain how that ruler appeared while writing this essay.

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Musings Uncategorized

My Week in Ireland with a Welsh Rugby Team

Tonna's rugby team on the pitch with their mascot, Yank on the sidelines.

This essay came from a letter written to my parents from Middle Mille, Wales.  It was completed from memories of what I left out.  Back then, I was too embarrassed to tell Mom and Dad the rest of the story. 

April 24, 1978

Dear Mom & Dad:

Well, it’s been some time since I last wrote so I thought to dash off a few lines to keep you up to date.  By the time you receive this letter, Scott (Hamilton) should be back in the States, although not necessarily in Washington.  I’ve been here at Scott’s since my last letter, save for a brief sojourn to Ireland where I met up with a Welsh rugby team and toured around with them.  They were really friendly and a lot of fun.  I got to see my first rugby match and did a heck of a lot of something that Welsh rugby clubs do best – drink beer.

In the pub after the game with the Welsh rugby team.

Actually, it was a very strange week.  I met these guys my first night in a pub after I’d ferried from Fishguard, Wales and made my way to the town of Wexford on the southeast coast of Ireland.  They were staying in a big hotel and one of the mates said, “There’s plenty of room at our hotel, so why not come stay with us and go on tour?”  That sounded fine so I did.

I kind of became their mascot and they all called me “Yank,” never bothering to learn my name.  I endeared myself to the club (guys about my age) after their first match.  We were all sitting in the opposing Irish team’s pub.  We were drinking beer, lots of Irish-made Guinness, and eating sandwiches and drinking more beer and singing songs, and having a cracking good time.

The Tonna boys wore red and white.

The Welsh love to sing and we sang almost every song they knew (no not really, there is no end to the number of songs they know).  So, one of the Tonna boys (as they called themselves being from Tonna, Wales near Neath Port Talbot) challenged me to lead the guys in song.  He was a big, fat, long-haired, red-headed oaf named Daffy, but a heck of a nice guy too.

The Tonna Rugby Football Club emblem.

With cheering and jostling they stood me atop this heavy wooden table.  I had to do something and started singing the one song I was guaranteed to remember all the lyrics.  I led them in a rousing rendition of “If I Had a Hammer,” which they all got the biggest kick out of.  After that, I became “one of the boys,” as they’re fond of saying.

Love, Bill

Note: The letter to Mom and Dad describing my time with the rugby team ended here, leaving out the untold story of the rest of my week.

We continued traveling up the east coast of Ireland stopping at small towns along the way.  They played rugby in the late morning; we drank beer in pubs each afternoon; then back to our hotel for more drinking and some nights playing poker.  I even taught them a game or two.  The pattern continued for several days: big hotel breakfasts, sandwiches and Guinness at pubs, then more frivolity until falling to bed.  By this time everybody liked me so much I was almost one of the team, primarily as ‘Yank’ their lucky charm.

The Tonna Rugby Football Club (RFC) photo after a match.

Our final destination was Dublin where they’d catch a ferry back to Wales and I’d tour the Irish capital.  So far, my sightseeing in Ireland consisted of rugby pitches and public houses.  In Dublin fair city we found ourselves in Temple Bar, a lively district where patrons poured themselves from one pub to the next.  Many have street-side windows which open fully guaranteeing easy camaraderie between those in pubs and those passing by.

We’d been good mates for several days and planted ourselves for a sendoff glass to conclude our camaraderie.  After a couple pints, I begged forgiveness and bid farewell. With travel bag in hand, I said my goodbyes to each and wandered the streets of Dublin in search of lodging for the night.  Temple Bar has a confusing hodgepodge of meandering streets and alleys where it’s easy to circle back around.  After surveying several cheap hotels and B & Bs, I found myself walking past the very pub I’d left an hour before.  Cries of “Hey Yank!” were shouted and I laughingly saluted my old friends.  They waved me in and no sooner seated than a pint appeared.  One led to another, and soon I was thoroughly soused.

Relaxing after a ruby match and an afternoon in a pub.

The hours rolled by as we laughed and drank into the night.  They’d be catching the midnight ferry to Holyhead for the long bus ride back to Tonna.  My mind was a muddle – do I leave the pub, drunk as a skunk to find lodging?  Or cast my lot with this scrum and travel back to Wales?  It was late Saturday night and frankly, I was in no position to walk a straight line let alone find shelter.  Choosing the path of least resistance, I stumbled on the bus for a short ride to the ferry.

The Irish seas were choppy that night.  The ferryboat listed in rhythmic patterns perfectly calibrated to agitate a drunk’s equilibrium.  The details of my seasickness are as shabby as I felt and shan’t be detailed here.  The ferry landed and we were back on the bus for the 200-mile journey south along twisting roads to Tonna.  The all-night trip was gruelingly slow and sleep agonizingly fitful.

Upon arrival, Richard, one of the footballers offered a room in the row house where he lived with his folks.  We hit the rack that morning and slept until 2 pm.  I awoke that afternoon with a monstrous hangover.  I drank plenty of water trying to salve my aching brain.  Richard’s mum was a sweet lady who fixed us tea and biscuits.  It was the finest cup of tea I’ve ever tasted.  Oh, that lovely cup of tea, how it soothed my throbbing skull.

In small Welsh towns, locals gravitate to their clubs for the evening’s entertainment. Richard, his dad, and I wandered along to the Tonna RFC clubhouse.  It’s somewhat akin to an Eagles lodge in the U.S.  The largest room was filled with trophies in display cases surrounding tables where young and old rugby players socialized.  Not just the boys I’d traveled with, but their fathers, uncles, and townsfolk who played the sport a generation before. Another pint of ale was probably the last thing I needed, but being a polite young man I good-naturedly accepted and thus began another evening of drinking.   Being Sunday night we left at a reasonable hour.  Early the next morning I bid adieu to Richard who was off to work.  I then enjoyed a pleasant cup of tea with his mum before heading to the town’s station.

My week with this Welsh rugby team thankfully came to an end.  It was time for me to dry out and find my bearings.  I caught a bus to Haverfordwest and made the one-mile walk to Middle Mille for several more days with Scott before his planned departure and mine.  My next stop was London town.

Scott Hamilton’s home in the tiny village of Middle Mille was once the town’s public house, now called pubs.

Postscript: Seven years later, I realized alcohol was not my friend.  The story of May 26, 1985, the day I quit drinking is still being lived. It was the second-best decision I ever made. 

 

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History

Hitchhiking to Haverfordwest

Map of LeHavre to Haverfordwest
My route traced on a map I bought in France.

St. Patrick’s Day has always been special for me, though my heritage is Welsh. That day in 1978, I hitchhiked from France to Wales to visit a friend living near Haverfordwest.  There’s no Irish blood in my veins, but surely on March 17, I had the luck of the Irish.  Here’s the letter I wrote home a few days later describing the adventure to my parents.

March 21, 1978

Dear Mom & Dad:

Well, as you can see by the postmark and card, I’m now in Wales.  Last Friday I took the train from Paris to Le Havre on the coast of France.  I had planned to take the ferry to Southampton. I arrived at 11:15 am and fiddled around the train station for a while, only to find I had missed the noon ferry.  I walked to the ferry docks and saw the next ferry was at 11:30 pm.  It was about 1:30 in the afternoon.  There was only one other person hanging around, a French boy a couple of years younger than me.  I asked him where he bought his ferry ticket and he said something in broken English about hitching a ride on a truck.  He asked me if I wanted to go to town so we stashed our luggage and went to town for the afternoon and early evening.

My letter to Mom
My letter to Mom, postmarked March 21, 1978, Haverfordwest, Wales.

We got back about 8 pm, checked out ticket prices, played pinball and whatnot.  He related that the truck (i.e. lorry) drivers were allowed to take one passenger with them in their lorries.  Almost all the lorry drivers were English so I started asking them if they could give us a lift across on the ferry.  The ones who were in line said they couldn’t since they already had their tickets.  By this time, we were pretty despondent and figured we would have to buy tickets.

Then I decided to see if I could find someone who hadn’t been able to get his ticket yet.  I found a lorry driver and he said, “Well, I suppose that would be quite alright.”  He and a friend got us tickets, and onto the ferry we rode in their trucks.  Then to my astonishment and good fortune, I discovered we’d have beds for the 8-hour crossing, in a room with three other truck drivers.  You see truck drivers are treated royally on the ferries and since I was now a ‘truck driver’ (by virtue of my ticket) I was entitled to the same treatment.  We had a huge dinner, comfortable beds in a four-man room, a shower, plus breakfast in the morning.  All these lorry drivers were the friendliest people imaginable.  They treated me just like one of the boys.

My handwritten copy
Back then my cursive penmanship was small, neat, and legible.

Well, to make a long story longer, I made it to the docks of Southampton where my lorry driver friends (John and Ted) dropped me off and found a good place for me to hitch a ride (at the exit gate from the docks).  I waited there, talked to a policeman, and attempted to find Brawdy, Wales on a map I had purchased.  It wasn’t on the map, so this very nice bobby (English policeman) called the U.S. Embassy in Southampton and asked them where Brawdy was.  They said it was near Haverfordwest, which is in the middle of Wales on the west coast.  The same policeman (who was guarding the checkout point from the docks) then proceeded to ask every exiting lorry if they were heading to South Wales.  He asked for a couple of hours in the early morning cold, but no one was headed for South Wales.

One chap was headed north to the M-4 at Newberry (a major east-west thoroughfare to Wales), so I hitched a ride on his lorry.  He dropped me off at the M-4 and no sooner had he left, another lorry stopped to drop off a rider and motioned me to hop in.  I did and he took me to the Severn Bridge at the border of Wales, where he dropped me off.   Waiting there was a car with a Welsh driver who had stopped for a cup of coffee.  He motioned me over and took me about half of the distance that remained to Haverfordwest.

This time I wasn’t so lucky.  I had to wait a whole five minutes before two men who looked like coal miners just getting off work, picked me up.  As it turned out they were Irish and worked for the telephone company laying cable underground (which accounted for their appearance).  We headed down the freeway only to come upon an accident.  My Irish friends saw it would be a while.  So, back onto the freeway, and back to the exit we’d previously taken, and all the way back to where they had picked me up.  We then took another route.

Since they were Irish and it was March 17th (need I say more) we decided to stop off at an olde pub and celebrate a bit.  We had some pints and a good talk with the bartender who used to fish off the coast of Washington.  Soon enough we were back on the road and feeling a whole lot finer this Friday night.  That’s when these two Irish workmen who were heading back to Ireland for the weekend decided they might just as well take me to Haverfordwest, then continue to their own destination.  They did and that’s how I arrived here.

Middle Mille, Wales
My first view of Middle Mille, where I would spend the next month of my life.  Scott’s home was across the bridge in the center of the photo.

I called the U.S. Naval base at Brawdy and asked for Scott (Hamilton), but the sailor on duty said he’d gone home.  He gave me Scott’s address and I took the bus to a town one mile from Scott’s house walking the rest of the way.  He lives in Middle Mille, a tiny village of half a dozen homes.  Scott had just received my letter three days before (even though I mailed it from Vienna nearly a month ago) so he knew I was coming.

Today’s weather is sunny, but cold.  Happy first day of spring (today!).  Talk to you later.

Love, Bill

Note: Scott Hamilton was a longtime family friend, serving in the Navy and living in Wales.  I stayed a month at his home.  Here’s how I described it in my letter.

“Scott has a beautiful, old English house (formerly a pub) made of stone and 50 feet from a creek.  It’s in the middle of a group of 5 to 6 other houses which make up the Village of Middle Mille.  It is fully modernized with two upstairs bedrooms and a large front room and smaller kitchen and bathroom downstairs.”

Scott Hamilton's home
Scott’s home was formerly a pub and occupied the central location in the tiny village.

Most days I toured the countryside often on foot or bus while Scott was at work.  At night we ate dinner, watched BBC, and messed around with his Ham radio equipment, a teletype machine, and perhaps 20 different connections and components.  With his knowledge of electronics, Scott devised a way to pick up wire service broadcasts and print out those news dispatches.  Sometimes we’d stay up reading press releases from TASS, the Soviet Union’s new agency, the Associated French Agency (in English), as well as the Associated Press (AP).  One night we “watched” (i.e. read) live new dispatches from South Lebanese Conflict involving that month’s Israeli-Lebanese- Palestinian hostilities and U.N. responses.  In this tiny corner of Wales, what Scott had devised was a primitive form of the early internet.  I was fascinated by the experience of it all.

One day, I walked the local countryside with two neighbor boys which I recounted in “A Walk in Wales.”  A few weeks later, I crossed over to Ireland, met a bunch of guys my age, and traveled with them up the Irish Coast, relating that adventure in another letter home titled, “My Week With a Welsh Rugby Team.”

King boys in Middle Mille
The two boys who lived next door and joined on “A Walk in Wales.”      
Categories
Musings

A Walk in Wales

How many walks do you even remember?  Walks to school as a child?  Your walk at graduation? Strolling home from campus late at night?  Walking down the aisle towards your life of marriage?  The solemn pace of the pallbearer when that dear uncle passes?

Some of life’s most memorable moments are seemingly mundane.  So it was with my walk in Wales in the spring of 1978.  I was 24-years-old and spending four weeks of my five-month pilgrimage to Europe, living with a friend in a tiny village of western Wales.  Scott Hamilton was in the service, stationed at a nearby U.S. Naval base.  Scott was something of a loner and rented a stone cottage far off the beaten path.  He lived there with his English sheepdog named Gretchen. 

Middle Mille was no more than six homes and an abandoned mill.  A small creek that once powered the mils flowed through the town. Remnant water wheels of rotting wood and rusting iron dotted a maze of surviving channels and canals. A portion of the old woolen mill had been converted to a home. 

Middle Mille, Wales, April 1978. The old mill is to the left and Scott’s stone cottage is center. The stream is seen below.

A family lived there with two young boys, perhaps five and seven.  Most days I was at loose ends so made the acquaintance of their mother.  She was in her thirties and glad for the company in this isolated place.  On occasion, I’d share a cup of tea with Mrs. King.  The King family traded woolen goods from their storefront which doubled as the front room of their rambling stone house. 

The King boys (whose names I’ve forgotten) were game for an adventure so one day, with their mom’s approval, I proposed a stroll up the creek as far as we might go.  It was a typical spring day in western Wales with light breezes and sunlight broken by passing clouds.  The valley was mostly unkempt fields and broken-down fences.  It was a vestige of Wales that time and prosperity left behind.  Without plan, map, or lunch we began our trek with the creek as our guide.  We hopped fences as necessary and crossed stone bridges where sheep once roamed.  The stream grew smaller as we pressed further up the valley.

The King Boys ready at the village church.

The King boys reveled in discoveries and played imaginary games, while my mind drifted back to a childhood hike some two decades before.  The summer of my fifth year, we climbed the mountain just east of my grandparent’s house.  They lived in what was left of a coal mining outpost once called Hiawatha.  Only three homes remained identical miners’ cottages on the Kanaskat-Kangley Road. My dad was born in the middle house 35 years earlier.  The St. Clairs lived next door.  My climbing partners were Barry, age seven, and Billy and Dickie St. Clair, ages nine and ten. 

The Kombol kids the summer Barry and I climbed the mountain: Billy, Jean, Danica, and Barry at our home in Elk Coal, August 1958.

We crossed over the old railroad tracks and followed a creek up the forested hillside. Our first stop was a primitive dam where Pa Kombol maintained the water system which fed the three homes.  We played near the pooled reservoir then continued our climb through dense stands of fir, hemlock, and cedar covered with moss.  There was a trail of sorts but the path was steep.  Determined as only the youngest really knows, I struggled to keep up yet never admitted weakness.

The creek became a trickle but we climbed still higher.  When the creek was no more we determined the summit was reached.  A view appeared within a narrow clearing.  The sun shone down upon us which added to our sense of glory.  To memorialize the accomplishment a knife was produced from which shirt buttons and shards of cloth were cut.  We attached theses badges to the stump of a fallen tree.  The four of us stood in solemn camaraderie.  Our sacrificed tokens echoed a hope that one day we’d return to find proof of the ascent and reclaim our hidden treasures.  Little did I realize that future treasures will one day be found in memories.

Exploring the graveyard with the boys.

Back in Wales, I pondered, “Might these boys one day experience a similar feeling?”  Several hours into our hike the creek forked.  Neither branch provided sufficient flow to keep our interest.  Clouds gathered behind us and it was time to head home.  We left the valley floor climbing the upper ridge.  A trail led us back to the village.  By the time we reached Middle Mille, we’d rambled maybe five or six miles.  I deposited the boys with their mother with promises to explore again. The King boys and I undertook several more adventures during my stay.  We examined a nearby church and graveyard.  We found an old water wheel where I tried coaching the older lad to snap my photo.  He fumbled with the camera asking, “Which button do I push?”  As I leaned forward the shutter clicked. 

At the old water wheel in my trusted pea coat.

My time in Wales was coming to an end.  There was only so much to learn in Middle Mille.  My visits to the nearby market town of Haverfordwest began to grow stale.  London was calling, but I yearned for a piece of this green valley to take home.  Mrs. King helped me choose a Welsh-made woolen blanket.  It cost a pretty penny and I shipped it home in time for Mother’s Day.  Both of my Mom’s parents were children of Welsh immigrants, making her almost pure Welsh. When she died the red plaid blanket came back to me.  It reminds me of my walk in Wales.

The Welsh blanket given to her for Mother’s Day, now is available to keep me warm.

In October 2015 after visiting our son Oliver at Cardiff University, Jennifer and I spent a night in Haverfordwest before boarding a ferry to Ireland.  We drove along a narrow path barely wide enough for our car to reach Middle Mille.  I wanted to show her the place I’d stayed 37 years earlier.  There were a few new buildings but the village was mostly unchanged.  Scott’s stone cottage looked the same.  The old mill complex still sold woolen goods.  The Solva Woollen Mill is now the oldest working wool mill in Pembrokeshire – one of only two remaining in the county.  We wandered about the grounds.  Jennifer snapped my picture standing beside a restored water wheel.  We hadn’t time for a walk, for there was a ferry to catch.

I found myself back in Middle Mille ,37 years later standing by a water wheel where the King boy once snapped my photo.