[RichardS]

I was born in 1948 and had quite an adventurous childhood, I suppose, but to me it was normal. We moved every three years or so, sometimes to other countries. The first few years were Pakistan, England (3 different areas that I can remember), Pakistan, England, Germany, Malaya, Germany, etc. I traveled from England to Holland unaccompanied at the age of 9 (I was put on a train in London and took myself through customs and immigration and onto the ferry to Holland). I traveled from London to Singapore unaccompanied at the age of 10 and on the return flight was looking after my 9-year-old brother. The airlines were quite good, but they didn't have the unaccompanied child supervision program in those days. I didn't have labels stuck all over me :-) We had lots of stops in those days e.g. London - Frankfurt - Rome - Beirut - Bahrain - Karachi - Colombo - Singapore. These days it's London to Singapore non-stop - 12 to 13 hours. The only difficult bit was the stop in Delhi on the way back when we were taken to an off-airport hotel for refreshments because the terminal was being re-developed. I wasn't worried by the sub-machine gun armed guards in the terminals at Beirut and Bahrain. Normal Middle East for the late 1950s :-)

I don't think we would be allowed to do that these days :-)

Richard.

[Rupert]

Ratlady/grhazelton----Your post reminded me of the early 60s when I was a young teen and had ventured over to Dallas for a party that never materialized. I went to the Bus Station to get back to Ft Worth and as it was late, the last bus had already left out. A "Freedom Bus" was about to depart for Ft Worth and I asked if I could hitch a ride. Yep, get on board!
Damn fun ride! As they prepared their "protest" by trying to eat in the Bus Cafeteria, I knew better...people of all shapes, sizes, and colors had already been eating in there for years! I ate there all the time, good food and cheap too! Different places, different situations......

Certainly not wanting to lead this thread in any P&R direction, let me get back to some other childhood fun......my Granny used to tie a string on those big giant grasshoppers and I would walk them around like a little puppy. Anyone else ever do that? We seemed to be able to make a little fun out of most anything!

Regards!

[grhazelton]

Ratlady/grhazelton----Your post reminded me of the early 60s when I was a young teen and had ventured over to Dallas for a party that never materialized. I went to the Bus Station to get back to Ft Worth and as it was late, the last bus had already left out. A "Freedom Bus" was about to depart for Ft Worth and I asked if I could hitch a ride. Yep, get on board!
Damn fun ride! As they prepared their "protest" by trying to eat in the Bus Cafeteria, I knew better...people of all shapes, sizes, and colors had already been eating in there for years! I ate there all the time, good food and cheap too! Different places, different situations......

Certainly not wanting to lead this thread in any P&R direction, let me get back to some other childhood fun......my Granny used to tie a string on those big giant grasshoppers and I would walk them around like a little puppy. Anyone else ever do that? We seemed to be able to make a little fun out of most anything!

Regards!

Glad to hear of a happy bus station "protest" in the early 60s. So many were far from happy.

Ah, the grasshopper! Sounds like a Georgia Thumper. In Virginia we had big beetles, perhaps 3/4 to an inch long,with lovely sort of metallic green wing covers.They''d crisscross the yard flying about 2 feet high, looking for mates, I suppose. We used to catch them, tie a piece of thread perhaps 3 or 4 feet long around them where the thorax joined the abdomen, just before the wing covers, and they'd fly around under our "control." And let's not forget catching lightning bugs and keeping them in a jar. Kinda spooky in a dark bedroom when you were 5 or 6.

BTW, here's a treat for those who haven't read it. Dylan Thomas, who inspired Bob Zimmerman to change his name to Bob Dylan, was a Welsh poet. He sadly died in the mid 1950s of an excess of living, but not before bequeathing to us some wonderful poetry and short stories. Try "A Child's Christmas in Wales" for an elegiac view of the sort of Christmas we all wish we'd had.

If you can, search out a recording of Thomas. He could probably have made the phone book entrancing. Caedmon records has or had a number of his recordings.