Monday, March 15, 2010

Canadian Flying Wedge

Joanne went next door one morning with McConnell’s morning cup of coffee and found five young strangers asleep in his living room, two men, three women. He didn’t really know who they were. He’d only met them the night before in downtown Málaga. I got to know these young people a little, and they really had a great story. It would be a wonderful novel. If only I were a wonderful novelist.

The most serious minded of the young people seemed to be a young Canadian named Elmer. He called himself Rem. Why Rem? When he was in the 8th grade people began spelling and pronouncing their names backwards. Elmer became Remle and Remle became Rem. His mother hated it. All the more reason for keeping it. Rem was engaged to be married but his fiancé decided that it would be better to not go through with it. So Rem decided to treat himself, his sister, and a good friend, to a backpack trip through Europe using money he’d saved up for his honeymoon trip.

The three young Canadians found themselves in Málaga when a cruise ship docked. They went aboard for an evening of vino and dancing. There they met two young women, English and Irish, who had signed on with the cruise ship as dancers. Once aboard, their passports were taken from them for “safekeeping.” In the meantime, in addition to their regular dancing duties, “other services” were sometimes requested. Rem and his party were outraged and readily agreed to help the girls escape.

The ship’s purser returned the passports whenever the ship docked because the girls needed them for customs inspection. This time, however, things were going to be different. After the girls had their passports and had been cleared by customs, Rem, his sister and his friend formed a flying wedge of righteous Canadians, put the girls behind them, and barged their way onto shore through surprised passengers, crew and customs people.

Once away and fairly safe from pursuing pimps, who didn’t really want to catch them and find themselves explaining things to the guardia, our young band of refugees found themselves in the middle of the night in the dockside area of a strange Spanish city wondering what to do. Even if there had been someone to talk to, they spoke no Spanish. They didn’t know anyone in town. They didn’t know where the consulate was. Of if there was a consulate. It was a typical young person’s plan.

Fortunately for them, along came McConnell. On his motorcycle. He agreed to take them to his home. I have no idea how many trips this took.

They were really neat kids. I distinctly remember their story because when I heard it I felt old for the first time in my life. Look at it this way. I would have notified the authorities who would have assured me that things would be investigated and everything would be under control. On the whole, I think the Canadian flying wedge was the better answer.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Visitors from Ohio

In early 1975 our daughter Pat went downtown on some errand of her own and returned with four people from Ohio, three men and a woman in their sixties or seventies and one man in his early nineties who tried to keep it a secret because he didn’t want people treating him like an old man. They had arrived in Torremolinos on an AARP tour and were gee whizzing around town when Pat found them. She decided they were lonely and brought them home to meet us

We invited them in, “put the kettle on,” and talked a bit about their visit and agreed to meet later on in the week for lunch. We enjoyed their company, went to a few places, played some bridge with them. We even had a bridge party at our house one night. Besides our visitors from Ohio, our neighbor McConnell brought over some Irish friends, and we had a lady from South Africa, an English man and a woman from Texas. (I’ve always looked at Texas as it’s own country, possibly its own world.)

One afternoon our Ohio acquaintances gave us a letter that had been put into their mail box at the hotel where their apartment was. They returned it to the desk and explained in their best Spanglish that the letter was not meant for them. The clerk accepted the letter but the next day it was in their mail box again. When it appeared in their mail box for a third day, they wondered if we were the intended recipients. They then reasoned that if the letter was ever going to stop appearing in their mail box, they would have to deliver it themselves.

They thought that the whole affair was simply a little strange. However, we took it to be a message from someone in the government, perhaps the guardia, to let us know that they were keeping an eye on us. It made sense in its own strange way. We were living in Spain during the last year of Francisco Franco’s reign and the first year of Juan Carlos’. Franco took over reins of government after the Spanish Civil War and, since he was a fascist, running a strong Theory X organization seemed an imminently reasonable thing to do. Heavy handed government from the top down. With laws to enable such a government.

It was, for instance, illegal to have more than five people who were not members of your immediate family in your house at any one time. This was his way of nipping insurrection in the bud. Technically, our bridge party was illegal. We had broken the law. They weren’t going to do anything about it, but they wanted us to know that they were “on” to us. We weren’t Spaniards.

That was life in Spain for the foreign resident. There was no way a person could live in Spain and obey every law. They could always get you for something. But so long as you kept the money coming in regularly, they were willing to overlook any minor illegalities.

Of course, that’s only our theory. Maybe the post office was just confused.