Around the World at Seventeen

When our Australian years ended, we did not simply reverse the Pacific crossing. We boarded another ship and continued west. A dock strike complicated the departure and the ship's cargo, including newsprint, became part of the delay. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth marked the beginning of a voyage whose schedule seemed to belong to forces outside our control.^[1]

The Indian Ocean was vast, and shipboard life developed its own routines. At one point the vessel rolled severely enough that the angle became part of the family story. Julie was still very young, which added the practical details of caring for a small child to the romance of crossing the world.^[2]

We passed through the Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean. Europe followed: ports, rail travel, London, and the accumulated history I would later study more formally. I was not yet eighteen, but I had seen societies shaped by war, empire, engineering, class, and migration.^[3]

A Pan American flight carried us to New York, and from there we returned home. In 1953 I had first put my foot in the Atlantic at Atlantic City. Early the next year my toes had reached the Pacific. Now, after Australia and the westward voyage, the world was no longer a set of distant names. It had become memory.^[4]