After work, Peter and I sometimes splurged and went out for a meal. This might be a steak at Tad's Steakhouse, for $1.19. At other times I would eat on my own at Horn & Hardart's on my way to work. In this self-service restaurant customers selected their food, which was visible in a large display unit with small glass-fronted compartments. When the customer put coins into a slot, the door opened and the plate could be removed.
Peter Skinner met another new arrival in New York, an aspiring author from Poland called Jerzy Kosinski, whom we knew as Jurek. Peter went on to edit some of Kosinski's books including the first, The Painted Bird (1965), which had an initial big impact in the literary world and sold very well. Kosinski seemed to like the social company of two young Brits and he entertained us to meals and social events in the evening. We were not to know at that time that he would later become famous, and controversial due to doubts about the authenticity of his book. In 1991, in ill health and beset by the literary criticism. he wrapped a plastic bag around his head and wrote a suicide note: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity." To me he was simply an engaging, somewhat quirky benefactor - and I wasn't turning down a free meal with interesting company.
What with teaching the French class and standing behind a counter for eight hours, during my time off I was usually resting. Just being in New York was entertainment enough. It roared with life, 24 hours a day. As the season changed, it also became bitingly cold outside, another new experience: a real winter. Everything was larger than life in comparison with my previously quieter and duller life in Britain. There was sometimes a scary edge to being in the city, a feeling that violence might occur. That feeling was exciting in itself.
In early 1962 I noticed a newspaper ad looking for someone to run a student travel office in Berkeley, California. That sounded intriguing and I found myself interviewing with a student travel agency called Educational Travel Inc., the travel department of the U.S. National Student Association. They needed someone to run their Berkeley office. I fitted the bill: Oxford degree, a decent suit, had travelled around Europe and even sold student charter flight tickets while at Oxford. I duly found myself on the cheapest flight my new bosses could find, heading for Oakland on a prop plane with intermediate stops.
On the West Coast, every day felt like spring. I roomed with some easy-going Cal students in Berkeley, sleeping on a couch. My job was to promote student travel at colleges on the West Coast - a salesman's job - and run the office with a girl assistant. We sold tours, including study abroad trips, student ship tickets across the Atlantic and charter flight tickets within Europe.
My responsibility was primarily to visit colleges and drum up business, and it seemed like a paid vacation to me.
I drove around in a blue Sunbeam Alpine sports car with British plates, and created quite a dash at some sororities when I visited. Sometimes I showed a travel movie and gave a talk, or I tried to contact a teacher interested in getting a group together for a custom tour of Europe. Other times I simply put up posters, or talked to the student government to act as agents for us. Everyone wanted to hear about how to get to Europe on the cheap.
The 1960s saw an explosion in travel to Europe by Americans. Arthur Frommer had pioneered the way in 1959 with "Europe on $5 a day", showing how the dollar could go further if the smart tourist picked European-type pensions and local eateries
Also, the dollar was strong. In those days, Europe was in fashion, particularly France. Who hadn't seen Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in "Breathless". Every student wanted to go there, with a copy of the student guidebook Let's Go, and an International Student ID Card, good for discounts, which we issued.
In the early 1960s transatlantic passenger sailings were still in full swing from student ships to the famous liners: SS France, Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth and the fastest, the SS United States. Less than ten years later some of these same ships were being laid up, casualties of economics and changing tastes. By 1970 Boeing 707's were superseded by 747's, carrying more than 400 passengers. But for now a transatlantic crossing by ship was the way to go in style.
After six months of selling student travel, I was told by the head office I was needed as a tour leader for one of our trips, a Politics & Economics Tour of Europe, offering credit. I told them I was scarcely older than the students. They said I had a degree from Oxford in Politics & Economics and besides, the tour leader they had picked was ill. I had ten days to get ready.
The Politics & Economics tour went off without incident. We visited various political institutions like NATO and OECD, and were given a tour and lecture. The students took notes, and I thanked our hosts. We ate well, stayed in nice hotels and did some ordinary sightseeing as well. The students were well behaved and motivated; they were earning college credit. My job was mainly to see we arrived at places on time, introduce speakers and keep the group of fifteen persons together. For this I was being paid, and it seemed like an easy job.
We travelled to Europe by student ship, the M/V Aurelia, 29,000 tons of the Cogedar Line. Of Italian registry, it had been built in l939 to carry immigrants from Europe to Australia, and had been recently been refurbished. In the summer it was chartered by a U.S. organization, Council on Student Travel, to carry students across the Atlantic, an eight-day crossing
On the 29-year old M/V Aurelia, despite cramped cabins, old fittings and watered down wine, the mood was infectious and the excitement palpable. Once in Europe, many students used the Eurailpass, sleeping on overnight trains, or took student flights. This student flight network, run by the European National Student Travel Bureaus, was wide ranging and remarkably cheap, using DC 4s and other prop planes of similar vintage.
I have taken various sailings around the world over 50 years. These include a free first class ticket on the SS France in 1965, thanks to my status as student travel operator. On the SS France I wore a dinner jacket when dining and had a cabin to myself. In 1974, on a trip to the Far East with my then wife, we boarded a Polish freighter in Singapore, bound for Yokohama, Japan. But the best sailing I ever took was on the old M/V Aurelia, because the 1,100 passengers were alive, open minded and ready for an adventure.
I had hardly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after six weeks in Europe, when my boss in New York called to say he was quitting as Executive Director and was looking for a successor. I was summoned to New York to be interviewed by the Board. I was surprised at the offer but jumped at the opportunity. I flew to New York and met with the Board of Directors, mainly students from the National Student Association current crop of officers. The interview was informal, in someone's apartment, with a TV playing in the background.
I was offered the job, and accepted on the spot. I had no idea what to expect. I was now in charge of a student travel company, employing sixteen people in an office on Madison Avenue, selling travel services (tours, tickets, ID cards) and was expected to make a profit for the parent organization. The company was run by recent students in a student fashion, handling a lot of money and never quite sure how solvent it was. Still, we were in a growing business, and had the advantage of non-profit status and some unique travel services to sell. And I had a new job.
So, in suit and tie, I went to work. Travel to Europe was popular, things went well, and tour sales increased. For me, being a big fish in the small world of student travel was better than being a room clerk. I travelled regularly within the USA giving talks or attending educational travel conferences and to Europe where we had a small office in Rome. It was a real kick to walk a few blocks to the Pan Am building, which towered over Grand Central, take the express elevator to the roof and catch a helicopter to JFK. Sales improved, and the Board seemed content. This was fun!
The publisher Arthur Frommer called one day and wanted to discuss publishing a student flights manual we put out. We met in a restaurant in Grand Central and ate steak and kidney pie. Frommer, already a household name, saw a good market among students travelling to Euro
pe for our listing of flights within Europe. Who didn't want to know about a flight from London to Paris for twelve dollars? He was amiable and focused, and it was easy to agree to a deal.
In 1964 I was invited by another organization in the student travel field, the Council on Student Travel, to attend a reception to greet a delegation from Sputnik in Moscow. Sputnik was the youth and student department of Intourist, the Soviet national tourism agency. I talked with the head of their delegation, an older man and, judging from the red pin on his lapel, a Communist Party member. Hearing that I represented US students, he extended on the spot an invitation "to visit the USSR for as long as you want at our expense."
The idea was that I would get a red carpet tour, and then we would sit down and plan future trips in each direction between the USSR and USA, an exchange of student groups. I had always heard that the way to visit the USSR was in a delegation, and here I was being invited as a delegation of one. I said "Yes". To get to know them better I took three in the delegation including the chief out one evening in New York. I thought a few drinks and a good steak would pave the way for my visit to Moscow. After the few drinks and the steak dinner I thought of somewhere unusual to visit: Sammy's Bowery Follies. This was a big mistake, I realized as the evening passed. What I thought of as late night entertainment, songs croaked out by female singers well past their prime, the Soviets saw as degradation and exploitation by the capitalist system. Still - the invitation to the USSR had been extended and accepted, and I was ready to go.
Before leaving, I checked with the US State Department as to what advice they had to offer. Although this was the Cold War era, plenty of US organizations had links to organizations in the Soviet Union. State Department's advice was to pay careful attention to the practical side of the exchange of student groups and to ensure quality service from the Soviets when our student groups visited the Soviet Union since the standard of facilities in the USSR was generally nowhere near as good as in U.S. They advised me get very clear details in advance regarding meals and accommodation.
I also consulted with the officers of the US National Student Association. They told me to stick to making business arrangements, and not get snared in making political statements or get into any situation which might prove embarrassing. I told them I understood what they were saying: be careful when speaking in public, don't get drunk or photographed in a compromising situation.
I had been invited to attend the May Day Parade, and on April 30 I arrived in Moscow. The head of the Sputnik agency, who had invited me in New York, met me at the airport, and expedited my passage through Soviet Immigration. He was an older, serious man chosen I gathered not because of business acumen but due to political connections. As we sped by taxi into central Moscow, he asked what I thought about the multi-lane highway. It seemed sort of ordinary to me, but I told him it was pretty impressive since he was obviously proud of the amount of traffic.
We went straight to the Sputnik office for the first of many receptions, fuelled by vodka, involving toasts and lengthy translations. I could see that this student and youth travel agency was far removed from our setup in the USA. The Sputnik staff was all first and foremost party members, and the top job was a political appointment. I hoped future meetings would be less political.
Next day was the May Day Parade, a military demonstration of the power of the USSR. Tanks, vehicles, rockets and other equipment rolled past followed by marching groups, lasting for hours so far as I remember. Then there were lengthy speeches. The weather was clear but cold, and I was glad I had a thick overcoat and astrakhan hat. I watched from a special area for minor VIPs, not too far from the dais where the top officials presided. Fortunately I ran into some Polish student delegates, a lively group, not too subservient to the Soviets. We agreed to meet up in the evening and to sit together if possible at the May Day banquet.
The long evening, with several courses and many toasts, seemed to go on forever. I was not called on to speak which was as well, since the vodka was affecting me. "Do you know what you are singing?" the jovial Poles asked me, as the whole auditorium rose to sing the Soviet national anthem. This was, thankfully, the end of a loud and long night. I somehow got to my room, and some minutes later resisted answering a tap on the door from a red haired woman from the Polish delegation wanting to further our relationship.
Not a good idea, I thought, following the advice from my student bosses.
Eight busy days followed with many sightseeing visits as well as discussions with factory workers, party members and students. The translator/minder assigned to me was a dour party member, competent but humorless. We travelled by train to Kiev, then flew to Yalta on the Black Sea, then back to Moscow. At each stop, there would be a reception, whatever the time of day. It might be breakfast time at a factory or an early evening meeting with students at a university, but there would always be speeches, and lots of food and vodka. The subject of Vietnam inevitably came up. "What are you doing there? they demanded. I agreed with them, but couldn't say so. So I prevaricated and talked around the subject until the vodka took its effect on everyone present, and the toasts would begin.
At Yalta we stayed in a student center right on the beach. The balmy climate on the Black Sea was a pleasant change from the icy grip of winter in Moscow. Even my guide relaxed as we drank beer ate shashlik (lamb on skewers) cooked over an open fire in the mountains. On the second day the people at the student center asked if I would like to see a video showing the activities of the center during the summer. I agreed, and the next minute was looking at my old room mate from New York, Peter Skinner, filmed while attending an international student conference at the center some years previously.
Our visit to the Black Sea over, we returned to Moscow to start business talks. We discussed running a trial trip in each direction, and simply offset the land arrangements so that no money would change hands. Soviet students would receive a free land tour in the USA, and American students take a trip of the same length to the Soviet Union, paid for by Sputnik. We agreed to start the exchange visit the following year.
Coming back to the controlled chaos at Kennedy Airport, and listening to the accents of the cab drivers and the shouting of the police, I was glad to have escaped from the drab uniformity of the Soviet system. I was tired of being heavily chaperoned and programmed and being on public view. Once was enough, I thought, for this type of trip.
By l967 I was ready to quit. I had enjoyed the job, learned a lot about running a small company, and done a lot of travelling. But I sensed there was not much more to learn and I was anxious for a new experience. America had been good to me, and for me. However, just prior to my leaving, there was a dramatic revelation in the US press that the National Student Association had been accepting large sums of money from the CIA. In the travel department, separate from the parent organization, I knew nothing of this. But it was such hot news that I needed to travel around Europe to assure personally the national student travel bureaus of our non-involvement.
This chore accomplished, I left the student travel agency and moved back to the U.K. Curiously this revelation of the CIA connection to the student organization followed me and got mentioned some years later in the English satirical magazine, Private Eye. The brief but toxic article resulted in the windows of my business in Oxford being broken and my name ("Jim=CIA") spray painted on college walls. None of the left-leaning students responsible for this, whom I met face to face at one point, believed my protests that I had no knowledge of the NSA's connection with the CIA. The incident soon passed with no lasting effect. From today's perspective it seems trivial, but in those days the Cold War was still in effect.
PART III, CHAPTER 11
IN THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
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1990'S
BED & BREAKFAST OWNER ALPINE, TEXAS
I closed my Houston shop called Glendinning's of Scotland in 1986 and went hiking in Oregon. Next I took a Round the World trip. While in Houston I had taken a trip
to Big Bend National Park in West Texas and had been impressed by the whole area called the Davis Mountains/Big Bend region. I wrote a guidebook to the area and while doing that I became interested in moving to Alpine, the area's largest town.
A handsome 1930s brick-built house was for sale in Alpine, Texas at an intersection of the east-west highway (U.S. 90) and the north-south highway (Texas 118) which leads to Big Bend National Park. It was soundly built and had nine rooms on three floors. On a whim I decided to buy. In 1994 I opened a Bed & Breakfast house and called it The Corner House due to its location. It was my place of business and my home.
Alpine is located at the end of a wide valley at an elevation of 4,484 feet, surrounded on three sides by low mountains. In a good year there is rainfall of sixteen to eighteen inches as well as abundant sunshine. The town of 6,000 lies 80 miles north of the Mexican border, 150 miles southwest of Midland which has the nearest airport and 200 miles east of El Paso. It is the county seat of Brewster County and houses local, state and federal government agencies and is the region's major banking and retailing center. It is home to the only university in the area, Sul Ross State University, a four year institution founded in 1917, with a student enrollment of around 2,000.
Alpine's founding in the early 1880's was due to the existence of water at a nearby spring. Water was vital for the steam engines of the railroad which had just arrived. Water always played a vital role in the economic history of the area. Good years for rains were interspersed with longer drought years which severely affected ranching. Local ranchers still talk about the drought of the 1950s. More recently, I remember in 1997 when a long rainless spell ended, seeing my neighbor wandering around in her yard, a happy look on her face, as rain fell. Not just the ranchers but the whole population was affected by the amount of rainfall.
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