During my younger days, very younger days, the ones when I was a teenager growing up in northeastern Ohio, my travel was limited to imaginary trips, ones taken to the stars, by way of the sci-fi stories I read. Reality travel was limited to bus trips from Niles to Youngstown for special shopping expeditions, usually with my mother, for buying shoes and clothes for school. Although the single department store in my hometown carried wearing apparel, primarily work-clothes for the local steelworkers like my father, nothing there could satisfy my mother’s tastes for school clothes. Real shopping required a journey to Youngstown and the Strauss’ Department Store with its five floors, accessed by the only escalator in that part of the state.
There were occasional Sunday drives in Uncle Frank’s car to visit a shrine or some other special site in northeastern Ohio or northwestern Pennsylvania. My first railroad excursion came with a college-sponsored weekend in New York City, during a school break in my junior year at Kent State. My first airplane experience was a flight from Oregon to Washington, D.C. where I interviewed for my position with the NIH, when I was in my mid-thirties.
Karen and I went on our first foreign travel, to England, for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Those never-to-be-forgotten two weeks whetted our desire to visit Europe annually, thereafter, for the next thirty years. We still have the desire, but not the ability.
Even our shopping trips have been curtailed. During the early years of our marriage, weekends were devoted to necessary, but very enjoyable, outings to the local malls or shopping centers. We became well acquainted with many of the stores in and around Hanover, New Hampshire, Corvallis Oregon, Washington, D.C. and Amherst, Massachusetts.
For wandering on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, small, college towns have great places to explore, with marvelous names such as “Dangling Conversations” or “Yankee Peddler Candle Shop.” For major items, a journey to Springfield, Greenfield or Northampton was not unusual.
This was also the time when Karen and I would take our coffee-and-donut-drive, after dinner, in order to have time together before she would begin her evening studies for her Master’s degree. In later years, when we had moved from New England to Houston, our getaways were confined to walking tours of Greenspoint, Willowbrook and Memorial City malls, with occasional excursions to Deerbrook, Sugar Land or The Galleria.
Traipsing around a major mall can offer inexpensive pleasure for couples with a few, free hours to spend. These are convenient sites for people-watching, an event that does not require any monetary cost in order to be enjoyed. European counterpoints are even better. I have been amazed by the international scope of the shopping malls available in any large city in the world. Given the prevalence of identical stores selling clothing and shoes, it is difficult to realize you are in a mall in Edinburgh, Scotland, and not in the States. The only differences are in the accents of the buyers and sellers. Throughout Europe, it is easier to stop at a McD’s or a Pizza Hut than to find a local fast-food stand.
When visiting a shopping mall, the only condition a stroller needs to consider is whether the mall is laid out in a string, such as Memorial City, so that the walker can visit shops which are always on the right side as the explorer transverses the building, or is it circular, like Katy Mills, so that the efficient traveler must zigzag back and forth in order not to miss any buying opportunity. On the other hand, the true mall-walker really does not need to buy anything. The entire purpose is merely to look at things and at people. Of course, there is always a Cinnabon, or other pastry along with coffee, that can be purchased to maintain one’s energy for the visit, should the need arise. It’s also a good idea, to know where the restrooms are located, especially as one ages.
Aging, itself, is the only real problem associated with travel, whether it is to a foreign country or to a local collection of shops such as those found in Old Town Spring or Old Town Tomball. It was not that long ago, when Karen and I would take pleasure in wandering around their shops in springtime or late fall, when it’s possible to enjoy being outside along the Gulf Coast. There were also weekends when we would drive to visit The Strand in Galveston or River Walk in San Antonio. We even managed to stroll around Fredricksburg, Schulenburg, Lagrange or Boerne, Texas. There were years when we would spend a fun-filled afternoon at the Texas Renaissance Festival or wandering through Lost Maples Forest.
I’m not sure whether it was the years of the COVID epidemic or merely the aging-process, itself. However, no matter what might have been the original cause, we have not traveled much beyond Brookshire for the past four years. I cannot recall the last time I saw the beaches at Galveston, with or without seaweed and oil droplets, or the musicians and jugglers of Renfest.
Indeed, we recognize we can no longer endure a ten-hour flight to Europe and two weeks on a riverboat cruise along the Rhine or Danube, as we once did. There are times I think about how I would, once again, love to be in New England in October, either driving along the Kancamagus highway in northern New Hampshire or bouncing on the ferry boat to Nantucket Island. Although we have seen more of western and eastern Europe than I could once have imagined, we never did get to Ireland, Scandinavia or Spain. And we never will.
Time has ended our travels. Once more, I’m limited to my imagination and my memories. I am grateful for having both of them. On the other hand, I recognize time-travel, itself, is still possible. Although no one can physically go backwards (or forwards) in time in order to see and hear the wonders of the world, I have hours of videos I captured on our visits to so many national and international places. I’m pleased I made the effort to edit them into viewable recollections of sights Karen and I have seen. Those images, along with the memories I retain, and the imagination I currently possess, allow me to engage in a mental time-travel that warms my heart and stimulates my mind as much as those journeys I once made with Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. I hope that the time-travel I enjoyed once-upon-a-time may remain with me until my memory is no more.