JUST A STORY, NO PHILOSOPHY

Photo by Ryan Spencer on Unsplash

I got stuck on the island of Crete once. I was traveling with my French girlfriend in a van I had outfitted to live in. It had a bed, a chemical toilet and a way to cook. It came on a ship from New York to Le Havre, France, in January of 1972.

I was used to Texas winters. The cold was a surprise, we couldn’t get warm enough. We kept heading south.

We spent a week near Paris with her family friends and then headed south looking for warmer climes. Spain was still ruled by Franco in those days; it had a “closed” feeling. Guardia Civil was everywhere, and they kept tabs on us.

We stayed in camps usually, although we rented a house briefly near Barcelona, where I bought a cheap guitar, but we couldn’t get away from the cold. Retired Brits were everywhere, living placid lives along the coast and Barcelona itself was full of Americans looking for a home. We kept heading south.

Finally we took an Italian ship from Malaga to Piraeus, stopping in Livorno and Palermo. I could have lived on that ship, the Michelangelo, the rest of my life. The food, the celebrating Italians, the warmth both physical and emotional — it was sad to arrive in Greece, as stupid as that sounds.

Beautiful, humane Greece, where it was still cold, by the way, where the Colonels were still in power, where there really is a rosy colored dawn. We spent…