Story Time Friday #5

It's been over a year since my last Storytime post so I'll give you a quick recap.  I'm chronicling my life story, recreated for the most part, from the stamps in my various passports (remember the good old days when they always stamped your passport?).  So far we have...born in Germany, adopted at birth by an American Army soldier and his British wife (hereinafter always referred to as Dad and Mum), moved from Germany to Boston and then to Norway.  Left Norway for the San Francisco Bay Area where my sister, Barbara, joined the family.  Dad went to Vietnam for a year and when he returned, we drove across the country to New York and hopped on a plane for his next duty station in Belgium.

We flew into Heathrow Airport on December 1.  Our passport stamps say London Airport; the airport was renamed Heathrow the year before but I guess they hadn't updated the passport stamps yet.  The weather was freezing, snow everywhere.  Flights were delayed, cancelled, the airport was a mess.  The airline (Pan Am, I think) wanted to fly us from London, England to Paris, France, then north from Paris to Brussels, Belgium, and then have us take a train down to Mons which was our ultimate destination.  Yes, that's England to France to Belgium, two planes and a train!  Dad was sick, my sister Barbara was sick, and we had fourteen pieces of luggage plus a Pack-and-Play type portable crib, and something else, a high chair or other baby paraphernalia.  It had been a long road trip across the States, delays in New York, and now this.  My Dad had had enough.  He had some sort of diplomatic passport (why I have no idea, another one of those questions I wish I'd asked) and voila! one look at that and all of our luggage came off the plane and our brief stay in England to recover began.

My Dad secured a taxi to take us from London to Manchester in the northwest.  200 miles in a taxi in 1967, can you imagine?  Wish I had the credit card receipt for that jaunt!  Most of Mum's family lived in the Manchester area and whether they were alerted to our coming or we just showed up on the doorstep, I don't know but we soon took up residence in a rented house on Cavendish Road (such a delightfully British street name, isn't it?).  It was a large two-story brick house and I remember a dining room in the front of the house and a living room at the back.  I know there was a kitchen but don't remember any details about it.  Upstairs were several large bedrooms with a very Downton Abbey-esque bell system, I had a lot of fun with that.  I also loved the little office that had a roll-top desk and a collection of rubber stamps that I played with endlessly.

I don't remember how or where we celebrated Christmas.  It might have been at my aunt's (Mum's sister) or at the Cavendish Road house.  I don't recall if we had a tree or any of the other details and I don't think there are any photographs of that winter.  Two days after Christmas, Dad and Barbara nursed back to health, we left England and flew into Brussels.  More to come, or as they say in southern Belgium (the French-speaking region)...plus à venir.

Our ultimate destination - Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)

There are currently 29 member nations but when we moved there in 1967, there were only 15.