First Night on Board the MS Arlene

Pt.18 - Meet the Captain

Link to Pt.1 of this series

Meet Him, Greet Him, But Not a Word of English
And there was the captain, shaking hands with everyone — so glad to meet us all. Meanwhile Andre and another of the Captain’s henchmen, a guy with no lips that reminded me of the concierge back in Paris, handed out the glasses of champagne. We took a love-seat, to complete a circle around one of the small tables. There was a small plate of salty pastry shells on the table. We had some. We had some more. The group of ladies around the table were all talking — to each other — in German. I understood some, pretended to understand more, laughed at the right times, but could not engage them in conversation. They passed us the pastry plate — I said “Gerne”, and “Danke” but they knew we were not of their group, and respected our privacy whether we wanted them to or not. I wished one of them would talk to us, so I could impress them with my German.

We found out that the national makeup of the passenger list (about 150 people) as 70% German, 10% French, and 20% English. Two of the English passengers were Americans. We talked amongst ourselves, and the half-hour went fairly fast in people-watching. It didn’t seem to be the time to get up and mingle.

And Now Ve Vill Talk About Ze Tours
The announcements began. Our unofficial “cruise director” was a German lady named “Lisa-Beth”. She conducted the shore excursions at the ports, usually bus tours, and when she was on the ship and the ship was underway, she provided commentary over the PA system, always in English, German, and French, so you always got to listen to it in two foreign languages, as well as her heavily German English. Her shore excursions usually cost at least $30.00 per person, and we were to pay her directly, not to pay the ship — that ees ze arrangement. We came to refer to her as “Frau Helga”, the prison matron. Her authoritative manner seemed to go with the Sitzbank and mandatory Vivaldi cabin music combination.

Peter, Frank & Jack
At 8:30, we were invited to proceed to the dining room, for seating assignments and dinner. Tables were assigned by language, arbitrarily. Since we were some of the last ones to get down into the dining room, our table assignment was right at the bottom of the stairs leading to the dining room. We met our assigned table companions for the trip. Peter Finch is a retired engineer from Oxford. Frank is a retired lithographer from Bristol. Peter and Frank were companions since before grade school. They were constantly ribbing one another. There is a mental block, here. The more I try to remember actual dialog, the more it eludes me. Jack Mahoney, from Scotland rounded out the table. He is a retired professor of Ethics.

Now Fressen Sie!
The meals are always superb. Ultimate flavor, and picture-perfect presentation were always the order of the day. There were six servers, and they served the entire room more or less simultaneously. Servers were in their early twenties. I never learned any of their names, and they all waited on everybody, rather than having territorial tables. Some looked like waitresses. There was a Cambodian girl who always looked very happy. One was a walking embodiment of grace and beauty, more on her, later. The servers never engaged in conversation with the diners, but were always there whenever someone needed something.

Listening to Peter and Frank was like listening to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Peter always described things in minute detail and complete sentences, in a complete monotone. Frank, on the other hand, was full of exclamations and animations. Frank was married, but left his wife behind, because she didn’t like to travel. She encouraged him to take the trip with his companion Peter. Peter had lost his wife within the past year, and was adjusting to life on his own. He was also prone to some sort of arthritic inflammation, and was sometimes in great pain. When he was hurting, he sat more quietly with his head lowered. His arthritis bothered him particularly in the mornings.

Professor Jack was always eager to distract Peter into a private conversation about ancient civilazations. Our trip included many sites which Jack wanted to see, places that he had not yet seen, although he had travelled the world extensively. Tomorrow’s shore excursion, the Camargue was one of these places. When we indicated that we weren’t planning on taking the bus tour, he told us about the Coliseum at Arles, which sounded like something we wanted to see. That day, he had seen the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. We decided to try and see that the following day, when we returned to Avignon.

Back to Der Sitzbank - Gute Nacht
After dinner, we were still exhausted. Upon returning, we found that the room had cooled down some, and that we could cool it down even further, now, by opening the window. There was no insect problem with opening the window, so we left it open. In the distance the dark spectre of Spectacles was lit by only a few feeble lights coming from the upper deck. A cruise boat was navigating up and down the river. On the side of the boat, there were lights mounted of searchlight intensity. Apparently, night river tours have the capability of illuminating their own scenery as they go along. It was like a searchlight in our windows, but we were in bed anyway, and the boat was on the other side of the river. We slept like stones.

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's a number I rehearsed for this year's Thanksgiving show (11/28/9). It's from the '30s.

Dedicated to good friends. They always seem to pop up just when you need them the most, offering a word of encouragement, and keeping you from taking yourself too seriously.

(hope this works - new vid ed software)

Pt.17 - Der Sitzbank und Spectacles

Link to Pt.1 of this series


Pt.17 - Der Sitzbank und Spectacles

I sat down on the bed, and started to read a brochure put out by the cruise line, about the cruise ship. I found that we were not fully utilizing all of the amenities in our stateroom. For example, there was a steel plate on the wall with a black four-position knob on it. By turning the knob, we were serenaded with either British short-wave broadcasts, or Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. With the strains of the string quartet shivering into “Winter”, it seemed a lot cooler in the room. And, I discovered that by huddling in the corner, right next to the air conditioner, it was just a little cooler than the rest of the room, which, in addition to the window radiation, was also radiating heat from the deck above.

We sat and read the book about our stateroom, which was written only in German. What we thought were merely narrow bunk beds were actually the latest high-tech device in comfortable accommodation. These amazing beds were referred to as “Sitzbanks” in the manual. They were not only narrow hard beds at night — by day they were very uncomfortable sofas. While sitting on the sitzbank contemplating the view of the river (our room was on the river side of the boat), our feet dangled off the sides of the sitzbank, not reaching the floor.

While we were reading, the Four Seasons reached its inevitable end, and, just like the real Four Seasons, the music started out again — from the beginning. Was this an all-Vivaldi channel? Still, it was the only music, and I hadn’t heard the Four Seasons in a while. I got up to further explore the room, perhaps to discover some amenity I had missed. I discovered that our bathroom had not been supplied with washcloths. So, I went to the desk again, and told Andre that there were no washcloths in our bathroom. He told me “There are none on board”, and, I could tell just from his tone of voice, that the matter was closed.

I returned to the room to further contemplate our fate. From out of our window, through the shimmering heat, I could see the Rhone river. It was just a wide river, not quite as wide as the Mississippi here at Avignon. To the front of the boat, there was a bridge crossing the river. I was once again thankful that we hadn’t had to take a side trip across the bridge to discover that our boat was on This side of the river. We just wouldn’t have made it.

Across the river, there was a black boat with white lettering on its side “Spectacles”. We would note later that, although there was activity on board the “Spectacles”, the ship never left the port. Examining it more closely, it looked kind of seedy and run-down. Maybe someone was just living there, and the ship never left its port. Joyce speculated that maybe they have a telephoto lens, and sell “surveillance” footage to porn distributors based on what they could see through the stateroom windows of visiting ships.

It was now nearing six o’clock, and nearing time for our “welcome cocktail with the captain”. This warm welcome would take place at 7:00 p.m., with dinner to follow in the dining room. We sat back on our Sitzbank, and looked forward to the experience of actually meeting a real ship captain, and then actually having him buy us a drink. Maybe we could ask to use his washcloth. . . Vivaldi kept flailing away, our third time through the Four Seasons. Still, we were where we were going to be for the next week, and that alone felt good. No more schlepping the baggage around for awhile. At the very worst, we could sleep all week, and it would feel good.

We had a drink of our own, to bolster our curage for our upcoming meeting with the Captain. I went down to the ice machine and got six more tiny cubes for Joyce’s martini, and I had some good lukewarm American Whiskey — Old Crow. By 7:00, we were dressed again, and ready to go. Andre told us that, no, the Captain’s reception wasn’t until 7:30. We went back to our room and stared back at Spectacles some more, all the while tapping our toes to the lilt of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

At 7:30, we headed for the Salon. Andre, once again struck with amnesia, asked us, if he could help us. We told him that we were there for the Captain’s reception. “That is at 8:00", Andre told us. Back to the cabin. We poured ourself another small drink, and had some more Vivaldi. I wondered if the Four Seasons would be playing when we got back later. It would be.

At 8:00, they finally decided to greet the new passengers. We entered the salon, a pleasantly furnished room with groups of living-room chairs arranged around small coffee tables. A bar was at one end, a dance floor in the center, with a piano against one wall near the dance floor. At last, we’ll be able to hear some real French Jazz, from the country that gave us the Hot Club. Entertainment was piped over the house PA system, light classical music. Joyce broke into a sweat from Vivaldi-deprivation. I hummed some in her ear to snap her out of it.

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

Bach No More - God's I-Pod Part 2

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Grade School - I was the little fat kid who played the hymns on the piano for the class to sing. Most of the elementary teachers couldn't play piano worth a dam, one finger with lots of mistakes was typical - they were all too glad to have me in their class. I could sight-read those suckers. For morning devotions, and right after lunch, I'd have to pick out a hymn - there were 660 of them in the Lutheran Hymnal to choose from. I'd write it on the chalk board, and walk over to the piano to lead the hymn.

In a past post, I've told you about the "Bringing In the Sheaves" incident - how Pastor Kay took me in his office and told me that God didn't like that sort of thing - He preferred the hymns in the Lutheran book, and things written by Bach and Buxtehude. I kind of liked the strong march tempo for a recessional - getting everyone out of the church as fast and efficiently as possible. But Pastor Kay assured me that any organist who liked his position would play something that God liked.

But then as we got into High School in those '60s, God had a change of heart. For awhile, I continued to lead the hymns for the teenage Youth League gatherings, until one fateful day. Somehow, in a way I to this day do not understand, God descends to the level of a stoned hippie. The Synod required the pastors to attend retreats focusing on How To Reach Our Youth - as if The Youth were some foreign species. Prayers have to be crude, halting, self-indulgent. The Service, re-done for Youth, is stripped of all elements of tradition, the chants, responses, hymns -- all scrapped. Rows of chairs? Too straight for God. Let's arrange them in a circle - now we've got God surrounded! Or, let's just dispense with chairs altogether- what the hell, let's sit on the floor. And of course, of the 660 hymns we had all practiced all our lives - none of them is appropriate for Youth Worship.

And, the music! Oy, how God has changed his mind about His musical tastes. Now music must only have two chords, and one of them has to be E minor. Acceptable instrumentation is a badly-played guitar -- that open-string E minor is still whanging in the back of my head whenever I think of Youth Music. No more joy. No more praising God in a major key with an ever-changing palette of chords and intricate harmonies. It's all Kum Ba Ya from here on out. Now we're singing Negro Spirituals, calling on the Lord as we did back when we worked in the cotton fields. (ironically, at the same time, blacks had moved on to Gospel music based on the more traditional hymn forms.)

Well, in the end, I was Kum Ba Ya'd out of a piano playing job. After many discussions with the minister, and failed attempts to indoctrinate me, I was left as an incurable curmudgeon at the age of 17, which I remain to this day.

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

Pt.16 Arrival at the M.S. Arlene

Pt.16 Arrival at the MS Arlene

Link to Pt.1 of this series

A Familiar Theme - Death March of the Luggage
We were both kind of numb from dragging our suitcases across a gravel expanse in the hot sun, and then dodging four lanes of near-freeway traffic. to cross the road, and then balancing the luggage between the highway and a ditch on a narrow strip of grass..


There. The boat was in sight - Our boat was named the "Cezanne", right? No, it was the "MS Arlene" Oops. There’s another boat further down the road. Let’s go there. Down through gravel and grass, along the side of the road. A deep ditch separates the river from the highway. The next boat down the river was the MS Arlene, but we were still on the other side of the ditch. A rickety ramp crossed the ditch. We hopped the baggage across this, and up the ten-foot hill.

A Mirage - or just a Bad Dream?
The MS Arlene was there, just like the picture — looks like a floating barracks, white sides, two rows of windows, and a rail on the top deck. Nothing impressive on the outside. A man in a suit introduced himself — Andre? He came out to help us in with our baggage. We had boarded the MS Arlene. Nothing to do now, but get waited on hand and foot in the air-conditioned splendor of our luxurious stateroom.

We were in the lobby of the MS Arlene, It was cool, air conditioned, clean. It was like a motel lobby, with a reception desk, a tan marble floor. We presented our boarding papers, and Andre showed us to our stateroom. It was a hot, very small room. The orange curtains were open, letting the sun in. A picture window about four feet long and three feet wide let in the afternoon sun, which we could feel radiating without regard for the air conditioner, which, even turned to its maximum setting emitted a barely detectable disturbance to the air directly in front of the vent. The vent was cool, but none of that coolness was allowed to work its way into the room. As expected, there were two small single beds. One was permanently mounted into the wall on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, other was presently locked upright. A set of cabinets. During the day, the first bed surved as a sofa, with movable bolster cushions against the wall, and an orange furniture cover placed over the entire bed.

Ha Ha Monseur, Ou e la Frommage?
When we opened both of our suitcases, there was no room to walk. The room was equipped with a small desk, an even smaller closet, with fixed hangers. There was a set of cabinets above the movable bed. A bathroom held a small shower stall with sliding doors, a small sink, and a toilet.
A notice posted in the bathroom informed us in French, English,and German about how expensive towel service was, and if we really didn’t need to change our towels every day, we could leave them on the towel bars to dry out, but if we wanted new towels, we were to leave them on the bathroom floor.

Unlimited Ice!
While we unpacked, I asked Andre at the desk if there were any ice available, as the tap water was quite tepid. He showed me an ice machine at the end of the hall. I took our two glasses to the machine, opened it up, expecting to fill them both and take them back to the room. The entire inventory of the ice machine was four cubes floating in about ½” of water. I took all four of them, and returned to the room. I gave Joyce the four cubes, and drank my water warm. I figured there were enough things going wrong, what with the hanger situation being what it was and all. There would be no room for whining about ice.

We continued to unpack. I went back to the desk, and asked Andre about getting a few more hangers. He said that some would be brought to the room. I managed with two hangers, folding the rest of my clothes to fit in the cabinet. Joyce got the remainder of the hangers, the floor of the closet, the desk drawers, and the other cabinet for her clothes. Joyce began to pine for the comfort of the Nikko.

What more could possibly go wrong?
So, we were in a foreign country in a small hot room, no hope of getting out until the end of the week. We speculated — maybe the meals, the fantastic French cooking, would compensate for all the momentary discomfort, and the lounge would feature a spectacular floor show every night, perhaps even better than the Gil Seville show on the Dolphin cruise ship the year before. (Please see the writeup of the New York Cruise of 1997 which I didn’t write last year) The hangers arrived. Joyce was finishing her unpacking.

What could possibly go wrong? heh heh hehThanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

Thanksgiving Thoughts - Corn Shocks and Thanksgiving Hymns

I grew up in Watertown, Wisconsin. It was a healthy and growing community. When I was a kid, the north end of town, where I lived, was still emerging from farming to residential. I remember up on Spaulding Street, there was an entire city block owned by Walter Griep, and there he grew corn. He had a farm further out, but that was by God his corn field and he was going to by God grow his corn there. Each fall, he would stack up his corn stalks into shocks, arranged in rows. Over the years, this became an increasingly precious link to our heritage and our community's past. I have my mother to thank for pointing out the wonder in things around us - she always pointed out those corn shocks as we drove past. Sometime in the early '70s, Walter died, and the corn shocks were no more. I always think of those corn shocks this time of year.

Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. We got off of school, we celebrated the day with family and friends - eating to oblivion and then going out visiting one another. And the Thanksgiving hymns - I loved singing those - "Come Ye Thankful People" "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing", "Now Thank We All Our God", and so many others.

The teachers always encouraged us to sing loudly, even when we sat with our parents in church.

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

Extra-Curricular Pep Talk

When I was in high school, I didn't join many extra-curricular school activities - that was for people who didn't have anything better to do with their time. I was busy. I had my after-school job at Woolworth's, and worked with a church group, and the church library. Every night I did homework, piano practice. I was building (mostly taking apart) radios in the basement, and then there were the tape recorders....

My mother loved to recall her high school days (back in the good old days before us kids, when life was great). In high school was very "outgoing". She had "gone out" for nearly everything she could possibly join - cheerleading, chorus, drama, and still had a part-time job at Bremser's grocery store. At her funeral, I met so many people who had known her, based on organizations she had joined in high school.

Well, one day my mother took me aside to have a talk with me about my "sedate" lifestyle.

"You know, you're old enough, now. If you wanted to - once in awhile - just 'go out', you don't always have to tell us exactly where you're going." (Was that a little twinkle in her eye?) "Just be home in time to get some sleep. You should have some fun, how can you know exactly where you're going to go when you're out with your friends? You're old enough to take care of yourself." Bless her, I wasn't being 'devilish' enough for her!

I somewhat made up for that excess tranquility in college and afterwards, but I'll always remember that talk with her.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52