Samantha trial-fitted with water bottles and two tyres.
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along the way, so we greeted each day with a smile on our faces. Mo was now back in residence and I can still taste the spaghetti bolognaise she introduced us to. I’d first tasted pizza at age 22 and now at 27 was a spag-bol fan. It could be said that sophistication came to me slowly.
A cabal of the rugby club stalwarts was summonsed to a farewell party at the Firsts' captain's house on the night before departure. This seemed a great idea … nothing could go wrong this time! Roy and Barbara were a smidgeon older than us and had a lovely place ideally suited for the occasion. This was not to be a raucous knees-up, rather a recognition that I had been part of the club for five years and now I was leaving. A couple of years earlier the club had hosted a team from Yugoslavia and the well-heeled like Roy and Barbara had taken them in as billets. The visit was memorable for the physical hardness of their players and their ability to drink copious amounts of slivovitz which they had brought with them in seemingly vast quantities. Apparently, it is a type of plum brandy but I would describe it as a beverage with the oiliness of kerosene and the pungent metallic tang of aftershave … in other words hideous. It is possible that it is just a kero-shave … no distilling needed, just a 50:50 blend. Those who had taken in billets, had each been bestowed with a bottle of this rocket-fuel. Roy and Barbara had been generous hosts and taken in two players so had been gifted two bottles of Yugoslavia’s finest, which is a bit like being punished for coming first.
After two years of foisting the slivovitz on every new guest that visited, Roy and Barbara still had one and three-quarter bottles of the dreaded stuff. Being a newbie, Roly was the obvious next victim. It would never be said that Roly is a big drinker, but this was a big occasion and maybe it was with a bit of false bravado that he made the ominous uttering “This isn’t too bad!”
Roly is not a naturally gregarious person and here he was in a social situation where he only knew a few of the attendees … so it would be expected that his shyness would prevail. To the contrary, fuelled by slivovitz he became more outgoing and relaxed. The three-quarter bottle was soon finished and the unopened one broached. This was an unbelievable performance. There was very little assistance from any of the rugby club. We all knew what it tasted like and suspected it led on to worse things. I think Roly achieved semi-legend status that night, being as he appeared to be able to tame that awful Slavic liquor whilst still being seemingly lucid and half-pie charming.
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Of course, tamed is a relative term because although he kept it all together during the social intercourse that was my farewell, the journey back to Mo's place in Twickers was not as successful. It required an urgent stop, fortunately on a semi-country back road. Here Roly attempted to turn himself inside out, clearly an impossibility but give him his due, he tried … man did he try. The mighty had fallen.
There was a sadness at leaving Mo the next day, not knowing if I would ever see her again, seing as there was no commitment to returning to the UK. I gave her a Kiwi hongi which is the rubbing of nose and forehead together. The breath of the two hongi-ing mix, and it is a ceremony of accepting friendship, however, it would be some years before I would be aware enough of Maori protocols to know it is always only used as a greeting, not as a farewell. Still, the physical contact was emotional and strong. Interestingly I recall no such emotion in leaving Steph because I had such confidence that it was only a temporary separation and already there was an intention to meet in Mexico City at the Poste Restante on 15th Jan 1977 at Noon … only seven weeks hence. However, she clearly felt differently and wrote to my parents saying ‘It was the worst goodbye I have experienced and I made a complete fool of myself by sobbing all over the place which embarrassed Roly terribly and even Des found it hard to handle'. Personally, I think Roly was too ill and hung-over to notice or feel anything. He was a very subdued and contrite boy who took to his bed immediately when we were on board, not to arise for several days.
The TSS Stefan Batory was built in Holland in the early 1950s but had been operated by the Polish Ocean Lines since 1969 after a refit in Gdansk. Although by 1976 air travel had largely superseded the common use of ocean liners for passenger travel, the news didn’t seem to have filtered through to the communist-bloc. This was the cheapest way I could find to get to the North American continent. Of course, being that it was being run by the ‘Commies’, I’d taken a bit of ribbing and suffered many Skoda and Lada jokes. Everyone seemed to know a shocking anecdote about travelling by Aeroflot or had a neighbour who’d endured Moscovich or Trabant ownership. Pointing out that these were not Polish or ships didn't seem to make a difference. Of course, the food was Eastern European … it would be, it was a Polish ship. I found that OK and Roly didn’t eat much. He came aboard in a pretty precarious state and we sailed out into the Atlantic before he could get any sea-legs. The head-on, Force-Eight high seas, and relentless motion kept him cabin-bound and queasy. I told table-mates I was travelling with my brother, but for a long
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time, I think it was doubted because of the lack of evidence. Roly’s sea-sick period morphed into tonsillitis and we really were on the homeward straight before he was sighted.
My six-week voyage from NZ to the UK five years earlier had been a young person’s delight, tropical skies, duty-free beers and non-stop partying. This voyage was the polar opposite and polar is quite apt because soon we were into such cold weather (-10C) that the ship’s rails and guy ropes were swollen with ice making them a full hand-span thick. The removal of this ice was a full-time job for the crew. Once Roly was on deck (not really on deck as that was way too cold) we filled in the hours with endless games of Battleships and quite a few games of table tennis, which wasn’t fully fair as I had been a regional representative player through the age-group years and up to A Reserve … when I retired and went to the UK. The other passengers were a much older lot but friendly enough. My recent research showed that Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s assassin, had travelled with his family from the USSR to the USA on an earlier branding of the Stefan Batory. Maybe we stayed in the same cabin.
After ten days or so, we sailed into the calm of the St Lawrence Seaway and for the first time, we observed Canadian life, even if distantly. We could see the distinctive orange school buses collecting kids, fully swaddled against the cold. Initially, these were almost lilliputian in scale, as the entry gulf is so wide but once into the 400-mile channel itself, the seaway narrowed somewhat and our views became more magnified. The snow-covered landscape captivated us but the cold would invariably send us back indoors pretty quickly. Montreal in early December was very cold and notable for the dented and derelict state of the taxi fleet. The roads were filled with brown-coloured, icy slush and driving a cab was probably like a spell on fairground dodgems. Maybe they repaired them every Spring.
As quickly as we could manage, the Greyhound Bus Station was located, and a bus to Terre Haute found and boarded. The distance between the two cities is about 1,000 miles or so, but we have no clear recollection of the exact route or how long it took … it seemed like a lifetime. Two options are listed currently, one taking 28 hours and the other 40 hours. Certainly, we rode through the day across endless prairies and through more than one night. By 1976 the Greyhound Bus service had lost its romance and attraction. The 99 days for $99 (1972) was no longer bringing in tourists and international travellers wanting to see the US from the ground. It
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was now simply for the poor and disadvantaged … with a few nutters thrown in for good measure. We saw the dregs of the greatest nation on earth. We also saw what seemed like mums fleeing bad home