Saturday, September 8, 2012

Fifty Years in the US and I forgot

No one reminded me in the month of June that I have now lived in the United States for 50 years.  I arrived in NYC in June of 1962, 22 years old, pregnant, and knowing little about the US.  My only asset was that I spoke fluent English with a very British accent.  My itinerary told me that I would arrive at the Columbus, Ohio Airport 1/2 hour after take off from Idlewild (now JFK) Airport.  Of course, no one had explained to me that there was a one hour time difference between New York and Ohio and, therefore, the flight actually lasted 1-1/2 hours.  The turbulence started over Pittsburgh and I threw up from that point to landing in Columbus.  I wonder if the fellow sitting beside me ever recovered from that experience?  At that time women who were pregnant were only allowed to fly up to a certain time.  I was just under the time limit.  Between being sick and apologizing to the fellow next to me, I had to continuously assure the flight attendants that I was not dieing, but only suffered from "all day sickness," a curse which I endured during all three pregnancies.  I was met by my husband, a newly discharged Air Force veteran, in Columbus, Ohio. As we drove away from the Airport toward our new home in Lancaster, Ohio, I was overwhelmed by the width of the road (US33) on which we traveled.  Roads just weren't that wide in Europe and the darn thing was flat as a pancake and straight on top of it.  No careening around mountains, just a flat wide road and the drivers were sooo polite.  Life in America had started.  It has had its ups and downs, but overall life has been good to me. Yet, I still miss a good loaf of real German bread and the dark green honey from the Black Forest and the smell of its pine trees and, of course, "Maultaschen," the pirogis of Poland or gnocchis of Italy in their Swabian form. 

Knitting content coming later.      

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on your 50th anniversary! You moved to OH just about 4 months after I moved to KS from MO. But I have no memories before that. I did work with a woman in 1989-1990 that had come to the states in a similar way from Germany, but never did find out where in Germany.

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