Day 55 - Flying

Image by puddy_UK, via Flickr

Being at the airport between flights reminds me of the first time I ever flew anywhere. It was June 1968 and I flew on standby from Fargo, ND, to Newark, NJ, where I spent seven weeks as a volunteer with the Christian Neighborhood Summer Program in Jersey City, New Jersey. The program reimbursed the volunteers for the cost of a bus ticket to Jersey City, up to a limit of $100. A standby ticket on Northwest Airlines at that time cost $77, so I chose that method to travel.

Another college student from Moorhead also flew on that plane. She smoked and in those days I don't think there was even any smoking vs non-smoking section or if there was, I ended up sitting next to her anyway. She was a year older and the daughter of one of my dad's good friends, but I didn't spend any time with her in New Jersey because eight of us ended up working in two smaller suburbs, Weehawken and Union City, instead.

When we arrived in Jersey City, we were brought to the basement of a church where cots had been set up as the girls' dormitory. Most of the volunteers were girls; the boys all ended up staying with one of the pastors involved in the program. Immediately on putting down our suitcases, a few of us grabbed cameras and headed up the steps to begin exploring Jersey City. It didn't take as long as the length of time we needed to walk to the corner of the block for us to realize that walking on the streets with cameras around out necks made us stick out unacceptably, so we headed back to the church basement to put the cameras away.

At about that time, the two pastors from the Lutheran churches in Union City and Weehawken arrived to pick up the eight of us who had been designated to work in those churches, about 8 blocks apart, instead of remaining in Jersey City. I don't know how they picked which of us would stay in Union City, but I was one of them.

The two pastors were brothers-in-law. Pastor Hank's wife was Pastor Gary's sister. Gary was single, but he lived in a four bedroom house next to his church and that became our dormitory instead of the church basement. Gary stayed with his sister and Pastor Hank for the seven weeks.

The four bedrooms of the house were all upstairs. It was as though there had been a very large room up there that was divided into fourths, with doorways only into the two rooms nearest the stairway. Two of the bedrooms could only be reached by going through one of the other rooms. It must have been my introversion that led me to claim the single bed in the room in the furthest corner. It was the only room with a single bed, the only room where only one of us could stay. The others had multiple beds, including, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, one room with bunk beds.

Our accommodations were significantly more comfortable than what the rest of the girls had in that church basement. We also had better food. One of the members of Gary's church, Vannie, walked her German Shepherd dog to the house every morning in order to make us breakfast. She also put out bread and sandwich makings for us to make up our lunches. And in the evening, she had dinner prepared for us when we got back from our classes. I was introduced to an entirely different cuisine during that summer. Vannie, in spite of being a strong Lutheran, cooked a lot of Italian food. My favorite was veal parmesan. Vannie made a pan of baked veal parmesan with 12 pieces of veal the first time. The eight of us devoured them. The next time, she made two pans with 12 pieces of veal each. The eight of us devoured those as well.

The one treat I came to appreciate was very unassuming, so initially I wasn't all that excited when I saw it being passed around for dessert. It was pound cake. Just plain yellow pound cake. But I quickly learned that it was a good idea to volunteer to wash the dishes on the days we had pound cake because that meant I would be able to have another piece, or two, while helping to clean up the kitchen.

Vannie also introduced us to a new birthday tradition. Her birthday was during the time we were at the church, so she made each of us a knitted pair of slippers as her birthday present to us. She didn't want any presents from anyone, but she liked the idea of celebrating her birthday by giving others presents. Having Vannie as our surrogate grandmother (she was in her 70's) was a nice benefit of the program.

It was while in New Jersey that I realized what I wanted to do with my life. Most of the children in Union City and Weehawken were immigrants, and most of those were from Cuba. Most of their parents didn't speak much English and some of the children also were uncomfortable speaking English. We had the children act out some Bible stories for their parents at a program on the last evening. The boy who played Jesus was sick the day we rehearsed the play, so one of the high school girls who helped us stood in for Jesus. One of the boys whose English was weakest was given just one line and he was to address that line to Jesus. Because he had practiced with the high school student, when the time came the evening of the program for him to speak his line, he walked to the edge of the stage and looked out until he found the high school student in the front row and spoke his line directly to her.

I had always known I wanted to do something with foreign languages. I was studying both German and Russian at college in preparation. But that summer I realized I didn't have to learn a foreign language - I already spoke one, English. When I returned to Minnesota from New Jersey, I changed my major from German to English and then set out to take as many non-literature-based English courses as I could to prepare myself for teaching English as a Foreign Language. No one in Minnesota had much of an idea of what I wanted to do. Children who couldn't speak English well in the schools in my home town were put into remedial reading classes, not ESL classes. It took many more years for Minnesota to catch on to the need for teaching English as a second language to immigrant children instead of having them shunted off into separate classes with labels such as "special" or "remedial" in front of them.