Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

(First published October 16, 2008)

Bendith Duw ar Bobl Cymru a`u plismyn gwaraidd!!!

(God bless the Welsh People and their civilized policemen!!!)

My original motivation to travel to Britain for the first and only time, in 2001, was to investigate Notting Hill.

Notting Hill was long famous, even before the warm-hearted film of the same name with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, for its incredibly congested, unbroken mass of bargain-seeking and perspiring humanity crushed within its mile long length, as the best flea market in Europe.

While I did find beautiful ceramics, overflowing tables of eccentric flotsam and jetsam, and the original 1964  Beatles periodicals I was actually seeking, as well as a priced-to-sell full suit of medieval English armor for mounted combat or jousting, the memory I find that lingers longest are my three unplanned days in Wales.

The distance from London to Cardiff, the capitol of Wales, was slightly less than driving from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin.  Interesting places are much closer together in Great Britain than in the States.  The approximate size of the former homeland of the world wide British Empire is about the same size as Illinois and Indiana, together.

Britannia…small, but mighty!

To me, the charm of travel is experiencing the unexpected, and that is what the Welsh Police Force was unprepared for, when I attempted to explore their part of that lovely little island, and they kept crossing paths with the continuously confused Jewish guy from the far more dangerous South Side of Chicago.

I just love those guys.

 

In May, 2001, without warning them first, I flew from Chicago to England for four days, three of them of exploring Wales.

I was going to rent a car in London so I could wander through the Welsh hills, dales and towns. A helpful guy from American Express advised me that my rental car was covered by them as an additional benefit of having their Optima card, and not to take the expensive local insurance policy because that was unnecessary.  I thanked them, packed up my guide books and road maps and left the American Midwest to seek British adventures.

This was at the height of the international concern about whether there was an outbreak of mad-cow disease in England, so being a carnivore, I was concerned by how limited that might make my choices of what I could eat there.  Because of severe food allergies, including many fruits, vegetables and even some spices, and not being a fan of East Indian cuisine, this was more than a casual concern. Plus, being slightly kosher, I didn’t eat pork.  Or drink coffee.  Or beer.  Or wine. That little British Isle was beginning to look smaller and smaller.  And even more of an adventure, too.

Tea, however, was ok.

Not enough, of course, but it was a start.

My initial desire to go to Wales was to visit the world famous town of Hay-on-Wye.  I first heard about it years ago when I owned a world-travel bookstore.  It was claimed to be the only town in the world with thirty-five used bookstores, each specializing in a different subject, like cooking, science fiction, art and so on.  Just thirty-five used bookstores, a pub, a gas station and the Wye River swiftly flowing by, to add to the romantic setting.

Mae`r Gelli Gandryll yn nefoedd ar y ddaear i  lyfrgarwyr! 

(in Welsh–Hay-on-Wye is Heaven on Earth for booklovers!)

I wondered if all that fairy tale charm could actually be true.  I had to see for myself.  It was irresistible.

So I landed at Heathrow Airport with my one carry-on bag.  I never take more than a single bag under the theory that the airlines can’t lose something of mine unless I give it to them.  To date, I have never a lost bag.  I also carry a little day bag with me with some essentials: a dozen prescriptions (sigh…); a 1982 antique Olympus X-A 35 millimeter camera, not digital and great pictures, plus ten roles of 36 exposures film; a good historical book set aside in advance especially for a long airplane ride; band aids; a tiny flashlight and a couple of imported dark chocolate bars for hunger emergencies.  My standards for what constitutes an emergency is somewhat flexible when it comes to dark chocolate, now considered to be a health food, thank God.

Then I went to the car rental company to pick up my reserved compact Ford, which looked somehow European to me.  The steering wheel being on the right side might have had some small influence on my first impression of how the car seemed kind of alien.  Kilometers prominently displayed on the odometer were another distraction.  But, I dismissed that as no big thing.  As advised by my credit card company I refused the offer of 100% collision insurance from the car rental company and paid them for the three-day rental with my Optima credit card.  My brief thought about that was:

“Well, that’s a nice savings.”

It would not be my last thought on that subject after the tumultuous days to come.

My first impression of London, while trying to escape from it was:

 “Jesus Christ! This is one huge, complicated and jam-packed city, man!”

 There was concrete everywhere, big buildings, bridges and thousands of fast cars whizzing around me, as I searched for my exit. The signs being in English were of little comfort because all the names were still foreign to me. There were huge trucks and a great deal of noise surrounding me.  I wanted to get out of London as quickly as I could.  Then the exit I’d been searching for appeared in my windshield and I did.

I was 132 miles from Cardiff, or about two hours away.   Now, I was in no great rush.

The road from London to Cardiff, Wales was beautiful and surprisingly empty.  Little traffic and no visible towns for the majority of the distance between the two cities. No billboards.  Just green, everywhere.  England was many shades of green, was my first impression.  I read they had sixty million people living in Britain, but I saw no evidence of any of them for a long time between London and Cardiff.  That was also when I first noticed that the highway seemed somewhat narrower than in the States. The individual lanes seemed more compact, too, but I thought I might be imagining that part.

So, driving along, casually, I passed exits for Windsor, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough, Calne, Chippenham, Corsham, the ancient Roman town of Bath, then rolling through the gentle Cotswold Hills I passed Keynsham, the bigger city of Bristol, past the Bristol Channel just by the border of Wales to Newport, and then down the west side of the narrow channel to one of Wale’s largest city, Cardiff.

Cardiff, a modern city of 320,000 people and the Capitol of Wales since 1955, was first inhabited by European Celts, according to excavations, at about 600 B.C.  Its name in Welsh is Caerdydd, which translates, according to most historians, into Fort Dydd or Diff, possibly named after the river Taff where the ancient Cardiff Castle is located.  The Romans built that fort in 75 A.D.

It was attacked by the Normans in 1081 A.D. after the successful 1066 invasion from Normandy, now part of present day France.  The Normans built the castle over the foundations of the destroyed fort. It wasn’t until 1536 that Cardiff and all of Wales became legally part of England, involuntarily, from what I read. Calling the Welsh people British doesn’t necessarily make them believe that, in their hearts.

English was forced upon its inhabitants from the 16th century on, but Welsh lives on and is still spoken there today and taught in many places around the world. The Welsh are a fiercely independent and proud people who may very well regain their independence within this current century, as England peacefully loosens it grip on Wales and Scotland. This disintegration of Great Britain is called Devolution and all sides seem resigned to it, with some Brits happier than others about its inevitability. However, no terrorism or armed conflict is advancing this slow political separation.

After over one thousand years, the level of intermarriage between the Welsh, the Scots and the descendants of the French invaders is so overwhelming that in reality, I imagine the desire for independence is more about a sense of pride and an effort to preserve distinct geographic and cultural identity.  As an American, my opinion has no place here, but I hope all sides remain friendly and close.  During my visit, I was treated far better than I deserved to be, in some cases, by both the Welsh and the English.  I would happily go back to both places.

I am not some great expert on Welsh or English history, but I read five books about the island before going there, because I want to know where I am, once I get there, especially if time is short.  My story is about an unusual series of experiences I had in a remarkable part of the world.  Besides my own recollection of bits and pieces of what I read seven years ago, I found the very attractive internet site, www.cardiffworld.com  to be a fast source of some of the facts I used in this story.  I thank them for making this writer’s job an easier one.  You can learn a lot more by visiting their site yourself.

 

After some difficulty, I managed to find a parking place, just outside of the downtown Cardiff business district.  There were great masses of people clogging the streets and some serene-looking police on horseback watching all of them.  I had no clue about the reason for this.  I had traveled to both England and Wales without any reserved places to sleep, figuring I could find a B & B with no real trouble, because I’d done that several times in the past, including in non-English speaking countries.  There was always someplace looking for a little revenue.  But not this time.

I, not being even remotely interested in sports of any kind, made a strategic mistake in not taking into account how big a deal red hot soccer playoffs were to thousands and thousands of local people and not-so-local people.  The match was between Edinburgh and Cardiff (I hope that’s correct) and of major importance to all sides.

When I walked from my car to where the mobs were, about a mile, I was not overjoyed to find huge throngs of people with their faces painted in their team’s respective colors.  The mounted cops, relatively few in number compared to what would have been a reason to roll out the National Guard in Chicago, seemed very adequate to keeping the peace, sort of.  It was my first close-up impression of Welsh cops.

One side would let out with a roar, and I mean really thundering damn roar–their team’s slogan or name or whatever– and then the other side would roar in response, as aggressively as they could be, I felt, without both sides throwing rocks.  The streets were virtually impassible and I was this bewildered Chicagoan standing in the midst of all this, pretty much terrified by what seemed to be an imminent eruption of chaotic violence.

The city, and not a very large city, looked like it had seen better times, with a number of empty storefronts papered over.  This problem was not limited to Wales, of course, but it was my first impression.  Difficult economic times might be part of all of this, as far as I knew, when my eyes fell upon this walled something in the center of town, about two blocks away.  I squeezed my way toward it, seeking refuge, as my face was conspicuously unpainted and possibly suspect to the crowds I was attempting to squish through. Despite my trepidations, no one harmed me. I realized that fact a bit later, however, when I finally reached my objective, after about an hour.

I found the small entrance to the very old looking structure and discovered it was a gift shop, of all things, and the entrance to ancient Cardiff Castle as well.  For a very small amount of money, I paid to enter and discovered that I had the very large, and I mean square blocks of empty space, all to myself, with this tiny and crumbling castle at the center of the walled enclosure.

It was very eerie to be walking quietly around the silent historic grounds of what used to be royal, with the incessant roaring going back and forth like an audio tennis match, just outside the walls.  I found it to be meditative and I stayed in there a while, imagining myself to be under siege by nameless invading hordes.

I will survive, I thought to myself, with a smile. Let them come.

I decided, while waiting for the mobs outside the walls to go someplace else, to pretend that I was in the Welsh Alamo…and (what the hell) that I was Davy Crockett Jones.  Maybe someday, people would write songs about my valiant last stand…

Later, and very curious, perhaps because I named my son David after Davy Crockett, I looked up Crockett’s ancestry on the internet.  To my surprise, the famous frontiersman’s family name was originally de Crocketagne and his ancestors were French Protestant Huguenots who fled religious persecution in France around 1690, first emigrating to Cork, Ireland and later to Donegal.  Crockett’s grandfather, also David, sailed for America about 1760 and his father John was supposedly born at sea on the way over. Later John fought in the Revolutionary War against the British.

From this wonderfully convoluted history of an American hero, I concluded that Crockett, being sort of Irish, if only because his French family was there for seventy years on their way to America, that Crockett was Celtic (by association) and Ireland being incredibly close to Wales, he could have been a Welsh hero if his family hadn’t left for the “Streets of Gold” to the West.

Where was I?

Oh, yes!  Cardiff  Castle.

So, later that afternoon, noticing it was getting darker and remembering I had no place to stay, I left the castle and walked back toward my car through streets that were now largely empty and unusually quiet.  I decided that it was useless to try to go to a government office in town to find someplace to sleep, with all the out of town soccer-mad people already lodged there for the big match.  So, that situation only left my going door-to-door-to-door, stopping at every single house or row house on my way back to my car.

Persistence counts, I learned long ago.  After about one hundred “sorry, no’s” a balding, friendly middle-aged man came to his door in an undershirt, listened to my bedraggled question and replied,

“Sure, yeah, I gotta room left. Some guy reserved it but he never showed up, so lucky for you, eh?”  

I believe the rent was thirty pounds (then, about $45.00) a night and I for stayed three nights. That included breakfast, but the next morning I didn’t recognize anything on the tray that was offered to me, so I thanked them and left for the day.

To avoid offending anyone, always a good idea when in other countries, I told them I was an Orthodox Jew and I never ate breakfast, assuming that was exotic enough of an excuse that they would shrug their shoulders and go back to watching a BBC story about soccer on their television.

Years earlier, I had gotten seriously sick in New York City and later in San Antonio from food poisoning, so for me, no food was better than pot luck. Better hunger than agony, always.

So, as I had learned to do long ago, I found a friendly neighborhood grocery store, bought a small loaf of hard crusty bread, some slices of Cheddar cheese, a bunch of purple grapes and a local soft drink.  I walked all around town, eating out of the paper bag and it was great.  And very cheap, too.

I visited bookstores and craft shops and department stores to see how the Welsh merchandised their products. I talked to lots of people.  Everyone was open and friendly.  Some people asked me where I was from, since I don’t look very Welsh, I guess, but it never seemed important to anyone and I felt at home and at ease, while there.  Many of the young girls were very pretty and quite distinctive looking.  Yes, I noticed.  I may have been fifty-one at the time, but I wasn’t dead.

Mae yna ferched del i`w cael, ond dim byd tebyg i ferched Cymru

(In Welsh–There are pretty girls, and then there are Welsh girls, in a class by themselves)

I couldn’t sleep, probably from jet lag, so I got up at 1 am and wandered around the empty streets of Cardiff. Except for some voices feeling no pain at a couple of pubs and some fish and chips joints, the street was silent.  It was eerie.  I didn’t feel concerned for my safety, which was not true for every place in Europe where I’d wandered around the streets late at night.

I was still hungry, so I walked over to a garishly lit chips stand.  Fish is usually safe to eat, if it’s well-cooked and fresh.  Potatoes are also on my eatable list, so, not noticing any dead bodies lying around the stand, I decided to take a chance. Plus, I was curious after years of hearing about chips places in English movies, and I wanted to share that experience.

I got in line, with about a half a dozen people ahead of me, and soon a few more behind me.  It was a busy little place for it being so late at night.  The guy behind the counter was working alone and had just run out of a supply of fried fish, so we were all waiting for a fresh batch to finish frying.

The minutes went by.

Most people were quiet, maybe on their way home after working a late shift in a factory. Several were smoking English cigarettes and I inhaled the strong and unfamiliar aroma, as the smoke sort of hung there in the air on the windless night.

 Then, out of the dark streets around the chips joint appeared a very drunk, blond, middle-aged woman wearing bright red lipstick who, after surveying the line of customers then walked right up to me, specifically, as I waited there in that fish and chips joint, at about 2 am.

Without a word, she grabbed me and kissed me in a wet and passionate way, while I stood there, paralyzed with uncertainty. I didn’t know, in Wales, if this was a good thing or a bad thing, being singled out that way.  Was she trying to warn me away from the fish and chips place?  I wish she had. But never mind that.

Do I only look good to women that are really, really drunk?

After that first “greeting” she backed up, though not far enough, looked at me for about thirty seconds, as I noticed that other people were also watching this little Welsh drama, and then she grabbed me again and kissed me that same slobbering way.  Then she smiled at me and walked away, unsteadily. Not one word was spoken. The guy behind the counter in the white hat and apron looked at me sympathetically and said,

“Hey, it looks like she fancies you, mate.  Sorry about that.  Want malt on your chips, then?”

 I never moved during this episode.  I stood there frozen like the Statue of Liberty. I imagine it was a funny scene to the people around us, unless she was a regular there. And worse, she never called me, and she never wrote, either…..

I took my paper envelope of somewhat greasy fish and chips, paid the man and walked backed to my room, blocks away.

That was the end of my first night in Wales.

Part 2

Mwy o `straeon gan yr Ymwelydd Americanaidd dryslyd

    (More stories from the confused American tourist)

After a difficult night, the little of it I had left after leaving that surreal fish n’ chips place in Cardiff, I lay there for a while in the big bed with its creaking wooden frame in someone else’s house, just staring up at the ceiling.

I was recovering from that 2 am fried fish meal, which was an early indicator that I was becoming unable to digest various oils, increasingly, and which would soon include olive oil and shaved Parmesan Cheese in Italian restaurants (to use on good crusty bread instead of butter) and house salads and eventually even popcorn in movie theaters, too.  Peanut butter was already taboo, after thousands of sandwiches I devoured as a little kid in Chicago.  .

One thing I didn’t want, was to discover a new surprise food allergy while alone on a foreign island.  This was new and I would have to mentally add it to my banned shopping list, now too long to easily remember.  I would adapt—I’ve always adapted—but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t morn some wonderful flavors that were now permanently off limits to me.  Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Welch’s Concord Grape Jelly and Silvercup White bread.  Good bye old friends, from the Fifties.

That other worldly-blond?  Ahhhh, I don’t want to think about her at all. Ever.  Terror in the night, man.

But, I was ok enough to get up and out of my lonely room.  Long married and used to snuggling a very warm and attractive wife, for decades by then, sleeping alone was always cold when I traveled.  I missed the dogs that slept with us too.  Traveling alone can be a mixed blessing: I could do whatever I wanted with no negotiations, but I could also shiver at night. A very mixed blessing.

I suppose replacements could be rented, but not by me.  Perhaps a dog, but that would be as far as I would go.

So, slightly nauseous, lonely and with much to explore and no clue how to get there, I dressed and left my three-day home.  At least it was warm in Cardiff, and the natives were friendly.

I consulted my detailed road map covered with little pictures of big castles to lure the average tourist, and I decided to aim toward Swansea and see the southern coast of Wales.  Swansea was the next sizable town southwest of the capitol and fairly close, too.  I’d read about a place called Three Cliffs which was supposed to be especially beautiful and that was the kind of experience I wanted.  Castles would be later on.

I went back to the same small grocery and gathered up some supplies for breakfast.  Besides grapes, a crusty loaf of bread and cheese (that looks so romantic as I type those words on this page…) plump red tomatoes plus a little shaker of salt to sprinkle on them are very good road food, too.  Tomatoes are like juicy apples: both food and drink together.  Very practical and you can’t spill an apple or a tomato while driving.  European dark or bittersweet chocolate was always welcome, of course, as long as it wasn’t too hot outside and a small enough bar for me to knock off in a short time.  Dark chocolate always made me a little happier.

Also, I always kept a plastic water bottle, with me wherever I went.

Always.

There is a big difference between having water and not having drinkable water, as I learned in 1969 when my van broke down twenty miles east of El Paso, Texas, about an hour before noon and the shimmering universe of heat was something, at nineteen years old, I had never encountered before.

I was just north of Chihuahua, Mexico and in the West Texas desert, stuck in the fine tan sand up to my old van’s axels.  I was far north of the Rio Grande River and any other source of water.  I was just out of sight off of the interstate, looking for whatever I was looking for, and I was trapped there, for hours, with no water.

That story–involving a grim pact with the friend I was traveling with to split up to see if we could save ourselves; major culture shock when I finally got a couple of Texas Rangers to stop for me when I frantically flagged them down from the side of a hot blacktop road, with my white T-shirt tied to a long stick, foolishly thinking they were Western versions of the Chicago cops I knew and liked; then being angrily accused of being a deserter from a Texas military base during the height of the Viet Nam War, when that was more likely a fact to the Rangers than not–is for another time.

But it did give me a clear standard to judge the way policemen in different places will, or will not, help you when you really need it.  My gentle advice for Welsh travelers in the United States, if they think there is one chance in a million their car will break down while touring my giant country, please be certain you do NOT—repeat, do NOT—break down in Texas.

Evidently, real men do not have their cars break down in Texas, because if it does, you must be, according to my one bad experience there: Fleeing someone or something, a foreigner (meaning not a Texan), or some god-damn liar because no Texan would ever be so dumb to have their car break down in the West Texas Desert. That situation implies that you are a person of suspicion and keep…away…from the Texas Ranger’s car, no matter how desperate you may look.

I’m going back to green and friendly southern Wales now, to continue my considerably happier story there.  But for the record, the military installation in El Paso was Fort Bliss, which I was definitely not deserting, and it took a long while before those damn Texas cops believed a single word I said, in my unwelcome Yankee accent.

Yeah, it’s been forty long years since that moment in time, but man, I sure remember Texas.

I stopped my meandering in central Swansea to ask directions from a man standing by a bus stop.  I pulled over in the light traffic, rolled down my window and asked him how to find the place I was looking for.  It seemed very close by where I was, according to my map.

The man smiled, leaned in my window and began answering me, or I thought he was answering me.  I had no clue what he was saying.  But I smiled back at him, and requested that he repeat the directions once more, please. He cheerfully did that, but it was the same.  He tried once more, and I thanked him, pretending I understood him and slowly pulled away.  It may possibly have been my first exposure to Welsh.  But he was sure a nice and friendly guy.

Better incomprehensible directions from a kind soul, than thunder and lightning from those Texas Rangers.

So I continued to wind my way through the town and just as I was leaving it, I saw an ancient-looking one-pump gas station and decided to try again.  The guy there was very helpful, spoke strongly accented English that was different from London, but otherwise no problem for me.  He showed me, on a larger scale local map, exactly where I was and where I wanted to be and then told me what road to take to get there.  I guess he knew I was from out of town.  I thanked him, bought some gas and followed his directions to the Three Cliffs area.

As I moved along the pretty green countryside, I was thinking that as the towns became smaller and more isolated, maybe Welsh was still in active use, instead of only now being revived in schools around the country.

I knew that was true for Israel, where I’d been exactly one year before. I was visiting there with a childhood friend, Rick Munden, who spoke about as much Hebrew as I did, meaning: Shalom.

At first in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, everyone we met spoke very fluent English, which was the same as I experienced in Hebrew school in 1958, forty years earlier.  So, I kinda assumed that while Hebrew was Israel’s “official” language, it was really English, so that the small country could communicate with the rest of the world.

Cultural history aside, in 1948, when Israel became independent of the island I was coincidentally driving in at the moment, how many people in the world spoke conversational Hebrew, as compared to say, English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, Chinese or German, all world languages to one degree or another?

Maybe fifty thousand people, at most.

Even if Israel, whose steadily arriving post-war refugees spoke about seventy different languages (to make communication between its citizens even more complicated) chose to resurrect ancient Hebrew as a common emotional and national way to make all of its people bond together under a single flag, that would still not help it become a successful trading nation.

So, English, the world’s most common language due to the enormous world empire of that same little island I was motoring on, and still considered to be the international language of business and trade even though that historic empire was now only history, was selected by Israel’s government as the best way to go, and coincidentally would make connecting with its very supportive American cousins, much easier.  It’s a whole lot easier to raise money if the people you’re asking can understand what you’re saying.

You don’t survive for four thousand years as a distinct culture/religion/people by not adapting to your surrounding realities.  So, I would assume that the exiled Jews sent to Babylonia (where the tragic Iraq War is now being waged, unfortunately) as captives pretty quickly learned how to speak their captor’s tongue.

The same way they learned Greek to speak to Athenians, then Latin to deal with the mighty Romans, and so on as they watched each successive empire rise and fall over the centuries.  I would not be surprised at all if the Jews in the next century were fluent in Chinese.  We already support their restaurants all over the world, so why not?

But I noticed, on my long drive down from Jerusalem thru the blistering Negev Desert, when I stopped for water or gas in some tiny town, everyone spoke Hebrew and nothing else.  That was when it first hit me that Hebrew really was the country’s first language.  While it made Israel more foreign to me, I still was proud of what the little country had accomplished as far as reviving ancient biblical Hebrew and transforming it into a modern sophisticated language in common use, every single day.

Perhaps that was the same situation in modern Wales, in terms of bringing spoken Welsh back from the dead.

That led to a series of other thoughts which I had been mulling over the years in my life-long hobby of absorbing, sorting and cross-referencing geographic, demographic and historical trivia.

Israel?  Wales?  How much alike are they?

The answer is: A lot more than an average person might think.

You don’t believe it?

Okay, try this out.

1–Israel and Wales are almost exactly the same size: Wales, a bit over 8,000 square miles; Israel, a bit less.

2–Both have a large body of water as their western border: Wales, the Atlantic and Israel, the Mediterranean Sea.

3–Both have resurrected an almost extinct national language in modern times to define their cultural identity, to varying degrees of success.  I have read that the Welsh schools have revived their original language to the point that it is not only no longer declining, but in fact flourishing.  Just look at the internet where there seem to be more Welsh organizations than Welsh people.  But I am very happy for them, because I understand their pride.

Hebrew?  Now spoken by millions, worldwide.  To me, an incredible feat of resurrection for the Holy land, though not involving Jesus.

4–By some very interesting coincidence, both nations were or still are under the control of Great Britain.

5–Both small but valiant nations are surrounded by much larger hostile neighbors.

Israel? Over a billion Arabs on their north, east and south.

Wales?  Well, Wales knows exactly where it is and who lives nearby, so I’ll leave it at that.

6–Finally, Israel had King David who is revered today as a virtual Jewish saint, and the Welsh have St. David, their country’s patron saint.

After I assembled this, I checked and found out that Wales has about 3,000 Jews in their fine country, out of a population of about 2,900,000 or .01%.  Both the Welsh and the Jews have dark hair, dark eyes and are not very tall, so how can anyone tell who is who?

Perhaps the Welsh are actually descendents of the Ten lost Tribes of Israel?  What a nice thought.

But first, this incident happened and I got all riled up on behalf of Wales.  See if you agree with me.

I asked a good friend of mine to read my story about Wales to see what he thought about it.  He is a very well-educated man, far more than I am, multi-lingual and widely traveled.  He likes most of what I write, but he had a technical correction for me this time, explaining that what I keep referring to as “Welsh” in my story is incorrect and that the proper name for the language the Welsh people speak is Gaelic.

Well, I know that is true.  I used to sell language systems in my former foreign language and world-travel bookstore, where I carried Irish, Scots and Welsh Gaelic tapes and one hundred other languages, including three types of Arabic and seven Native American languages as well.

So, I already knew what he pointed out was correct.  I just don’t agree with it.

I see it this way.

(The Welsh words in my story are in bold print, beneath the paragraph it refers to.  All English to Welsh translation was done by the totally charming Gwen Jones, linkline@welsh-language-board.org.uk   Thanks, Gwen!)

The Greeks speak Greek. The French speak French. The English speak English.  The Danes speak Danish.  The Swedes speak Swedish.  The Italians speak Italian.  The Navahos speak Navaho and even the “Hebrews” speak Hebrew.

Mae’r Groegwyr yn siarad Groeg. Mae’r Ffrancwyr yn siarad Ffrangeg. Mae’r Saeson yn siarad Saesneg. Mae’r Daniaid yn siarad Daneg. Mae’r Swediad yn siarad Swedeg. Mae’r Eidalwyr yn siarad Eidaleg. Mae’r Nafachos yn siarad Nafacho ac mae’r “Hebreaid” yn siarad Hebraeg.                                                    

Why can’t the Welsh speak “Welsh”?  Why can’t that brave little country name what they speak after themselves?   Are not the Welsh worthy?  Must they split their language with their cousins the Scots and the Irish?   Must the outside world be allowed to choose what to call the language the Welsh speak between themselves?

Pam na all y Cymry siarad “Cymraeg”? Pam na all y wlad fechan ddewr honno enwi’r hyn a siaradent ar ôl eu hunain? A ydynt ddim digon teilwng? A oes raid iddynt rannu eu hiaith gyda’u cefndryd, yr Albanwyr a’r Gwyddelod? A oes raid i’r byd tu allan ddewis beth i alw’r iaith mae’r Cymry’n ei siarad ymysg ei gilydd?

Who has this undemocratic right to interfere with the Welsh people?

Pwy sydd â’r hawl annemocrataidd hon i ymyrryd â’r Cymry?

I say NO!

Rwy’n dweud NA!

It’s their damn country, their damn language and they can call it whatever they want to call it!  I say call it Welsh, if it pleases them, and the rest of the world can go soak its head.   This Jew votes for the Welsh to speak for themselves, as they see fit.  Amen.

Diawl! Eu gwlad nhw ydi hi, eu hiaith nhw ac fe allent  ei alw beth bynnag y dymunent ei alw! Rwy’n dweud i’w alw’n Gymraeg, os ydyw hynny’n eu bodloni, a gall gweddill y byd fynd i ganu. Mae’r Iddew hwn yn pleidleisio bod y Cymry yn siarad dros eu hunain, fel y gwelent yn briodol. Amen.

Long Live Wales!

Cymru am byth!

 

I finally came to the area the man in that old gas station described for me, but there seemed to be no place to park.  From what I read about it, this place was a real gem in different ways, and in America there would brass bands roaming around the streets drumming up attention and selling tickets to it.  There’d be T-shirt and souvenir stands, saying dumb things like:

 “My parents went to Three Cliffs in Wales and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

  I was swiftly discovering that, just like in the 1930’s Depression-era gangster movie by writer David Mamet The Untouchables where the famous Scots actor, Sean Connery playing a tough old Irish Chicago cop (and a straight one, too) declares to the young and inexperienced in-the-ways-of-the-world Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner, that there might be various ways of dealing with a difficult or dangerous situation, but to that old cop, there was only one way:—– The Chicago Way!—there was also a certain and quite subtle Wales Way, too.

I finally passed a spot near a high stone wall covered with vines that seemed to be recessed sufficiently to allow my little car to park there and still allow other cars to pass by with no problem.  But there no other cars in sight.  It was so quiet.  Then, as I attempted to parallel park the car while sitting on the wrong side (to me) and get it as close to that wall as possible, I discovered that I couldn’t fathom how to do something which in the States I was very skilled at doing.  Like a left-handed person (which I am) trying to sew or paint right-handed, if that gets my problem across to you.

On my fifth or sixth effort, I thought I finally had it, until I heard this unmistakable sound of metal scrapping again stone.  Not a good moment for me.  I sat there, in my little metal sardine can of a car, and thought about inspecting the damage.  Deciding that seeing it wouldn’t change anything, I squeezed out of the car on the passenger side and didn’t look back at the damage.

I searched for an entrance to the natural wonder gently poking into the sky above me, which I could see from the street.  But after about thirty minutes I gave that idea up in favor of some American ingenuity and gumption.  There was this other high wall, about eight feet, on the other side of the street going some way to my left or right and I walked along it looking for a gap in the defenses until about two blocks later, I found it.  The wall was broken like some vehicle had smashed into it (No, no, no, I didn’t do it. Really) and the top of the wall had crumbled inwards leaving a lower spot only about five feet off the ground.

Being still reasonably fit at my advanced age of six hundred and twelve months, I decided to give it a shot and lifted myself up and over the wall, falling onto the dirt on the other side.  The only things that audibly cracked were the dry branches beneath me, fortunately, so I got up, brushed myself off and just kept going, like the Energizer Tourist.

I believe someone told me or I may have read, that the name Three Cliffs wasn’t based on any Christian story but on three fairly low black hills that might be called mountains in Wales.  Little mountains.  I could see them clearly now, ahead of me, with the beautiful blue ocean stretching behind them into the horizon.  I kept moving, curious to see what was over the bluff in front of me.  There was no one else anywhere, but that may have been because I was somewhere that no one was supposed to be in the first place.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

When I reached the top of the bluff, there was a trail and a sea of green, green grass stretching out in front of me, sort of bending in the soft, warm and continuously blowing breeze.  The sun was high and the cloudless sky too blue to be real.  I was inside of a painting.  I will describe what I saw next exactly as it was, no more, no less.  It is no effort for me to remember such natural beauty.

As I walked down the little trail worn in the grass by other feet, I passed a small stone ruin, about the size of a log cabin.  It was not very architecturally distinctive, just sort of square and crumbling.  I walked over to it to look closer, since there was no fence or anything else around it to prevent that.  I know what you’re thinking, but no, I don’t normally climb over every wall I see. Then I saw the small brass plaque screwed into one of the higher walls.  I read it and smiled to myself.  It was a thirteenth century structure.

In America, anything over one hundred years old is celebrated as… Historic! Amazing! A Time-Defying Wonder!  That includes people, buildings, companies and possibly political machines.  Usually, to see one of these non-human phenomena, one must buy a ticket so one can marvel up close.  A buck is a buck.

Here was a small and unheralded ruin about four hundred years older than the 1776 founding of the United States and I could touch it, smell it, go inside of it and no one gave a damn.  It makes one think about values and time.

There was no graffiti on its walls, and it wasn’t mentioned in any of the guide books as anything especially notable. But what lay just past the ruin, as I kept on moving toward the sea, absolutely was.

The trail on the bluff stopped and there was a steep drop off to a completely enclosed, very wide and deep meadow, far below where I stood.  I can’t find a way to say approximately how wide it was except to say it was like a canyon in the American southwest, except green, everywhere.  Down the center of it ran a thin serpentine stream bending this way and that, like a shimmering blue python winding its way into the sea.  The color of the stream was the same as the sky, so perfectly did the water reflect that same ethereal blue.

Were that it, I would have been stunned by the tableau spread below my feet and happy to experience such exquisite natural beauty.  But it was the herd of wild horses running free across the meadow that made me sink down in wonder and stare at them from my perch high above them.  Different shades of black, tawny, white, grey, the herd meandered, then stopped.  Some of the horses nibbled at the plentiful grass and then all of them suddenly began running again.  It was an Eden.  It was more than anyone could reasonably ever expect to witness, and to me, evidence of God, it was so perfect.

I was also completely alone and couldn’t believe that simple fact, either.

I watched all of it a while longer…the sea, the three little mountains, the meadow, the slinky silvery ribbon of a stream and those stunning horses, like some visible prayer.  Do my words do it justice?  Not even close.

After a while, I got up and walked along the rim of the bluff, looking for a way down.  I decided that there must be one.  Who could resist becoming part of this canvas?  Not me.  I didn’t need a souvenir, I just wanted to be closer to all of it.

Eventually, I found the path, a steep one without rails or anything like that.  No steps cut into the earth, just dirt bending lower toward the meadow.  I carefully worked my way down, keeping an eye on all the horses, and conscious that they were surely keeping an eye on me, as well.  After a bit, I made it down to the flat meadow.

I started walking towards the horses, feeling the cooler air wafting over me that always seems to happen when I walked closer to a lake or ocean.  A mystery to me, that large bodies of water seem to make their own weather.  I moved slowly, watching them drink water from the stream.  Watching them group closer together in the farther part of the meadow.  Watching them, watching me.

After a time, I was close enough to touch a skinny shivering colt standing next to its substantial mother.  The horses didn’t move.  Not sure what to do at first—I didn’t want to spook them and ruin this magical moment—I remembered the advice I gave to my four children when they first discovered dogs:

Always put you hands out, palms up, so they can see that you’re not holding something that can hurt them.  Stand still and let them sniff your hands.  Be patient. Dogs know who they can trust.  They can sense it.

I followed my own advice, but chose to let the mother horse do the sniffing.  I don’t think it would have pleased her to have me approach the colt first.  We were all standing by the stream while this happened—the movie of it is running in my mind now—The mother kept her large black eyes on me every second.  I stood there like a statue seeking her approval.  Then she moved closer and pushed her nose gently against my chest., something I didn’t expect, but very much like an accepting dog would do.  It was fascinating, the similarity of it.

I slowly lifted one of my hands and stroked her long wheat-colored nose.  She let me.  I ran a hand, just one, lightly over her long flowing mane and the side of her thickly muscled neck.  She stood there, letting me, blowing air out of her nose.  The other horses were watching us.  Nobody moved.  Then I slowly moved my hand to the colt standing right up against her, like they were joined.  I was careful.  The colt allowed me to run my finger tips over its side, its neck, watching me tremulously all the time.

Then the mother horse lifted her beautiful head and turned toward the rest of the horses, slowly moving away from me.  I stayed where I was.  It was their meadow.  I would not overstay my welcome. The herd moved as one, away from me and closer to the mouth of the stream where it flowed into the sea.  I was a witness, I didn’t need any more than to be just that.

What happened next, the rest of that unique day in my life in fairy-tale Wales?

I don’t remember.

It doesn’t matter.

 

Part 3

 

My last day in Wales had a very full agenda, so I was up at 6 am, ready for double-barreled tourism.

I filled my gas tank, loaded in some road food and set out for adventure.  My first objective was Caerphilly Castle, about twelve kilometers west of Cardiff.  I had read about it, imagined it, and even seen some pictures of it. But it turned out to be cooler than any other castle I’d ever been in before.

Before includes Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France and William Randolph Hearst’s (stolen from Europe) vast San Simeon Castle in California.  Since seeing Caerphilly, I can add The Czech Republic’s Prague Castle to that list, too.  With the herds of beautiful women floating all around Prague like gazelles, I’m amazed I even noticed the somber castle. But, I did. And Wales still trumps them all.

No, I haven’t seen every castle in those countries, and the ones I did see were big and impressive, especially sailing north up the Rhine River.  But after a while, you can get “castled” out.  A kind of sensory overkill, with yet another vast pile of chiseled stone and hand carved everything inside of it.

After a while, I was able to accurately follow the many twists and turns on my intense Welsh road map, which eventually led me to the drab little town of Caerphilly.  The town seemed to me to be a post-industrial kind of place where the local coal mines finally ran out of extractable coal and the local economy reflected the hard times that followed after that.  I was initially disappointed, as I slowly drove through the grey and empty streets trying to find some sign that would tell me where the castle was.

But that didn’t take long, and I quickly understood why the town would do nothing to slow down travelers seeking their claim to fame.  A couple turns here and there, and…Damn!

I was inside of a Disney movie!

The castle stands alone, surrounded by a moat.  It has a drawbridge and four massive, round, tower-like structures at each corner.  It’s not the largest of its kind I’ve ever seen, but there is a kind of majesty to it that the others just didn’t have.  They were all very nice museums of former royalty, but this was a CASTLE.

 As a kid, I played with my little plastic armies of mounted knights in shining armor, as well as cowboys, Indians and World War II soldiers, sometimes all taking part in the same battle.  In my imagination, all the wars I waged on my South Side of Chicago basement floor were equal opportunity conflicts, and neither time nor technology were barriers to my assorted armies from different centuries.

So, while sometimes this meant a medieval knight was blasted off his horse by a bazooka shell, it also meant that about as often, the uniformly green-colored plastic United States Army soldiers were crushed under pounding hooves of massive English battle horses or speared by the knights, too.  Sometimes, the Sioux Indians would join in with the knights in battle, so that meant modern American soldiers were shot by the deadly arrows of 19^th century whooping braves, riding bareback on their swift ponies, as well.

My basement was a very dangerous place to be a plastic military man of any century.  There were endless negotiations between the different armies, and frequently personality conflicts among the respective leaders, preventing alliances.  No matter what, everything inevitably led to war, over and over and over.  Sigh…

So, given a childhood filled with a lushly vivid imaginings of such unlikely happenings, and a steadily increasing self-taught knowledge of real historical battles fought by actual armies all over the fields of Europe, the USA and ancient Asia by Persian, Greek, Roman, Viking, English, French, German and American armies and navies, my encountering this wondrous and perfect castle was simply enchanting for me.

Even though there were no other tourists out as early as I was that particular morning, that only added to the sublime sense of “floating back through time” feeling, and it was no challenge adding sound effects in my mind to the (imaginary) intense siege that the valiant Welsh defenders inside of the castle were trying to survive, despite the overwhelming numbers of their English attackers.

I was eight years old again, on that lovely morning in South Wales, and the sense of delight at being able to experience those feelings with a real castle right in front of me, was delicious.

I waited until the castle opened, and after rummaging through the assorted treasures of Caerphilly’s neat gift shop, I quickly went from exhibit to exhibit, learning that a wealthy man made a decision in the mid-nineteen century to reconstruct what had been an old ruin, and was single-handedly the reason for its resurrection.  One determined person can really make a difference and influence the lives of countless other persons.

But readers, I saved the best part of my story about that castle for last.  Sometime in the last 150 years, one of the giant rounded towers on one of the four corners had begun to detach itself from the castle.  To see it is not to believe it.  The falling tower is suspended, with no visible means of support, at about a forty-five degree angle from the rest of the castle.

It’s incredible to see, with its big bricks sticking into the air, across the way from where they used to be connected.  There were bricks randomly scattered all around the base of tower, further evidence of its slow-motion disintegration.  How does the damn thing stay up at such an extreme angle?  We’re talking tons and tons of stone here.  It’s been seven years since I was last there, and I’d be amazed to know that it was still just as I last saw it, in May of 2001.  I know I have the pictures I took to remind me–as if I needed them to remind me– of that gravity-resisting phenomenon.  I’m fine remembering it as I last saw it.  No one has to tell me otherwise.

I still had a long way to go that day, if I was going to be able to navigate my way through the Black Mountains of Eastern Wales to see Hay-on-Wye before its many bookstores closed for the day, so I had to tear myself away from my fantastic new playground and get going.

I know…so very American of me, rushing around like that.  But I did the best I could with the time and money I had available.  So far, it was a wonderful day.

It was time to push on.

After leaving the castle, I was somewhat confused about which road to take to get to that unique and remote Used-Bookstore town.  I wanted to drive to it as directly as possible, but not speed, because getting stopped by the local police would not get me there any faster and might be very expensive, too.  So I ambled along, from small town to small town, trying to aim north for that famous dot on my map, next to the Wye River.

I am a very careful driver.  I never get traffic tickets, including parking tickets.  To me, running a stop sign or a red light is a sin.  A person could get killed if someone did something thoughtless like that.  So, yeah, I suppose I do drive like a little old lady.  But I don’t have any accidents and I pretty much get where I want to go, about when I intended to get there.  Planning helps.

But just like I was unaware of that big soccer event in Cardiff that made finding myself a place to sleep so difficult, I also missed a couple of details about driving in Britain when I was reading all my Guide-to-Wales books.  I had a nice full-color video, too, but that just showed me more pretty scenery.

The next town north of Caerphilly was Risca, then Crosskeys, Abercarn, Cwmcarn, Newbridge, Abertillery and Blaina, with eight more to go before I arrived at Hay.  Such romantic names.  I drove the speed limit, not a kilometer more, watching the picturesque towns flow by.  So, why were all those cars piled up behind me?

I was also a bit sleepy, after dreaming about beautiful horses running free and missing my wife and my three dogs to cuddle up to.  A lot of nocturnal galloping, but not much real sleep.  So, as my eyes drooped occasionally, I would drive too close to the curbs of the roads, sometimes hitting them, causing a sudden jolt to my car which immediately woke me up.

The roads were pretty narrow to begin with, and passing me was not possible, so there were some unhappy Welsh drivers behind me, honking sometimes, but nothing like blasts I’d be enduring in Chicago.  It was, uh, polite annoyance, I guess.

By the time I rolled through Abertillery, I saw a couple of police cars up ahead of me, with a few policemen standing around. One of them waved me over to a side street on my left.  Immediately, a mass of cars shot by me through the town.  Surprisingly, the other police didn’t seem to notice how fast they were all going.  That was odd.  Maybe they didn’t have to write their certain quota of traffic tickets every day, as the thousands of Chicago cops (unofficially, of course) have to turn in each day, to help balance Chicago’s fiscal budget.

The two cops standing closest to me were talking to each other and also into a walky/talky kind of a radio, while they were watching me.  They both walked over to where I was patiently sitting in my car, mostly concerned about how long this unexpected situation would take.  One of the two cops went on one side of the car and the other one came over to my window.  I looked at him.  Serious. Young.  With a look of concern on his face. So far, no one barked at me to stay in my car through a bull horn.  Nobody was writing anything on a ticket pad, either.

I must be in a foreign country, Toto.

Then the cop standing by my window spoke to me for the first time:

“Sir, are you alright?  Have you been drinking?”

 I replied to him, mystified: Yes and No.

“Well then, are you taking any medications that might impair your ability to drive?”

I responded, hesitantly, unsure what to say…or what not to say.

“Um…Officer…I take many prescriptions—should I call you Officer?–so I can’t drink any alcohol at all, but none of them have any effect on me, as far as becoming drowsy goes.” 

He made a note in a small notebook he was carrying.  He was writing with this little stub of a pencil. He was not in any hurry.  More cars whizzed by us, going north.  Then more questions, as he appeared to be reading something else already written on that little notebook’s page.

“How was your driver’s side car door damaged that way?”

 I thought to myself…driver’s side door…driver’s side door…which side is that?  Oh, yeah!  Right side.

I, of course, remembered exactly how it happened, and answered the polite cop, slowly, but kind of concerned too, because from the many European films I’d seen over the decades, a friendly, urbane, soft-spoken but extremely observant British or Continental policeman was no less effective in getting their man, eventually.

This polite cop was speaking to me like I was possibly late returning a library book, except he wasn’t quite sure about it…yet.  I wasn’t nervous, but he knew more than he was telling me.  I sensed it.  But then, over the years I’ve talked to a lot of cops—some voluntarily, some not.

“Officer, I went by the Three Cliffs historic park yesterday—you know, where all those beautiful horses run free…?”

The young cop smiled at that comment, and I continued,

“Anyway, I am brand new at driving a car over here and I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, driving on the right side, I mean.  But my insurance will cover it, from American Express.”

He wasn’t really interested in the damage, I could see.  More like, just generally curious about me, like I was some kind of imported insect.  He went on.  So did all those other cars.

“So…you’re not drinking…no prescription problems…can I see your license and passport please?”

Except for the present situation, I was fascinated by all this.  In America, the first thing cops ask for, is your ID.  There is generally a presumption of guilt.  They speak to you like you just escaped from someplace, and they caught you.  They want your hands to be visible, at all times.  The fact that you aren’t already in a jail is, unfortunately for society, assumed to be some oversight on the part of, most likely, a do-gooder liberal judge.  God damn liberals….

My polite Welsh cop was carefully looking over my passport and license, to see if they matched up, probably.  Then he smiled, looking at me.

“Chicago?  I have a cousin in Chicago.  Do you like the White Sox or the Cubs?”

Surprised at the question, especially expressed in the center of a tiny town in Wales, eight thousand miles from our two local baseball teams, both of whom I never, ever cared to see play ball.  How do I answer that question?  Sox?  Cubs?

In Chicago, the wrong answer on the wrong side of town could have serious physical consequences.  What side of town was I on here?  I decided to punt.

“Well, Officer…who does your cousin like?”

 Officer Friendly told me he had no clue, and that his cousin worked in an American pub someplace near Chicago known as Wrigleyville.  Moving on, he peered at me, more closely,

“Mr. Katzman…am I pronouncing your name properly?  Some of the drivers who were following you called their local police stations and reported erratic behavior on the part of the driver of the car, that he kept hitting the curb and was driving so slowly.  While they were upset about getting where they were going somewhat faster, we wanted to make sure that a visitor to our country is not in any trouble, or ill, or something. 

You understand?

I nodded, silently.

He continued,

Those other police departments, in the towns you passed through, called us to watch out for a rental car with a single occupant and with scratches on the driver’s side door.  You were the first person to exactly match that description.  You haven’t actually broken any laws. 

 Are you sleepy?

 Seizing the moment, I nodded and answered,

“Well, maybe…a little.  Y’know, jet lag can do that…”

 He responded, in a sympathetic voice, telling me to go to this local pub and get myself a hot cup of coffee.  Maybe it would help me cope with my tiredness.  I was thinking that this guy missed his calling, that he was perfect for the priesthood.  Then we shook hands—just try and touch a cop in Chicago!—and he waved to his partner to come with him, whom, all this time, was watching me from the other side of my car.  He could see everything I was doing from his perspective, especially my hands, or if there were any beer cans crumpled up on the car’s floor.  Standard procedure and perfectly executed, without a word from him.

Culture shock, for me.

I waved goodbye and drove to where he told me to get coffee.  Nice people in there, too.  I decided not to bother to bring up the fact I didn’t drink coffee.  Didn’t seem to be the prime moment to volunteer something like that.  I used a lot of cream and sugar.  It was ok, I thought, as I slowly drove away.  Not bad at all.

So, I went on my way toward the next town, Blaina, not too far from Abertillery, and to my surprise, there were some more cops waiting for me.  No cars behind me this time.  One cop approached my car and looked in at me.

“Are you ok then, sir?  The men from the other town asked me to see if you were feeling better.  Are you?”

 This was another universe of law enforcement, man.

I thanked him and said yes, sir. And that the coffee in Abertillery was very good.  I took for granted he knew which pub I went to.  Probably knew if I left a tip or not.  And my address in Chicago, too.  I smiled at him.

“Okay then, Mr. Katzman, be careful driving!”

And he waved goodbye to me and walked back to the other cops.

Of course he knew my name.

Ebbw Vale and Nantygld, same reception committee—this was fucking amazing—wasn’t there any crime in Wales to keep all these guys busy?  How many police departments knew about me, at that point?

But in Bryn Mawr, there were cars behind me, impatient, annoyed at my slowness.  I was driving thirty kilometers an hour, the posted limit.

An older cop there waved me over, again, and asked me why I drove so slowly, like I was a welcome brother-in-law or something.  Not accusing, not irritated, just casual conversation over the fence in our backyards.

“Well, officer, I felt I was doing the right thing in your country by sticking to the speed limit, meaning thirty kilometers an hour.  But everyone seems to be going faster, so I don’t know what else to do.”

He smiled broadly.

Mystery solved?

Why was he smiling?

He told me he’d be right back and then he walked over to the rest of the welcoming committee, including some people not in uniform.  He said something to them while pointing to me.  Everybody smiled.  Some people laughed.  One woman put her hands over her mouth, like she was amazed.  I felt left out.

Then the older cop, grey hair, bushy grey mustache, ambled back over to my window.  Now I would get to hear the joke, too.  How nice.

“Young man, it’s miles, here.  Miles.”

I looked at him, stunned.

“Miles? 

 Not kilometers?”

He was chuckling to himself, amused by the clueless American tourist, who was unwittingly antagonizing everyone who had the misfortune to become stuck behind him on the rural Welsh secondary roads.

 “Miles, son, “he continued.  Everyplace, miles. 

 In France it’s kilometers, but never here. 

Get along now, and try to drive a little faster. 

 It’ll be good for international relations, too.”

 I realized that I had just become part of Welsh lore, like the Headless Horseman, but funnier. That old cop would now become famous, in all the little towns I’d been in and was still going through, on my way to Hay-on-Wye this afternoon.

He, after all, had solved the: Great ‘Tourist Driving Like A Damn Snail’ Mystery.

 He’ll be riding on the head float in the Christmas Parade this year, I bet.

I drove away, waving, smiling, but I drove away quicker this time, too.  My driving at a strict speed of thirty kilometers an hour was equivalent to creeping along the Welsh highways at 21 miles per hour.

In the next two towns to come, Gilwern, Crickhowell, there were still little clusters of cops waiting for the American Joke to sail by, but they were all smiling and waved.  No one asked me to pull over.

Miles, he said.

Miles, not kilometers.

Hysterical.

But it would not be so funny in Talgarth, a market town farther up ahead of me, as I drove through the deeply blue/green Black Mountains which rose up on either side of me, dotted with white sheep.

Very serious scenery.

Somewhere between Talgarth and Three Cocks, another town, I had the accident.  It happened so fast.  Good thing I was insured by American Express.  There would be yet another Welsh cop waiting for me, in my future. But he, however, didn’t seem to feel like smiling very much.

 

Part 4

So, now thoroughly enlightened as to how fast I could legitimately motor along Wale’s skinny streets, I drove on toward romantic Hay-On-Wye.  This was the high point of my trip and I eagerly looked forward to exploring endless used bookstores.

Going through guidebooks and a packet of information from The Wales Tourist Board, I learned a long list of intriguing bookstore names.  Chicago had a fair share of used bookstores in an area called Printer’s row, as well as another area just north of the famed landmark cinema, The Biograph Theater, where notorious bank robber John Dillinger was shot dead, after being fingered by the Lady-in-Red, by a fusillade of bullets from many FBI pistols, led by the famous (and as yet unknown cross-dresser) J. Edgar Hoover.

But reading the list of names, and anticipating visiting the actual stores, was like trying to eat just one piece of chocolate.  Here’s a probably incomplete list of the names.  Any errors are mine:

Castle Hay Books…Murder 4 Mayhem…Outcast…Rose’s Books…Richard Booth’s Bookstore…Marijana Dworski Books…Pemberton’s…Westwood Books…The Wye Gallery…Poetry Bookstore…Children’s Bookstore…Boz Books…Book Ends…Cinema Bookshop…Antique Gifts and Books…Hancock and Monk…Lion Street Bookshop…Rare Comics and Cards and The New Strand.  (Whew!)

For me, being caught someplace without a newspaper or book while in an airplane, doctor’s office, or any situation where I’m waiting, is inconceivable.  I don’t know about the next generation, but for me, reading is as necessary as food.

I was going through this very busy and somewhat larger town, Talgarth, where there seemed to be some kind of street fair or celebration of some kind, and there were people and cars everywhere, whizzing around me.  I wanted to pull over and check it out, but there wasn’t enough time.  While thinking this over on a quieter side street, an annoyed person in a car waiting behind me honked loudly.

Surprised, I looked into the rear-view mirror, but before I could see who was honking, the dark vehicle suddenly whipped around my fragile rental car and smacked my left side mirror with a shuddering CRACK!!  At the same time, I saw their side mirror go flying off into the sky.  I guess it was a draw, in terms of unexpected damage.  But nevertheless, I was shaken by one more assault on my little car’s thin metal shell, again in someone else’s country.  This was a disconcerting moment.

What do I do now?

The attacking car was swiftly out of sight, perhaps hoping I couldn’t catch their license plate number, and if that was their assumption, they were correct.  I waited a moment, looked over at the left side of my car, then rolled down the window and saw my poor mirror, limply hanging down by the thin metal cord that adjusted the mirror for different drivers.  The glass was shattered.  It was dead.

I rolled the window back up and thought about what to do.

Leaving that town seemed to be a good idea; given the evident aggression of the only person I’d had any ‘contact’ with, so far.  And the contact wasn’t charming, either.  So I slowly rolled through several alleys, found a less busy main-drag type of street and headed for the countryside.  I had a fleeting feeling of being an escaping bank robber, like poor dead John Dillinger, on the run with my dangling mirror banging noisily against the previously intact passenger door.

Oh, me! Now what?

I drove and drove, quickly became lost, and seemed to be driving endlessly through wheat fields.  Or corn fields.  I didn’t stop to study that.  At that moment, I didn’t know if I was fleeing from someplace, or seeking refuge at another place.  But all there were on every side of me were fields…growing something.

Morosely, I followed the narrow country lane as it twisted and turned, thinking: I know what will happen.

There will be armed Welsh Policemen waiting for me, everywhere.  Fresh signs posted on every wall, screaming to the public:

Be on the lookout for the Lunatic American Driver and report any sightings immediately!

They already knew my name, my face and whatever else they knew.  The honeymoon was over.  Find that man!!

After a while, through the thick cloud of farmland dust surrounding my car, I saw a small building ahead of me.

Civilization?

Maybe.

Did I want that?

Deciding to slowly proceed, I was not thrilled to see that it was a simple, older, woodframe and plaster type of building planted in the middle of nowhere, like me, and–surprise!!!–it was a Police Station.

A mixed blessing, I decided.

Resigned to the glum reality that there was no escaping this dumb situation, I pulled up to the side of the petite building, very pretty with flowers all around it, and one other car parked on the other side of it.  I paused, shaking my head that this was like being caught in a Pink Panther movie; I turned off the motor and got out.

Walking through the door, I saw there was nothing in the room except an old and scarred wooden desk, a phone, a file cabinet, a fax machine, a copier and a fat sleeping Calico cat.  Very peaceful.  So I called out, gently:

“Hello?”  

A man appeared in the doorway of the next room—how could this igloo have two rooms in it? —in a police uniform.  He appeared to be well fed, a little harassed and I felt like an intruder interrupting his day.  His ruddy face seemed to echo my trepidation.  He swiftly looked me over in that cop-like way, which usually begins with the hands, and seeing no apparent reason to be concerned, he asked if he could help me.

I stated simply that I was a tourist, just had a hit-and-run accident and felt I should report it to avoid any problems when I left for America, the next day.  He agreed with me, but remained serious.  He offered me a chair, dug through the file cabinet for a form and sat down himself, opposite me and began writing.  The cat stayed where it was, probably watching every move I made.

I told him the facts, and that I was already bewildered by the alien, to me, driving arrangements in Wales, that I wasn’t sure what to do, and that I had insurance.  At least I had insurance.  He nodded, and kept writing.  I realized that this was not as big a deal to him as it was to me.  I was confused by that.

He took my passport, asked me where I was staying while in Wales, and was anyone hurt?

I replied,

“Not me. But I have no idea about the other guy.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look up and kept filling out all the lines in the form.  He inspected my passport carefully.  He took my driver’s license, Chicago phone number, asked about my flight time and airline and wrote all that out, as well.

I was oddly impressed at his quiet professionalism.  Here he was, in an isolated country outpost representing the law, and he was just sitting there, quietly doing his thing.  He made a copy of everything I gave him, returned everything back to me, and sent a fax to someplace, telling me this would not take very long.

He offered me some tea while we were waiting and did I want any sugar with it?

I did.

Lots.

He looked over my sorry-ass car and filled out more information in the form.  Then something came back to him out of the fax machine, from somewhere, telling him that in fact, nobody was looking for me, anywhere, and at last, he smiled.

I sagged a little in my tense apprehension of what might have happened had the fax said otherwise, and he noticed that subtle reaction, too.  He told me that I did exactly the correct thing, that sometimes wild lads in Talgarth drank a few too many pints in the pubs and these things happened every so often.  It was a larger concern for the tourists, he kindly added, when they were caught up in a minor accident, than it was to the local police.

He told me he appreciated my forthrightness and cooperation, shook my hand firmly and told me not to worry, that no one would be waiting for me at the airport.  He was reading my mind, I thought.

His hand was muscular and warm.  He was not wearing a gun, I noticed for the first time.

This was not Tombstone.  This was Wales, and they did things differently here.

I was still confused, but happier.

The officer gave me precise directions to Hay-On Wye–not far at all, really– and told me to drive carefully, with a larger smile.  He was telling me a joke.  I got it.  Welsh humor.

I thanked him for the tea and carefully backed up from his police station.  I didn’t want to run over his flowers.  No point in pushing my luck.

I turned in the direction he told me to go and slowly drove away.  I could see him in my rear view mirror, still as yet unbroken, and he was waving to me.  I waved back.

How did they ever find guys like him to be cops?

I arrived in Hay-On-Wye with the sun still reasonably high in the sky, and with a sense of relief that I actually made it there before my time ran out.  I had images in my mind of this being Oz and that hourglass with grains of sand, representing passing time, swiftly flowing through it.  A flying monkey sure would be useful about now.

I parked my battered car and wandered through the streets of the lovely hamlet.  A feeling of serenity came over me as I relished the very idea that a place such as this existed, though curiously not in New York City or London or Paris or San Francisco or Berlin or Madrid or Cape Town or any other bustling world metropolis, but here, nestled cozily in the rolling Black Mountains, bordered by a musical river rippling past it, in a land of unusually calm and kind people.

I guess Hay was exactly were it ought to be, and logic had nothing to do with it.

It was a quiet place, but then most book people, like me, were somewhat silent meditative types.  You have to be able to focus to become lost in a good story.  Too much idle chatter defeats that objective.

I went from store to store, regretting that all my misadventures had cut deeply into my browsing time.  But just like holding and kissing a very beautiful and willing woman, a short good time can still be a very good time.

Books.

Oceans of books spilling off tables, sitting outside of buildings, filling the dusty windows of musty stores who beckoned the curious to step inside and try a little history, or a mystery or a sonnet waiting centuries to be spoken aloud.

Books, with corners worn, some pages torn, notes on their edges and filled with the invisible fingerprints of the devoted, but now long departed.

The alluring fragrance, the intoxicating perfume of ancientness, the pleasures of disintegrating pulp filling my nose, my lungs, covering all of me with a fine mist of atoms of carefully selected words.

Wordsmiths, like me, with fingers poised above keys, awaiting just the combination of letters and punctuation to capture a moment, a laugh, a blush, a thrill, or a cry of either fear or delight to appear in their minds, always with a quest for originality, to say an old thing in a new way

Science fiction, philosophy, religion, cooking, anthropology, fashion, Western Ireland or Western Arizona—both possibly filled with romantic gunmen—astronomy, astro-physics, engineering, travel—six letters suggesting a million possibilities—biology, botany, demographics, civil wars, civil rights, carpentry, electronics, aviation, sex—and a lot more than 69 variations about that, too—architecture, archery, fairy tales, medicine—and how can it be that a tiny pill once a day cured my soul-destroying hayfever?—dictionaries, languages, coins, stamps, art, dogs, cats, rock n’ roll, geography—boring? Oh, yeah?  Well, try Iceland, one of the coolest, most complex places on earth—movies (Jesus! Don’t get me started…), animal husbandry, world war, world peace and memories of desperately falling in love.

Jewish history, giving birth to Christian history, and then swirling up from the hot desert sands came Moslem history and out of all that, came a blood-splattered smorgasbord of God, faith and death.  Each claiming that the God of Abraham was their God, and only their God.

Madness!!

Stranger, please tell me: Where is Heaven?

That depends on how much learning matters to you, and whether or not you feel compelled to read, religiously.

For this particular Jewish-American boy from the South Side of Chicago, my Heaven turned out to be in a tiny land about the size of Israel, but with a lot more water.  My feet were on the ground, but my head was in the clouds, when I first discovered the celestial village of Hay-On-Wye.

I did buy a few books, treasures to me, knowing I was quite limited in what I could carry back with me on the plane.  But then I stumbled into this out-of-the-way shop selling books on music, old LPS, and fatally for me, a couple shelves of old Jazz periodicals stacked near the register and falling over onto the floor.

There are probably more complicated ways to say this, but essentially, after striking a deal for all of them with the remarkably laid back and possibly chemically-enhanced proprietor, I staggered out of his quaint shop with over two hundred vintage British Jazz magazines I felt I could resell in Chicago.  Jazz is Jazz.

After scrounging up a couple of strong boxes and some rolls of brown plastic shipping tape, I packed those magazines securely in cardboard and taped those two boxes to death.  Bullets could not get past a box that I secured, man.  The airplane?  I’d figure that part out later.

Then, short on English Pounds, but long on pounds of English periodicals, I left sweet Hay-On-Wye for quiet Cardiff tonight, and crazy London in the morning.

Adieu and Shalom, fair Wales!

 

After managing, remarkably, to avoid hitting any cars, curbs or walls, both driving through the Black Mountains at night to get back to my lonely room in Cardiff, and then with the incredibly bright rising sunlight in my eyes all the way back east to London, my last hours in Great Britain were stunningly cop free.

There was still the grim matter of returning the battle-scarred rental car, but there was no way to avoid that.  It was my last task before flying home.

When I found agency’s Return Car sign, I pulled in and parked, left the keys in the ignition and hauled out my luggage and of course, all that jazz.  I stood by the car, waiting for the person who receives the cars to inspect my wreck and confirm that I had filled the gas tank.

After a bit, a very round gentleman appeared, who looked to me to be possibly East Indian, and when he spoke to me, his accent confirmed it.  His little gold metal nameplate attached to his jacket said: Mr. Patel. He was friendly, but business-like walking all around the car to see what there was to see.  He had a clipboard and a pen, which he parked over his right ear when he wasn’t using it.  It was a bright sunny day and no tiny scratch would go undetected.

I waited.

About five minutes later, Mr. Patel collected my reservation papers, checked the line about my insurance coverage and told me to please wait while he called to settle up matters with my company.  Thoughtfully, he recommended that I stay there with my heavy boxes instead of trying to drag all of my stuff into the waiting room with the other people.  He told me I could board the shuttle bus right there to go directly to my terminal and my plane.  There would be someone to help me with my boxes when I arrived there.

I thanked Mr. Patel and waited.  I wasn’t really concerned.

Five minutes went by.

Then ten more.

Where the hell was Mr. Patel?

Then he was back, but with a less than thrilled look on his face.  Now, I was concerned.

“Mr. Katzman”, he began, “it seems that American Express doesn’t actually offer car insurance to travelers in Great Britain.  So, in essence…you are not insured.”

Long silence.

I looked up from my confounded misery to the patiently waiting Mr. Patel, plaintively asking of him,

“No insurance?  Really?”

He shook his head, side to side.

Disaster.

Christ.

I sunk down onto one of my boxes of Jazz magazines with no clue about what to do.

Mr. Patel must have noticed my distress, because what followed was unprecedented.

He came a little closer to me and asked me whatever had happened to cause the car to be in the condition it was in.  His voice was lower, and sort of consoling.  I wasn’t expecting that.

I sat there, wordless, spreading my hands upwards and apart in a supplicating way, like a person seeking alms, from the Greek word meaning: pity.

I looked up at him and slowly unspooled my depressing tale of confusion and misadventure involving half of Wale’s police force, and ending with that spirit-killing hit-and-run accident in Talgarth.  I showed him the accident report, only then realizing that it firmly asserted my innocence in the last matter, which that solitary policeman in the Welsh countryside chose to believe was true and wrote up in his report, confirming his confidence in my story.

I was unaware, up to that point, that that was what he wrote down, because I hadn’t read the report yet.  I was so relieved he let me just drive away, I didn’t think to read it. I was stunned to still be receiving his help, one day and hundreds of miles later.

I showed Mr. Patel my American State Farm Insurance card, telling him that I never, ever, had any accidents in my country and how incredulous I was to hear that my assumption of insurance was completely wrong,

There was a quiet pause, as Mr. Patel appeared to be thinking about all of my experiences during my short time in his country.  I sat on my box, focused on the ground, feeling defeated.

It was not supposed to end this way.  This could amount to thousands of dollars.  I didn’t have it.

Then Mr. Patel spoke up, and his voice was different.

He said, in a manner that was unexpectantly reassuring,

“You know, Mr. Katzman, as an immigrant to England myself, I know how things can suddenly go wrong, despite a person’s best intentions. 

To be in a strange environment, where you don’t know anybody, driving on a totally different side of the road than you are used to, and especially, not having been told by anyone at this rental agency that England uses miles and not kilometers…it seems to me you have already experienced far more punishment than a visitor to this country should have to endure.

I do not want to add to that.  Let me see what I can do here.”

His clipboard reappeared and he began circling the car once more.  He scratched out some things and wrote down some other things.  I watched him, wordlessly.

In a few minutes, with his pen again behind his ear, he sat down next to me on the second box of jazz magazines. He read over the several pages again, and then turned to me, saying,

“I think that mirror must have been defective or loose or it wouldn’t have come off so easily.  It is not your responsibility to be aware of such things, and a side mirror is an easy thing to replace. 

I also imagine that when that other car struck you, as verified by the police officer in his accident report, it is totally reasonable to assume you took evasive action to escape that other dangerous driver, leading you to unintentionally scrape your door against a rough wall in an alley. Better to scratch up a door than to have the car totaled, in my opinion.  It must have been a frightening experience for you. 

On behalf of my company, I regret that.”

I stared at him.

This was London, not Wales.

Why was he talking to me this way?

He continued,

“As the manager in charge of damage inspection, I am given a certain amount of leeway when inspecting cars, especially cars driven by our American friends who come to visit our country.  England has suffered badly because of that endless and terrible Mad Cow Disease publicity, and we need tourism here to help support our economy. 

I can see that repainting the damaged door is not your problem either, under these circumstances.  But I have to say that the damage to the hubcaps on the wheels, where you repeatedly hit the curbs, is something I can’t come up with a believable way to explain.  So…”

He paused, calculating.

“What do you say to settling everything for one hundred ninety-five pounds, Mr. Katzman?”

Mr. Patel looked at me, about one foot away.

Close enough to kiss, but I resisted the urge.

I looked at him, in disbelief, while hearing his words.

He was willing to settle all that wreckage for approximately $290, in U. S. dollars.  Not thousands.

I had about two hundred pounds still left on me, out of the seven hundred I started out with, four days before.

I had to ask.

“Mr. Patel, you’ve never met me…you’ll probably never see me again. 

Why are you doing this?”

He smiled at me, amusement in his dark eyes,

“Because you need it.  That’s reason enough. 

Take this paperwork with you and pay them at the counter over there.  I will watch your things.”

I did what he told me to do, and came back.

We shook hands.

He helped me load my heavy boxes on the shuttle bus, than said to me, in parting,

“I, too, have been helped by strangers here in Britain when I was in bad shape. It meant a lot to me, and I try to repay that kindness, when I can.  I believe you don’t have to know someone to lighten their load. 

Good luck to you.”

I nodded to him, shook his hand again, and told him I would remember him.

And I have, years later.

A short time later, checked in and seated on the plane, all my boxes and luggage packed away, I sat silently contemplating the extraordinary series of events that had happened to me, and all the people I had met, in such a short time.

As the plane lifted off, and I watched that proud island recede into the distance, I thought to myself with a pure heart and not a little wonder,

“Long Live Wales, and Long Live England, too.”  

 Epilogue

If I don’t tell you, you may always be curious about the loose ends in my story.  So this is what happened:

(1)–When I landed back in Chicago and settled into my regular life, I called American Express to convey my unhappiness with what I had been led to believe, about my being insured to rent and drive a car in Great Britain.  It took some persistence, which I certainly have enough of, and eventually I worked through several layers of management, finally arriving at a woman whose voice conveyed a sincere desire to resolve my complaint.

After hearing my detailed description of my difficulties while driving in Wales, and my horror upon hearing that I had been misinformed about being insured by some young man from American Express customer service, while I was still in America, before I left for Britain, she requested that I please hold on while she did some checking.  I said fine.

I waited.

About ten minutes later, she returned to the phone, thanking me for my patience.

I waited.

Somehow, she was able to verify all of my claims, explaining that the young man evidently wasn’t sufficiently trained by his supervisor and believed he was telling me the correct information.  The woman assured me such a mistake would never happen again, to me or anyone else.

I waited.

Then she offered to reimburse me for every penny of what I paid the rental car agency in London, plus a bit more to cover the cost of checking those heavy boxes of jazz magazines, as a gesture of good will to a long time customer of American Express.  She told me to look for the credit on my next statement.

I waited.

Finally, she apologized on behalf of her company and thanked me for understanding that anyone can make a mistake, even someone working in a worldwide financial organization.  She also hoped I would remain their customer.

That was quite enough for me.  I expressed my appreciation for her swift and fair response to my complaint and I thanked her, in turn.  The matter was closed, as far as I was concerned.

(2)–Over time, I sold enough 1964 Beatle magazines and British jazz magazines to pay for 100% of my trip to England and Wales, including those romantic fish and chips in Cardiff, late one night.  I still have some of both periodicals, and they continue to sell, years later.

(3)–I actually spent two days in England before traveling to Wales, and overall I had a wonderful time, except for that one incident where two rough guys grabbed me, threw me against a wall, and robbed me of one hundred pounds in Piccadilly Circus, part of Downtown London, but…well…that’s another story.

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