INDIANA AIRPORT

JUNE 30

Betsy,

   Europe, I can’t believe it! How I wish you could have come! Castles, bicycles with bells, men with pointy little beards, and women selling cabbages from boats right in the street! Ships in bottles, men in haciendas; there is just so much to see and so few rolls of film to see it with.

   I am dashing you this quick note as I sit in the foreign flights waiting area at the airport. Johnny is standing over by the rope. (I think he is going to cry.) Aunt Lilly (my mother’s sister, the one that didn’t marry) has given me dozens of handkerchiefs to deliver to “old friends” that she made on her “grand tour” of Europe between the wars. She also gave me five hundred dollars, so I suppose I shall have to....

    My plane leaves in fifteen minutes. I’m telling you, Betsy, that might not seem like a very long wait to you, who are staying in Indiana, but to me, who is going overseas, it seems as long as one of the foreign time zones I will soon be visiting.

    In many ways, Betsy, and I mean this, I envy you staying home. I don’t know what it is inside me that makes me want to fly away from all the people who love me (Johnny really is almost crying now) and risk all in a daring search for novel adventure. Please save all my letters as I may lose my copies and I want to publish my adventures as a novel when I return. Tell Johnny that I will miss him and not to cry. The loudspeaker calls us to board....

Aujuice, Amaretto,

Cindy

 

 

 

LONDON, ENGLAND

JULY 2

Dear Mom and Dad,

    England is very much the sophisticated country! Everyone here is very polished, but whether it is heredity or environment I will not know until I have made my conclusions. I have carefully observed the Tower of London today, Dad, and will send you a description later. For now, I just want to say it was incredible, although I did not see the Beefeaters feeding, which the tour guide said was the most incredible part of the day. I visited a very sophisticated English men’s club to deliver a present for Aunt Lilly, and was shown the carpet that was over two hundred years old. I also met Sir Morton Feldstein, whom I invited to visit us if he is ever in Indiana. (I hope you do go ahead with enclosing the carport and making it a den this summer, Dad, as I told him he was welcome to stay in the left “wing.”) I am going to Paris next week and will write you again from the city of night lights.

Your loving daughter,

Cindy

 

 

 

LONDON, ENGLAND

JULY 3

Dear Aunt Lilly,

    I visited Boogers Club today and asked for Sir Lashmont Toff so that I could give him the handkerchief and your message. The porter who stood behind the peephole in the door couldn’t remember him. When I told him that he had been a member between the wars; he recalled “some ‘aught.” He said there was a doorman at that time whom the members called Sir Lashmont because he was “rigid with gin” and “stately of bearing.” I said he couldn’t possibly be the one as Sir Lashmont was an old friend of yours. I left the handkerchief with the porter anyway, in case Sir Lashmont should come in. I also met Sir Morton Feldstein, a real gentleman on the steps up, and he also did not know of Sir Toff, but said there was a chance that he had been promoted to earl or baron and would now be a lord and difficult to trace. Sir Morton sends you his regards, too.

Ta-ta,

Cindy

 

 

 

LONDON, ENGLAND

JULY 5

Betsy,

   I have spent the last few days getting an intimate tour of London by Sir Morton Feldstein. I have seen so many restaurants, nightclubs, and posh gambling (can you believe it!) places, my mind is a smear. I am going to Paris with him tomorrow. Yesterday he bought me some lingerie for the trip. I think he is quite infatuated with me. Don’t tell Johnny. I will write again from Paris.

In haste,

Cindy

 

 

 

PARIS, FRANCE

JULY 8

Betsy,

   Sir Morton was called away from Paris today by a waiter who brought a note summoning him back to the House of Lords on urgent national business. However, even “matters of the gravest significance for our island” cannot fill the empty place left in my heart by Sir Morton Feldstein.

    Love, I think, is like snow on a warm windshield—it melts and leaves you only with the sound of the car radio. * Au rebours, mon amour!

     I think I will leave Paris for Germany. The city has no joy for me now or a hotel room, as they are all booked. Germany may be the place for me, as the German people know what it is like to be conquered by the dashing English and to eat sausage.

Farewell,

Cindy

 

*P.S. I think it was the great French philosopher Volaré who said this. I translated it myself from a cocktail napkin of his sayings, which Sir Morton gave me as a sake du keep.

 

 

 

WEINERWALD,GERMANY

JULY 20

Dear Auny Lilly,

   The Germans are a very nice people and not at all like they were in the war or the movies. I for one do not believe the Germans will war with us again. Not after last time, and last time II.

   I always make a point of telling the Germans right up front that I went to school with Rebecca Leiberman (who is Jewish) and would have been her friend regardless of her religion or creed if she hadn’t had a voice like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon duck and that funny ketone smell from eating Sizzlean. If the Germans can’t accept that, who needs them? As they say here, “Let ze bygones zyglon be.”

    Tomorrow I am going to Disnichtwald Castle and will give the Count your handkerchief and the message. I will write soon.

Your niece,

Cindy

 

 

 

DISNICHTWALD CASTLE

JULY 22

Betsy,

   I have the most incredible news! I only wish I could be with you to rub it in in person! I may be marrying a Count! But promise you won’t say anything to anybody yet, especially Johnny.

The Count, whose name is Gottfried, is the son of an “old friend” of my Aunt Lilly’s.

    “Call me Gottfried,” he said when we met. “Mr. Count is so formal.” He has asked me to stay in the castle of Disnichtwald for an indefinite period. We have already lived together as Count and Countess, if you know what I mean which I hope you will not tell Johnny as he would not understand it even if he knew what I meant.

    The castle is three hundred rooms of drafty romance. Yesterday I went to town and bought some teak-tone self-sticking wallpaper, but find it won’t stick to the rock walls. Maybe if I scrape off the lichen. The castle is supposed to be haunted by either the ghost of a gardener or the gardener himself, who was fired by the old Count (who is a bit of a doink unless you like them just this side of alive and with a habit not washing well).

Your friend,

Cindy

 

 

 

AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND

JULY 29

Dear Aunt Lilly,

   I have been to the Castle of Disnichtwald and gave the handkerchief and your message “Lilly remembers” to old Count. He was most receptive of these gifts and made use of the handkerchief right away. His son, the young Count, with whom I became very friendly, told me the old Count remembered you well and had a collection of your pictures privately printed.

    The young Count, Gottfried, has been called away to lance a veneer blister on an olden-days clavichord and has promised to write to me at the youth hostel in Amsterdam. He also gave me an ancient coaster with the Disnichtwald coat of arms on it. It also has the phone number of the family dentist and an appointment on the back, which will always remind me of the time we spent in each other’s mouths, kissing. I’m sure I will see him again. Until then, letters letters letters.

Your affectionate niece,

Cindy

 

 

 

AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND

AUGUST 2

Mom and Dad,

   Hello from Holland! I’m staying at the youth hostel here in Amsterdam, and would you believe it, there is another girl here from the Midwest! Her name is Cathy and she is from Ohio. Small world, isn’t it! And charter flights are making it smaller every day. It may sound funny, but I’ll bet by the time I am twenty-three that I’ll know someone somewhere who either knows someone or is someone almost everywhere else in the world.

    Thank you for the money, which arrived at American Express yesterday. I will be more careful in the future not to spend it.

     I have, as you advised, made careful observation of the art galleries and Dutch monuments. I saw Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and was very impressed with his overall sophistication. He must have worked very hard on his painting if the length of the lines to see it are anything to go by.

Your affectionate daughter,

Cindy

 

 

 

AMSTERDAM  NETHER-

NETHERLANDS

AUGUST 4

Dear Betsy,

   Last night Cathy, who is from Ohio, and I stayed up all night with some provosts drinking BOLS Advockaat (which is a liqueur made from distilled omelets), smoking hash, and watching the sun come up over the canals. It later turned out not to be the sun but an orange floating by in the water, and the provosts turned out not to be provosts, who are European university teachers, but provos, who are unemployed bicycle thieves who live in tents on garbage scows. Cathy and I woke up and it smelled like we’d been sleeping inside a real dump truck. Now I know why people are immunized before they go on vacation. Yecch. Tomorrow Cathy and I are going to Italy to be out of bicycle range.

Your friend,

Cindy

 

 

 

VENICE, ITALY

AUGUST 5

Dear Mom and Dad,

    I can understand why art students from schools all over the Midwest and as far as California come here to Venice. Some of those Renaissance masterminds could really paint. I have carefully observed, as you asked me to, a number of their postcards, which are on display in the lobby of the hostel. Many of the pictures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints are said by experts to display a strong religious motif.

    Cathy, the girl I told you about from Ohio, is with me here in Venice as we both had a strong desire to visit romantic Italy at the same time. Not that Holland wasn’t a nice place, but it’s the sort of place if you’ve seen it once you wish you hadn’t. As I write to you, I hear the radios of the gondoliers in the canal beneath the dormitory window and smell the smell of strong anchovy sauce blowing from the back of a restaurateur somewhere. I’ll write again soon.

Your loving daughter,

Cindy

 

 

 

VENICE, ITALY

AUGUST 5

Betsy,

   One of the most surprising things about old Venice is that the people over here use the old Indiana expression “chow” all the time! Once again, the Hoosiers lead the way!

   Cathy, the girl from Ohio that I told you about, is a bottomed-out old feminine hygiene kit, if you ask me. We went for a ride last night on a gondola, and the captain asked us up to his hotel room for dinner. He had a romantic moustache, and we ate squab. He talked all through dinner so beautifully, it made me wish I spoke Italian. He rubbed my knee several times to assure me it was O.K. Well, what with his touches and all, I had to go to the bathroom, and when I came back Cathy was resting her head in his lap and he was resting his thing you-know-where! Well, maybe that’s the way they get men in Ohio, I said, and stormed out into the street, which was unfortunately over my head. When I was rescued and returned to the hostel, what do you think I found out?

    That a “squab” is a pigeon! He probably snared the pigeon himself that morning with the laces from his filthy boots.

Yours,

Cindy

 

P.S. Guess what? The gondola captain turned out to be married! His wife came home and picked up Cathy and checked her out of the hotel room and into the canal. If she hadn’t gotten a hold of a dead dog floating by, she would have sunk! Huh. Maybe she wouldn’t have minded that. A few more gondola boys might have stuck their poles into her as she lay on the ditch floor.

 

 

 

CASTANET, BAIN

DE SOLEIL, SPAIN

AUGUST 7

Dear Aunt Lilly,

   Well, here I am at last in sunny Castanet, Spain. Tomorrow I visit the hacienda of Don El Producto de Panatella to deliver the handkerchief for you and to give him your message.

   I guess you know, Auny Lilly, that Castanet has the famous monastery founded by St. Begonia Nasturtium in the first century B.C. The Nasturtium Brothers, who have taken a vow of perpetual inebriation, still wander the streets today much the way their predecessors did, but at greater personal hazard since the coming of the automobile. I will let you know how Don Panatella is.

Your niece,

Cindy

 

 

 

CASTANET, BAIN

DE SOLEIL, SPAIN

AUGUST 8

Betsy,

    Incredible. That’s all I can say. Who would have thought a young girl from Indiana could win the affections of one of the world’s oldest noblemen? Where shall I start?

    After I left Italy, I traveled through the south of France, where I stopped to pick some grapes in the vineyards. We worked from early morning till lunch, when we had a petit dejeuner, which is made of bread and cheese and is quite long by Indiana sandwich standards. But that’s another paragraph.

    I toured Spain for a while and saw a place where Ernest Hemingway got into a fight with a bull. Then I decided to stop off at Castanet, on the Spanish Bain de Soleil, and drop off one of the handkerchiefs Aunt Lilly asked me to deliver to some of the friends she made on her “grand tour” between the wars.

    Yesterday I made the journey out to the hacienda of Don El Producto de Panatella, the Spanish nobleman.

     He seized the handkerchief from me. as if it were a piece of the Bayou tapestry, pressed it to his nose, and was possessed by a faraway look that came into his eyes.

     “Yes, Lilly,” he said, “I remember her well. It was long ago, but I remember her well. She had your hair....” Well, I told him my hair was blond and Lilly’s was brown. “Yes,” he said, leaning forward and burying his noble head in my hair, “but it had the smell, the same smell as yours.” I was spun out by the guy.

     “I have known many women,” he said, “and I have found something to be loved in them all.. . the heart has many facets like a fine-cut gem. Lilly had something. I see it in you, too—amazing in one so young....” With that, he leaned forward and buried his noble head in my breasts. He was madly in love.

      Please don’t tell Johnny! I think I am in love, too. What difference does age make as long as the lights are out? Ours may be one of the most celebrated loves of all the neighborhood.

     Yesterday Don El Producto showed me his scars. He has over ninety-two knife wounds in his buttocks from jealous husbands. He certainly is a skilled and resourceful lover. Yesterday I was sleeping on my stomach and he “got in my back door” and “went down the basement stairs,” if you catch my drift.

Your friend,

Cindy

 

 

 

 

ATHENS, GREECE

AUGUST 10

Dear Mom and Dad,

    Spain was O.K., but double expensive. I was staying with this old Spanish noble man on the Bain de Soleil and I thought it was free, but his daughter returned and told me that the hacienda was actually a hotel and that I had to pay double in-season rates plus check out immediately to make way for a convention of swineherds from Dusseldorf. So if you could, please wire me some money to the American Express in Athens.

    I have carefully observed what is to be seen in Athens. I saw the Cradle of Democracy and its teething ring, plus the Paradox of Zeno. I have also seen the Parthenon, which is incredibly beautiful, especially at night when they have the pink and green lights on, but it’s not as well kept as the one in Nashville. Anyway, I can sure see why the ancient Greeks were so proud of their city-states, especially at night.

     I went to a “toga party” in the Parthenon a couple of nights ago. There were a lot of famous people there, but they were hard to recognize because they weren’t famous yet but they will be soon. Anyway, a Greek threw us out for rolling one of the columns off the hill down on the city.

    The Greeks are very poor, at least by Indiana standards, yet there is hardly any crime here.

Your loving daughter,

Cindy

 

 

 

ATHENS, GREECE

AUGUST 11

Betsy,

   I met this nice boy from Utah at a wild toga party in the Parthenon, and we plan to visit Istanbul in Turkey together soon.

   His name is Billy. Anyway, you know how they say there is hardly any crime in Greece? Well, I was walking along with my handbag straps over my neck like Billy told me, and they broke when some Greek ripped off the bag. Well, I went to the police to complain, and I discovered that the reason there is hardly any crime here is that there are hardly any laws.

Your friend,

Cindy

P.S. Forget Don El Producto de Panatella. Paint his name over.

 

 

 

ISTANBUL TURKEY

AUGUST 14

Betsy,

   The most horrible thing happened outside of Istanbul! Billy and I were attacked by men on camels who had Polaroid Swingers. Can you imagine! I can hardly describe it, it was so humiliating, so brutal. After it was over, I didn’t even feel human, and Billy could hardly walk. Those naked, hairy Turks taking pictures all the while. If they had tried to touch me, I don’t know what I would have done. I got Billy to the hospital in Istanbul and the doctor kept making greasy jokes about “putting a patch on Billy’s inner tube.”

   I will see you next week sometime, as my charter home leaves from Paris either Sunday or Monday.

Your friend,

Cindy

 

 

 

 

PARIS, FRANCE

AUGUST 20

Dear Mom and Dad,

    It has certainly been quite an adventure for me. When I add up all the observations I have made of foreign people, I can only say it was worth it. It will be pleasant to get back to good old Indiana, though. See you soon.

Your loving daughter,

Cindy

 

 

 

PARIS, FRANCE

AUGUST 20

Dear Aunt Lilly,

    I will be leaving Europe tomorrow. I have delivered about half of your handkerchiefs. I will give you details when I get home.

Your niece,

Cindy

 

 

 

PARIS, FRANCE

AUGUST 20

Dear Johnny,

     My plane gets into the airport at 12:15 PM. Please meet me. I look forward to telling you all about Europe, and I am sure you have a lot to tell me about your interesting summer job at your uncle’s store. I hope you have saved your money.

Love,

Cindy