I found myself wondering constantly why it was that Hawaii was such a paradise while New Zealand was such a grim washout. The two island groups are basically much more alike than they are unlike, except that New Zealand is much, much richer in resources, having far more usable land, much gold, much coal, oil and many other minerals, and unlimited water power. Hawaii has nothing but farm land, no commercial minerals of any sort. If there is any advantage in climate, it lies with New Zealand, not with Hawaii. Hawaii is much overpopulated for its resources, while New Zealand is underpopulated-an economic advantage unless the population is very small, but New Zealand nevertheless has four times the population of Hawaii.
Hawaii does have an advantage in tourist trade in being more centrally located, but in all other ways New Zealand is more favored, being bigger and very much better endowed. Even in the tourist trade New Zealand is not too badly at a disadvantage, as she is much nearer the heavily populated east coast of Australia than Hawaii is to our west coast and also she draws on the entire pound-sterling area for tourists, a trade not available to Hawaii because of the money embargos placed against us.
Then why?
I was forced to conclude that the difference must lie in the people themselves. The New Zealanders have saddled themselves with endless laws and government regulations restricting competition, reducing production, discouraging incentive, and almost prohibiting initiative. The wage fixing, price fixing, licensing, and forbidding outright of many economic activities considered routine with us is almost beyond belief. New Zealanders themselves complain that their own people will not put in an honest day's work. Between fixed wages with no incentive to work harder on one hand and a social security system so pervasive that not working is almost as good as working on the other hand, the New Zealand employee has precious little reason to do a good job-and his employer has even less incentive to risk new capital in a game that is intentionally rigged against him. To a stranger, the result looks and feels like stagnation.
The economic environment in Hawaii is essentially like that in all the rest of the United States. We do have government regulations, certainly, enough of them to make some of our citizens apoplectic, but compared with New Zealand we live in economic anarchy. Whether we think we have too much or too little, or perhaps the wrong ones, nevertheless our rules are not such as to make ambition fruitless. Hard work and imagination still pay off, despite what the crepe-hangers say, and Hawaii is a showcase proof of the fact. The residents of Hawaii work like beavers in spite of the lazy climate and they get rewards for their efforts. Even unskilled labor receives the highest wages in the entire world. As for those higher up the ladder the material evidence of their rewards are everywhere around you in Hawaii.
But of course no one in Hawaii is satisfied with his share, any more than people are on the Mainland. Perhaps that is the real difference between the two sets of islanders: those in Hawaii are hustling to get more while those in New Zealand sit back content with the government-controlled minimums assigned to them. Why hustle when the prizes are predetermined?
We were having a wonderful time in Hawaii but I had to get Ticky out of there before she picked out a building site-and before I weakened and leased it. Leaving by air is not very ceremonious, thank goodness, for neither one of us was in emotional shape to stand at the rail of the Lurline and listen to "Aloha Oe" as the ship warped slowly away from the dock. A plane departure is mercifully swift. As it was, we were both weeping as the Markhams piled leis around our shoulders. I wonder if anyone ever leaves those glorious islands without promising himself through tears that he will return?
It was a short sleeper flight back to San Francisco. By the time we finished breakfast the Golden Gate bridge was in sight. Before eight o'clock we were standing on the soil of the Mainland and were home for a second time. I had caught cold on the flight, so I rested up in a hotel bed for a couple of days while Ticky shopped. Despite Singapore and Buenos Aires she considers San Francisco tops for shopping and complains that I never allow her enough time for it there; my indisposition was convenient. As soon as I was able to totter around we had a drink at the Top o' the Mark, then caught an evening flight to Denver-and we were home for a third time.
To us, softened up by summer in both hemispheres and months in the tropics, Denver was unbelievably cold. It was too late to catch a shuttle flight to Colorado Springs, so we hurried to the Brown Palace with our fingers numb and our teeth chattering while Ticky pointed out that we would be warm through had we stayed in Hawaii. I conceded the point but was interested then only in getting into a hot tub of water as quickly as possible. Our room turned out to have a nice big tub and all the hot water I could want; we got warm. The room was luxurious in every way and reminded me of New Zealand because it was so different. But I must admit that it cost twice as much as our room in the Waverly.
But it was worth at least six times as much. The next foreigner to make a disparaging remark about bathtub & plumbing as the vulgar criterion of culture in America in my presence is going to get a swift poke in the eye. Decent bathrooms do not constitute civilized living, but they are as necessary to high civilization as water is to a fish. Music festivals and such are necessary, too-but we have both.
The shuttle flight from Denver to our little town is only twenty-five minutes; one does not even unfasten seat belts. For the last time I made sure that all the suitcases went with us, then breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that all worries were over.
Ten minutes after we took off that confounded daisy clipper caught fire. The pilot made a sharp U-turn and headed us back for an emergency landing while the hostess hurried up and down the aisle, assuring the passengers that there was no danger. Ticky leaned over to me and whispered bleakly, "If we walk away from this, I'm going the rest of the way by bus." I did not have an answer.
The plane filled up with smoke to the point where we could not see each other's faces and I began to wonder if we would smother even if we did not burn. But the hostess-gallant as airline hostesses have proved themselves to be in many an emergency-turned out to be right; the fire was not dangerous, being merely some excess oil in a cabin heating system and involving neither structure nor engine. We landed easily and walked away untouched.
I did not attempt to argue with Ticky's determination to go the rest of the way on the ground; I kept quiet while cursing silently the perversity of chance that took us forty thousand miles around and up and down a planet without a single mishap, not a missed connection, not a missing piece of luggage, not even a flat tire-then saddled me with a fire in the air when we were actually within sight of the mountain we lived on. I felt sure that I would never live it down, that I would never again persuade Ticky to risk her slender neck in one of those pesky flying machines.
So I did not argue; I simply guided her steps toward the cocktail bar and administered several doses of nerve tonic to her as rapidly as possible. I had one, too, to keep her company-and just a bit because I had been a touch nervy myself when the cabin filled up with smoke and the plane lost altitude rapidly. Nothing important, mind you, since I am a fatalist. But the first dose of medicine tasted so good I had a second one.
It took them an hour and a half to get that bucket of bolts ready to fly again, but by the time they did Ticky was no longer talking about catching a bus. With only a little effort she could have flapped her wings and flown down unassisted. The second try at getting to Colorado Springs was uneventful, though we were amazed to find that we had been away so long that they had had time to build a new airport terminal while we were gone. But we did not stop to admire it; friends were waiting there to meet us, with hugs and handshakes and more tearful kisses. Ticky, with great care, had managed to keep one orchid lei fresh; she wore it, and carried that ubiquitous and utterly unpackable big coolie hat she had bought in Java. Between the two she looked quite out of place in that bleak and cold mountain day. We were home.
Thirty minutes later we were home for a fifth time and truly home at
last, in our own living room, with our friends around us and our cat bumping our legs and demanding to know where in the hell we had been?
XIV
Unpacking
This trip was taken for itself; I had not planned to do a book about it. I am a fiction writer by trade and it seemed to me that John Gunther and Robert Ruark and James Michener and their peers had the globe-trotting business pretty well sewed up. But I found it necessary to write one anyhow, just to get the jumble of impressions in my mind sorted out. A confirmed writing addict can't think clearly without a typer in front of him. (Writing is not a profession, it is a disease.) Since I was compelled to write about it anyhow, why not whip it into some sort of commercial form? It might possibly bring in a few royalties.
But now I reach the point where I must state what I learned from it, which is the hardest part. "Is this trip necessary?"-as those accusing placards used to read during the War. Was a trip around the world worth what it cost in money, in working time, in very considerable physical effort?
There is an old story about a gangling youth, back country, who saw a merry-go-round for the first time and just had to ride on it, to the disgust of his mammy. When he got off, his mammy looked at him sternly. "Sammy, you has spent your money, you has had your ride-but where has you been?"
Did he get anything out of it that made it worth the cost? A fair question-
For me, it has always been worth it. I have never sailed from a port in my life, any port anywhere, but what I was glad to do so. When I was a kid, on a Sunday we would climb on a street car and ride all the way out to the end of the line, then ride back again. It was almost as good as a John Bunny nickel show. Now I have been on the biggest merry-go-round of all, the street car with the longest run; I've paid my money and ridden all the way to the end of the line and back again. It was worth it, I don't regret the expense.
Even today in wealthy America the people who can manage a trip around the world are a very small handful of the population, which is another reason for writing about it. Those who can spare the time usually cannot afford such a trip; those who have the money to spare usually find it difficult to spare so much time from their business responsibilities-one does not become wealthy by trotting off on long junkets with no one to keep an eye on the business.
Now, Ticky and I are far from being wealthy-wealthy writers are as scarce as albino crows; I know of only one. Most free-lance writers are just two jumps ahead of the installment collector and borrow money from their agents and importune their publishers for advances. But a free-lance writer does have the advantage that he is not tied to the shop; he can usually arrange his time to do what he wants to do. Therefore, if he can scrape up the money, he can travel. To me, this is probably the greatest single advantage of an otherwise not-too-satisfactory trade. My colleagues seem to think so, too; free-lance writers are, I am almost certain, the most tireless vagabonds in the whole population, not counting those people who are paid to travel.
We were able to make this trip because I found myself, for the first and only time in my life, with enough money not already committed elsewhere to permit us to make it. A prudent man would have taken such money and invested it in something solid; to spend your only nickel on the merry-go-round is not sensible economics . . . unless you believe in your heart (as I do) that a ride on the merry-go-round is worth more than cash in the bank. You must be able to laugh in Poor Richard's face. Now that the money is gone I'm saving my nickels again for a trip around the world northern hemisphere, and after that for a trip all the way across Asia come the day we get the communist apes civilized or liquidated. After that- Well, after that I will really have to save my nickels because I figure the first scheduled tourist trip to the moon will be pretty expensive.
But I rather think that, by the time I am ready to pay for tickets, Mrs. Feyock will be ready to sell them to me.
In the mean time, what did we learn on this trip? Not what we saw-we saw funny birds and people who ate bananas with knives and forks and lions in the bush. What did we learn? What was worth the effort?
In the first place, travel to see scenery is not worth the trouble. Scenery is everywhere. Hollywood has long since listed all the outdoor backgrounds in the world, right in California. The hypothetical trip I described whereby one could see everything New Zealand has in a few states of our west could be duplicated for any part of the globe, if not inside the forty-eight states, then certainly within North America. If your principal interest is in natural wonders, then the usual two-week vacation is long enough; we've got them all, right here at home.
Nevertheless I am certain that I got my money's worth and a big fat profit in the people we saw and encountered and the things we learned. I am going to split the list up into two parts: practical matters, and heavy punditing of the Walter Lippmann sort. The practical minutiae will give you something, at least, for this book; the wise conclusions you can read or ignore- I'm new at the pundit business.
Practical matters: Packing and preparing for a long trip of many weeks or months with many stops is different from packing for a fortnight's vacation. There are two approaches, to pack only for health and reasonable comfort, or to pack so that you are prepared to dress smartly for every occasion you are likely to encounter and to have with you every convenience you are likely to need.
I strongly favor the first approach and believe that luggage should be limited to two bags apiece, one for each hand, no matter how long the trip. But many wives (and some men) prefer Ticky's approach, which is more like that of the White Knight in Alice Through the Looking-Glass. You remember? The White Knight had never yet been troubled with mice on his horse but, if one ever should show up, there was a mouse trap waiting for it. Ticky would be happiest with a camel train.
But she did manage to have us smartly turned out under all possible circumstances for months on end, and we had with us typewriter, books, extensive camera equipment, binoculars, an electric iron, and a dozen other things, all within the limitations of ten suitcases and no trunks.
But first let's list items indispensable even when traveling light. I am not going to list clothing in detail, as that is personal choice and the requirements of destination. British Overseas Airways Corporation, 342 Madison Avenue, New York 17, has an advisory service on how to make the most of your international flight allowance of 66 pounds-which is just about two large suitcases. Esquire had an article on this same subject this past year and Holiday runs such advice from time to time. But I will not presume to pick out for you your clothes or toilet articles.
But I do want to make certain remarks. Make all possible use of the new synthetics such as Orlon, Dacron, and Nylon, the ones which do not wrinkle and which may be washed out in soap and water. Reliable drycleaning is not only hard to come by, but frequently there is not time for it, whereas you can always wash out a garment in a tub or hand basin, if it can stand soap and water. I had with me two pairs of slacks which looked like tropical-weight wool which I wore almost constantly. They have never been drycleaned, have repeatedly been sopped in hand basins, and have never been pressed. But the creases in them are as knife sharp as the day they were purchased; they simply do not wrinkle. I had a formal dark blue suit as well, which looks like blue serge-but it was washed in a bathtub with soap and water one time when we were long away from drycleaning. Without drycleaning and with the circumstances of travel, hot train compartments, planes, and buses, and such, wool clothes will soon begin to stink, even when they still look smart. Avoid them as much as possible.
I do not like the feel of most of the synthetics against my skin, so I used cotton shirts and underwear. But this is a personal idiosyncrasy.
We each carried just one all-purpose coat. Mine was a dark blue topcoat-raincoat; Ticky's was a long coat in an oatmeal shade which could be worn day or evening. This shade will show dirt but it was made of Orlon, which is the same plastic as Plexiglas and washes just as easily. It could be, and was, washed out in a bathtub, then allowed t
o drain dry, whereupon it was ready to wear without pressing. Besides this she carried a plastic raincoat and plastic boots of the sort that fold into an envelope and fit into a purse. Since my topcoat was a raincoat and since men's shoes are not the frivolities that women wear, I did not have this equipment-but it is worth considering.
The drugs we found indispensable are these: aspirin, laxative, the opposite of a laxative (even more important), vitamin pills (we started out without any; Ticky got both scurvy and pellagra), Dramamine (there is a new seasick remedy which your doctor can recommend which does not have some of Dramamine's side effects), iodine, Band-Aids, and a fungicide (I prefer Upjohn's Benzo-Salicylic Compound, plus Desenex foot powder, but be sure to take something; the fungus skin diseases and diarrhea are the two greatest physical hazards of travel abroad).
In addition to the above, which I regard as an irreducible minimum, if you are dependent on thyroid extract, insulin, nitroglycerine, or any other special drug, take along a bit more than necessary for the entire trip. Although chemist's shops are everywhere your prescription may not be honored, the local chemist may not have it, or you may not be able to get to one in time. If you are chained to spectacles, as I am, two pairs are an utter minimum-remember what happened to me in Africa, when I broke two pairs in twenty-four hours.
If you use an electric razor, take along the sort of blade razor you hate least; you will not be able to use your electric razor about half the time.
Tramp Royale Page 39
