Before I begin, let me apologize for my poor writing skills. I had Mrs. Smisson for English class and she was a great teacher. Unfortunately I was a very poor student. I was more interested in watching TV than studying. I also had trouble concentrating on my studies when at home doing homework. I was so crazy about TV shows like 77 Sunset Strip, Man From Uncle, Paladin, Rat Patrol, Combat, Gunsmoke, etc. that I wired leads to the speaker of our TV in the living room. From there I ran the wiring through the floor under the cabinet where the TV rested in our den then continued under the house up through the register in my bedroom. There I connected a hidden speaker under my desk so I could listen to the programs without my parents knowing about it. 

    After attending ECU for almost three years, I was struggling to stay in school due to the low GPA from poor grades. My first year was so bad that I had to go to summer school to get enough quality points to stay in school. I made so many D’s and F’s that first year that I had to make A’s and B’s to get my average up to a C and stay in school. I made good grades the next two years, but not enough A’s and B’s to get my GPA up to par. 

    I joined the US Navy in October of 1972 to avoid being drafted after losing my student deferment. My draft number was 98 and at that time all draftees were given the choice to join the Army or Marine Corps and most were being sent to Vietnam. I went to boot camp with a young man from Durham on the same plane to Orlando. After three months of boot camp in the same recruit company, we were both stationed in New London, CT at the submarine base working on tug boats towing submarines in and out of Long Island Sound. One night we lost electrical power on the base. Soon after I was notified that my friend from Durham had been killed when he hit a power pole on his motorcycle near the base at what must have been a very high rate of speed. This was not long after I had learned that my high school friend Matthew Rudisill had died from a heart attack while playing basketball in a gym at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.  I had just been to see him there on one of my trips to and from Raleigh. I was depressed for a while after that. I had been riding motorcycles for many years and was extremely lucky to still be alive after many close calls. I once fell asleep while riding and woke up to find myself close to the edge of a cliff that went down more than 500’ below. My guardian angel was protecting me.

    Then the Navy transferred me to the aircraft carrier USS Independence CV-62 with a crew of almost 5,000 in Norfolk, VA. I had a great job on the ship correcting navigational charts working as a quartermaster in the navigation division. Our work space was either on the bridge with the captain and other officers or in Secondary Control located under the flight deck on the bow of the ship. That is where we made chart corrections from the Notice to Mariners publications issued monthly to correct our chart portfolio for the world’s oceans. We could look out one of the 5 portholes down at the pressure wave of the bow and see dolphins riding the wave as we made way through the Atlantic and the Caribbean. We could also watch the planes after they were launched from the flight deck. It took me 3 months to learn my way around the ship. I had to qualify as a master helmsman by driving the ship while entering and leaving port, refueling or taking on stores/ammunition from a supply ship, during flight operations, or making passage through narrow straights. Watching jets take off and landing on the flight deck was very exciting at first, but trying to sleep in our berthing space under the flight deck with planes taking off and landing day and night was difficult to get used to. The noise was unbelievable. We had our own lounge with both an onboard TV and a radio station to enjoy when off duty. The ship went to the Mediterranean Sea for a 6 month deployment. It was home-ported in Naples, Italy.  We had port visits in Rota, Barcelona, and Palma de Mallorca, Spain. We also went to Cannes, France as well as Iraklion, Crete before returning to Naples, Palma, and Rota. The ship’s recreation department had very good tours in all the ports we entered. I took advantage of all that I could. I have to say that I am not proud of a lot of the things I did with women that were waiting for us on the pier when we came ashore during these port visits. But after being at sea for a period of as long as 40 days, it was very hard to resist the temptation especially when all my shipmates were enjoying themselves with ladies of the night. I was not a good Christian man in those days. I cursed like a sailor as the expression goes. I drank too much and I didn’t follow the Ten Commandments.  Eventually we returned to the shipyards in Portsmouth, VA.  After leaving the shipyard, we made trips to Mayport, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba then returned to Norfolk. I received an early good conduct discharge in August of 1975 and returned to school at ECU with the GI Bill paying my tuition while staying in the Naval Reserve. The school had a program for vets and they erased all my D’s and F’s from my records and I had to take all those classes again. This time I received mostly A’s with just a few B’s for my grades.

    In September of 1976, I decided to leave ECU in Greenville, NC and move to Valencia, Spain to study at the University of Valencia. On the advice of my advisor Dr. Murad, who was the head of the Spanish Department, I went on a Junior Year in Spain program that was approved by the university. It was arranged that all the students in this program would be living with a family in the city of Valencia and would receive room and board as well as a lot of exposure to Spanish culture and language.  My classes would consist of Spanish history, art, literature, and the Spanish language.  Mima, my girlfriend at ECU, left school on a Junior Year in France program to study the French language at the university in Aix en Provence.  We exchanged addresses where we would be living in Spain and France.

    I arrived in Madrid, but my bicycle and a large trunk followed on a cargo plane several days later when they should have been there. I took the train to Valencia from Madrid without them because I had to register at the university for classes then had to return to Madrid to pick up my things.  I was very disappointed to find out that myself and another student had been placed with an old widow.  It was only a couple of weeks after his arrival that he had family problems in San Diego, and had to return leaving me alone in the apartment with the old woman.  I had nothing in common with her and only returned to the apartment to eat and sleep.  She was very frugal and the food was terrible. It was obvious to me that she was only in this program for the money.  I met a couple of very interesting Spaniards at the university who were marine biology majors and soon developed a great relationship with them.  With them I obtained the bulk of my learning the Spanish language.  They had already made friends with one of the female students that was in the same program with me.  Together we had a lot of fun going out on the town and making excursions out of the city to interesting locations throughout the province of Valencia. My classmates were mostly Spaniards so the professors did not seem to have the American students in mind when speaking because they didn’t slow down or speak clearly while teaching. It was difficult to say the least. 

    After three months of living with the old woman, I was invited to move into the apartment belonging to the family of my friend Juan Ibanez.  It was closer to the University of Valencia and much more convenient for everything. We had parties every weekend with many of Juan’s friends.  At Christmas time my girlfriend took the train from Aix to Valencia and we had a wonderful week together going to parties and traveling to Mallorca on an overnight ferry. We spent several days sightseeing in Palma de Mallorca before returning to Valencia. While we were in Mallorca I proposed marriage to her.  She told me she loved me, but she wasn’t ready to get married yet.  Mima returned to Aix and to the family that she was living with.  We decided to meet in Munich, Germany a few weeks later and go to the Hofbrauhaus for New Year’s Eve.  

    It was my decision to save money and hitchhike to Munich. It was a blessing to get very good rides with very nice folks. The first ride took me with a group of Spanish students from Valencia going to a rented cabin in the Pyrenees where they were going skiing for several days. I decided to stay with them for two days as I was almost a third of the way to Munich and ahead of schedule.  From there I hitched a ride with a beautiful young woman to Lyon, France. Unfortunately I didn’t get her address or phone number. I left my borrowed hiking boots (very expensive mistake that cost me $200 later) in the back of her car.  

    From Lyon I received another fantastic ride.  A wealthy young Swiss student picked me up in his vintage 1958 Volkswagen in pristine condition.  He invited me to stay at his apartment on the outskirts of Geneva. Since I was so close to Munich, I stayed with he and his roommate for two days of partying. After arriving in Geneva, Switzerland, I had to buy more boots because it was snowing and very cold. Switzerland was the worst place to buy them due to the value of the Swiss franc (backed by gold) compared to all other currency.  At that time a postcard in Switzerland cost almost a dollar while in the US you could buy one for $.25. 

    The train to Munich was not expensive so I decided to take it.  I was supposed to meet Mima at the Munich train station at the time her train came in from Milan, Italy.  Unfortunately she was not at the train station when I arrived at the appointed time.  I was wondering how in the world I was going to find her.  After waiting several hours, I went to the Marienplatz (famous large city square with the Glockenspiel Clock Tower to think about what I was going to do. How would I find her in a city of over 1 million people?  As I was watching people in the square, I spotted Mima and was never more relieved in my entire life then that moment upon seeing her. It was a miracle and she couldn’t believe it either.  She said her train had arrived early and she didn’t know when I would be there. We were so happy that afternoon. We went to the Hofbrauhaus and had a beer.  The women serving the beer were incredible. They would come from the bar with 4 humongous beer steins. These steins held almost 1 1/2 liters of beer.  We were hardly able to finish them.  

    After New Years, we went to the train station to catch the train to Milan and then to Aix.  As we arrived at the train station, the train to Milan was getting ready to leave and the next would not leave for another day.  Mima wanted to get on the train and worry about our tickets later.  I told her we couldn’t do that because we would not be allowed to purchase the tickets after getting on the train and we would be either fined or put off the train at the next stop. We argued for a while and finally I gave in and we got on the train.  I didn’t have a lot of money left and I was worried and for good reason.  After the conductor found out we had no tickets, he told us we would have to immediately pay a fine that amounted to more than three times the price of the tickets. That almost cleaned us out of the money we had. I lost my temper and really let her have it for not listening to me. After arriving in Milan, Mima went on to Aix and I spent all the remaining money I had to get a ticket to Valencia. Our relationship was destroyed because she never forgave me for getting upset with her. Mima lived up to that phrase made famous by Wm. Congreve: ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

    I was dependent upon money from my GI bill to pay for my studies and that only came once a month. My parents had to deposit the government check then wire me the money. I was going to have to borrow money from my Spanish friends to make ends meet until my next wire arrived.  Things would be difficult for a while.  When the semester finished, I decided to leave school and head to a warmer place.  My destination was the Canary Islands, a province of Spain, but very far from the mainland.  The Canaries are located 100 km west of the coast of Morocco.  I bought saddle bags for my bicycle and filled them with all the clothes and items I needed for a lengthy stay on Gran Canary Island.  I left Valencia on the highway south to Andalucia and Algeciras, Spain where I would catch the ferry to Gran Canary Island.  The first day on the road I had to repair 2 flat tires and the second day was worse. I ran out of patches to repair my tires and decided that it just wasn’t worth it to keep pedaling my bike to southern Spain.  I put my bike on the train and continued to Algeciras.  

    It was a two day trip to the Canaries from the mainland.  The first night out we encountered a bad winter storm in the Atlantic. Around 10 pm I heard a lot of commotion out on deck. In the distance I could see a freighter that was on fire. The captain changed course to see if he could be of any assistance to the burning vessel.  As we approached the vessel we could see the navigation lights on two lifeboats.  The wind and the waves were terrible.  It was extremely difficult for the captain to maneuver the large vessel alongside of the lifeboat to rescue the survivors and it took several hours just to finally get alongside one of them. In the meanwhile, the lights of the other lifeboat disappeared.  The crew were a mixed lot and spoke several languages. They were obviously untrained to perform a rescue like the one that was needed.  They threw life rings to the lifeboat, but the people were suffering from hypothermia and could not hold on.  They could not manage to tie a lifeline on to the lifeboat. The swells were so big that they were smashing the lifeboat up against the side of our ship and threatening to break it apart. One poor survivor that was holding on to a lifeline was pulled out of the boat and fell between it and our ship. His legs were crushed between the two when the swell pushed the boat against ours. The survivors were all wet and two bodies were floating face down in the water filled lifeboat. The wind and waves would take the lifeboat almost out of our vision and the captain would have to maneuver the ship to them again and again. The poor folks were crying and begging for help, but we were almost helpless.  Finally a large muscular German passenger pushed crew members aside and climbed down a rope and managed to tie it on to the lifeboat. One after another he carried survivors up the rope ladder to our ship until all were aboard. There must have been 15 or more in the boat. The crew gave them all blankets, hot coffee and whiskey.  They were all incredibly happy to be alive.  We never found the other lifeboat and I don’t know to this day if there were any other ships in the area that were able to assist the burning freighter.  I have written to the Trasmediterranea Ferry Company in Spain to see if I could get any information of that rescue.  When I returned to Valencia in May of 1977 on one of the same company’s ferries, there was an article in their magazine on the rescue so I know there has to be a record of it somewhere.  

    After leaving the ship in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria which is on the north end of the island, I road my bicycle a day and a half down a good highway to the southwestern tip of the island about where there was a campground where I could pass the winter very inexpensively.

This part of the island was very well known for the resorts where thousands of Scandinavian and German tourists spent their winter vacations on beautiful white sandy beaches.  Here I found Camping Guantanamo at Playa Tauro and made a lot of friends immediately.  I met a German woman that was cooking dinner 5 days a week every evening and selling it to  many of the campers. She had been there a long time and wanted to sell her business. I bought all of her cooking equipment and gave her a small amount for her business and began cooking in the campground kitchen every evening. I already had all her clients so it was a slam dunk.  All I had to do each day was ride my bike to the store in Arguineguin  which was only about 5 km from the campground.  Next to the campground was a bar right on the beach.  The beach was a clothing optional beach so that was very attractive to many Scandinavians and Germans.  The campground was full of young English tourists escaping the brutal English winter.  There was a party in the campground every night.  I brought my Spanish textbooks and continued to study during the 4 months I was there. I continued to write to my parents and friends as the mail service was very good.  I gave a free meal to an Englishman every night for cleaning all my cooking utensils and dishes. 

    After arriving, I made the mistake of drinking the water from the campground tap. The next day I was in a bad way and If any of you have been to Mexico, you probably know or have heard of Montezuma’s Revenge is. Drinking contaminated non potable water can be dangerous. From then on it was bottled water or beer only. In a couple of days I was back to normal.  I fell in love again and this time it was with a beautiful girl from Jersey in the Channel Islands between the UK and France.  It never became serious because she went home not long after I arrived.  Then another woman came into my life.  She was a young nurse from Chicago on vacation with her best girlfriend who was also a nurse.  Unfortunately they both chain smoked cigarettes and that put the brakes on that relationship.  I couldn’t stand kissing anyone whose mouth tasted like an ashtray. They stayed a month or so and went back to the US. We had a great time together while it lasted and I kept in touch with both the Jersey and the Chicago woman for many years afterwards as well as some of the English, and Dutch friends that I made there.

I was no longer receiving money for school from the VA so I ran out of money and had to return to Valencia.  Before leaving Gran Canaria, I bought a lot of duty free Marlboro cigarettes and other items in high demand back in Valencia before returning to the mainland. This gave me enough money to live on until my parents arrived in June.

My parents flew to Madrid where I met them. My dad rented a car and we traveled to all the major cities of Spain during an unforgettable month. I believe my dad took almost 1000 slides during that trip. I turned them all into a digital format.  My parents had been to Europe when I was younger.  My mom’s parents had lived in France after the war because my grandfather was a colonel in the US Army and was stationed at a base in Orleans, France. We went to spend a summer with them and during that time my mom and dad had toured a lot of France, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, but had never been to Spain.  We had a fantastic time traveling together and meeting many wonderful Spanish people. My mom grew up in San Antonio, Texas and learned to speak a little Spanish. The Spanish people we met were thrilled to meet Americans that could speak some of their language.   

    We returned to the US together in July and I was planning on finishing my degree in Business Administration and Spanish at ECU.  Unfortunately when I went to register they told me that I would have to pay out of state tuition because I had been out of the country for an extended period of time. I protested, but they told me I would have to take it up with the board at the admissions office.  I was furious to say the least and without sitting down and rationalizing what to do, decided to go back to South Dakota where we had lived before moving to Raleigh. Then I was going to head to the Pacific Northwest where I had seen and read about the incredible landscapes and history in National Geographic Magazine.  

    I started another adventure after buying a Chevy van. My ’66 VW camper had burned to the ground on I-85 while driving to Greensboro, NC to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the Greensboro Colosseum.  I needed another vehicle in which I could make that trip. I wrote about this in a previous story that I hope you enjoyed.  

Wow!!!  Barry.  I'll write more later, but what a life you've led!!!

Dan,

I may have done a lot of traveling and had a lot of adventures, but not compared to your experiences. You are like Louis L'Amour in many ways. He is one of the world's greatest story tellers. I have read most all of his books and I just ordered 5 short story collections that have recently been published by his family after finding more of his lost works. I know many of our classmates have had some great adventures, just can't understand why they don't want to share them.  Is inflation getting bad there in Pataya?  We are seeing prices rise here in Colombia.  The new president is a socialist/communist and very cozy with Venezuela's dictator Nickolas Maduro.  

Blessings to you and your family