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Show Family Weekly August si, lim Expect the Unexpectec :;iJ Some American tourists wan noted write I! entertain for a moment, happily, a visual image of an elderly spinster who has discovered a man under her bed. :r I few days ago I asked a friend how she had enjoyed the trip from which she and her family had just re- A turned. My friend is from Rhode Island and this vital statistic goes a long way toward explaining the ambiguity of her answer: "Well, it wasn't what we'd expected." The limb of a tree is not something a New Englander goes out on. I was born and grew up in the Middle West, but, until this exchange with my friend, it had not occurred to me this geographic incident would affect my response to the sorties I have made from my native milieu. I stay away from a discomfiting speculation about the possible cause being a lack of orderliness of mind. There is no getting away from the realization, however, that I have always gone on a trip with great expectations of enjoyment but never with a mental prospectus detailing what to expect. My first view of Paris, for example, was 4 Family Weekly, August 31, 1969 , t IV through a window in a corridor of the boat train from Cherbourg. Since this was my first trip to Europe, this was my first journey on a French train, and I spent nearly every minute of it at a window in the corridor of my coach. I had seen pictures of European trains, so I knew the corridor would not be down the center but along one side. But I did not know it would be wide enough for two people to pass nor have windows along the whole length. Until I saw a passenger beside me operate it, I did not know the windows could be lowered from the top, allowing, in seasonable weather, an inquisitive traveler like me to put his head out for a wider view. I had not expected, either, very nearly to pitch all the way out when I heard for the first time the piercing shriek of a French train whistle. I am no longer startled witless ; it is now a sound I not only expect but love (though not musically) as a symbol of France. To this day, each time I hear it, I The sight of the Eiffel Tower had an effect as positive as the whistle's but in the opposite direction. Instead of leaving the ground, I think I would have sunk into it had there not been a horizontal bar across the window, convenient for resting elbows while looking out, handy for clinging to when I suddenly developed knees in aspic. I heard myself say aloud, "I didn't expect it to look so fragile and delicate," And then I remember I said, in order to believe it, "Emily Kimbrough's coming into Paris!" The memory of that arrival in Paris is vivid to me today, but I do not remember any landmark that balanced my anticipation nor a detail of living that was not a surprise. Because of my awareness of a chronic deficiency in mathematics, I had studied and rehearsed aloud the details of French currency and the proper percentage for tips. I was not equipped, however, for the details of my first encounter with a French porter. He exhorted everyone within hearing of his powerful voice to understand the starving condition of his wife and large family that would certainly not be relieved by the miserable sum I was offering Jum. Without doubt, too, because of the size and weight of my luggage and I had been ashamed of its modesty his back was injured, and he would be unable to work again for a long time. Out of humiliation at my own situation and concern for his, I would have given more had a Frenchman not intervened. The family of my taxi driver was in an even more pitiable condition, but I had discovered, with some surprise at my aptitude, how quickly public mortification can harden the heart No experienced traveler nor guidebook had told me to include in my preparations, physical conditioning for a lighting device I would meet in the kind of French hotel I could afford. It was (and still is) called a minuterie and performs just as the name sounds, lighting the corridors one minute from the instant the starting button is pushed. The hellish invention is always installed on the ground floor by the front door. My room was on the third ; there was no elevator. If I took the position of a competitor in the dash at a track meet knees flexed, body forward, head out, and one hand on the 50-ya- rd 1 1 I f |