Homeward Bound

July 21, 2011

Homeward bound

The boat that I row won’t cross no ocean The boat that I row won’t get me there soon -Neil Diamond

BREAKING NEWS: TS Empire State VI and the Boys of Summer have turned a late-scheduled one-day stop in Mallorca into a four-day festival of fun, sun and Spanish Castle Magic. On account of our extended holiday in Spain, we are not—repeat, not!—going to France.

Four days in Palma de Mallorca, the disco inferno capital of Europe? ¡Hey, Macarena! Don’t get me wrong. There’s more to it than just shake, shake, shake—shake your bootie. I, for one, felt like everyone’s favorite knight errant, Don Quixote of La Mancha, when I disembarked the ark and what did I spy but a fort guarded only by a couple of grazing burros. I kid ye not. And what upon a hillside but a castle and a windmill! ¡Dios mio! My father, the medievalist, would have thought he’d died and gone to Dante’s Paradiso; if not that juxtaposed with the splendid medieval architecture—a 10th century Arab Bath, for instance; one of the few remaining testaments to 700 years of Moorish rule in Mallorca—were clothing optional beaches and all-night foam parties; in other words, a 21st century bath, if not quite Arab. Add expats and immigrants, and Palma is quite the mixed-up, perhaps reluctantly cosmopolitan place; a far cry from the passed over provincial backwater it had been before Franco opened the floodgates of tourism in the 1950’s. ¡Gracias al Caudillo!

Continuing on the subject of Gold Star dedications, my dear friend Nicholas Valavanis says hello to his mother and father, whom he loves and misses. And I, ol’ peppery Curley, say Happy Big Fat Turkish Wedding Day to my cousin Paul and his wife, Aylin. Wish I could be there to dance the Macarena—¡Hey, Macarena!—late into the Istanbul night, but, alas, duty calls.

Lastly, far be it for a seasoned—or seasonal, as the case may be—journalist to report on hearsay and rumor, but the hearsay and rumor scuttlebutt has it that our scheduled bunkering in Gibraltar for fuel and supplies might—repeat, might!—turn into a full-fledged pull-out-all-the-stops stop with liberty and justice for all...well, except for those naughty boys and girls assigned ED. I, for one, am as sure as Dante’s Purgatorio hoping for one last chance to sink my little tootsies into European soil before the long cross-Atlantic trek; but if Providence—or Captain Smith, whomever is calling the shots—wills it, then we’ll hunker down like Saint Brendan the Navigator, steamroll this here steamer past Go without collecting 200 greenbacks and head straight for Throgs Neck!

¡Hasta el próximo!

Curley