When I first read Never Say Goodbye I thought that the plot device of taking a friendly-ish and unmolested trip behind the Iron Curtain was a silly one. No one ever did that! I thought. But this reading was much closer than my last one and some of the details are so real that you just can't imagine that Betty didn't see them herself. Thomas, the hero, speaks of the big hotels as being empty of tourists because it's the wrong season, for instance.So, I keep a book in the car at all times. (You know the drill. Husband runs into the grocery store to get cash for the sitter and you're there with nothing to do for 10 minutes...) Right now, it's a thick hardback tome called Great Escapes--it's an old Reader's Digest compilation of great escapes from impossible situations and it's wonderful. All the stories are just a few pages long. Anyway, just this week I picked it up and read the story of a man who took a vacation behind the Iron Curtain and met a girl who later became his fiancee'. (He got her out by going to flight school for a year and learning to pilot a small aircraft and then being willing to fly across the border and possible create an international incident.)
So, it isn't the rare thing that I thought.
My question is, do you think The Great Betty went to Communist Poland?
Here's my case: I don't think she did (because wouldn't she have used Poland again in other books?) but I think a close friend of hers did and her writer's nose smelled a good story.
P.S. That picture up there is dedicated to my baby, Code Monkey van Voorhees.
Well, I Wiki'ed Poland and the real question is when The Great Betty might have had this adventure.
ReplyDeleteMy feeling is that her observations of Gdansk were too personal to have been pulled out of a guide book or based on someone else's experience.) But this could have happened at any time in the 60s, 70s, or early 80s. (I'm intrigued that Mills & Boon published it in 1983, suggesting The Great Betty wrote it the year before, roughly. But Harlequin -- a Canadian company -- didn't publish it in North America until the 1990s. Yet another benefit of perestroika...)
Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement was in 1980, and martial law was declared in 1981. Who's to say Betty didn't make a trip to Poland in 1980? My grandmother went to the Soviet Union in 1969 when she was 80 -- she figured (correctly) that the Soviets were less likely to hassle an old woman in a wheel chair. (Not that The Great Betty was old in 1980...)
My father has Polish relatives and visited several times before the Iron Curtain came down. He also made a trip to Russia. It's possible that Americans had restrictions against travel (I don't know) but I know quite a few Brits who traveled to eastern Europe. It wasn't exactly comfortable (one was always told to take toilet paper and bath plugs) but definitely interesting. I remember when he went to Russia (I think in the early 70s) that the only trouble he encountered was having the film confiscated when he took a picture of some statue or monument - apparently there was some super top secret installation in the frame, though needless to say he had no idea and wouldn't have known how to pass it on to the Secret Service.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Americans had any travel restrictions, per se, but we are VERY far away from Poland (even the East coast Bettys) and that, added to the Iron Curtain and the toilet paper, might have been deterrents enough. But if I'd lived in Holland and it was a mere day's travel, I can see hopping over the border and looking around.
ReplyDeleteMy only sticking point, is, if The Great Betty went herself, why didn't she dip into those experiences again? (We hear about Norway and Portugal over and over again...)
Betty Keira -- I would love to be proven wrong (because that would mean someone who actually KNOWS stuff has shown up!!!) but here's my theory on that:
ReplyDeleteEvery trip in a book is a single trip in her real life. So every book with a trip to Norway means she made that same trip. The trips to Portugal and the Mediterranean are easy to understand: warm, friendly villages, etc. (Notice: no trips to France other than to clip the corner heading from Dover to Rotterdam?)
But Norway always confused me until I realized that someone (her son-in-law, I suspect) was actually a civil engineer building bridges in northern-most Norway. Because, really -- no one touristy goes to Norway at the times of year that she went to Norway. But you might if you were visiting family.
But I bet she went to Poland only once. Maybe she'd not gotten the memo about bringing toilet paper and a bath plug...
That's my supposition, at least.
I take serious issue with your illustration as I type on my computer that runs an open source OS (Ubuntu Linux), in a browser that is open source (Firefox) and If I were editing one of your photos I would do it on my open source photo editor (Gimp) and write you a letter on my open source word processor (Open Office) all of which are free and of better quality than Microsoft products aren't as susceptible to viruses and malware and were not coerced from anyone but given freely kind of like the law of consecration.
ReplyDeleteI feel we have found my line in the sand right in front of bottomless french fries and open source.
I knew I could expect censure from a tech-y's wife (Bride of Tech-y!). Seriously, though, Nathan loves open source...
ReplyDeleteYou know what I find amazing about Open Source software (I use Mozilla for browsing and e-mail) is that a bunch of intelligent folks sit around in their basements and spend an inordinate amount of time expending their little grey cells and sharing their knowledge through typing into computers and cultivating virtual relationships without any hope of economic gain. Oh, ooops....
ReplyDeleteI'll have you know, neither Betty Keira or I have a basement!
ReplyDeleteI have a basement and you're welcome to use it anytime, Founding Bettys. Word to the Wise, bring your snuggly and wood. There's a frig/freezer, stove/over, woodburning stove and beds down there. Come summer you may be sharing with the young professors. Never know when the swallowers return to Basementstrano. And you'd have to bring your own computers/programs (free or MS, up to you).
ReplyDeleteI'm ambivalent on everything else discussed in this thread. I have two polish SIL's so I approve that Betty went there, (if she did.)
Ooh, here are pictures of my basement office. It's nicely warm too, mostly because it's next to the furnace.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, that's where I am right now, typing away.
I would love to snuggle down in your gorgeous office, Betty Magdalen! That fabric stash makes me drool, even though sewing is all but impossible for me these days. You have serious issues with fabric buying! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI do all of my computing and sculpting from my bed on an over-bed table, surrounding myself with as much storage as possible to keep office supplies, art supplies and tools as close to hand as possible. The sewing machine just doesn't lend itself to this arrangement! I miss it so!
me<><
I've often wondered about doing all my writing in an armchair--we have a laptop but it stays on the counter because once you show the kiddos that it can be moved, well...A deep chair looks just lovely to work in and I am so jealous of your space. Does that sound very Virginia Woolfe-y?
ReplyDeleteWell, you know that all Bettys have a permanent invitation to come visit and blog from that every easy chair...
ReplyDelete