LUCY VAN OLDENBARNEVELD
Little Italy, March 31, 2017.
“I grew up in Hamilton and we didn’t have a lot of money or a lot of opportunity to do things, but I always wanted to see the world.
“I had been working at a roller rink all through high school and had saved up a bit of money. And when I was 17, I saw in the newspaper that Greyhound had an all-you-can-use pass, a three-week pass, anywhere in North America, for $175. So I thought, ‘This is my chance.’
“And for some reason, my mother didn’t oppose this. I don’t know why, but God bless her, she was busy with two younger siblings, and this was going to be fine. So I got the pass and I’m thinking, ‘Where am I going to go? I don’t have any money, so how am I going to work this?’ But my grandmother in Holland, who I loved and who was a fascinating woman, had always talked about San Francisco and how, if she could do it all over, wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just go to the Golden Gate Bridge.’
“So I get on the bus in Toronto, and I have a rainbow-striped shoulder bag filled with sandwiches I’d made — roast beef and lettuce and white bread. I think I had a suitcase as well, with some clothes. And away I went.
“My grandmother had a sister in Reno, Nevada, so I was going to stay with her for a couple of days. But other than that, I had nowhere to stay in the evenings. So I had the Greyhound bus schedule, and I was able to plan it so that I could sleep on the bus at night while we were travelling, and wherever I landed in the morning, that’s where I would spend the day. And I had three weeks to use it, so I was in Wisconsin, I was in Salt Lake City, I was in Chicago for the day — just the one day because I had to get on the bus to sleep. So I stopped in these cities and toured around, and I finally arrived in Reno, Nevada. My grandmother’s sister picked me up. Jean and Palmer — I’d never met them, and they were the kind of people who smoked and drank and had steak for breakfast and lived in a trailer. I stayed with them for three nights. They had no kids or grandkids, and so Jean and I became fast friends, and she’d send me polyester pants for my birthday for the rest of her life.
“So there we were on my first day in Reno, Nevada. We’re going to get groceries, and we’re walking out — and there are slot machines everywhere — and there’s this one slot machine with a silver dollar in it. And Jean says we have to gamble it right away, so we throw it in and $50 comes out. This was when I was 17, many years ago. Fifty bucks! And I can really use this money. So I bought them the steak and eggs, and left them after three days and arrived in San Francisco at six in the morning, which was perfect — I was going to have the next 12 hours in San Francisco.
“My first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge. I walked to it with all my stuff, and thought I would spend the day — or the morning, at least — walking back and forth across, just to tell my grandmother that I’d done this. So I bought a postcard at Fisherman’s Wharf, walked to the Golden Gate Bridge, stopped halfway across the bridge, wrote the postcard to my grandmother — I said, ‘Oma, I’m right here. I’m sending you this card,’ walked to the other side, came back and mailed the postcard. I was thrilled to be able to do that for her and she just loved getting it because she was infirm at that point and wasn’t going to be making any more trips.
“And then I spent the afternoon taking a tour of Alcatraz and thought that it was the most exciting thing: the ferry over, learning that there were sharks in the water and learning about the prisoners and the Hollywood recreations of their stories. I felt I had landed in some glamorous place; I was so dazzled by this American city.
“And then it came time to get back on the bus. I went up the Oregon coast and spent a day in Portland, and then eventually Seattle. I spent a day in Vancouver, and then kind of worked my way back.
“We had family in Holland and we’d visited there before, but this was really the first time I’d been anywhere by myself, and I think that it defined me in the sense that I realized that I could do this, that there’s a huge, wide world out there, and I was just so wide-eyed and excited to see it. And I think my sandwiches lasted all the way to Reno. They were gross by then, but when you’re 17, who cares?” — Lucy van Oldenbarneveld at her home in Little Italy, March 31, 2017.