The year 1972 was the year I first rode an airplane and visited the continental United States. It was also the only trip Mom would ever allow me to make with Papi and Titi Gloria. She might have allowed me to travel because all the tough times I had gone through until that point. We set to visit my aunt Titi Geno at her place somewhere in Brooklyn Borough, I want to say.
We left Ponce's Mercedita Airport's old terminal building sometime in July. We flew a PrinAir de Havilland DH 114 which was the airline's standard workhorse. I know we must've flown in July because I remember hearing about the crash of PrinAir flight 191 while at Titi's. That crash took place at Mercedita on June 24, 1972.
I kept my face glued to the window as we ascended. I started to experience vertigo as we ascended, but I didn't care. We approached a puffy white cloud and I saw we were about to punch through it. We did and the flight got very jumpy afterwards. In fact, too jumpy. I vomited in my mouth and swallowed it. At that moment I began to hate flying in propeller-driven planes - a fear I would only shed many years later.
Waiting for us at the old terminal of Isla Verde International Airport was my cousin Peter. He was to join us in our journey. I knew it and was looking forward to. His family had moved from St. Thomas to a cinderblock house in a very rural area of metropolitan San Juan. We boarded an American Airlines Boeing 747, and I was afraid the flight was going to be as jumpy as the one before. It didn't happen, in fact it was so smooth I doubted we were moving at all.
As soon as we landed Titi Geno's daughter, my cousin Edna, picked us up at JFK International Airport. Edna and her then husband would be our drivers and guides through most of our 2-week stay.
Soon after the landing I was asking all sorts of questions. "Where's the Empire State Building? Where's the Statue of Liberty? Will we see the Brooklyn Bridge?" And on and on. I found it amazing that sun was still up in the sky after seven in the evening. and the sun In Puerto Rico it would've set already.
We traveled to several places during the visit. I did get to go to Liberty Island and climb up to the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. We went around Manhattan in a Circle Line ferry. We drove before the Empire State Building though we didn't go in. We also drove by the just completed World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan.
We took the subway everywhere. We walked through Central Park and the Bronx Zoo. One vignette I love to retell has to do with our visit to the zoo either at the Bronx or at Central Park's. There was this huge black gorilla sitting behind a heavy glass pane. My cousin and I had an umbrella that we then aimed at the puzzled gorilla. We began to open and closed the umbrella repeatedly, in shooting snaps. The gorilla inclined its head to one side, as if not believing the sight of us. Then, in an instant, his expression turned to anger, it raised both its arms and bared its fangs. You've never seen a 7 and an 8-year-old running faster away from the - I imagine - chuckling ape.
We rejoined the adults, giggling. They asked, "What happened?" "Nothing" we said, poster boys for a Bill Cosby child joke.
We also traveled to Boston to visit Tío Joaquín and his brood who lived in Boston at the time. Tío Joaquín known as "Quino" (KEEH-noh) was a brother to my beloved Mamá Ana. The adults rented a van for the occasion and to Massachusetts we went. It amazed me one could be riding the same road for hours on end.
I found Boston underwhelming compared to the canyons of Manhattan and said so. We visited the ocean front for a few minutes and the coldness of the ocean breeze impressed me.
The last memory I remember was of our visit to New York's Botanical Garden. There I rode on a camel and saw for the first time a peacock extending its tail.
We said our goodbyes and returned to San Juan in a Boeing 707. I found the space tighter than in the 747 but the flight was also pleasant. The flight to Ponce from San Juan via PrinAir wasn't even as jumpy as the departure flight, two weeks before.
I came home to find Mom pissed because Tío Salvador, another brother to Mamá Ana, had insulted her. He was the one who drove us to the airport on our departure and on the way back he blundered. He told Mom that she should give me to Titi Gloria because I would grow up to be un bandido otherwise. Tío had a fame of being quite undiplomatic and inconsiderate to the feelings of other people. Maybe he thought he was helping me by making such an idiotic suggestion. Believe me, he didn't help me any. What he did was to reinforce Mom's narcissism.
Thus, the summer of 1972 came to an end with indelible memories. In August I would start my second grade at la Academia.
Video - “Voy a América” by Puerto Rico’s Menudo boy band in 1979. The song captures what I felt on my first visit to the US mainland in 1972.