An Unlikely Quartet

In July 1981, my grandmom brought 15-year-old me along on a four-day chartered bus trip to Montreal with her sister, Martha, and Martha’s friend, Mary. Here’s my traveling companions standing outside the Expo 67 pavilion. 

Picture me–the only teen on the tour-amidst a platoon of dozens of senior citizens. A sitcom writer could have written it all down and turned it into an episode of The Golden Girls.

The most interesting character was my Aunt Martha. The trip would have been torture if I didn’t have a great-aunt who was like a female Don Rickles along for the ride. 

Martha constantly wisecracked about traveling with the “Geritol Crew.” Frustrated by the glacial pace of our slow-moving group, 60-year-old Martha fantasized about equipping the bus with a retractable roof and seats with some sort of apparatus that could catapult passengers off the bus. 

I also recall standing in a throng of Montrealers with my aunt, as she commented in a stage whisper: ”Mary–the B.O. is terrific.” 

Martha almost always called me Mary because I reminded her of my mom when she was my age. I didn’t bother to correct her; I was perfectly willing to be called Mary if it kept my aunt’s stream of commentary rolling. 

You always remember certain firsts in your life, and on this trip, Martha was the source of one of mine–she was the first relative who dropped the F-bomb in my presence. Back then, the F-word wasn’t as commonly used, and my family just didn’t say that word. But Martha let loose when a tram car was nowhere to be found, leaving us stranded in the middle of Expo 67 Park. 

Most adults I knew were so worried about setting a bad example that they wouldn’t dream of expressing impolite thoughts to a teen, so my aunt’s lack of a filter was refreshing.

It should be noted that Martha was by no means a barbarian. After all, she was the one who’d gone to the bother of looking up Montreal in her set of encyclopedias and pulled out a loose-leaf sheet with handwritten notes about the city when we set out. 

Travel can be broadening in so many ways.

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Stay tuned: I turn 60 this year, and I’m celebrating every Throwback Thursday with a snapshot from my life on the 0s (10, 20...) or the 5s (15, 25…)