Home Leaves

In January 1979 my family moved from Montgomery Village, Maryland (next to Gaithersburg) to Paris, France.  My father was posted at the US Embassy, with the Dept. of Commerce.  It was an indefinite posting with no known ending, unlike many DOD “tours” or State Dept. assignments. 

 As a 10 year old, I was too young to appreciate the “magic” of Paris.  Even Owen Wilson, as standard issue non-pretentious American actor as you can find (short of boobs like Jonah Hill or Larry the Cable Guy), comes off at pretentious in “Midnight in Paris”.  To me, it was a strange, new world where the native language was French, not English, and my familiar landmarks and TV were completely absent.  Even McDonald’s was only sparsely represented in Paris with a few very substandard locations – greasy, green French fries and persistent flies.  Tacos and Roy Rogers were unknown; even Chicago Pizza Pie Factory and Pizza Hut were years away.  School supplies consisted of “cahiers” and fountain pens.  But we did get to go up the real Eiffel Tower (not the replica at King’s Dominion) and went on trips to London, Belgium, and the beaches of the south of France.

 At some point, my father revealed that we would be able to return to the US on leave (a month vacation), starting August 1980.  To say this excited my brother and I, would be a huge understatement (my sister was too young to remember the US to be excited).  The night before leaving, on the first trip in 1980, was like trying to sleep the night before Christmas.

 Although we owned a house in Gaithersburg, which we did not sell but simply rented while we were gone, the logistics of rentals were such that kicking out the tenants for one month really didn’t make much sense.  We could go by the house and take a look at it (see my Aberdeen Proving Ground pics on Facebook), and I recall on at least one occasion being permitted to go inside by the current tenants.  But each time we needed to find alternate housing.  1990 probably can’t count as “home leave” as we were actually moving back.

 1980.  Our first stop was the Dulles Airport Marriott – not much in the way of fun, but we did get to see American TV again.  Aside from AFN TV at the Raymond Hotel up in Mons Belgium, American TV was practically nonexistent in Paris.  Occasionally they would show US movies or shows, overdubbed into French, but the French were very touchy about “cultural imperialism” and most of the French TV programming was French.  Although the US summer programming was all re-runs (except the Olympics) it was better than anything on French TV.  Fall 1986 at UMCP was the first time since January 1979 I was able to watch live US TV again.

 The highlight of the trip was purchasing the Intellivision video game system and we started this campaign of aggressively seeking out as many games as we possibly find.  We stayed most of the time with my relatives in Alexandria, Virginia (just off Route 1 north of Fort Belvoir).  Although all my cousins are now married, with children, long out of the nest, my aunt and uncle still live in that same house.  For a brief time we stayed across the street in a house of neighbors who had gone on vacation.  At the end we stayed in a Ramada Inn on 270.  Returning to Paris was a major bummer.

 1982.  We started this one out at the Marriott in Montgomery Village (now a Hilton).  Unfortunately that exhausted our budget fairly rapidly, and my parents found more affordable accommodations at the Colonial Manor motel on 355, right across the street from White Flint Mall; the motel is long gone.  It had a kitchenette in the room, and a small pool in the central parking lot.  We continued our diligent search for Intellivision games.

            In addition to seeing “Young Doctors In Love” at the movie theater at White Flint, we also saw the most heavily hyped film of the summer there, “E.T.”, which did not impress me, and “Tron”, which we did like.  “Tron” was notable because several Intellivision games tied into the film appeared in the game catalog long before the movie itself came out, although the games themselves came out after the movie.

 1984.  I already  reviewed this in my Summer of 1984 blog.  We switched houses with a Foreign Service family who lived off McArthur Blvd.  We watched “Mork and Mindy” and the 1984 L.A. Olympics.

 I now recall, which I had left out of that blog, that our family drove up to Boston, Massachusetts that summer during the home leave.  I have vague memories of my brother and I walking around downtown Boston in the heat, but not much more than that for Boston itself.  From Boston we drove west to Worcester, which is where my mom’s family comes from – and most still are.  At Worcester there was a gaming convention, Massconfusion.  We got there too late to actually register for any games, but stayed for a while and enjoyed this.  I know my brother and I had bought Stormbringer, the Elric of Melnibone roleplaying game from Chaosium, the same summer I was reading the Elric books.  Sad Wings of Destiny (Judas Priest) and Master of Reality (Black Sabbath) were the “soundtrack” for that summer, purchased from the PXs of SHAPE and Henderson Hall, respectively.

            We actually met up with Phil, my best friend from high school.  His family had moved back to the US that summer, and was living in temporary housing in Beltsville, MD waiting for their sea shipment to arrive. The TV in that house was an old black and white – more like brown and yellow – with a distorted picture tube.  His mom took us to Laurel Mall, but accidentally took us south on Route 1 instead of north, giving me an early view of College Park.

 1986.  This was the summer I graduated from the American School of Paris, and in fall I was due to start college at the University of Maryland, College Park.  Soon after graduation, but before home leave, I had to go up to SHAPE to get my wisdom teeth removed.  This dentist believed in tackling the issue one side at a time, to allow me to chew food with the other side.  I recall on the second trip, a week later, I listened to Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits) on the car tape deck on the way home.

            My parents had bought an efficiency in Rosslyn, Virginia, in 1984, which is where we stayed this time.  5 people, in TWO sofa-beds and one cot = claustrophobia, so we stayed out as often as possible.  I managed to hang out with Phil, who had moved back to the US in summer 1984 and finished high school at Park View in Sterling, due to start at George Mason University in the fall.  In July I did a two day orientation program at UMCP, which not only familiarized me with the campus, registered me for fall semester classes, and got me to memorize my SSN for the first time, but I also made a few friends who I was able to hang out with in the fall; this was especially important because NO ONE from my high school was going to this college.  We also started learning to drive; unfortunately the car we had been borrowing from my relatives was a stick shift, which didn’t help, but by the end of the summer we had our provisional MD drivers’ licenses.  The coursework was completed at the Sears at Montgomery Mall, the real driving on the streets of Silver Spring, miraculously without any accident; the driver’s ed car was a Chevrolet Cavalier with two sets of steering, accelerators and brakes.

 1988.  I already reviewed this in my Summer of 1988 blog.  My parents avoided the 1984 mistake and got a huge apartment in upper Manhattan (96^th Street & 5^th Avenue, overlooking Central Park).  I spent most of the summer down at College Park, taking summer classes, without ever actually going back to Paris.  It was a great summer for concerts:  Pink Floyd, Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock (both at RFK), Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, (both at the Cap Center) and AC/DC (5^th row at Madison Square Garden).  I got my first car: a 1984 Chevrolet Cavalier, instead of the late 70’s Pontiac Trans Am I’d wanted (and still don’t have) and managed to have my first accident, which luckily enough was with a UMCP utility truck they didn’t care about.  My brother came down to stay with me, then my dad, and we all took the train up to NYC when my second session was over.

 1990.  This summer I graduated from UMCP after taking only the first of two summer sessions to finish off with the last two dead end classes (not required for subsequent classes), Money & Banking and COBOL.  The next day, 7/14, I went back to Paris for the last time – and I haven’t been back since.  On August 1, I returned to the US and with help from Phil, got our home ready for the rest of my family who were moving back permanently after 11 years in Paris.  It was full of cobwebs, mysterious rug stains, filthy kitchen, overgrown back yard, barely functioning swimming pool, a whole host of problems which would easily have exhausted the security deposit which the inept property manager cluelessly returned to the tenants.   So, for over two weeks, I was alone in a huge single family home with no furniture, but it had electricity and phone service.  I had a small TV and a VCR, and rented Pink Floyd, Live at Pompeii on VHS, for the first time.  I had no idea I would like it so much, but I did.

            By August 19 my family had come back, but the sea shipment didn’t arrive until September.  In late August I started classes at George Mason University School of Law, at their campus on Fairfax Drive in Arlington, and I wound up moving into that same Rosslyn efficiency in September…AND lived there throughout law school and 11 years past.