-7-

By September, 1966, it became time to start thinking about my approaching flight from New York back to Switzerland to complete my university studies and consider my next move. I was 23 years old. Especially in Switzerland, many people my age already had their future lives mapped out.

Mrs. Forsling had kindly booked my hotel rooms for my final days before flying back to Switzerland; in Philadelphia at the Sheraton on J.F. Kennedy Blvd; at the Ambassador Hotel in Washington D.C. and at another Sheraton in Manhattan. Little did I know what classy hotels these were. On top of that she got me tickets to the White House and to the Capitol visitors’ gallery.

I was going back with much more than I had arrived with.

Things I definitely wanted to take with me included my Spalding wooden baseball bat, which just barely fit in my luggage bag, diagonally.

Also, I wanted to take a leather catcher’s glove and a professional baseball and the charcoal color extra light two-piece summer business suit that Mrs. Forsling had insisted I acquire. It would fit me for years. Later in my story, it even served as my wedding suit, with full approval of the bride!

And, of course, I had to take the parallax distance meter golfers used at the Sewickley Heights Country Club. I never developed an interest in golf, but I figured I could use it in my compulsory Swiss military service to estimate the distance to targets for mortar launching practice.

Every item going into my luggage was wrapped in memories of my first experience of America in 1966.

For instance, the 4 fl. oz. bottle of “Royall Lyme” all-purpose lotion made in Bermuda. The humid sub-tropical summer climate in the Pittsburgh area made it desirable to use electric pre-shave lotion as well some after-shave. On my first day in Ambridge on July 4th, I went to the nearest drug store to see what was available. I bought a green labeled pre-shave with the word “lectric” as part of the brand name. I can no longer remember the full name. I soon stopped using it because it did not do what it was supposed to do. Later I felt that I also needed some after-shave. Checking out the shelves with many unknown brands, I picked Old Spice. What a mistake. Mrs. Forsling told me in no uncertain terms to throw it out, because it had an “old man” connotation. I did so. This is probably the reason why they brought back a bottle of Royall Lyme from their vacation in Bermuda.

My days in Washington were filled with a visit to the Smithsonian and the space capsules and the Wright brothers’ plane. I also needed to go to the Internal Revenue Service to get a tax clearance to be able to leave the USA. By the time Hussey Metals paid me my final pay it was too late for the tax clearance certificate to reach me in Sewickley Heights. I had a long and friendly conversation with the tax official, who told me that Herbert Hoover was of Swiss ancestry, originally called Huber.

Near the Capital I happened upon a “Poor Peoples March.” Of course, I didn’t join the protestors. I listened to the speeches and took photographs with my Kodak Instamatic from the edge of the crowd. I noticed another man who also seemed to be taking pictures from the edge of the crowd. He appeared to be a middle-aged man in worn clothes with a pocket camera. To me he looked like a homeless person with some mental health condition.

I got to talking with another man who was wearing a trench coat. He told me the other “photographer” was an “innocent” person who did not even have film in his camera; and that he was known to him as a “regular attendee” at all these demonstrations. We got talking and I got the feeling that he was like an undercover agent tasked to observe all the growing rise of protest marches for civil rights.

In Philadelphia I saw the Liberty Bell and was asked in front of City Hall if I was Italian, probably because nobody else was wearing a European style three piece business suit on a Sunday morning.

My final days were spent in New York City, mostly in Manhattan, at the United Nations buildings, the Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and at a Broadway performance of “A Hand is on the Gate” by an all-black cast, which included Cecily Tyson and Leon Bibb and directed by Roscoe Lee Browne. I was impressed and later bought “an original cast album” released by Verve Folkways, which had been recorded on September 26, 27 and 29, 1966, during my final days of my first summer in the United States.