Continuing the 70 year retrospective of my live in 5 year intervals, 1979 was the year my wife and I went to Europe. Married ten years, with three children, I got my parents to fly from Connecticut to Cincinnati and watch them for three weeks. Our trip was in part courtesy of my mother-in-law’s employer, a wholesale machinery dealer. I had done some bid analysis for them in the past and they had a few machine tools in Italy and France they wanted me to take a look at and evaluate.

So off the three of us went; grandma, me and the wife. We landed in Vienna, where I rented a very bad running Opel sedan from Hertz that sputtered us on an adventure across the continent and then to England. My wife had spent a summer in Europe before we met and she always wanted to go back.

I had to borrow to pay for the part of the trip that wasn’t supplemented but it was worth it. To see Saltsburg, Venice, Rome, Florence, the Riviera, Paris and England among other stops was as a thrill. I speak fluent French which was a great aid, even in Italy.

Meanwhile the world was reacting to the Three Mile Island meltdown, the Iranian Revolution, the appointment of the “Iron Lady” as the Prime Minister of England and runaway inflation in the United States that would doom the Carter Administration.

We would return to Europe for our twenty-fifth anniversary, with a family nearly grown, but not with the energy I had to explore and enjoy when I was in the prime of life. I will never regret having taken the trip. I have been back several times for extended stays as I love the Europeans and their life styles. After all, they are my ancestors.

In fact, I could spend the rest of my days in a little village in the south of France, reading my paper as I enjoy a baguette, some fromage and strong coffee. About five years ago I spent a month in a little village there called Montflanquain, where some Americans had retired to enjoy the quiet life. In fact it is located in the valley of the Dordogne where the Cro Magnon man was found and human life may have begun. Was this the real Garden of Eden?