New Passports are here

Recently I read that passports were going to be much more expensive after a certain date in July so we rushed out and got our passports renewed.  Jim and I have had passports since 1954, when we went to Germany.

It was fun pulling out our bag of old passports, laughing at our passport photos, and reminiscing about all the "ports of call" recorded in the old books.  Over the last 56 years we have traveled to a lot of places outside the US and needed a passport.

Getting my first passport was quite an ordeal.  Jim had gone to Germany (US Army) and he wanted me to get my passport and join him there.  I went to the Federal Bldg. in Dothan to apply.  They sent my application to New York.  Time to sail to Germany was getting close and my passport had not arrived in the mail.  I don't remember how I found the phone number to call the passport office in NY, but I called and they said they would hold it at their office in the Rockefeller Center for me to pick it up since there wasn't enough time for them to mail it to me.  So I left Elba (Montgomery) via train to travel to NY City to get on the Holland American Ship "Maasdam" to go to Germany in March, 1954.

I arrived in NY and checked into a hotel near the train station.  Then I walked several blocks to Rockefeller Center, took the elevator up several stories (scared to death) to pick up my passport.  They had it at the desk, awaiting my arrival.  I was only 19 years old but very brave and ready for my big adventure. I walked back to the hotel and loved window shopping along the way.  When I returned to the hotel, I asked at the desk how to get to the Pier the next morning to board the ship.  I was lucky.  There were other passengers staying there and the hotel arranged for a station wagon to pick  us up and take us to the pier.

I had never seen anything larger than a big fishing boat and the size of that ship blew my mind!  As I walked up the gangplank to board, I kept wondering what kept such a big ship from sinking.  I found my stateroom and someone had already delivered my luggage to my room.  Crossing the Atlantic twice is enough "cruising" for me.  AlthoughI might  change my mind one day and get back on the water again.

I think I've already written about my voyage to Rotterdam, Holland where Jim met me, and we traveled via train to Wurzburg, Germany where we would live.

We were required to have our passport with us at all times while in Germany.  Once while visiting some friends, their little girl was playing with my purse and took my passport and dropped it behind a chest.  Later I missed my passport and was frantic.  I couldn't leave the house without it.  Our friends tore their house apart looking for it, and two days later discovered it behind a chest when something else fell behind it and they had to retrieve it.  You aren't supposed to mutilate your passport and guess what.... I knocked over a bottle of red nail polish and covered the front of my passport.  Couldn't remove it with polish remover as I was afraid it would removed the lettering or dissolve the paper.  I am probably the only person with a "pinkish green covered" passport.  Nobody in customs ever asked what happened. People as clumsy as I should never travel away from home.


Our latest passports are really different.  So much security now to prevent fraud.  The clerk at the passport office asked where we were going - our destination.  We said we don't have one in mind right now -- we just want to be prepared.  We figured that by the time our passports become invalid this time (10 years), we will be too old to travel.  Surely we will find a place to go and use them so our money won't be "wasted".