Home Lines

Every year during the 1950s and 1960s my Aunt Palma took a cruise to the Bahamas on a Home Lines ships.  Her favorite of their ships was the original Homeric.  This ship sailed from New York to Nassau in the Bahamas.  She took the same cruise every year, and usually the same ship and destination.  It was not a particularly beautiful ship, but it had a huge Lido Deck with a pool and hundreds of deck chairs.  My parents thought of it as a luxury they could not yet afford.  But once my brothers and I were old enough to be left alone for a week - they too started cruising, inspired by Aunt Palma .  Whenever Aunt Palma left on a cruise we would travel into Manhattan to see her off, check out her tiny cabin, sit on the Lido Deck for awhile, leave the ship when the announcement came for all visitors to leave, and then throw confetti streamers at the ship as it left the dock.  It was a big event for us.  Now, for security reasons, these traditions are gone and only passengers may enter a cruise ship; not any visitors wishing to see them off.

Aunt Palma would always bring us back gifts from Nassau's Straw Market.  Handmade straw bags or straw dolls or little straw baskets.  I could picture her bargaining with the sellers in the Straw Market stalls.  In 2015 I took a cruise on RCCL's Oasis-of-the-Seas and visited Nassau for the first time.  The Straw Market was right by the cruise ship's dock.  With my nephew, sister-in-law and her sister we ventured a little bit further into Nassau city.  I wanted to see the famous British Colonial Hilton Hotel, the Governor's House where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor once resided, the Pirate Museum, the shops on Bay Street.  We did so, but Nassau did not look very safe to us.  After a couple of hours of exploring we returned to the safety of our cruise ship.  I began to wonder, did Aunt Palma ever venture beyond the Nassau Straw Market?  Perhaps sailing on the ship to the Bahamas was enough of an adventure for her - which is certainly okay.

Returning to the ship we walked again through the Straw Market.  One vendor had hand-made wood carvings.  That is where I saw 'Fred and Ethel' for the first time.  It is a wood sculpture of a man and a woman sitting on a bench.  Perhaps waiting for a bus.  Perhaps on a first date.  She holds an umbrella in one hand and clutches her handbag tightly in the other hand.  His left leg is crossed over his right away from her.  I had to buy it.  Fred and Ethel (I named them after Fred and Ethel Mertz of "I Love Lucy") found a home on the top of my kitchen cabinets.  Now, in my new Florida home, they have found a new home on the window sill of my lanai.  They will forever remind me of Aunt Palma, of my one and only day in Nassau, and of the joy of souvenir shopping when on a vacation trip.