Just about every routine conversation between my parents Lilo and Janos eventually evolved into a shouting match. This was especially true in the time that plans were being made to move permanently from Brazil to the United States. Major change, major fights. Every issue was reason for raising the heat and noise, and the level of agitation and panic in the children. The two could even fight about the weather. How could so much neediness and anger coexist in the same people?
It’s a wonder then that the plan to move was actually executed. János had managed to get a job at the Caterpillar Tractor Company in Peoria, Illinois. This was the best prospect János had found in his ten years in Brazil. But Lilo was not about to submit to his dream for a better life without a fight, numerous fights.
The year was 1957, and the plane we took to the States was a Braniff Airlines Super Constellation. This plane was Howard Hughes’s great wonder of the world, the Lockheed L-1049, afftectionately known as “Connie.” It had a long curvaceous sweep from front to back, similar to the later supersonic Concorde, and an improbable tail section with three vertical stabilizers/rudders on a horizontal stabilizer/elevator, and four propeller engines on its wings. While graceful, on the ground the plane had a tall stalky aspect on its landing gear, like a long-legged crane.
The plane was actually quite small by the standards of the 21st century. Count the windows: fifteen. That’s fifteen rows max, and the seats four across. Ah, but the seating was luxurious and roomy compared to today’s sardine-can configurations. Today there is one specimen of the Connie on display at New York’s old Idlewild Airport, behind the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Terminal, now a national landmark.
What an elegant aircraft; we flew to the United States in grand style. And therein lies the con. Unfortunately, the month was February, and anyone traveling from tropical Brazil to breezy Chicago in February should have his head examined, chiefly my mother and father. I boarded the plane wearing shorts, sandals and tee shirt. Tropical beach wear for a ten-year-old, suitable for an overnight flight, with stops for refueling in Belém in northeastern Brazil, and then Miami, and on to Chicago. It was glorious.
Then the doors opened after landing and we were hit with a wall of the coldest air anyone ever experienced. I was gasping for air while shivering like a frenetic drumbeat…………… racing down the stairs and across the tarmac to what looked like indoor space. My parents finally realized the gravity of the situation, and somehow got me to the first of many cheesy hotels that I would get to know across America. But first to the nearest thrift store for a new wardrobe. It would be decades before I wore sandals again.
The biggest con was the promise of a peaceful, quiet life in another continent.
