Being in the right place...by William James Johnson

After getting the travelling bug during my sixteen years as an aircew officer in the RCAF, I continued to travel. I loved the adventure of experiencing the new and strange cultures which I visited in over 20 trips to Europe. I remember the young boy who shared his french fries with strangers as we waited outside a tour bus in Northern Ireland. It was a chilly noon in high winds coming off Dingle Bay. The fries were delicious, and the young lad said he liked to share his food. He knew the tour company discouraged eating on their bus.

I've always found talking to strangers on a long distance flight overseas always made me feel by the time I landed, that I was born and raised with them. Must be the fact that people seem to prefer unburdening themselves to this unknown character, because there is no chance they will ever meet again. And the sharing of secrets goes both ways.

Momentarily, I just had a passing recollection of a group of my fellow travellers, many from New Zealand who still write to me, lying in about four inches of geothermal pool water, looking like a gathering of breeding hippos. They all roared when I labelled them as such.

Then there was the time I met the master chef on a Holland America cruise ship who was told that I was a famous Canadian artist. The substantial aging senior asked if I would mind doing a drawing of him. We chatted in his kitchen below decks and talked of many things while I did a ball point sketch of his bearded face. Even a blind man could have sketched him. He was thrilled with my handiwork and asked what he could do for me. We settled on his agreement to send me his recipe for carrot cake. I'm still waiting for it.

But my last episode is the real reason for this blog. We were at an Italian banquet in a large hall in Venice, where a row of dining tables were arranged end to end. This made it necessary for us to space ourselves along each side, where we stood waiting for the host to give us the signal to sit. Across from me was an American woman who had become a friendly acquaintance on the tour. As we were still standing, I realized she was having a problem. She was pointing at her throat, and tears were pouring out of her eyes. No one else noticed that the lady was choking. Without delay, I raced around the long line of tables and grabbed the choking woman around her waist and tried unsuccessfully to apply the heimlech manoeuvre. I had never done this before, but I had seen it done in movies.

My failed attempt was making me panic. The fact that waiters thought we were fighting and were trying to pull me off her was not helping. I grabbed her again determined to squeeze as hard as I could, even if it meant I might crack a rib. Suddenly a chunk of Italian bread stick which she had bitten into, and like a wine cork had lodged in her throat, shot out of her mouth and struck the man across from her. In a weak voice she said,"You saved my life".

I returned to the other side of the table and could not stop my legs from shaking. Needless to say, I really did not enjoy the meal that night. Before we left Rome to return home, she came up to me and gave me a hug. I'll always remember what she said. "Now you know why God put you on this trip." I was lucky. I was in the right place at the...