We were up early and well rested. Our stay at the Palacio De Los Navas, though brief, was pleasant and a notch above the norm.
The bed, one of the best.
And the breakfast all we could hope for.
We particularly enjoyed our conversations with Andrés at the front desk. Highly competent and well mannered, he could have played the role of receptionist de hotel in an old Gregory Peck movie. I considered asking Andrés for a photo, but thought the better of it. A discrete man, I didn’t want to offend.
The train from Granada to Barcelona was on a bullet, likely one of the originals, as there were no outlets for charging. Nevertheless, it was a whisper quiet ride with speeds up to 300 kmh. Six hours from station to station, it was a melancholy ride, as long train rides often are.
Traveling northeast toward Cordoba, then north, we left the Sierra Nevadas behind long before sunrise.
As the landscape opened
one could imagine Don Quixote astride Rosinante off in the distance, Pancho Sanchez at their side.
Hours passed and sunshine
gave way to cloudy skies.
After a while, Pa asked if he might see my photos.
“Those are nice my boy. But there are no power lines or warehouses or the other modern things we’ve passed.”
I told him I prefer to see things as I’d like them to be, not as they are.
He chuckled. “Now you sound like old Don Quixote,” and he commenced to quote M. Cervantes verbatim:
“Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there, with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.”
Making his point, Pa asked if he might share a few photographs of his own.
”They’re the only ones I have left,” he said. “I somehow misplaced the ones of Bea and the girls.
This one . . .
I was captain of our high school baseball team.
And here . . .
I was a judge then.
And this last one . . .
that’s when I was still respected.”
Pa then leaned against me, as I leaned against him nearly sixty years ago.
Holding each photo with reverence, I recalled snippets from an old Paul Simon song:
Can you imagine us Years from today Sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange To be seventy . . .
And what a time it was It was . . . A time of innocence A time of confidences . . .
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph Preserve your memories They’re all that’s left you.
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