Perils!

By Carolyn and Jack Fleming

PERILS! is actually two books in one. One book is a collection of close calls and scary stories that actually happened to two adventuresome author-travelers. Danger lurked on the river behind the Taj Mahal! A knife-bearing Sikh came to the rescue. Catching a subway train was almost fatal during a monsoon in Japan. The intrepid couple caught a late-night jetliner, which broke in two as it landed. Seven additional stories about surprising adventures and close calls make for an exciting read!

The second book is a manual for survival and management of serious, emergency problems during travel or at home, such as fainting, choking, and chest painwritten by one of the authors (JF) who happens, also, to be a cardiologist.

The authors suggest a new, intriguing word, anticimoxie. Following its precepts, the reader will think ahead and will be more likely to arrive safe at hometo tell more scary stories!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466973183

Carolyn

Carolyn Fleming is the author of a novel, Journey Proud, set in Georgia in 1933; a cookbook, Pensacola Holidays, published in two editions; and Democracy Means Sharing, a collection of essays about the American jury system and about serving as the foreman of a federal grand jury during America’s bicentennial. (The judge sent it to all the US Supreme Court members where it probably became the first book so accredited that contained a few recipes by jury members.) Jack Fleming, a cardiologist for over four decades, is the author of A Primer on Common Functional Disorders about psychosomatic illnesses and coeditor of a textbook on nuclear cardiology, as well as many cardiology research articles and essays. A singer, he has written many ballads and other lyrics, including “Down on the Natchez Trace” and “Hitch Up Your Hippocampus.” The authors’ first collaboration was the book and lyrics with composer Allen Pote for the full-length musical Seaplane about early flight. (For this, the trio received honorary citizenship in Hammondsport, New York, the birthplace of Glenn Curtiss, one of the heroes of Seaplane.) The musical played at the Kennedy Center. Fleming-Pote followed this with a musical-whimsical for children entitled Imagination, inspired by the life of Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Pacific. Excerpts have played in Samoa where the authors made four visits. Other musicals include Bahia de Panzacola and Doctors with H’Art. The Flemings received jointly the doctorate of humane letters by the University of West Florida. They also received the Adelia Rosasco Soule Award for Literary Distinction and a special medal by the City of Pensacola-Escambia County. The result of the collaboration that the authors cherish most is their family.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Alert Anticipation with Moxie—Anticimoxie

Some of our Perils and narrow escapes:

Close Call at the Taj Mahal—

Soviet Samovar Intrigue—

Rushing Through Morocco—

The Perilous Indian Night—

The Faulty Late Jetliner—

Driving through the Dolomites—

Pathos in Peru

Riding Through Romania—

Exotic Saudi Arabia—

The Monstrous Monsoon in Japan—

Handbook on Survival

Conclusions

Plus: Handbook on Survival

Choking, Chest pain, Drowning, Fainting, Falling/Injury . . . CPR, Heimlich Procedures in Adults and Children

Anticimoxie may help you save someone’s life—

possibly, your own.

Preface

As writers with a long interest in travelling with a mission, or for sheer pleasure, we present here a lighthearted account of some of the exciting adventures and close calls we encountered over several decades of travel. While gathering information for a literary-travel adventure, Thinking Places, Where Great Ideas Were Born, we had visited the homes, studies, garden houses and country pathways of over thirty creative people. These included Greig (in Norway), Dickens, Woolf, Shaw, and Kipling (in England), Stevenson (in Scotland and Samoa several times), Twain and Glenn Curtiss (in New York State), Hemingway (in Key West) and others. During that period of time we travelled also on tours to Ireland, Iberia, the Balkans, Russia, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East.

On our quests we received lagniappe (a Louisiana French/Spanish term for something extra, often unexpected) with each journey, usually a positive experience. But there were some harrowing times, too; some are related in following chapters. We have learned the hard way about the potential perils of travel, or even in everyday life. We hope this shared knowledge may be helpful to others who venture forth, and who are open, within limits, to seeking new experiences and challenges!

As this book Perils evolved, we realized that the reader can be better served if we relate some suggestions on how the reader can think ahead, with alert anticipation and with moxie, or energetic know-how, about how he or she can avoid or minimize potential problems, and, especially, how one reacts to emergencies. Thus, we have coined a new word, anticimoxie.

In addition, we have described in an attached Handbook on Survival, how we may help others in our presence, travelling or at home, who unexpectedly may have serious acute, physical problems or medical emergencies. Our recognizing the seriousness of the situation and our prompt response may help them significantly or even save their life with first aid measures before a First Responder arrives!

Our title for this book, Perils, comes from our remembering the silent movies’ intrepid heroine, Pauline in her famous serials, The Perils of Pauline, beginning in 1914, and later in the musical-film, 1947. Barely escaping disasters at the end of each serial, weekly installment, Pauline was always eluding buzz saws, oncoming trains and other dastardly deeds of a treacherous villain.

We’ll describe some of the villains out there who we encountered while travelling, or at home. But more often, as Pogo said, We have met the enemy and they is us! As travelers we too often are nonchalant or mindless, or too excited to pay attention, anticipate and avoid little or sometimes really big problems! More about that, later.

Some years ago we did survive a crash of a jet airliner, a DC-9, while landing at our home airport. Sparks were flying freely and jet fuel lines no doubt were severed when the body of the jet broke in two just behind the wings. Somehow we were saved from a fiery inferno on a rainy night. (The drama and humor of this scary event is described in a following chapter).What do you do in such an unexpected circumstance?

Have anticimoxie, that’s what!

Often while travelling, enthusiasm and excitement about being in a beautiful or special place sometimes overshadows our judgment about potential danger. An excellent illustration of this is in the chapter, "Close Call at the Taj Mahal, Murder o’er the River Behind!" A little boy with beautiful, trusting, brown eyes played a major role in our peril and narrow escape on the river behind the Taj Mahal!

The folly of pushing one’s luck, packing it all in, delaying departure and driving at night on a dark, lonesome road in India in spite of reports of highway bandits is described in the chapter, "The Perilous Indian Night, Bandits on the road to New Delhi!"

So, one of the themes of this presentation to you, the reader, is: when travelling or even when going to an exciting Big Sale at your favorite bargain store, enjoy every day to the fullest, but slow down a bit to evaluate; look before you leap! Think ahead and use your head!

Anticipating consequences and summoning up a generous dose of common sense and know how, or Moxie, are easy to suggest. But everything may seem to be so benign at the time of excitement or stress. Just murmur anticimoxie as you dive forward! (Of course, you are always convinced that there is a good reason for diving!)

A naive or even a seasoned traveler may be so enthralled in a special tourist destination that he may let his guard down. Even in holy places such as the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem, we encountered a pickpocket. A friend walking back of us aborted an attempted purse theft! (In the old melodramas the villain would have cried, Curses! Foiled again!)

So there are villains out there awaiting your purse or more, all over the world, and perhaps, in your hometown! But live your life enthusiastically, with your eyes and ears open, ready for new adventures, learning, serendipity and lagniappe. Nevertheless, as you dive into the fray, ever so often, whisper (and listen to yourself), "anticimoxie"!

Introduction

Alert Anticipation with Moxie—Anticimoxie

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

To take a journey or traveling are magic words to many of us. Admittedly, excitement about travel may not be for everyone. Travel may be dreary and routine for one travelling salesmen and yet, exciting and challenging for another entrepreneur who travels.

Many of us want-to-be-travelers yearn for the open road and