When my brothers and I were teenagers, our parents thought that going overseas for work would be a way to experience Europe and get paid for doing so. They planned a several-year move to the Netherlands for our father's job.

It all seemed easy at the beginning. I was away at college and my brother Jim had started living on campus at UCLA. They had enrolled our younger brother Richard in a high school and picked out an apartment in Holland. A couple had agreed to rent their house for at least two years, and the neighbors had thrown a sumptuous farewell party.

Then, the boss called.

"Will, we've assigned Don to the Dutch operation. We need your expertise for a power plant project in Bilbao. That's in Spain. I remember that you speak Spanish."

So, plans were quickly undone, and they waited—for more than a year. Then, the rush was on again. Dad packed hurriedly and flew to Spain. Mom stayed behind to finalize arrangements and attend my graduation at UC Santa Cruz. She and Jim drove up the newly completed I-5 freeway in the family's small Datsun. I had to jettison most of my accumulated treasures to fit into the car, except for a large box that I shipped to Southern California via Greyhound.

Before we drove home, I bought a dozen donuts for the trip from the new fried dough hotspot. On the way down, we passed a king cab pickup truck on the side of the road. The whole family was standing there, looking forlorn. Mom talked to their dad.

"Our family goes to Mexico every year for summer vacation. I can't fix this. Axle's broken."

Jim said, "We're not too far from Kettleman City. There's a garage there, and not much else for hundreds of miles."

We offered to squeeze the father into our car and take him there. The mother said they had left home without food, expecting to shop along the way. We gave them our baker's dozen in the pink box.

Back in the Los Angeles suburbs, our mother was anxious to join Dad in northern Spain. I was getting ready to start medical school downtown. Richard wanted to stay home and finish his last year of high school. He also had a part time job and was rebuilding a VW bug, which I later learned could be push started with the tiny Datsun.

I had been looking forward to living in the dorm, since it was an apartment building that our grandfather helped build. Instead, I would endure the morning commute through Los Angeles traffic, pay bills at the house, and act as adult guardian for Richard.
A few months later, I opened a letter from Mom, saying Dad was coming to the U.S. for two weeks. I hoped that he'd come to visit. However, the next letter to Richard and me said that Dad was shepherding a group of Spanish engineers to view new power plants in Louisiana and Mississippi.

We were disappointed, but Dad did write and tell us about their first day in the South.

The Spaniards had worked on their English skills for the trip. They learned about American hotels and practiced vocabulary words with a list of common American breakfast foods that they would like to eat.

"Toast, white or whole wheat. Bacon, crispy or flabby. Eggs, scrambled, sunny side up, over easy, poached. Potatoes, hash browns or country fries."

"Mornin' gen'l'men". The waitress was ready to take their order.

The first man exhaled his list and breathed a sigh of relief, only to be flummoxed by, "And how'd ya like yer grits?"

Everyone at the table stared at her, clueless.