The Anti-Titanic

When I was a kid in the 1950s, my mother used to let me and my brother take a day off from school a few days after New Year's. We would accompany our grandparents as they went to the West Side piers in New York and boarded one of the great ships docked there. My grandfather would give us a little tour, and then we would have a party in their cabin, Champagne for grown-ups, Coca-Cola for us. All too soon would come the announcement that all visitors were to disembark, and I would trot obediently after whoever was in charge of us. Tugs would push the ocean liner out into the Hudson, and then, with a blast of its steam horn, the massive vessel would set off for the Narrows on its way to some exotic part of the world beyond: the Mediterranean, South Africa, Hong Kong, South America. I yearned inexpressibly to go too, but, alas, it never occurred to me to try to stowaway.