The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Woman Facing East: Margaret Mosher looks at a painting she brought back from a 1983 trip to China. A family member picked up the other pieces pictured during travels in the 1920s.

Seniors travel the world

By Sharon Parks

Whether facing off with a fish in China or soaking up jazz in New Orleans, two Willow Glen seniors have racked up extensive travel experience in their retirement years.

When Margaret Mosher, 83, retired from her position as clerk for a Santa Clara County court judge, she decided that some of her travels would be to countries where most people were not allowed to go. Her most memorable trip was to China with a tour group in 1983, when that country first started letting Americans in.

Mosher recalls that her tour group was detained in a hotel by Chinese law-enforcement officers, who stopped the elevators to keep the Americans from leaving. She says she and her fellow travelers were under constant surveillance by the police.

"One lady became ill and had to go to the hospital by ambulance," Mosher says. "I went with her in the ambulance. The hospital room had just a bed, a chair and a pull-down light. It was a dump. On the way back to my hotel from the hospital, I rode public transportation, and I was the only Caucasian on it. They stopped the bus, and everybody turned around and looked at me."

Mosher visited a house in Hua Jia Shin where an extended family lived--parents, children and grandparents. "They lived in one big room with a loft," Mosher says. "There were chickens running loose in the house." Mosher says the food was good, but she never knew what she would be eating from one meal to the next.

"The food was brought into the hotel on a great big lazy Susan," Mosher says. "The fish, for some reason, always landed in front of me with its eyes facing me. It was the whole fish. I would pass it down and say, 'no, thank you'; I didn't want any."

Mosher led the tour to the plane on the way home. They wanted to split the tour because they didn't have enough room on the plane. "I told them they had to find us a place to stay all night and supply us with dinner, breakfast and transportation back to the airport because it was their fault they did not have enough seats, and they weren't splitting us up," Mosher says. "Can you just see a little old lady stomping her foot and telling them what to do?"

Mosher also traveled to Russia in the early '90s with a tour group and thought it was very interesting. "You don't realize how suppressed those people are," Mosher says. "They might have two pairs of shoes in the store, and as far as the food went, we were never sure of what we were going to eat. The food lines were long."

Mosher says Russian people don't have many material things, and the things they do have are outdated.

"I like to visit places before they have become Americanized," adds the Willows Senior Center volunteer.

Fellow Willows Senior Center volunteer Mary Reynolds, 80, has also traveled a lot since her retirement, but her destinations have been to more tried-and-true vacation spots in the U.S. and Europe.

"Margaret's the one who's been to a lot of foreign lands," Reynolds says. She's braver than I ever was."

Reynolds has been on several cruises. The one she enjoyed the most was the cruise to the Panama Canal, a waterway which, she points out, "most people don't get to see."

Reynolds says she enjoyed all the shipboard activities and didn't mind her less-than-luxurious sleeping quarters.

"You spend most of your time out, anyway," Reynolds says. "I would go and sit on the deck and read while watching the water. I enjoy the water. It's so peaceful."

Reynolds has been to Hawaii several times and often visits her son in Boston. She's also been to Canada and New Orleans.

"New Orleans was fun," Reynolds says. "I liked the entertainment, music playing all day long on the corner. The town has an interesting night life. There's something about it I just like."

Reynolds has one more trip she would like to take, to Switzerland and Italy. "I don't know when I'm going to make it," she says.

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