Those socks from Barney's. It's amazing what the mere glimpse of socks from Barney's does for a girl's morale. Still wrapped in their crinkly tissue paper . . . still with their little tags. Crunchy to the touch any time I get near them while digging inside my trunk. I have yet to find a good use for socks in this land. Goodness knows it's not cold enough for socks; and oh what the dirty floor would do to a sweet little pair of pink socks. Nevertheless, they're there . . . some secret and very powerful talisman against my occasional capricious whim to go completely Heart-of-Darkness-native.

 

I asked for a porcelain toilet at my site. Yes. It's true. It's the ultimate humiliation, but I did it. I was told, with the utmost patience and with only a teeny smidge of condescension and patronization that "no, Kathy, I've got 50 sites and none have porcelain toilets." This response was quickly qualified with the caveat, "But Kathy, you might be original and have something created." To which I responded, quite sheepishly, "Oh no! I could not possibly! It would be way too embarrassing. I wouldn't belong in the PC at all. But where can I buy one?!?!" Embarrassing but true. That ol' flat-iron dilemma is looking rather silly about this time, right? Come on . . . who asks for a toilet in a land without clean drinking water? Where are my priorities?

 

So what really happened? What have the history books omitted? Byrd? Meade? Livingston? Selous? Goodall? Do you suppose they took even one, tiny Western convenience? Maybe a pair of socks from Harrod's . . . maybe silk PJs from Jermyn Street? The Tiffany cocktail shaker? We can only speculate.