Fred Wilber

I went to Switzerland in 1954 on a DC9 flight, intended for the French Riviera but redirected to nobler shores. I have mentioned this trip thirty times, but each time I recall unmentioned dialogue and incidents particular to a land of acclaimed deportment and manners, conduct of which I am notedly fond.

The male passengers on the flight spent most of their time walking the aisle carrying martinis, rejoicing in never having been so high—so high before. I sat in my seat and caught an air-flight cold.

Anywhere I go, I seek story material, expecting none this trip due to the rearranged flight plan. I bought an Irish hat in Limerick, Ireland because the plane landed there and thirty men needed additional vodka. Sturdy men, they were, New York to Zurich without an emesis.

In the hotel room I watched a television show, Hans Christen Anderson style. One background whistler doing a simple but pleasant tune while two dwarfs juggled, children did a country dance, and an accordionist wove his way through everybody. The same show was on all the time with a different cast doing the same things.

To relieve my cold, I went to the hotel courtyard for a famously refreshing Swiss white wine—clear and crisp as the Mendenthal glacier off the west shoulder of Mount Jungfrau. (A little Swiss color here.) Hardly seated, two people arrived—a male policeman and a lady approaching the area wearing high heels and a crocheted lace dress. A white toy poodle on a leash preceded her, wearing a lace weskit of the same style as the lady’s dress (the looseness of the lace being the reason I knew the dog was white.)

After she passed, although I barely noticed her, I asked the gendarme if the lady was in show business, to which he replied “we don’t talk about such things here, sir!” So, I asked, “Was that the lady’s dog?” He said, “I don’t know, sir.”

I asked, “Have you seen the lady with the dog before?” He said, “yes.” Beginning to get somewhere I said, “I know, of course, you would say you don’t know if the dog is hers if you have seen her with the dog for ten years. I am an American, familiar with subterfuge. I ask you, since you don’t seem to know when a business is clearly a business in your own homeland. If I gave the dog a hundred franc note to chew on, would you arrest me?”

To which he replied, “Only if the lady saved the dog from choking by whisking the note from the dog’s mouth.”

Obviously the woman was a professional dog walker. Getting the picture, that manners is the civil way to mitigate misunderstanding, then I asked, “Do you have murders in this pacific land?” to which he asserted, “Yes, but only among tourists; we are an old-world land, through, where some of the worst murderers have marched, so we have lost the thrill of the kill, which in other countries is blamed on the poor and unpatriotic foreigners.”

I went up to my room hoping for a new TV format. A dwarf was juggling unassisted and a lady was playing a piano. I remember hoping somebody would whack the dwarf.