Another reason I changed my name on Facebook to Roberta Pennington is Pennsylvania. That's where I hung my hat when I arrived from Beirut in the summer of 1973. I landed at JFK on Czechoslovakian Airlines, very affordable at the time, with the comforting flight identification of "OK" followed by some numbers. When we got on the plane in Prague, the stopover from Beirut, the aircraft personnel requested from some of us to go sit in first class until the plane takes off because the rear of the plane is too heavy for take off.
If this happened now, I might think I am the culprit, having put on a good 30 pounds since then.
Nina and her boyfriend received my telegram from Beirut with the flight number OK123 but could not figure out what airline the OK represented. They drove to JFK with hopes that any employee at any airline would be able to tell them what the OK stood for. How were they to think Czechoslovakian Airlines? Where is the OK in that?
It took a good hour for us to find each other by accident. The drive home was uneventful, not counting my non-stop chatter about the latest from Beirut.
As soon as I found a job, I also found a drama school I could afford. Hedgerow Playhouse was situated on the outskirts of Philadelphia in a small town called Rose Valley. I didn't have a car so to get to school, Nina would drive me to the train station, I would take the train to Rose Valley and from there, a cab, to school.
That's where I got my college degree in dramatic arts. Oh, it was not a big ceremony. Just my classmates, my teacher and all the other teachers of the school. Afterwards, they, the teachers, asked me why I had attended their school. What did I expect to learn? I immediately went into innocent mode and said "I don't know. Shouldn't you be the ones telling me what I need to learn?" What I really was asking by being in that school is for direction. They did not give me any maps when I got here.
Later, one of the teachers, an elderly gentleman, approached me, kissed my hand and like a brother, said "Don't go to school. Go to New York but don't go to school. Go to auditions. Go to New York and go to auditions."
I was happy that the critics in Beirut were thus exonerated.
My close friends who were also my fellow actors in the theater, had one by one left for America. It was the continuation of a trend started years before when my best friend of the day (or year) would leave for America with their family.
After a few years of acting, Ara left for America to study Theater Arts; Garo, to do business and to live like Zorba and Nina, to pursue her Master's Degree in Education. I felt their absence without bringing it to my consciousness. So I was sad without knowing why. My whole world had turned upside down. It was not easy to be me without them. Of course there are many people in Lebanon, but no four people had been
together and shared the ups and downs of when we were actors for a few years. It was
hard to loose them. They had moved on. Not that I was not trying. I was the first fugitive of the group. I almost moved to Canada to get married with someone I had only known for one month.
Nina kept writing for me to go live with them in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, which, it turned out, is a suburb of Philadelphia, where I could work and study acting at the same time. I was being arm wrestled to pursue acting when I was not even sure I wanted to. A diploma is one thing, finding a job is another. That's probably the more important skill.
It was only the third or fourth time I was in class when this ceremony took place. So what I had done for a month was audition for the school. I was good to go to New York but they had already told me that I can't take part in their productions because of my accent. I was to wait for a part like in The Rose Tattoo.
It is so easy to make a big decision when that entails the great city of New York. I had already an invitation from cousins to stay with them in New Jersey. This was also my breakaway from the constant fights Nina and her boyfriend entertained me with.
I had to leave Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, where I had waited for the bus every morning at ten minutes to eight and it had arrived two minutes later; had been greeted by the same smiling face of the driver accompanied by a "good morning" that never failed to make my day. That was the best part of my stay in Pennsylvania.
It was a start.
He was the happiest man in Philadelphia. He later told me that he was of Armenian descent. Sadly, I don't remember his name.
My job was two bus lines away from home. And the return home was a ride, courtesy of Brother Tony, a colleague. No, I was not working in a monastery but in the city of brotherly love.
The day after my graduation, I asked him to drop me off a bloc away from my home. Brother Tony was perplexed as to why and I was too embarrassed to tell him. I wish it was because I saw a movie theater or a drinking place or a nice store. It was for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I could have written a great ad for KFC at the time if I knew what was good for me. Coming to America was like being in a huge shopping center with thousands of shops and finding out that unless you stop the growling in your stomach you will not even know where to look for what, how, when and why.
Next stop, New York.
