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Going With the Flo When the Flo Is a Know-It-All

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<i> O'Sullivan is a travel writer based in Canoga Park</i>

Flo Forsythe was a little over four and a half feet tall, with flaming red hair. She was also old and had a voice somewhere between that of the late Sophie Tucker and a submarine dive alarm.

I’m telling you about Flo three years after the fact, because I think I’m almost over being mad at her. She was one of the group when Joyce and I took a motor-coach tour on our first visit behind the Iron Curtain.

Our fellow passengers looked like a pretty interesting bunch.

John Malesko, a second generation Polish-American, wanted to see “the Old Country.” He and his wife, Velma, had brought Mrs. Malesko’s elderly mother along because they had been afraid to leave her at home.

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Phil Glickman and his wife, Mary, were from Nashville. There was a red-headed doctor from Italy, Bill and Brenda Edmonson from Toronto and a lot more. There were about 30 of us.

But Flo stood out.

Flo the Member

Though she looked like a red-haired Momma by Mel, she dispelled the impression that she was from the comics immediately by announcing that she was Flo Forsythe, “a member of the Fifth Estate.”

Fifth estate?” Edmonson asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I am a senior editor and newspaper columnist.”

“That’s the fourth estate,” said Edmonson.

She said she was “on assignment,” that she was first and foremost a reporter and that she was going to report on exactly what a tour behind the Iron Curtain was like.

She also said she knew no one would mind if she took the front seat for the entire tour because she was too short to see well from any of the other seats.

Mrs. Johnson, a young lady in her early 30s, said a bad word. Someone else said “Amen.”

Our director, Mr. Verde, advised us that each of the communist countries we would pass through would supply a bilingual guide. Hopefully, one of the languages would be English.

We were told that we would all have an absolutely wonderful time, and then we got a 10-minute run-down on the rotation of seats, the hotels we’d be staying in and the currency exchange situation.

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Repeat the Hood Parts

“Point of order, point of order,” said Flo Forsythe. “I’m taking notes, here. Could you repeat a little of that?”

“Which part?”

“From the bilingual guides?”

Verde sighed audibly, sat down next to Flo and repeated his explanation.

At the East German border, a few of us stepped off the bus to stretch our legs while Verde took our passports into the guard station.

When most of us were back on the bus, Verde explained how they always made people wait at Iron Curtain borders so no one would have any doubts about who was in charge. “But this time,” he said, “maybe just a little longer.”

Thirty minutes later, Mrs. Forsythe, who had been caught taking pictures of the East German guards and the “No Pictures” sign over their shack, was marched back to the bus.

As they walked her to her seat,she kept lecturing them about freedom of the press until Mrs. Johnson interrupted.

“Mrs. Forsythe,” she said, “would you kindly put a cork in it?”

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Forsythe was indignant.

Mrs. Malesko’s mother sat up straight, smiled brightly and said, “I think the young lady said, ‘Put a cork in it.’ ” There was a scattering of applause. Flo did not respond.

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One Odor for Another

The Polish border guard station, not having been designed for tourists arriving by the bus load, had only two bathrooms.

The guards, trying to make the best of this bad situation, had been using a lot of disinfectant, which simply exchanged one odor for another. Verde explained the situation and advised that while we could go into the building to use the bathrooms, making remarks about the odor would probably not be a good idea. The guard commandant, he said, was already quite embarrassed about it.

Only one of us complained. It got results. Four tour buses that arrived after ours left ahead of us, and Flo got a lot of cold, hard-eyed silence.

My wife is very tolerant. “Now, let’s be charitable,” she said. “Here’s an old lady who has probably outlived her husband. Her children are probably scattered all over the world. They never call. This may be all she’s got.”

I reminded Joyce about how much money we’d spent for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Being mad at her isn’t going to help. A little kindness might, OK?”

We had picked up our official Polish guide, Robert, at the border. He was a blond-haired young man with a bright smile and a huge mustache. We all took to him from the start; he said he liked Americans.

Building by Polaroid

On our first night in Warsaw, Joyce and I took a walk with the Maleskos on the dark and almost deserted streets of the city. We were approached by men selling zlotys and women selling flowers. We bought the flowers.

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Across the boulevard Verde was walking with Flo Forsythe, while she talked at him. She stopped and aimed her Polaroid at the Ministry of Health and Education, the largest building in Poland. It was a quarter of a mile away, just visible through the darkness. Flo used her flash.

The following morning we had our tour of Warsaw. The city guide, a bright, enthusiastic young man, showed us parks and civic buildings and talked about Poland’s good things. At the presidential palace, home of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, we were told not to approach the residence for any reason.

Within five minutes Flo gave her camera to Phil Glickman, told him which button to push and walked toward the front door of the general’s residence.

“Ma’am,” Phil called out, “I don’t think you-all better be doing that.”

“One picture,” Flo said. “Just one for my readers.”

She never got it. Instead, she got an armed military escort out of the courtyard, and all of us except our city guide were ordered back on the bus. We watched while the guide was interrogated by soldiers and then by men in suits. When he rejoined us he looked a little gray.

License in Peril

He spoke to Verde, told us the tour was over and walked off down the street. As we watched him go, Verde announced that he would have to attend a special hearing the following Saturday and that his license as a city guide was in jeopardy.

Flo said that, in her opinion, it was ridiculous.

Mrs. Johnson said that, in her opinion, Flo should shut up.

Shortly after that Bill Edmonson, who was a retired newspaperman, had a long talk with Flo. And that night in the hotel, Robert was given several letters to pass on to the hearing board. He promised that they would get to the right people.

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In the morning, Flo used the coach’s public address system to apologize.

“After you reach 39,” she said nervously, “you tend to forget other people’s rights can be more important than the public’s right to know.”

She said she was sorry and asked everybody to forgive and forget.

It might have worked except for what happened later. At Auschwitz she took pictures of the screen during the film presentation. Just about every important moment in the film was greeted by a blast of light as Flo tried, time after time, to take flash pictures of the action on the screen.

When she couldn’t understand why her Polaroid pictures showed nothing but a blank screen, no one offered an explanation. Some of us, including Joyce, were so angry that we couldn’t talk.

Never Saw the Like

Later, she delayed the coach so she could buy post cards, saying that her camera hadn’t been working and she had to have pictures to go with her article.

It prompted Mrs. Johnson to observe that she’d never seen a blanking 4-foot-tall, red-headed, hundred-year-old reporter, nor a blanking post card in a blanking newspaper to illustrate a blanking article in her whole blanking life.

In Krakow, Flo bought an ice cream just as the bus was about to leave. When Mr. Waadt, our driver, honked, she looked around, found a receptacle on the side of a building and threw what was left of the ice cream into it. Waadt groaned and rose halfway out of the driver’s seat as Flo climbed onto the coach.

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“Drive,” said Verde.

“But wasn’t that a postbox?” asked Waadt.

“Drive,” said Verde. There was desperation in his voice. “Just drive.”

“I didn’t even get to finish my ice cream,” said Flo.

“Put a cork in it,” said Mrs. Malesko’s mother brightly.

We left Krakow at the maximum allowable speed.

During the few days we had left in Poland, Robert got very candid in some of his answers about the politics of his country. Flo wrote what he said in her notebook.

When another city guide, in another communist country, let a remark slip, Flo wrote it down.

After the second incident Edmonson talked to her for a long time.

It would be nice to say she changed at that point, and maybe she did a little.

She insisted on trying to interview most of us. But even though she promised to put our names in the paper, most of us declined.

Mrs. Johnson probably said it best. When approached, she told Flo to go suck on a frog.

But No Pictures

Before the tour ended in Frankfurt, Edmonson reported that Flo was, indeed, a columnist and a senior editor for a recreation section distributed with some weekly newspapers in an Eastern state. A few months after the tour was over, another of our fellow tourists wrote that he had just read a story under Flo Forsythe’s name in his local paper. The article had nothing in it that could have hurt anyone. It was not illustrated.

I had been thinking about Flo as if she were what Joyce had said, a lonely old widow who’d outlived her husband and whose children never called.

But what, I thought, if that were not the case? What if there had never been any husband, nor children, nor grandchildren? What would I be if my life were that empty? I don’t think badly of Flo anymore.

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Of course, if Joyce and I spend a few more thousand, hard-earned dollars for another life experience, I’ll sure hope she doesn’t show up on our bus.

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