The Generation That Failed

KAREN CALDICOTT

I traveled abroad for the first time in 1958, when I was 9 years old. My family lived in Zadar, a pretty town on the Adriatic coast in Croatia. There was a direct ship line to Ancona, on the Italian side of the coast, where my grandmother and I were picked up by my aunt and uncle in their little Fiat.

In those days it was not a small thing to travel abroad, either from any of the communist bloc countries or, for us, from Yugoslavia. I remember the excitement while I climbed the ship staircase, aware that this trip was something extraordinary and that it was going to take us to a magic place of wealth and beauty. I knew it because from time to time, as proof of the existence of this place, we would receive parcels with fine clothes, toys and chocolates. But I remember far better my first trip to the department store Standa in Naples, where my relatives lived. To a child used to grocery stores with not much food and the Narodni Magazin (People's Store) department stores with not many products, entering Standa felt like entering a dream. Perhaps not even my dreams were as plentiful and colorful as that store. Things I saw there dazzled me.

The best thing about Standa was that just before our visit the store had introduced a new selling system: self-service. It was quite amazing for everybody, not only for a small girl from Yugoslavia, to pick things up by ourselves. At first I just strolled around, not really convinced that I could touch and take into my hands anything I wanted. But when I came to the toy counter, I could not resist touching the dolls. There were many kinds of dolls, but I was interested in those big ones that were popular at the time. A fortunate owner would put it on a bed or a couch as a decoration. All girls envied the lucky one who had it, although she was not supposed to play with it. In its overstated beauty, such a doll somehow personified the entire new world that had opened up in front of my eyes. But after getting approval from my aunt to choose one, I could not decide which one I wanted. I agonized for a while and then burst into tears. There were simply too many choices for a child who came from a land with barely any dolls at all.

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