Tag Archives: Suffolk

anecdotes

Part 13… Mildenhall 38 years post PCS…

It may seem odd that out of all the places I could visit in the United Kingdom, I’d want to visit Mildenhall.  Mildenhall is a market town in Suffolk.  It is also home to an Air Force base that has been home to many Americans, including my own family.  My father’s last assignment as an Air Force officer was at Mildenhall.  He was the base engineer there from 1975 until 1978 and we lived in base housing.  Since I was born in 1972, I was just a little girl when we lived on Mildenhall Air Force Base.  I really don’t have any memories of living in Hampton, Virginia, which is where I was born.  I also don’t remember much of Dayton, Ohio, which is where we lived before we went to England.

Although I have been fortunate enough to travel all over Europe and beyond, I hadn’t been to Mildenhall since we PCS’d in 1978, when I was almost six years old.  I have been trying to get back there, though.  Two years ago, when we lived in Texas and Bill was finishing his Army career, we took two Space A trips.  I was kind of hoping we’d wind up at Mildenhall, but we went to Ramstein instead.

When I started planning our Scotland trip and we realized we’d have a few days afterwards to go somewhere else, I decided we’d finally get to Mildenhall, even though it’s not near Scotland and isn’t exactly known for being a tourist destination.  For me, it was exciting to visit again and see my old stomping grounds!

On March 24th, Bill and I said goodbye to Staffordshire and set off for Norfolk, the county next to Suffolk.  As a native Virginian who grew up near Virginia’s own Suffolk and Norfolk, it was a little weird to be going to the original ones in England.  Especially since once we got there, I noticed how much England’s Norfolk and Suffolk looked like Virginia’s Norfolk and Suffolk.

Unfortunately, Bill got my stomach virus, so the drive down there wasn’t as smooth as it could be.  We ended up having to pull off the road once so he could throw up.  I had chosen to book The Willow House, a bed and breakfast in Watton, a little village that was on the way to the airport in Norwich.  Although at the time, I was kind of sad we wouldn’t be able to stay closer to the base, I have to say that now that we’ve been to the Mildenhall area, I’m glad we stayed further out.  Mildenhall is very built up now and traffic is pretty bad there.

The Willow House in Watton.

Basic accommodations.

Thursday night, Bill and I were recovering from our run in with the stomach bug.  We had dinner at The Willow House, which has a pretty nice pub.  The portion sizes were huge and neither of us came close to finishing our meals.  On the other hand, I had a good rib eye steak, which was a nice change of pace after a week of so much fresh seafood.  The Willow House also has a nice selection of cask ales, which Bill and I appreciated as beer lovers.

Cute pub!

Bill’s huge jacket potato, which he said wasn’t quite cooked all the way.

 

My steak.  this came with chips, too.  It was way too much food, but the steak was good.

 

An example of breakfast at The Willow House.

The accommodations at The Willow House are pretty basic, but reasonably priced.  For years, my uncle ran the The Natural Bridge Hotel and Conference Center in Natural Bridge, Virginia.  They have “cabins” there.  Basically, they are little buildings with six to eight rooms in them.  The Willow House only has one building with rooms, but it really reminded me of the Natural Bridge Hotel cabins.  The Willow House has plenty of free parking and offers a great breakfast.

On Friday morning, after a good night’s sleep, Bill and I were both feeling fine again.  We had a big breakfast in the inn’s charming restaurant, then set off for Mildenhall.  Bill had set the GPS to find Tolley Cobbold Street.  If you click the link, you can get the backstory on why finding that street was on my bucket list.  The short version is that legend has it, that street was named after my late father, Charles P. Tolley.  I wanted to see if the street was still there 38 years after we PCS’d.

We got to Mildenhall and found Tolly Cobbold Street.  At first, I was a little disappointed.  Tolly Cobbold is the name of a beer that was produced for centuries in nearby Bury St. Edmunds until the brewery ceased production in 2002.  I was looking for Tolley Cobbold Street.  Unwilling to be let down by not finding it, Bill and I drove around some more and found the British school where I went to kindergarten.  We found the main drag, which features beautiful St. Mary’s Church and a charming little market square.  We also found our old house, which I easily recognized because it’s base housing and there’s a big field behind it.

Beyond those brambles is the field that backs up to our old house on base.  In my day, there were cows there.  Now, there are horses.  I’d rather gaze at the horses.

 

Me in Mildenhall as a little girl, looking at the cows from our yard.


Tolly Cobbold Street

 

Tolley Cobbold Road!

I told Bill I wanted to drive into our old neighborhood.  He was reluctant because we didn’t have a visitor’s pass.  However, I noticed that the guard shack near the neighborhood (which I don’t think existed in 1978) was standing wide open and unmanned.  I kept pressuring Bill, so he finally relented…  And then, I saw it.  The sign… Tolley Cobbold Road (instead of Street).  As I snapped a picture of it, I had to wonder how many Air Force folks looked at that sign right next to Tolly Cobbold Street and wondered if it was a typo.

My old school.  I went to kindergarten here with a bunch of British five year olds.  My mom said she sent me there because the school day was longer.  I’m glad she did it, even if she did it for kind of selfish reasons.

Our old English house… the first one I have memories of in my lifetime.  I sent these pictures to my sisters, who were much older when we lived there, and they confirmed that my memory hadn’t failed me!

I was a little sad to see all those trash bins under the gazebo.  

Scenes from around Mildenhall.  I hear they are planning to shut the base…  That makes me sad, especially since its been built up so much now!  And they like Americans, too… right?

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anecdotes, Military

On being a young American kid in Europe…

My very first passport photo before we moved to England.  I was about three years old and two feet ten inches tall.   I was born in Hampton, Virginia and my parents moved us back to that area when I was eight.  I grew up in Virginia and it’s now “home”, but I don’t miss it that much. 

As I was watching the dogs outside this morning, I had a sudden thought about being an American kid in Europe.  I spent part of my early childhood in England at Mildenhall Air Force Base.  We lived on the base, but I went to a British school instead of the American school.  My sisters went to the American schools.  At the time, living in England was perfectly normal to me.

I didn’t know I was in a foreign country, although I do remember my mom and sisters explaining to me that we were Americans living in England and that it was a “different country” than where we came from.  At that time, I didn’t have a concept of countries, though.  England was simply “home”.  I still have vivid memories of the primary school where I attended kindergarten with British and a few other American kids.  My mom told me she sent me there because the school day was longer and it kept me out of her hair.

Our backyard in England on Mildenhall Air Force Base bordered a big field with cows in it.  I was fascinated by them.  To this day, I still hate wearing shoes… and I love livestock.

We moved back to the States in 1978, when I was six years old.  At that point, I had spent half my life in England and it was really the only place I remembered.  I have only the vaguest of memories of our time at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Even though I’m American and was finally back in the United States after three years abroad, it didn’t really feel like my home.  It felt like a foreign country.  The time I spent as a small child in England changed me somehow, even though I am very much an American.  I guess living in England made me more aware of the world around me.  It definitely gave me a perspective that a lot of my peers didn’t have, although quite a lot of my peers were also military brats and a few of them had also lived abroad.

 

Me and my mom going to high tea at the Swan Hotel in Lavenham, England.  This photo was so fascinating to me that I used Google Earth to figure out where we were.  This hotel is still open and there’s a chance Bill and I might book a room there in March.  It depends on how nervous he is about getting us to the airport on Easter morning.

For some reason, I was thinking about kids who are born abroad and spend their formative years in another country.  They go to school with host country nationals, probably learn to speak the local language.  It’s “home” to them.  Then they move back to the country where they’re really from and it somehow feels “foreign” to them.  Even though they are among their people, they are different.  They were different when they were abroad, too.  They weren’t locals and weren’t likely to stay there longer than a few years, but they were mingling among the locals and got to see things through their eyes.

I think sometimes the first place you remember as a child is a place that really leaves an imprint.  I have always been kind of fascinated by England, though I haven’t spent a lot of time there since we moved back to the States in 1978.  We went to London in 2009 and I remember being questioned by the customs people.  They wanted to know if I’d ever been there before.  I told them I used to live in England.  That piqued their interest, until I told them I lived there as a young child in the 1970s.  Then it was okay.  I suspect there are a lot of Americans like me, people who lived abroad when they were kids and kind of feel like their childhood home is actually “home”.  I think my mom thought of England as home, too.  She said she cried all the way back to the States when we had to move.

My parents kept in touch with my dad’s British secretary from when we lived in England.  Before my dad died in 2014, they went back to visit her a few times.  She visited them, too, and even became friends with my Granny.  In fact, I saw her right before Bill and I got married.  I remember her fondly.  Before we left England, she asked me when I’d be back to visit.  I told her I wasn’t coming back until they built a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean.  She reminded me of that when I saw her last.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve flown across the Atlantic Ocean since 1978… or really, 1995.  I never took another trip abroad until I joined the Peace Corps.

My sisters cautioned me against marrying a military guy.  They saw my mom’s life as an Air Force wife and how it didn’t make her very happy.  I mostly enjoyed being an Army wife until Bill retired in 2014.  The lifestyle took me in a direction I wasn’t expecting, but I’ve been around the military my whole life.  It’s kind of second nature to me.  I didn’t have the globe trotting experience my sisters had because my dad retired from the Air Force when I was six years old.  But I definitely made up for that as an Army wife.  I eventually had roots when my dad retired, but now I’m not sure if I’ll root anywhere else.

Hebridean Princess in November 2012.  We’ll be back aboard in March.

In March, Bill and I will be going to Glasgow, Scotland to catch a cruise through the Hebrides.  We have decided that after the cruise, we will visit my old childhood stomping grounds, possibly with a stop in Stoke On Trent so we can catch a performance of Avenue Q.  If we do make it to Suffolk, Bill will probably have to acquaint himself with British driving.  I know it makes him nervous, but I feel confident he can do it.  If my parents could do it, he certainly can.  And who knows?  We may even move to England at some point.  The expat life definitely suits us.

I spotted this sign in Edinburgh.  My maiden name is Tolley.  My married name is Crossen.  Seems like a clue from the past.

I always thought I’d put down roots somewhere and raise a family.  That lifestyle is apparently not in the cards for me.  My expat career started with my being a very little kid in England and mingling among Brits.  Then I went to Armenia as a young woman and worked with others who also later became expats.  Seriously, a lot of my old Peace Corps friends are living abroad.  Now I’m on a second Germany tour.  I have no burning desire to move back to the United States anytime soon.  If I could, I think I’d stay abroad for the rest of my life.  We’ll see what happens.

For now, I’m really looking forward to going back to England and seeing somewhere other than London.  London is amazing; don’t get me wrong.  But it’s not what I remember about the first childhood home I actually remember.  Besides, England, Ireland, Scotland, and even Germany is where my people were from in the first place.

We lived in England when this happened…  

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