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seems to cement memories for me. I was fascinated by the round areas
carved out of rock with a raised central portion. This was where the
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water had to be lowered to them daily. Horrible. Jean stayed in Beirut
resting and shopping in some familiar stores downtown.

On the night of April 12, 1953, Jean and I were invited to a din-
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Saudi Arabs in the Saudi military). The dinner was enjoyable, because
they had American T-Bone steaks; in Aramco we were still eating Aus-
tralian beef, which had been trailed to the market and then had been cut
up and frozen for a year or so before we ever got it. On the way home,
the old bus jolted in potholes in the road. Soon after we got home Jean
said that she was going to give birth, so I called a taxi and we rode a
couple of blocks to the hospital. Our Cynthia Joan was born later that
evening. After Jean was wheeled out of the delivery room, I saw a nurse
whom I had known for a couple of years and she was busy cleaning up
our new arrival. She invited me in to see her. Our Cindi rather shocked
me because she was so bony, whereas Vicki had been little, but rounded
everywhere. Cindi’s shoulders stuck out as if the bones were only cov-
ered by skin. Jean had been a twin with her brother, Steve. I always
thought that it would be fun to have twin babies, and thought that she
might be likely to have twins sometime. This never proved to be the
case, but I often referred to Vicki and Cindi as my twins because they
were born four days less than a year apart.

At this time, Dhahran was engulfed in a cloud of locusts. The
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arrived, we had cabbages with heads about 3 inches in diameter in our
garden. In one afternoon the cabbages were eaten, stalk and all, down
slightly below the ground level. We tried to scare the locusts by bang-
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sounded like rain. When Jean brought baby Cindi home in a taxi from
the hospital, she carefully covered the baby’s face with a blanket as the
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