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us to Dhahran, there was a general strike and no taxis or buses would
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them for help. Two of the Italian employees came to our hotel in little
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When we pointed out that one of the carry-on bags included baby Cindi,
they were shocked and delighted because they had assumed that Vicki
was the baby we had spoken of. Somehow, they got us all to the airport
and all went well.

In 1953, the Aramco operations had been visited by the General
Manager of Iraq Petroleum Company from Kirkuk, Iraq. Aramco man-
agement was anxious to see what Aramco could learn from other Per-
sian Gulf companies. I was appointed a member of a four-man team sent
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plane at a relatively low altitude. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers drain
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easy to tell the brown river water from the green Gulf. The area is very
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the paths of primary and secondary canals, which had once been used to
irrigate the area. The Arabs had used the river water to irrigate cropland
but had never provided for any drainage. As a result, over the centuries,
salt accumulated and eventually poisoned all vegetative growth. The
area was now completely abandoned.

In Kirkuk, people told us of a savings plan that the Iraq Petro-
leum Company had inaugurated about a year before. The plan provided
for the company to accept employees’ savings deposits, which were
available to the employee any time thereafter, including a 5 percent an-
nual interest on deposits. Some of my fellow Americans immediately
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ees was so small. I talked to some of the British administrators and some
of the Iraqis and realized why the plan was a success. The employees
had never had a safe place to keep their money, since there were no
banks in the area. After being paid in cash, an employee had the problem

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