Page 174 - Adobe Photoshop PDF

In February 1958, we went on Long Vacation. Many of our
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in the States. Jean and I felt that it was a privilege to travel abroad and
we wanted our older kids, Janet and Richard, to see more of the world.
At that time, it cost about $1,100 for airfare from Dhahran to San Fran-
cisco and back. We found that airfare for a trip around the world was
only a little over $1,300. So we took our kids around the world in 1958.

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a refueling stop in Bombay. Even a short stop like that showed you that
India was a human beehive. We arrived in Colombo after dark. It was
a long taxi ride from the airport to our hotel. In the dark the taxi drove
using only parking lights. On the road were carts pulled by oxen. They
would have a kerosene lantern burning and hung beneath the axle. The
stupid taxi would drive at high speed, almost overtake the ox cart in the
dark and then zoom around it.

When we arrived at the hotel, there were many employees in
white clothing who were sitting or lying on the lawn in front of the ho-
tel. It developed that they were all on strike. There were no strike signs
or demonstrations. When we got to the registration desk in the hotel
they had our reservation for rooms but the clerk informed us that, due to
the strike, they would not assist us in any way. By this time it was very
late in the evening. I took the keys to our two rooms and had a terrible
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ments and the room numbers did not follow an obvious pattern. I found
the rooms had not had the sheets changed because of the strike. At that
hour there seemed nothing else to do but to accept the rooms, so Richard
and I carried the bags up to the rooms and we all crawled in bed. The
next morning we found that nothing had been settled in the strike and
neither food nor drink was available at the hotel. We were enormously
grateful for Jean’s careful preparation for the trip; she had included in
the luggage a number of cans of fruit juice. We drank those and got a
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Ceylon is a big island and the mountain peaks there are up to

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