Page 182 - Adobe Photoshop PDF

By this time, the importation of liquor was forbidden. Many of
our engineers and artisans had immediately gotten to work and created
their own stills to distill liquor. Bob was invited into the home of our
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amazed at the elaborate copper piping set up that Jim had which in-
volved cooling water from the kitchen sink and heat provided from the
kitchen stove. It was strictly forbidden to give or sell liquor to Mus-
lims but almost all the Americans arranged to produce their own liquor.
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they produced their own scotch or bourbon from the basic alcohol they
distilled.

The Aramco school system operated on the basis of three months
of schooling followed by one month of vacation. During the vacation
month, teachers were available to help anyone who had been doing
poorly in school or who had been on vacation and had missed part of
the school term. Such children then received instruction in very small
classroom groups. The system, we found, worked superbly. The school
term never seemed too long to the children before there was a vacation
month and they were never out of school long enough in vacation to
forget what they learned in their preceding school term. It seemed to us
that this was a system superior to anything we had known in the United
States and one that ought to be imitated.

April was one of the three months during the year when school
was out in Arabia. Janet was away in Switzerland in school and Jean
was thoroughly pregnant. When the opportunity came for a trip over
some Arab holidays I took Richard and we joined the group going to
Petra, Jordan. I had written to my Mother each week while we were in
Arabia in order to keep the extended Holmes family informed about our
family. Mother saved a number of the letters and perhaps it would be
wise to quote my letter to her written in Ras Tanura on April 17, 1959,
which she saved. It reads as follows:

“Dear Mom,
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