Hey anybody out there still with me...I am typing this on the actual site, something I never do, as usually write the story and then think about it a day...however, am out of time here...this is to let you know I am just this minute leaving for nine days on The Big Island with Peter and Cindy and family, will return April 6th. Last night I was going to post a letter I received, but simply ran out of steam at two am and could not get in here to turn this thing on. I am taking it with me, and if I find a computer - between beach sessions and watching the volcano erupt! oh dear - I will post it.

My plan was to, by this time, personally reply to everybody who has posted on this site. We see that has not happened yet. You cannot, well - maybe you can - imagine how appreciated you are and how much I love your entries and notes.

My ride to the airport has just arrived, so, bye for now.

Much love, Bonnie and the Cook Family

Tuesday Night – 18 March. Hey anybody still out there…Had a call the other day from Robert Nesmith. Robert, the man who will eat anything prepared in our kitchen, and then volunteer to do the dishes. The question: “have I used the new ovens yet? the space age double ovens, convection on the top and regular on the bottom”. Well, no. However, today was dark and rainy, a good day to warm up the kitchen with fresh baked cinnamon rolls. Plus, was expecting a visit from David and Julie Glover, for whom I traditionally fix cinnamon rolls. So, I got out the directions to see if I could turn on these new ovens. After a false start or two, I did manage to get them fired up. However, the convection oven starts at 170 degrees, and I need one hundred. Shot in the foot again! and back to the dinosaur microwave oven in the garage.

The story of our microwave: I had never heard of a microwave oven, except perhaps through osmosis during party conversation, when Henry showed up one day with an Amana microwave oven. We lived in the rowhouse in Abqaiq then – that tells us the year must have been 1973. He was so thrilled with himself - to present me with this total surprise. I was so startled hardly knew what to say, except that I had heard somewhere that these things were “dangerous and one should not operate them if children were in the same room.” And certainly, one would not actually eat anything cooked in such a thing. He was quite disappointed that I did not share his joy over this new invention, he who always gloried in having the very newest electronic toy. We came to a “compromise’ … we would use it. And, we did – sort of - the real usefulness for me was heating milk for making cinnamon rolls.

Note Number One: I wrote this in the night last night, and went to bed trying to remember why I was so hesitant about having a microwave. I got up again, and researched Amana, and was reminded: Amana came out with the first Radarange small enough for domestic use in 1967. In 1968 they were tested and found that indeed the microwaves leaked from around the door and the units were not safe. The problem was corrected; by 1971 the Radarange was marketed nationwide, still trailing myths and legends about their danger. Ours was a 1973 model, and all I had heard were the myths and legends

Note Number Two: we seem to have come full circle here – the last time Henry went to Dodgertown, would have been November Camp of 2006, he attended as a visitor, hoping to at least be able to watch a game each day. He was very weak and quite ill. Barbara Labine, his wonderfully good friend, and cook extraordinaire, took me aside and talked to me about what food I was fixing for him and how I was preparing it. I remember her explicit instructions: “tape your microwave closed and never use it again.” A few weeks I later bought a book on preparing healthy food. In the first chapter the instructions are: never use a microwave, ignore it, tape it closed, or get rid of it – as microwaves destroy nutrients.

Well, back in Abqaiq, we lived with the Amana. I never was good at using it. I remember Linda Simms telling me once that since she taught school all day her time at home in the kitchen was very limited, and she depended on her microwave extensively. After this conversation I tried with renewed energy to use this thing, but it really made no difference in our lives.

We were transferred to Ras Tanura in 1978, and the Amana was damaged beyond repair during the move. Secretly relieved, I watched Henry finally throw it away, promising to get me another one. I assured him there was no hurry.

Then, a year or so later, at Pat Hundertmark’s house, I saw her proofing bread dough in her microwave! In a metal bowl. I couldn’t believe it. She explained about her new Sharp Microwave/Convection Carousel she had recently bought in Kobar. Nothing would do now until I had a Sharp Microwave/Convection Carousel oven too.

I remember the shop in Kobar as being named the Pakistani Exhibition – could that be it? Or a variation on that name. Maybe it was the National Exhibition. A very nice Saudi man ran the shop. I told him I wanted to look at his microwave ovens. There was nothing on display, just boxes stacked throughout the store, four or five high.

He said, you Aramco?

Yes.

All Aramco buy this.

Well, would you open the box so I can see it?

No. You Aramco. You buy this.

But may I see it first?

No. Open box, you no buy, I no can sell box.

You Aramco. All Aramaco buy this. You buy this.

Well…

He would NOT budge – “Aramco buy this.” On the box was printed the words Sharp Microwave/Convection Carousel. So, I bought “this” - and wrestled it home on the interarea bus

He was right. “Aramco” was VERY happy with “this.”

That Sharp Carousel was as necessary to my reputation as the Kitchen Aid mixer. Every batch of cinnamon rolls and/or bread for these next 27 years had the first rising in the Sharp Carousel, exactly at 100 degrees for exactly one hour. It was wonderful to be able to control the proofing. Always this part of the process was done in the Yugoslav metal bowl. This wonderful bowl, in nearly daily use even today as we speak, was purchased at the “Dhahran Shopping Center” – a glorious name for a small shop, which also sold Avon products plus an amazing variety of other commodities. Another feature of this store was that occasionally one could spot rats peering at you from eye-level shelves as you shopped. No matter, just be careful, if a box looked chewed in any way, refrain from purchasing. Canned items were safe.

In 1994, when we were “a fixing” (as I’ve learned to say since moving to Arkansas) to retire from Aramco, I had planned to put the Sharp Carousel in the garage sale, as our new house in the States had a built in microwave oven.

Anne would not hear of it. She was as nostalgic about that microwave oven she had grown up with – we bought it about a year after she was born - as she was about the kitchen table (“you always said the kitchen table is the Heart of the Home, WHY would you even THINK of giving it away?”)

So, both the kitchen table and the microwave came back with us. That microwave was a dinosaur in this new kitchen. It is so boxy-big, plus redundant, with the nice neat microwave built in over the cook top. Anne still held on to the Sharp – “I’ll take it with me when I go to college – just keep it in garage for the next three years.” So, we did. And, before I realized it, but I was tripping out to the garage a couple of times a week to use it, as the built in microwave is not convection, therefore could not be used to proof dough. I have baked zillions of batches of cinnamon rolls these years in Arkansas, right up until these last few months when attending to Henry took so much time.

When Anne went off to college, if she had had a place for the Sharp Carousel, I wouldn’t have let her have it, as I used it on a weekly basis.

When she and Bobby married, I wouldn’t let her have it. She had to put a microwave on her wedding gift register.

So. Here we are in this kitchen with these gleaming ovens – and the convection function will not come on at 100 degrees. It starts at 170, too hot for proofing dough, as far as I know. Today I walked past the new ovens and on out to the garage to use the circa 1980 Sharp Convection /Microwave Carousel.

Other than the nostalgia of the story, is there some moral here?

How about, “Be content with what you have” – a major theme in church a few weeks ago.

What am I going to do when this thing finally dies? Stop making cinnamon rolls?

Perhaps we, the Sharp and I, will finish our lives the same year, and there will be no problem!

Bye for now –

Much love from Bonnie and the Cook Family

Hello, everybody still with me. Tonight I am back in Fort Smith – it is Tuesday, the 4th of March. I see now that every day is going to be an anniversary of some kind. A month ago was Henry’s last night here in this house. I’ve walked around and turned on all the lights, wound all the clocks, and avoided the Dodger Den. When Peter and Cindy put me on the plane today they were very concerned that I would be alone – am not used to alone as I was in the glory days of drilling, that is for sure.

So, tonight, 11 year old Olivia came to spend the night – this is nice, even if we have to get up at the crack of dawn to get her to school on time.

The hardest day in Orlando was last Saturday, the day we went to Disney – Epcot. In the summer of 1959 our first Big Outing was driving to Disneyland from Vegas. Peter says “I still don’t believe you went to LA, did Disney, and came back to Vegas all in one day.” We did. We were in a Corvette, remember? Henry was a young buck of 24 going on 25, and I seem to remember there was no speed limit in Nevada during those years. Had there been, it would not have mattered! My, how Henry changed in later years, when he would say to me, “just because the speed limit is 70, it is not mandatory that you drive that fast.”

Anyway, last Saturday was a lonesome day, walking around Epcot with the cute little family but no Henry. I missed holding hands, missed just the smell of him. Our three kids worked at Disneyworld at sometime in their careers, so we have spent many days there visiting and checking up on them, and consequently stayed in most of the old original hotels. And, there was a block of years when nearly every item of clothing, including watches, had Mickey stitched somewhere on it.

So tonight, I’ve come home to The Mail. Allison has been collecting it, and had it arranged on the kitchen table in categories: the cards, the letters, the bills, the symphony and Coterie, Merrill-Lynch, junk, catalogs, and boxes of books. It is a literal mountain.

Which brings us to: Mail. In the first years of marriage I was not much of a letter writer, or much on thank you notes. Henry trained me up on these things. I meant to, just never got around to it. He saw to it that I did my duty, and when I procrastinated, he would finally give up and take care of things, as usual.

In Libya, the mail back and forth to the USA was so very slow, writing hardly mattered. I did write some, to my folks and Auntie, was about all. We had no phone. International calls were not in our vocabulary. Don’t remember if it was possible to call. Perhaps from the post office, I think. The only phone call I remember in those days was when we were evacuated to Italy during the Six Day War. I did write Auntie and the folks, and the US government mailed it. My Dad received that letter, called the State Department in Washington,DC, and had them track me (and his grandchildren) down! He called me in our hotel in Naples!

That’s another story…

Back to the mail. Aramco mail service was pretty good – anywhere from 14 to 21 days delivery time to the States, and about that long coming to us.

After Henry was working in the office, he always picked up the mail on the way home. It was custom. Once I went to get the mail in the day, as I couldn’t wait any longer – we had two kids out at school and I would check every day to see if they had written. Henry then checked the mail after work – there was nothing. He was so disappointed. So, I never picked up the mail again. Sometimes I would check by and peer into the box to see if anything was there, but always let him bring it home. Just a little thing. Didn’t really matter, the letters were already more than two weeks old, what difference did a few more hours make?

We all learned early on to send mail with whomever was leaving the Kindgom on repat. We certainly expected to take mail with us. I don’t remember anyone every refusing to take other people’s mail. Some people didn’t like assuming the responsibility, so we didn’t ask them twice. Some drillers on 28/28 schedules flying those charter flights later on were iffy. Occasionally the men never looked in their suitcases until they were packing to come back and then discovered they had mail! Oh dear, they mailed it 28 days late.

We always took empty suitcases out, and we brought them in, full. Full of children’s clothes in the next three sizes, shoes in graduating sizes, vitamins, bags of chocolates chips and at least two boxes of brown sugar – can one live on entire year without chocolate chip cookies? Later, the commissary carried brown sugar and chocolate chips, so the next project was smuggling in bacon. After the pork store was in business, the fun went out of trying to get past customs with our bootleg wares.

Speaking of customs, I remember the night we picked up a new hire drilling family in the Dhahran airport, to take them to Abqaiq, and customs found two issues of Playboy in the bottom of his suitcase. He swore he didn’t know they were there! as he stood there in front of his wife and little girls – he was so distraught, I believed him. All of us nearly went to jail that night! Guilty by association. Ah, the drillers were legendary.

What I am thinking, as I look at this mail here on the kitchen table, was our taking out mail on every repat. It was fun. We reserved a suitcase just for mail. People came by the house in a steady stream for two days running before we left, bringing mail and small packages – cookies and things for their kids in boarding school. By the time we actually left, we had visited with half the population of the town. Usually people did not have postage. It didn’t matter. Who cared? One year, it was while we were in RT, we had a huge suitcase stuffed with mail, as our trip was early November. We must have taken out zillions of Christmas cards. Henry never ever minded buying postage for all that mail, he expected to, and was glad to.

We flew to Florida to see whoever was working at Disney at that time, and I was anxious to get that mail off my conscience. Our conscience. Henry said, wait. We are going to Miami anyway – to eat at a Jewish deli – those of you who knew him well appreciate this. He said, let’s wait and drive down to Key Largo and mail it from there. Wouldn’t people wonder how their Christmas cards came to be mailed from Key Largo? We were eternally in the thrall of that classic movie.

So, we did. And dawdled on the way, the post office was only open a few more minutes when we arrived. There was all that mail, to stamp and process. The staff were quite surprised to see us come through their door with a suitcase of mail. We spent just under a hundred dollars in postage. Henry had such a good time at this, it was worth every penny to him.

I don’t remember if we ever got any feedback on the postmarks. Perhaps people don’t notice. Henry ALWAYS noticed postmarks. Peter brought that up yesterday. Peter remembered he mailed us a letter from St. George where he was in school, but the postmark said SLC – the postal service had consolidated by then. Henry pounced on that immediately, and wrote Peter about going off on a trip to Salt Lake City instead of staying at school, studying. Poor Peter, so innocent, he had no idea what Pop was talking about.

It’s time to close this down for now. As I’ve read through this mail tonight, I am struck, again, with the numbers of wonderful people we have been so fortunate to have in our lives.

We love you all…Bonnie and the Cook Family