Hey those of you out there – thanks for the comments on the last journal entry. When I started typing that night, I was aiming for someplace else, but ended up in Las Vegas! I do want these stories for the grandchildren, and this seems to be the best way – as they come to mind, start writing.

I’ve been thinking all day about my defense for The Sugar Story. Jan Sizer said she planned to write it, but has not yet managed to do so - here is my version of the truth.

This story starts with:

1. The green Mazda station wagon we bought from the Nuttalls in Abqaiq before moving to RT. ( the car Henry gave to the Hains – precipitating a journal entry of a week ago.) This car came with no air conditioning - they had installed an air conditioner that could be turned on under the passenger side dash, on the floor, but it broke down by the time the car lived in Ras Tanura.

2. I had been to a meeting about food storage – being prepared in Arabia. The idea hit home, as in our early years in Abqaiq, the paper storage facility in Kobar burned to the ground – that was the unverified rumor. There was a great fear – was it real? Cannot remember. We all thought there would not be another roll of toilet paper in the Kingdom for months, until the next ship came in! thus, a great rush on paper goods at the Abqaiq commissary. So, at this meeting, the focus was food stuffs, and the easy way to start, after stockpiling toilet paper! was sugar. Not for your Blue Flame still, but for other household purposes. Looking back, we hardly used any sugar, except for making cinnamon rolls. However, I dutifully went to Rahima as suggested and bought a 100 pound sack of sugar, the sack was a heavy brown paper. That sack of sugar lived in the back of the green Mazda, since I had neglected to buy the plastic containers to store it in, and it was too heavy to pull out of the car. It never occurred to me to ask anybody for help. I just left the sack of sugar in the car.

3. This worked quite well, until Peter and Allison came home as returning students in the summer. Peter was hired on at the scuba club – his job: filling and delivering scuba tanks. He would load those heavy tanks into the back of the Mazda. The sack of sugar was a buffer, keeping the tanks from rolling and knocking into each other as he drove around town delivering them.

4. All was just fine. I basically forgot about the sugar as Peter had the car all the time anyway. Toward the end of the summer, the brown paper began to break down, the sewed bottom of the sack began to leak. Peter and Allison went back to school in the States. Now, as I drove around RT – with the windows down because of no air-conditioning - there was a good breeze going through the car, and sugar would blow up into the driver’s hair and down the neck. Sticky. I was always going to do something about this – however, the easy out was just to walk! Leave the car at home. RT is a little town – the Surf House was just down the beach, the school basically across the street.

5. The Sizers, Jim and Jan, arrived. New to Aramco, new to RT, new to Big Boss Henry. Their living arrangements at first were not too good. Henry offered them our house and car while we would be out of the Kingdom on repat. I never heard of or saw these people! (now, our good friends the Sizers)

6. The day we were to leave, Henry tied up many ends at the office. I was packing at home and getting baby Anne organized. Henry came home, checked arrangements, and checked the car. Oh dear. The sugar. Ordinarily Henry was very calm and collected. But not now. We were running late to get to the airport - an hour away. He was very, very and extremely, firm: “these people coming to the house are new. They can’t drive this car with sugar blowing down their necks. YOU get that sugar out of the car before we leave. You bought the stuff, you do something!”

7. Not much time here. Thinking back, why didn’t I just throw it away? It was so cheap, and not exactly clean now. I didn’t think. Just started filling up anything I could find with sugar. Thirty minutes later, the car was swept out, and we left for the airport. I don’t remember if I even met the Sizers before they took over the house and car.

8. This is where Jan takes up the story…they arrived, already a little nervous, to live in our house for a couple of months. Every container in the kitchen was filled with sugar. Every pot, every pan, every bowl, every piece of Tupperware. There was no way to cook, as every thing in the kitchen was filled with sugar. I am embarrassed just writing this.

9. Years later, Jan would say, “I looked at the family pictures on the wall, thinking:” the children appear to be normal. There just must be something wrong with the mother.”

Okay Jan – take it from here: