In the middle of the night of 23 June 2008 - Hey anybody out there still with me?
Thank you to those who write or call or email and say “hey, I am one out here,” as U-Drive Bob Erickson leaned over and said to me just last Friday, as the wedding was about to commence. I am in Orlando, visiting with Peter and Cindy and their beautiful and brilliant children. However, I came here basically to attend The Wedding. Jim and Jan Sizer - of the Sugar Story that appeared on this site in February - their oldest daughter was married here, a “destination wedding,“ at Disney’s Grand Floridian. This event was absolutely lovely in every respect, and I would write an account of it, I so enjoyed attending this wedding - Mickey Mouse was not a participant - except this is a Henry Cook site.
Aramcons Bob and Janet Erickson were not at our table during the fabulous lunch, but we, Cindy was persuaded to accompany me, had the pleasure of dining with a Sizer brother, Jeff, and his lovely wife, Brenda, and - Lynn and Gail Loncki, of Ras Tanura, and now of Dhahran. They came to know us as guests of the Sizers when the Sizers were house sitting for us in Ras Tanura. Gail commented on the wonderful dinner parties they attended at our house while we were on vacation! This is much like the people we used to meet some years later when we lived in Dhahran, people who would tell us about the wonderful parties they attended when Patsy Knox would house sit for us in Dhahran. I used to think, I sure wish I had been invited to some of those parties, they sounded so much more fun that anything we ever did. Once, I think, Patsy had a band, a combo, play for the evening. And, a few weeks before the Gulf War started - we came back from vacation just in time for the War - Patsy entertained a host of female pilots, she herself being a pilot. She gave us a picture of about thirty women in uniform, posing by our pool. This picture is quite a thrilling sight. On a somber note: one of those women was killed in combat over Iraq about a month after the picture was taken.
Back to the wedding - before I left for Florida it was decreed that my clothes are dowdy, so Allison devoted some hours after work to helping me find something suitable. However - the dress of choice had an attached piece of jewelry on an extended chain. I intended to replace this strange ornament that definitely was not me, with a little piece of Yemeni jewelry I happened to pick up on the trip. Intentions were good, got the chain off the dress, but the Yemeni jewelry never was attached to the chain; the original piece I dropped on the tile floor and it shattered. Time was short, just a couple of hours until flight time - doing my usual routine just before a trip, of “re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic” - I could hear Henry, yet again, saying that to me as I was trying to get ready to leave. So, what to do about the dress without the ornament? Relying on the classic, at the very last minute, I took my pearls.
That is where this is going: The Pearls. Henry and I visited Beirut in 1966. We had never been “anywhere”, well, except to Dallas and LA. We were coached by several people who tripped to Beirut on a regular basis, that we must do at least two things: take in a show at The Casino, and shop at a little jewelry store owned by George Mansour. “Everyone” bought jewelry from George Mansour. We knew nothing about shopping for jewelry - at that time our family jewels consisted of our gold wedding bands, and a piece of Navajo turquoise Henry bought me in New Mexico. Obediently, we spent part of a day at George Mansour’s: he recognized novices when he saw them, and gave us a quite an education about buying jewelry. We looked at diamonds, at rubies, at sapphires, at emeralds, at opals, and on and on. It was too much. We finally bought four gold bangles, and a harem ring.
About a year later, Suzanne Walston and Lo Jarvis (those two names are linked indelibly to the Tripoli years, and they will never read this - they’ve been lost to us for a very long time) went on a serious shopping trip to Beirut. Henry asked them to pick out a string of pearls for me. They took on this responsibility gladly, and with great enthusiasm. Those two are the Original Shoppers. They returned with the pearls. Gleefully and proudly they gave them to Henry to “present” them to me, for our wedding anniversary. He couldn’t wait. He came home the very day they arrived, and, grinning as only Henry could when he was pleased with himself, and excited about a surprise, he pulled those pearls out of his pocket, much as a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. They were wrapped in a wad of Kleenex. Not overly impressive! at first. George Mansour gave them The Speech, and Suzanne and Lo next educated Henry. Those pearls are “of the highest quality and value.” The clincher, couched in terms as only a Middle Eastern merchant could say sincerely and with a straight face - “these pearls are so beautiful, that men from far across the room will be drawn to the lady who wears them. Men will be mesmerized by their beauty and the beauty of the woman who wears them, and will not be able to stay away.”
That was never actually the case! Henry would tease me every time I put them on. Was I preparing to mesmerize men that night? However, they are “lovely and of highest quality.” Have had them re-strung twice - due to babies, my own babies, pulling on them. People in the shop usually comment on what an extraordinarily nice string of pearls they are.
So, I wore the pearls, and Henry’s presence was with me, there at the wedding.
And the gold bangles we bought on our trip to Beirut? Hadn’t thought of them for years, until the Yemen trip, traveling with Vicci, whose signature is an arm load of bangles, all different, each one beautifully exquisite. She wears an astounding collection of unique bangles.
My bangles were quite plain - elegance is simplicity? and they were 21 carat gold, so they were very soft. In just wearing them, they would pull out of a true round. Lay my arm down, as on a table, they would assume a rectangular shape. More of a trapezoid, actually. I loved wearing them, but they really were in the way while in the kitchen. Doing dishes they were always down in the soapy water. Could not roll out cinnamon rolls with them clinking down around my wrist. And, I became a fast learner about which metals conduct heat! Only took once to open the oven door while wearing those bangles, they heated up so quickly I was nearly branded for life. So, I would come into the kitchen wearing them, take them off and leave them on the window sill above the sink. Oh dear. Those villas were concrete block houses with big empty rooms. We had to buy everything: the closets as separate standing wardrobes, and, the kitchen sink as one unit. We had a huge white enamel sink with the drain board attached, and cabinet, all together. This very large unit was connected to the plumbing, leaving about a two inch space between the sink unit and the wall. You can see what is coming here. One day I accidentally knocked the bangles off the window sill. They fell, tinkling musically, between the wall and the sink unit. I can still hear them, falling all the way to the floor. Some days later, Henry came in from the rig, considered the situation, and decided there was no reasonable way to disconnect everything then and move that huge heavy unit away from the wall for gold bracelets. “We would think about it“. In a few years, while packing for the next move, we considered the bangles behind the sink, and decided to just leave them, a hidden treasure for someone to find sometime later in history. After all, the wide ones only cost twelve dollars apiece, the narrow ones, seven dollars!
Maybe someday our kids will wend their way back to the land of their childhood, (well, not Anne’s childhood) and locate a major part of their inheritance….
While on the subject of gold: Our first years in Abqaiq, George Mansour’s jewelry was still part of our lives. One of the teachers, D.J. Grothus, returned from Beirut wearing a “Wow!” necklace, the “wow” being what the husband said when he finds out how much the wife paid for it - this term originated with Gary Clark, a teacher in the school. Henry agreed that I definitely needed a wow necklace, so he arranged for someone to bring me one. It is 18 carat gol, a series of filigree balls separated by gold links, quite lovely. Over the course of only about two years, several women in Abqaiq were wearing their wow necklaces. I had not realized they were so prevalent until on one trip, while connecting through London's Heathrow, Peter, then in about the 7th grade, said, “look mom! That lady is wearing your necklace.” I looked, not anyone I knew, but indeed she was wearing “my” wow necklace. We oil field people traveled the same airline routes and shopped the same gold souks.
Upon retirement, I wore the necklace some, but when grandchild number one came along she was often into the jewelry box, her favorite thing to do was drape that necklace around herself. I took it away from her a few times, and then it disappeared. Through the next few years I have searched for it, finally faced the fact she must have dropped it into the wastebasket, as often when emptying the trash we found "treasures" she had squirreled away there. I thought, oh well, "but lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal..." or in this case grandchild loses. However - since 5 February of this year I’ve had occasion to search through Henry’s safe for various paperwork, and what did I find, but the wow necklace. He had carefully put it away from little girls. He had forgotten it was there.
I meant to write about the Yemen trip tonight - ended up in pearls and gold instead. Sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with this until it happens. Yemen on the morrow.
Bye for now - and much love from Bonnie and the Cook Family