The American Tourists by Donald Strawn (rocket ebook reader .TXT) 📕

He was a very interesting young man, and probably the most widely traveled person of 26 years that Iʼve ever met. He worked for the bank of Finland and has been sent all over the world on business.


After arriving back at Edeby, I had a chance to correct any errors and give last minute instructions for two days. Evelyn spent some time cooking a New Yearʼs banquet for all the workers at Ebbaʼs house. In her spare time she got all our “goodies” packed up for our return to the states.

We stayed up to see the New Year in, and to toast all our newly made friends. For the record, Jamie and I beat Evelyn and Kathy by 60 points at a game of Yatzee.

It seemed so strange to be writing 1990 for the date! When I graduated from Columbia Academy in 1959, I had no idea that I would ever live to
see 1990. The year 2000 was almost an obscene idea!

I would be ancient, or surely the Lord would come to deliver me from even the thought of it.
But, 1990 came and 2000 was only ten short years away. By New Years, 2000, I would be 60 years old, if I survived!

Hey! We made it back in record time, even though we were to get off on a shaky footing. While we were in Jugoslavia Kathy made our schedule for our return to the states. Then there had to be a last minute change. We wouldnʼt be returning via TWA, but by Pan Am & United airlines.

Since the Project had ticketed us to Sea-Tac only, our kids bought us tickets to PDX, so they wouldnʼt have to drive to Seattle to get us. Trouble is, those tickets were based on our first flight schedule, not the revised one that put us in Seattle some 4 hours too late to meet the Portland connection. So, when the error was discovered, they made reservations for another flight, and we would pay for the new tickets when we arrived in the states.

The travel agency in California had sent our tickets to Stockholm, but as of 10 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave, the tickets had not yet arrived. A trace with Fed Ex discovered them in Brussels! We were assured by Pan Am that there should be no problem, since they were prepaid tickets.

Eric Von Ekermann, the owner of Edeby Ripsa, drove us into the Stockholm airport taking the “short cut.” It was an interesting trip in itself, but his running commentary of the scenery that we were passing through was priceless. He pointed out a lot of his old “stomping grounds,” places where he served in the military, the farm where he met Ebba, the homes of old friends of the family and hunting companions.

The farm where he met Ebba has quite a story behind it. She was in agricultural college and as their final exam, 2 guys and 5 girls had to operate a farm together for a given period of time. Erik was a repairman who came to the farm to work on some of their equipment. After meeting Ebba he just HAD to rescue her from her agricultural dilemma. So he married her.

Upon arriving at the airport we went warily to the Pan Am counter to show them our yellow scrap of paper in hand that listed our flight number and time. Sure enough they were expecting us. New tickets were made for New York. At Kennedy we would transfer to the United terminal, yellow paper in hand. Praise the Lord, it worked again.

When we tried to pay for our tickets for the Sea-Tac to PDX leg of the trip, we were met with blank stares. There was no computer confirmation of a 1 A.M. flight for our reservation! It took a few minutes and 2 clerks to coax the right info from the database. Soon we were on our way again.

Vickie, Darin, and DeWayne met us at PDX, but our luggage didnʼt make it. It was delivered the next day, right to our doorstep on Hammond Ct. in Battle Ground,

What a trip!
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Text: All text and photos are Copyright of the author.
Publication Date: 11-12-2010

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