We had our second three month home leave in the spring of 1952. We flew to Beirut in the ARAMCO Convair and checked into the Normandie Hotel, our operating center the whole time we were in Lebanon. Roger owned the hotel and took care of the guests with nice rooms, a good restaurant, travel help, a lounge with bar, and a big, confortable waiting area that looked out onto the Mediterranean Sea.
We stayed about a week, visiting the American Community School, the Cedars, the mountains behind the city, Baalbek, the coastal vistas, Pigeon Rocks and the beaches of St. Simon. During this time, we enjoyed the GREEN scenery, something lacking in Dhahran’s tan surroundings. We ate a lot of fresh fruit! It was a wonderful week.
The Sixth Fleet was in and we watched daily morning gunnery salutes and fly overs. The aircraft carrier would go out and the airplanes would fly over the city in formation, American diplomacy at work.
My dad found an overland driver to take us to Aleppo, a healthy day’s drive to the north in Syria. The morning we left, the hotel folks help us load our big steamer trunk- a fortnighter- and four suitcases, plus our green ARAMCO bags. The taxi was an eight seater, one of the bench seats in the back was a folder. My dad had it in his mind that we could get to Aleppo early enough to get a short tour of the city after we checked into the hotel; we were leaving the next day for Istanbul on the Orient Express. But, our driver had some other ideas.
Along the way, he sped like a man possessed! The speedo needle kept bouncing against the peg. But, on a previous trip the driver lost a hub cap and he wanted it back so at various locations he slowed to ask folks along the road if they had seen his hub cap, then we would speed away in a dusty cyclone. My dad wanted to get a move on, to conserve time now so we could spend it at our leisure that evening. But, that was not in the cards.
Near the Syria border, the police stopped us, got in and told the driver to take them to the ice plant. This he did. The four riders, all in uniform, one in front and three in the middle of the back chatted as we wheeled down a road. At the plant, they loaded several long ice bars, each about four feet long and six inches square. They slid the bars under the rear middle seat and jumped in. We were off to their village, maybe a half hour drive. We dropped them at the village center; they took the ice and waved us on to Aleppo.
Finally at dusk, we wheeled into Aleppo just as the prayer call was announced by the Muezzen. We pulled up in front of Barrons and unloaded. We checked in and the driver waited dutifully. Once in the room, my mom and sister begged off, but my dad and I took a short ride around the city, bustling after evening prayers. Back at the hotel, we ate and hit the hay. Our room was draped in muted brown wall hangings and the air was circulated by a curtain that swayed to and fro from the ceiling.
We were up bright and early the next day. The hotel was grand! The service folks loaded us up and we went to the train station. The steam engine was already under pressure. We were hustled aboard our coach. Bags were either stored beneath our seats or sent off to the baggage car. These cars had the passage way to one side of the car. The other side was all private cabin spaces with a sliding door. The wooden doorframe was decorated with frosted glass designs and the purser was quite gentile. Our stateroom was large with four swing out sleeping bunks. The windows to the side away from the passageway were opened by pulling straps. We settled in and the train departed on time.
We sped through the Syrian countryside, mostly farmland and farming villages, with the steady clackity-clak of the wheels below. For a while we opened the windows but we were near enough to the engine for black cinders to fly in! We closed the windows after that, and for the rest of the journey to Istanbul. The seats were very comfortable and the stateroom was very clean.
The noon meal was served in the dining car by reservation which our purser made for us. He came and took us to our table. The room was decorated in red velvet drapes with glass panels separating the tables. It was quiet and the service was perfect; the table setting was spotless and the glassware sparkled. The walls of the car were embossed with unique patterns, also red.
The rocking of the car put us all to sleep after the luncheon. We were awakened to the rattling of the door. The ticket taker wanted to see our tickets and passports. I was impressed that these people spoke so many languages, English, Arabic, German, French, and maybe Armenian and Turkish. The ticket taker spoke to us in English and then his assistant in Arabic!
The evening meal was so far out of my realm of ‘what’s for dinner?’ I usually only eat what I recognize but my parents said, ‘this is like chicken, this is like a plum, these are potatoes,’ and so on. My sister moped up her plate. She was usually a picky eater, but not now. She was into this touring.
About eight P.M. the purser let down the overhead bunks and converted our seats into the lower bunks! We climbed up and I never slept so well in my life. I don’t remember anything until the purser rattled our door for use of the shower and toilet the next morning.
This style of travel was a welcome benefit all the way to London. We got off the train in Istanbul, Belgrade, and Venice. At each stop we were transported to a hotel arranged for us by the Putnik Travel Agency. At each city, we went directly to the American Express office for mail and telegrams, cash banking, and travel support. American Express was our lifeline back to America.
The highlights of the cities were the Mosques, the suq, and the Bosporus in Instanbul. The great palace of the Ottoman Turks with its oppulence was greater wealth than I had ever seen. Venice was such a different city with its canals and splendor of the Grand Canal. But, the windy condition made it very difficult for the boat guys to maneuver or make headway! St. Marks Square was gorgeous, and when the clock struck the hour, all the pigeons flew. In Venice, we trained to Rome and caught a Swedish bus line for the journey north. Paris was my mother’s favorite city. We stayed at the Louvois Hotel, on a quiet square with a tailored park. We stayed a week and every night fell into bed after rigorous sightseeing. My dad just kept clicking the shutter and rolling the film. In London we stuck close to the Thames. The palace, the changing of the guard, Wesminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and on and on. When we mounted the train for Liverpool, we were headed to board the Empress of France, an oceanliner headed for Canada.
I’ve saved Belgrade for last. We were some of the first tourists into Yugoslavia; it was 1952 and Tito had his ways and needs. We were met at the train station by Melena and Dubrafka, her daughter; I was 14 and she was about nine, I guess. Melena told us on the way to her apartment that a tattletale lived in the building and we should watch what we say. She did not want to be reported. This scrutiny was because her husband was sick (code word for in prison); he was going to be sick for five years. His crime, representing the opposition. The Angelich clan had some history of this.
We stayed in Belgrade and met the family members, my grandfather Milovan’s relatives. He came to America in 1907 after two of his brothers paved the way earlier. The women took my mother into a bedroom and wanted to see all her underclothing. They were so amazed to feel silk, lace and the like. A little child asked my mother, ‘Meleva (Mildred), why is it that your fingers are so bloody!’ He had never seen nail polish. There were several wonderful meals and so many relatives. They only spoke Serbian and I did not speak their language. But, my mother was fluent in this slavic tongue. Her parents made her learn Serbian in Butte, Montana, as a youngster.
After a few days, we flew to the coast, just outside Dubrovnik. The landing was on a grass field. The old Roman city was quaint and there was just one big European style hotel, the Excelsior, We stayed there at seaside. Each day the Adriatic Sea was more beautiful. Dad brought Melena and Dubrafka along and we had several days in town while my dad found a taxi to take us all to Tribinje, a small village near where my grandfather’s parents had their home. They were basically peasant farmers with a big garden, corn, and grape vinyards- some chickens. The land was rough but the natural mountain slopes were wildly beautiful. All these local families spoke Serbian but they were from Montenegro. My grandfather’s entry to New York City attests to this ethnicity.
We stayed nearly a week and my mother was visited by her blood relatives as well as one family friend who went to America earlier but came back to Tribinje, married and decided to stay. Just before our taxi came to town, sheep were driven across the road. When the driver told the herder to move his flock, a man in a WWI soldier uniform stepped to a back door window of the car and said, ‘Meleva! it’s me, Petro Petrovitch. I was your father’s friend in Montana!’ My mother got out of the car, they had a big hug. Petro said, ‘I remember you as a little girl when I came to Sunday dinner at your father’s home.’ Phew. Talk about emotion. We realized then that the word was out. An American Angelich came back to visit! Every place we went, people has stories about my grandfather and my grandmother, Joka (Jean) Kashikovich.
On the last day, we were taken to the old family house, the lentel had a chiseled message that said my grandfather and his brothers had erected this house with their own hands. The next day we flew back to Belgrade and the day after boarded the train for Venice.
In all our travels, we were treated with the utmost respect until we were confronted by a new conductor after departing Belgrade. He and his assistant asked for tickets, which my father produced. He did not realize my mother was fluent in Serbian. He used strong, negative language and said he would throw these Americans off the train at the next stop because they had the tickets for the coach but no tickets for the wheels to take us to Venice. Evidently the Putnik agents had made an error. The conductor became red in the face and raised up to full height as he told my father in broken English that we must leave the train because of the error. He arrogantly derided us openly in Serbian until my mother took off her sun glasses and spoke a few sentences in Serbian that shocked the conductor. His eyes widened and he immediately began to back-pedal apoligitically. The only word from my mother’s sentences that I understood was ‘Tito.” At the next scheduled stop, the conductor took my father into the station master’s office and the ticket situation was resolved without delay. Back on the train, we chugged for Trieste and Venice.
Later, my mother related what she told the conductor. First, we had just come from an audience with Tito, and he would not be happy to learn how we were treated on the train. The second thing was that all Americans study the Serbian language in school.
From Liverpool, the Empress of France made the crossing in six days I think. Two years before, I had spent about two months on oceanliners and steamships coming home through the Pacific. This Empress was the sistership of the Empress of Canada. We crossed without event; the weather was beautiful and the ride was grand. The ship came down the St. Lawrence seaway where we disembarked and took a train to New York City. The day after we left the ship had a massive fire at dockside!
At 505 Park Avenue, my dad did some company business and then we took a plane to Los Angeles. We spent nearly a month with our Angelich and Christophersen relatives in Long Beach and Wilmington.
My dad and I came back to Dhahran early and JK and my mom stayed another month. Dad and I flew to Des Moines to visit his mother’s sisters in Madrid, at the Lutheran Home. My grandmother passed when my dad was just short of twelve years. His mother’s sisters raised him until he went to California as a young adult during the great depression.
Back in Dhahran, I began to realize that Wilmington was no longer my home. I was happy to be back in the Field, to spent time with my friends at the pool, to go to the beach, to shop in al Khobar, to smell the oil and dirt mix roads, and hear the drumming fans of the AC plants 24/7, to hear the distant prayer call, to smell the woodsmoke and cooking odors from Saudi and Domestic camps, and the wind, almost always the wind. At night, I liked to look to the heavens and see the Milky Way, a star studded sky without polution and hardly any light to obstruct the view. There were seldom clouds. On a moonless night the desert sky was without equal.