31 May 2009

Hey, and thank you to those who emailed or called about the last posting – it is so good to know some of you are still out there.  Today have been thinking heavily about Abqaiq – The Friendly City.  Abqaiq, where the Aramco Adventure began for our family - Henry arrived in May, we came in July 1973 - Peter going into the 6th grade, Allison into the 3rd,  Anne not yet a twinkle in a mother’s eye.

   Last January we filled out our Reunion schedule online, made the plane reservations, and two weeks later, the reunion committee found it necessary to adjust the schedule.  Oh dear.  As things sifted out, we were leaving for Egypt the day of the Abqaiq “Tour”.  This was a major disappointment, as the Abqaiq people had planned a comprehensive full-day tour.  We re-arranged what we could, and on another day went to Abqaiq, on our own. This was not all bad.  Peter drove his family from Ras Tanura, the rest of us took the inter-area bus from Dhahran, just like the old days.  Not exactly.  In our old days, the inter-area busses were not air-conditioned, so in the summer the windows were down – that equals blowing sand in the eyes, and great blasts of heat.  The chrome bars at the back of each seat were startling hot to the touch – burning hot.  The drivers then were Saudis, wonderfully friendly men in snow-white thobes but very dirty around the hem, and flowing red and white checked gutras which occasionally blew across their face while driving.  They picked up hitchhikers, and pulled off the road for prayer time.  I remember one trip into Dhahran in the stifling heat and blowing sand, we sat there in our “Kobar uniform” of long tunic with long sleeves over jeans or baggy long pants, and there sat Annie Ruth Duke, wife of Carlton, who on the payroll was listed as – what? cannot remember the term, personnel I think - but we who lived there knew where he was every Friday morning!  I played the organ occasionally for the Fellowship Services – as a sometime substitute.

(Aside about Carlton, a man possessed of a vast array of talents:  He restored authentic Kuwati chests – we felt extremely lucky to be able to purchase two.  Carlton didn’t have them regularly, just when he could find them in an old souk.  Carlton made regular trips outside of Camp to visit the hajis on their way to Mecca, many overnighted out there in the dunes not far from the Main Gate.  The Hajis brought along tribal carpets to sell as they traveled, a way of financing their trip – those tribal carpets were the American Express checks of their culture.  One time Carlton offered to take me out to a campsite to meet the hajis and buy carpets.  We arrived a day late.  They had moved on.  Great disappointment.  To salvage the situation, Carlton took me into Abqaiq Medina where we visited a few Saudi families of his acquaintance, and we bargained for the tribal carpets they had on their floor!  He assured me that this was expected, to buy carpets right out of a person’s house – everything was for sale, for a price.  I learned from Carlton that there is no “bargain” (noun) when it comes to a carpet.  If you love it, you bargain, (verb) always with the expectation you will buy it.  Simple. Whatever agreed upon is a “good” price.

Back to the bus: Annie Ruth was visiting the sick in the hospital in Dhahran that day, I think, and there she sat, smiling and chattering, in a lovely dress and in high heeled shoes and nylon stockings! She is such an elegantly composed lady in the classic sense; there was no evidence she even noticed the temperature was at least 118 degrees. Perhaps a mild exaggeration – but not by much.

           I never thought to expect anything better than this bus arrangement, until a civic-minded lady circulated a petition requesting The Powers That Be in Dhahran provide the districts air-conditioned busses.  I was happy to sign.  Henry wondered if that was a good idea, my signing – Aramco being a strict patriarchal organization – however he was okay with it, considered the petition an exercise in futility.  He was right. At first The Powers That Be ignored the petition, but Marge DeSantis persisted, nicely but firmly. Someone suggested that perhaps those vice-presidents who deigned to visit Abqaiq occasionally on business make their trip on the inter-area bus instead of in their air-conditioned cars.  Let them get a taste of Real Life in Arabia! The rumor was this situation escalated until the petition was withdrawn due to threats about the husband losing his job over his wife’s indiscretion.  How true this was, now I do not know, but at the time, we all knew it as the gospel truth!

          The air-conditioned busses were incorporated into the company plan –  several years later.  By then we were past grateful and had moved on to “entitled.”

          The best selling t-shirt of those years had emblazed across the front, in blood-red letters, “I Survived the Abqaiq Highway.” Allison’s shirt is now part of her Saudi quilt. (Peter’s quilt is rock concert t-shirts, Anne’s quilt is The Gulf War t-shirts.  One of these days Sandra Hardin will make me finish this last quilt.) The Abqaiq Highway of our day was two narrow lanes, with a roller coaster effect, as it was simply asphalt laid down on the rolling dunes.  In some places rows of slatted fencing was installed, like snow fences, to hold the dunes back from inundating the highway.  This was moderately successful, especially in the places the company had the dunes sprayed with black tar.  The wind blown sand often prevailed, eventually covering the tar and the highway in many places.  From time to time the road had to be cleared.  Both sides of the road were a graveyard - carcasses of wrecked trucks, burned out haji busses, smashed cars and taxis, the occasional body of a camel or donkey.  The road signs were bent nearly to the ground, pushed over by oil rigs “skidded” (Henry would smile that I remember that term) from site to site on great huge wheeled vehicles.  There did not seem to be laws, driver training, or speed limits.  Truly, it was every man for himself.  Traffic zipped along at insane speeds – one could say comically - had the results not been so deadly.

          The Abqaiq Highway of those years surely has been mentioned in every article written by visiting journalists.  I just yesterday found an old clipping  - from the Houston Chronicle –  no date –  here is a quote: “My first experience with the Abqaiq Highway was on a taxi ride from the airport, and any fear-of-flying nervousness I felt on the flight into the country – “This is Captain Maboul…we should be landing in Dhahran in a few minutes…God willing” – was quickly forgotten as our imperturbable driver passed an oil tanker that was itself passing another car on a blind hill, and we narrowly missed hitting a British Land Rover filled with Englishmen…I heard snatches of colorful Cockney profanities as they careened off the road and into the dunes…”  (Every one of us has been there in this scenario.)  We chuckled about the Abqaiq Highway until the dangers hit close to home – a good friend was seriously injured in just such a “comical” accident – he returned to the States for endless medical treatment and finally resigned to life in a wheelchair.

           Today, the Abqaiq Highway is four lanes, most of the way separated by a median so wide the opposite two lanes of traffic is in the far distance.  The roller coaster effect has been erased.  The dunes, never lovely as dunes are in other areas of the Kingdom, seemed quite stark, well, ugly.  The Romance of our Bygone Era is no more. 

In Arabic, Abqaiq, also known as Buqayq,  means “father of the sand flies.” That says it all, right there. The Arab town of Abqaiq Medina today is astounding, with hundreds of very big, very new, beautiful pastel villas clustered just outside the Aramco Camp.  There are stoplights, and bypasses, and wide turnoff ramps with confusing signs of newly named boulevards.  Boulevards?  In Abqaiq?  The much respected Aramcon, Milo Cumptson, organized so many civic improvement projects in Abqaiq Medina, he became so loved and appreciated, they named a street after him.  The street sign is gone:  his son John emailed me that he lived there in later years, and when John left that job his last act before departing The Kingdom was to go into Abqaiq Medina and take down his Dad’s street sign, carry it back on the plane, and present it to Milo, living then in Northwest Arkansas. 

With much anticipation, on this Reunion Day in 2009, looking, watching, as we drove into the Aramco Camp - Abqaiq.  The first sight – nothing.  The hobby farm is long gone.  Allison was sad, but resigned. That area now is just space with sickly wilted weeds. The souk directly outside the gates has collapsed into itself.  A pile of rubble. I shopped there often at an “antique” store that sold treasures from Syria. In retrospect, I know now they really were treasures, as I saw those same things years later when I actually visited Syria.

The Main Gate sign reads:  Welcome to Abqaiq, the Friendly City – except the security guards were all business and no smiles as they checked over the bus. In 1973, we arrived in Abqaiq on the cusp of grandiose projects.  Everything Aramco did then, and still today, was on a huge scale as they were dealing with the largest oil fields in the world.  Thus, the Abqaiq Plant is the world’s largest oil processing center.  I have read the plant handles two thirds of Arabia’s oil production - I was told on this trip the Plant handles nearly all of it. The oil goes first to the Abqaiq plant where hydrogen sulfide is removed from the crude oil, the vapor pressure is reduced, making it safe to be shipped in tankers. Then the crude goes on through great pipelines to the massive Ras Tanura refinery, then on to the Ras Tanura terminal, which is, what else - the world’s largest offshore oil loading facility.  The Abqaiq Plant is vital to the Kingdom’s economy, and was a target of a serious attack a few years ago.  The attack failed, but just. Security is now very serious business.  After we passed inspection by the guards, we disembarked at the taxi stand where we used to get Taxi Number 8 – the driver was Mohammed, a tall elegant grey haired man with impeccable manners. I’m thinking he was  Sudanese.

            Early in our Abqaiq days, Glenn and Sandra Hardin, and I – and a very nice Saudi man from the Housing Office as our guide – took Taxi Number 8 with Mohammed to Riyadh – for the day, as tourists.  Glenn had the day off, Henry had no interest – he must have been on a rig anyway - and where were our kids?  Cannot remember.  This Saudi was so excited to be our guide, thrilled to show us his country.  He bought a new thobe and a new pair of shoes for the trip. Although he looked terrific, by the end of the day he was limping – what with his swollen feet stuffed into those stylish Italian pointy toed leather shoes.  We had different expectations of that trip, along cultural lines.  We Westerners wanted to see the major government buildings, the royal compound, the souk, the old city.  Our Saudi guide wanted to spend the afternoon napping as he did at home – since businesses are closed from noon to four.  We wanted to tour, he wanted to sleep.  We compromised to a degree, and got a day room for a few hours at a hotel.  I remember realizing for the first time he had no idea about being a tourist, plus, he was a little bit confused in the big city. And, he was very apprehensive about driving by the royal compound – since we had no actual business there.  He agreed to go there, but didn’t want us to appear to look at it – to look interested.  However, he knew where the souk was, and we helped him pick out gifts for each of his wives – I seem to remember they were three. 

         I got to know this Saudi man at the housing office, since we new hires spent much time at the housing office, checking to see where we were on the housing list – each family had a certain number of points based on job category, length of service, and whether a new hire or on loan from a parent company.  One time he offered me a job in the housing office – I called Henry to see what he would think about my “going to work.”  Bottom line:  he laughed me out of it – said, and this is more or less a quote: “you would have the place in a mess within two hours.  Your problem is you want everybody to be happy and you cannot handle saying no.  You would assign everyone what they want, instead of following the housing rules.  You would never pull out of the chaos.”  True.  I regretfully declined.

       One more story as I think of my very early days in Abqaiq:  One day I boarded the Kobar shopping bus, and right behind me was an Arab man of my acquaintance, and a lovely girl in an abayah.  How could I tell she was lovely?  The walk, the eyes, the complexion, the shape.  This girl was angry, steamingly angry.  She flounced to the back of the bus, flipping that abayah around herself, and plunked down making quite a scene. The man sighed and sat up in the front.  I watched all this, then went to sit by him:  “Okay, what is going on here?”  He explained that she was the third wife, and most unhappy, and he was, at her request, taking her back to mother in Kobar.  Throughout the hour ride to Kobar he told me about his wife situation – his father arranged his marriage to his first wife, his cousin, when he and the cousin were twelve years old!  They grew up together, and she is the love of his life.  But she has had many children and is not well.  The second wife, cannot remember the story exactly, she was a neutral feature.  This third wife he married “for the bedroom,” he said, and this situation was not working out!  We talked a bit, and I fell into giving him advice, would like to think of it as “counseling,” but have to admit, it was advice.  My downfall – dispensing advice.  Henry always said my advice is worth exactly what people pay for it – I cannot seem to stop talking.  So I spoke with this Arab man about my heritage – told him about my great grandfather in the States, more than a hundred years ago, who had five wives – my goodness, did I get this Saudi’s attention with this bit of information, and from then on he has always showed me great respect. We now share a commonality.  We talked about how my great grandfather treated his wives and families – they were equal, each had their own and identical house, he loved them and spent equal time with each wife.  By the time we arrived in Kobar, he realized he was fortunate to have only three wives to deal with, and he was giving some thought to the concept of equality – although he certainly did not agree with this idea.  I never did hear how things finally worked out.

        Side-tracked a bit there: back to the taxi stand.  What a change.  The taxis are under contract companies.  The drivers are Indian, I think, and seem to be new on the job, many are confused about directions.  When coming through the gate to take you home the driver has to surrender his driver’s license to security, he is given some sort of chitty, and then reclaims his license when he leaves the compound.  In Abqaiq, the simple bench under a tree where we used to wait is now a glass- enclosed small building, with a sliding door, comfortable chairs – and, get this – air-conditioning!!!

          The community center is beside the taxi stand – used to be the East Lounge, the dining hall, the snack bar, the library, the movie, the pool in the back.  Could not get into the East Lounge or movie – under renovation.  Peter has, or used to have, several movie posters, which fell into his possession due to Midnight Requisition Expeditions. Mostly, he asked.  The dining hall is different, of course, with waiters in white shirts and black ties and slacks, the tables adorned with white tablecloths and flowers.  Flowers?  Yes.  The library is larger, guarded by a very polite Saudi librarian.  He was not impressed that we had “come home.”  The snack bar was so different I could not then remember what it used to be.  The men in there were wonderfully friendly, the food selection was very good, and the cashier was a beautiful young woman from Nigeria by way of Jiddah, wearing a marvelous red and yellow turban, and she called me “Honey.”

         Going to the pool brought home to me how different things are now.  Demographics have changed.  I spent many hours on those spacious decks by the pool in a lounge chair reading while Peter and Allison swam – for team practice, in meets, for fun. The pool was a gathering place for kids and families.  For some years, we virtually lived at the pool.  Now – a high enclosure wall.  Swim times are posted:  the pool is open for women only certain hours in the day.  Boys under 10 years of age may accompany the women at certain times.  Men swim only certain hours after work.  There does not seem to be any family time allowed.  The atmosphere was cold and dreary.  Ah well…

          We walked up to the school – it is further than I remembered.  It was a hot day.  Arrived at a high wall, I am not liking these high walls, but there was a friendly security man in his cubicle.  The situation is so different, I looked for the houses across the street where people we used to know lived – located a couple of houses I remember.  The staff we met in the school were friendly, warm and inviting, sincerely pleased to welcome us, and allowed us roam the place at will.  They only use the new wing now –  the school I remember is empty – that side of the building, with the library, is basically abandoned, used for storage.  The principal’s office from where Bob Simms ran a friendly ship, and Sandra Hardin, and later Carol Grant, the secretary kept us on track, and Suzanne Hale typed stencils and ran them off on a mimeograph machine – remember?  Hand cranked a big drum, the copies printed out in purple ink?  That office is now an exercise room for the staff – and storage.

        While walking the school, Peter reminisced: when about junior high age, one day he was sent to a closet to get equipment for a class, opened the door to discover a couple, teachers, stealing a quick kiss in the closet!  Those were the innocent days.  I know them.  Well.  Of course, in those days, we all knew everyone.  Good for them. They are living happily every after!

       Roscoe was part of the school experience.  Roscoe, Hardin’s dog aka mutt.  A black ball of energy who, among other idiosyncrasies, showered in the evenings with the Hardin kids, and regularly figured out how to get loose so to have the run of the town.  There were about two occasions when Larry was directing the school band in concert, the gym was so stuffy that the side doors were opened, and suddenly Roscoe shot through the doors and up on stage, a bit confused by the instruments, but went from kid to kid until he found the Hardin kids.  That dog would jump up for attention, wag his tail and finally give up when Jeanette could not play her clarinet and pet him at the same time.  I believe Roscoe visited Friday morning services at the theater a few times – he was a devoted family pet.

       We found our three addresses in Abqaiq.  The port-a-camp – our little efficiency trailer on 17th Street – is long gone. The kids are very nostalgic about being part of the 17th Street Gang. That was the year Peter discovered some kids were actually born in Texas, he came to believe that he was vastly deprived because he was not – born in Texas.  (He since as recovered from this great disappointment.) I could not decide exactly where the port-a-camp was  – the place is totally scraped off, there are large tamarisk trees along the street.  Too different.  Next – the row house.  Our rows of houses are gone – in their place is a large grassy, very green grass, fertilized to blue-green grass, park, with spouting water fountains, walkways, colorful playground toys, and bridges over artificial waterways, and Saudi families strolling about. We figured out about where our row house had been, and took pictures of  “the spot.”  We miss the row house days – when Peter would climb out his bedroom window which was just three feet to the patio, and take off.  One time a teacher, Gary Clark, called me at almost midnight – he had just spotted Peter and a few boys roaming the streets, while I thought he was in bed.  At least in Abqaiq, there was nothing to do, little trouble to get into.

       We were living in the row house when Allison acquired a cute little hamster, Herbie.  The few times Herbie escaped from his cage he was easy to find.  One day, he simply disappeared – until I started the clothes dryer – which is ironic, this was the first time in history we had a dryer, had just bought a used one.  The dryer started making funny clunking noises, so we turned it off and Henry pulled it away from the wall to check the motor.  And - there was Herbie. And there was Herbie.  And there was Herbie.  Allison was devastated, tears flowing, the more she cried the more Peter and Henry would comment on another piece of Herbie that they pulled out of the motor.  Even now I occasionally think of Herbie when I start the dryer.

       And the Silky Yorkie, Cocoa, someone insisted we would love as they brought us her collar, leash and food bowl.  We soon discovered this dog simply was not house broken, and never would be.  She wet in every out of way place and smirked and wagged her tail and was just darling.  Henry was about to strangle her – there really was no way to control her.  She arrived as an expectant mother.  The puppies were born.  The puppies nursed and Cocoa went into convulsions – and we know who the soft hearted teddy bear was that called the emergency number at the Dhahran Kennel Club and drove Cocoa and puppies  – over The Abqaiq Highway! -  to the vet in Dhahran in the middle of the night.  Henry covered all the bases though.  While there he found a list of people wanting a dog, he made some calls and in a few day found a loving home for mother and children.

     The atrium on Drilling Circle is empty and dilapidated.  We discovered the siding door to the kitchen unlocked, so toured our house, remembering what was in each room.  Looked for the peace signs Peter and a friend painted on the back wall.  That young man lived with us about two months while his folks were abroad seeking medical treatment.  They were old friends from Tripoli days, but now the boys were older, and bent in different directions.  I really had to watch this kid, as his passion was buying Zippo lighters at the souk, unbeknownst to me, and setting things on fire.  We have all survived to tell the tale.

     This house brought back so many memories – when Aramco first had the atrium houses built, they did not enclose the atriums; they were useless in the heat and blowing sand and the flies that would over power the household.  So, Henry acquired some screen.  It came in sections, he was on a ladder lacing the screen together, and the ladder collapsed under him.  He fell onto the concrete – it was awful.  Henry had miserable troubles with his shoulder the rest of his life.

     Aramco put in simple basic terrazzo tile on the floors, difficult to keep up, finally we ordered carpet.  Picked it from a two inch square sample – was quite a surprise when it arrived.  I thought it was brown with occasional colorful flecks of yellow and orange.  It WAS brown, but with great huge swirls of yellow and orange, this would have looked great in a very large theater lobby. I resigned myself to living with my mistake. However, the Saudi who was assigned our house when we transferred to Ras Tanura, was absolutely thrilled with this carpet.  He loved it so much, he felt our mutual taste in carpet made us good friends.  He was a new hire, from Jiddah, and did so want his wife to assimilate and be happy.  He was hoping I could befriend her.  We were leaving as they were coming.  It was not possible to develop a friendship.  He took me aside once, and quietly confided in me that his family are city folk, that although he came from Jeddah his family is prominent in Eastern Europe, and: “Mrs. Cook, I am as much a foreigner here in the Eastern Province as you are.  My family are prosperous Saudi merchants with a business in Bulgaria, these Saudis here are robbers, descended from pirates that preyed on the pilgrims going to Mecca!”  A little class distinction there.

     The memories: We walked around “our” atrium, so very run down now, and stopped in the living room and considered where the rocking chair had been. One day someone called me from – what?  The Women’s Group? Community Services? – to say that Marianne Alireza was in Abqaiq with her son, someone then important in Aramco, that she was to speak in a few hours at a function, and would I provide a place for her to rest until her appointment?  “Entertain” her?  I did not know enough to be in a panic.  I knew she had married a Saudi, that she had written a book about it.  She came, she sat in that chair and rocked away the afternoon, and talked and laughed and visited – I didn’t have a clue. She was so normal, so personal, so at ease.  I sat there mesmerized.  I wonder now if I even thought to offer her something to drink?  Probably not.  We have her book, “At the Drop of a Veil”, autographed to Allison, but not dated, to prove she was in our house.  Where did I get the book?  Did she give it to me? The copyright is 1971 – we were living in the atrium by about 1976.  This woman has an amazing story: married into the Alireza family in 1943 – this marriage was the first time a Saudi subject married a western wife. Her account in this book is fascinating. Her dealings with the royal family, the divorce, the spiriting away of the children to get custody, the problems with a Saudi ex-husband getting the children back, and her appeal to the King who sided with her and gave her a lifetime visa so she could do anything she wanted to!!!  Good for her – she, an American, became the matriarch of a large and influential Saudi family.  A few days ago, here in Fort Smith, a friend was in our living room, rocking in that very chair  – and, flashed through my mind, ah – Marianne Alireza – once you rocked in this chair.

         If I were not writing this account on Henry’s site here – our children and there children would have no idea.  We do not exactly sit around and talk about the stories that are conjured up by “things.”

        While living in Abqaiq I found myself on the “Abqaiq Beautification Committee.”  Now, how did that happen?  Certainly I did not volunteer.  Henry teased me unmercifully about “beautifying Abqaiq.”  I had not thought about this for years until I saw Larry Tanner and Family on the Reunion trip.  Mr. Tanner was Mr. Abqaiq – literally the company appointed “mayor” of the town.   I knew of him, of his lovely wife, knew there were three children, but I never knew them, they were older than our children, out to school I think by the time we came to Abqaiq.  Well – when I attended the meeting of the ABC – Abqaiq Beautification Committee – Larry Tanner presided, in his office.  By the second meeting I was enthused, had talked to a few people about ideas, and arrived with my list of suggested improvements for the benefit of Abqaiq citizens.  Mr. Tanner would go around the table and give everyone in turn a time to present.  I launched into my ideas – he listened, and announced – remember, this was a long time ago, I had only met him for the second time and saw him maybe only once or twice after that – I remember the jist of his statement as:  “Mrs. Cook.  This is not a democracy, this is a benign dictatorship.” – and the tag end - something to the effect that you better not forget it!  He was nice, but definite.  I did not last long on the committee. 

       At the Reunion I joked with the Tanner kids (adults now, naturally) about my meeting their dad.  He has no idea of who I am, of course. 

      Something else I fell into – remember, I did not volunteer – these things seemed to happen to me at that stage of my life - I was asked to come to Dhahran on a monthly basis and serve with a group who were picking out commodities for the company commissaries.  I remember well the woman in charge. I remember her name. Very dynamic and determined to change things for the better.  She would put out six samples of ketchup and we would taste while blindfolded, and pick the tastiest.  This went on with canned peaches, then cheeses – you get the idea.  I did not like this.  I could never make up my mind.  I was adjusted by then.  I did not demand a choice, was just glad the commissary sold something – used to joke that when we arrived the commissary sold exactly twenty-seven items.  I lasted a few months on this committee.  When we had to fill out a lengthy survey about washers and dryers – I failed the test.  Then, Aramco only had Maytags.  They had had Maytags since time immemorial, if you bought appliances from the Aramco storehouse, did we call it “shop stock?” you bought what they stocked, not what you may want.  I was fine with Maytags, whose repairmen are the loneliest repairmen in the world – I bought that line hook, line, and sinker.  This woman wanted to institute having choices – and I was not helping her in this campaign – she fired me.  I was glad to stay home and not ride that inter-area bus (down The Abqaiq Highway! – presumably she had never ever been in our direction, she knew not what she asked) to those meetings and be blindfolded.

        Actually, we never had a Maytag until we moved back to states.  We always just bought used washers and dryers from people leaving – my goal in life became to someday have a matching washer and dryer set – the same color and the same brand name.  And now, finally, I do.

       For the first four years we lived in Abqaiq, we did not have a car.  Would walk to the commissary, shop, they would box up your things, and deliver the groceries.  We would leave the back door open, the commissary truck drove down the alleys, two men would carry the groceries into the kitchen and unload them onto the kitchen counter.  Often the groceries were home before I was.  This was a lovely arrangement.  Sometimes an item or two I bought was a little shopworn, or quite out of date.  Aramco would buy back boxes and cans of food if people moved, and then re-sell it.  Today, we would call that recycling.  By the time we arrived on the scene, this practice was being phased out – also the delivery service did not last long after we arrived.

      We bought a car – the green Masda station wagon that figured in the Sugar Story written on this site a year ago.  Complication with having a car was that the wife could not drive out of the compound to the gas station – located a ways away. Therefore, I had to plan the gas to last until Henry came in from the rig.  It became apparent that this would not be a great problem, as the town was so small I don’t think I ever shifted out of third gear – and we actually only bought gas about three times a year!  However – I did require a Saudi driver’s license so I could drive nowhere.  Henry was gone, he arranged for a nice Saudi from the office to take me out to Abqaiq Medina to “take the eye exam and the driving test.”  We went out to a government building, it looked like a large two story house, and walked through the open door, sat in front of the desk of a Yugoslavian doctor busily doing paper work.  During the entire four minutes we were there, he never once looked up at me.  Asked me to read the letters – or was it numbers? –  from the paper chart on the wall.  He handed me a signed paper, we were dismissed. He never knew what I looked like.  I treasure my Saudi driver’s license.

      We in Abqaiq had a bit of an inferiority complex – we did not have the Ras Tanura beach, we were not the cosmopolitan city of Dhahran! Well it was – cosmopolitan - by contrast.  We were a small, isolated drilling town in a very stark landscape.  We developed a bulldog-like defensive attitude – and maintained that the company would be nothing without the drillers – after all, Aramco IS an oil company, and the oil starts with us.

      When the company began the new commissary projects, the first one was built in Abqaiq – a consolation prize to our little isolated camp.  That commissary was eagerly anticipated.  We went from a tiny little building – that stocked very few items, to a wonderful complex – this vast commissary, with a mail center, and community offices. The opening day was a thrilling event.  The best story of the day, as we were counting the varieties of soap and shampoo on the shelves, (never until that day was soap sold in Abqaiq) was the voice of one Jo Waters, a woman of Abqaiq since the 1950s.  In her booming voice she was heard to exclaim:  “Well! What do you know!  Once Dhahran finds out about this, they will come down here, take this apart stick by stick, and truck it up to Dhahran!”

       However, wonderful as it was – it was “modern” – not historically quaint.  I happened to be by the old mail center the day they began tearing out the old mailboxes.  They are gorgeous works of art – of another era – each box has a raised metal eagle – they look like something out of an old movie.  I asked the man if I could have one – he just detached one off the end and handed it to me.  I ran back to school and told the shop teacher, Bill Waidner – he zoomed down there and got racks of old mail boxes, as did many other people.  Bill, and others, built a wooden frame around the boxes, turning them into savings banks.  They are  beautiful.  Wish I had had the presence of mind to ask for our own box number.

       When we arrived in Abqaiq in 1973, Henry was astounded – thrilled.  He could not get over the fact we were living on top of the largest conventional oil field in the world, the Ghawar Field, and there was not a pump jack in the Kingdom. ( I know numbers can be juggled to say anything, but I’ve read that from 1948 until the year 2000, 65% of Saudi’s oil came from the Ghawar Field.)  Henry loved his job, he loved working in Aramco Drilling.  He loved it even more when he moved up the ladder a bit and became a drilling superintendent with an office in town and he was no longer on the two week on and a week off schedule in the desert.  He took me to the drilling office late on a weekend, when everyone was gone, and we walked around his soon-to-be office, and he asked if I could make him drapes!  A homey effect.  The place was rather stark.  I forgot all about the drapes until someone on this Reunion trip mentioned – “remember the drapes you made for Henry’s office in Abqaiq?”  I did find fabric at Zamils in Kobar – it was a creamy damask – with raised oil rigs and palm trees.  Only in Arabia.  How oh how I wish I had thought to take them with us when we were transferred – just for the fabric… and the memories.

        As I close this out, on the last day of May, am thinking of when the Abqaiq plant burned.  The fire was a phenomenal sight, lasted many days, and so dangerous that the company closed the main gate – no one could enter or leave the camp.  I know this was thirty-two years ago, because Brett Allen was born on the 31st of May – mother and son were doing fine – except they could not come home – the Abqaiq Main gate was closed, for many days.  What to do?  Henry, in his infinite wisdom, juggled things around – Mr. Straight Arrow Never Succumb to a Flagrant use of Company Funds – figured out a way to get a drilling flight to pick up a mother and baby, along with drill bits or whatever, in Dhahran, and deposit them home, in Abqaiq.

          Thanks for you who stay with me here – bye for now…Bonnie and the Cook Family