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  • Travels With Della

    Jim Daughton

  • TRAVELS WITH DELLA © copyright 2018 by JIM DAUGHTON. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, by photography or xerography or by any other means, by broadcast or transmission, by translation into any kind of language, nor by recording electronically or otherwise, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in critical articles or reviews.

    Printed in the United States of America First Printing: 2018 22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1

    Book design by James Monroe Design, LLC.

    Beaver’s Pond Press, Inc. 7108 Ohms Lane Edina, MN 55439–2129 (952) 829-8818 www.BeaversPondPress.com

  • iii

    Contents

    Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

    Part IPre-Cruise Travels

    Chapter I.A - European Vacation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

    Chapter I.B - A Frenetic Trip East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

    Chapter I.C - Journey Without Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

    Chapter I.D - Road Trip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

    Part IIWorld Cruises: California To Malacca Strait

    Chapter II.A - Trip of a Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

    Chapter II.B - South Sea Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

    Chapter II.C - Sea Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

    Chapter II.D - Kiwi Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    Chapter II.E - The Land Down Under . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

    Chapter II.F - Southern Australia to New Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

    Chapter II.G - Bali, Borneo, and Manila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

    Chapter II.H - Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

    Chapter II.I - Route of Tragedies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

    Chapter II.J - China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

    Chapter II.K - Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

    Chapter II.L - Bangkok, Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

    Chapter II.M - Rounding the Malay Peninsula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

    Part IIIMalacca Strait Through the Mediterranean

    Chapter III.A - India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

    Chapter III.B - Dubai, Oman, and Petra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

    Chapter III.C - Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

    Chapter III.D - Turkey and Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

    Chapter III.E - Malta and Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

    Chapter III.F - Monaco and Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

    Chapter III.G - Gibraltar, Madeira, Bermuda, Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

  • v

    Contents

    Part IVAround Africa from Malacca

    Chapter IV.A - Sabang, Sri Lanka, Malé, Seychelles, Mauritius, and Réunion . . . . . . . . . 171

    Chapter IV.B - Madagascar, Mozambique, Richards Bay, and Kapama Preserve . . . . . . . 179

    Chapter IV.C - Cape Town and Namibia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

    Chapter IV.D - West Coast of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

    Chapter IV.E - Cape Verde to Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

    Part VSouth America

    Chapter V.A - Home to Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

    Chapter V.B - Peru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

    Chapter V.C - Chile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

    Chapter V.D - Argentina and Uruguay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

    Chapter V.E - Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

    Chapter V.F - Devil’s Island and Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    Part VIOther Cruises

    Chapter VI.A - A Baltic Cruise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

    Chapter VI.B - Captain Dag’s Homecoming Cruise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

    Chapter VI.C - Vancouver to Hong Kong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

    Chapter VI.D - Antarctica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

    Chapter VI.E - Four Seas Cruise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

  • vii

    Preface

    If you expect to read a gory murder mystery, a torchy romance, an international spy story, or description of the end of days, you will be disappointed. On the other hand, you might enjoy an older couple’s enlightenment about distant places, unusual experiences, strange local customs, and unique personalities.

    Della and I both grew up in small, country homes without running water. A shopping trip to town or a restaurant meal was a rare occurrence for our families. We had each been married and divorced for some years before we met and got married in 1988. The next year I quit Honeywell and started NVE Corporation as its sole employee. In 1990 Della retired from Honeywell and worked tirelessly to free me from all home responsibil-ities so I could devote my entire energy to growing our new company. By 1994 NVE had achieved a modicum of success, and Della and I were able to take a two-week, business-related trip to Great Britain and Ireland. Part I. Pre-Cruise Travels starts with that trip and con-tinues with three others, the last a road trip to the East Coast in the fall of 2003.

    By 2005 NVE was a public company, and its stock had made us financially comfortable. I resigned from NVE and we signed up for the first of what would be four around-the-world cruises on luxury lines. Imagine our excitement hearing three long blasts from the ship’s horn and sailing from port and attending the first formal night with immaculately coiffed and gowned ladies dec-orated with glitters of jewelry: tuxedoed waiters tending to every need; ship’s officers dressed in formal whites. How different this was from the way we grew up.

    Often on days at sea, no land was visible, only a vast expanse of ocean changing color with sky and sun and undulating with wind. Other ships came into view and then disappeared into the horizon.

    We would be at sea for a day or two, then visit ports in countries we had only read about in books, hear new languages, experience new native dress, eat new foods, see new plants and animals. And we never had to pack and unpack. What a way to travel!

    And our fellow cruisers were so interesting. Most world cruisers were retired, past middle age, and com-fortable financially. We fell in with those couples who had grown up with modest means and had created suc-cessful businesses. Many became lifetime friends.

    All four of our world cruises started in California ports and went westward across the Pacific. No two took exactly the same route. Part II. World Cruises: Califor-nia to Malacca combines the first legs of the four into a hypothetical single one topping at the Strait of Malacca off the south coast of Thailand.

    Two of our world cruises continued from Malacca around India, through the Suez Canal and the Medi-terranean, and across the Atlantic to Florida. These are described as a single trip in Part III. World Cruises: Malacca Through the Mediterranean. The other two cruises left Malacca and sailed southwest through the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, north along the west coast of Africa, and across the Atlantic to Florida. The story of these is told in Part IV. World Cruises: Around Africa from Malacca, also as a single journey.

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    In 2007 and 2013 we circumnavigated South America on luxury liners, leaving and returning to Florida ports. These trips are documented in Part V. South America.

    In this same time period, Della and I went on several other shorter cruises to the Baltic, Norway, Pacific Rim, Antarctica, and what I remember as the four seas, Black, Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic. These are described in Part VI. Other Cruises.

    In writing this book I generally have included my impressions of the coun-tries we visited and a few snippets of history readers might find instructive. In most cases I did not use people’s real names and I did bend a few facts in the tell-ing, but only to make my impressions of people and places as true as possible. A few pictures are included, some of not such good quality. Also I borrowed several figures, pictures, and facts from the internet.

    Many thanks to my writers group for reviewing this work over the past two years.

    Jim Daughton, November 15, 2015

  • 1

    Part IPre-Cruise Travels

    Three chapters in this Part describe trips Della and I took prior to our first world cruise in 2006. Not all married couples are cut out for traveling together, but on these shorter journeys we proved compatible, and when an opportunity arose for longer sojourns in later years, we signed up without concern about getting along.

    In a fourth chapter, “Journey Without Travel,” Della suffered through two bouts of breast cancer from 1998 until 2003. Our marital bonds strengthened through the crises. Hoping for her recovery, I promised her better and longer dedi-cated vacations without work distractions.

  • 3

    Chapter I.A - European Vacation

    To begin with, this title is slightly misleading. It wasn’t quite European, nor was it exactly a vacation.

    In 1994 the Magnetics Society gave me a Distin-guished Lecturer Award. It funded domestic and world travel for talks about technology at NVE Corporation, the company I had started. During 1995 and 1996 I gave twenty-five presentations across the US, Europe, and Japan. Because NVE was first to commercialize an important technology, I received many invitations to return. So this 1998 trip was sort of a boondoggle, a combination lecture tour and an opportunity for Della and me to travel together. My costs were covered by NVE, but I paid for Della’s travel, meals, and the dif-ference, if any, between single and double room rates. It wasn’t a pure eighteen-day vacation for me; I had to work about half of the time.

    Our travels were not really to Europe, but were lim-ited to Great Britain and Ireland, countries although not properly part of continental Europe, but they were mem-bers of the European Union. My plan was to travel on rail passes (one fee for all train, bus, and ferry travel) and to stay, when possible, at bed-and-breakfasts rather than expensive hotels. Reduced wardrobes allowed us to travel very light: a small roll-on for each of us, a shoulder bag for Della, and a briefcase for me. We would be guests several nights at universities having facilities for washing and ironing clothes.

    Our nineteen-day trip was to start from Min-neapolis. We were to fly to London and travel east to Bath, England, for two nights. We planned to go back through London and north to Leeds, and then further north to Glasgow, Scotland, and then west across Scot-land to Edinburgh. The journey was to continue north

    in Scotland along the east coast to Inverness, and then back south through the highlands for a ferry from Stran-raer, Scotland, to Belfast, Northern Ireland. A train would take us to Dublin and thence south to Waterford. We would go west to Tralee in the southwest of Ireland for two nights. Trains and a ferry would then take us back east across Ireland to Wales, and then to a hotel near the London airport for a plane back to Minneapolis the next day.

    While shopping at the Knollwood Mall for last-min-ute items, Della had an accident. Pedestrians had tracked melting snow from a late spring storm onto the shop-ping center floors, making them wet and slippery. Della slipped and fell forward, managing to partially break her fall with outstretched arms. But her head kept falling forward, hitting the floor with the sound of a shoe strik-ing a watermelon. She was sore and stiff all over for a few days, but the more lasting effect was a pair of black eyes.

    The day before our departure, we had lunch at a Perkins Restaurant. A couple sitting nearby stared and seemed to be discussing us. Della spoke to them, “I know what you might be thinking. No, I fell.”

    The wife muttered to her husband, “I’ll bet she’s covering for him.”

    These shiners, appearing at the time of the O. J. Simpson murder case, caused people to look askance at me everywhere we went for the several weeks of our trip. When Della was alone, earnest people would offer her assistance.

    Our son, Mike, drove us to the airport Saturday, March 21, 1998, for an evening flight to London. We were assigned seats twenty rows apart, making a roman-tic flight impossible. Gate agents and flight attendants

  • 4

    TR AVELS with DELLA

    were unable to help. Wheeling and dealing, I managed to find a lady willing to switch seats so Della and I could sit together. I bought her a fifty-three dollar pocket micro-scope from the plane’s commissary in compensation. We stowed our roll-ons and hand luggage overhead, already glad we wouldn’t have to wait at baggage claim when we landed. We settled down after an airplane supper and slept some.

    I looked out the window before sunup. A rose glow of new light over the North Atlantic lit a few scattered icebergs. This, I thought, was finally going to be some-thing new, a business trip where Della and I could spend more time together than on previous hurried sojourns.

    Our plane crossed the green island of Ireland and landed at London’s Gatwick Airport a little after eight-thirty in the morning. We cleared customs in good time. We caught the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station where we had a light breakfast and prepared for a trip on the subway system.

    Underground trains in London are called “tubes.” Della’s sense of direction was phenomenal above ground, but little short of miraculous in that warren of interlaced tunnels under London. She knew which direction was north through all the twists and turns, and knew where to go at the top of stairs. There were people surround-ing us, scurrying to and fro like furry subterranean mammals. Della led the way pulling her roll-on and shouldering a bag, followed by me with my roll-on and briefcase. We used up the first of ten rail passes to board a train to Bath, but we had to switch to a bus due to road repair. We arrived in Bath at 12: 30 PM and ate lunch at a Thai restaurant.

    I had selected The Villa Magdala, like most of our bed-and-breakfast lodgings, for its proximity to the train station. It was an easy walk to the Magdala. The river Avon flowed just across the street, and Roman Baths were located only six blocks away. The boutique bed-and-breakfast was actually two neighboring Victorian houses joined together. Walls of the lobby, stairway, din-ing room, and our bedroom were covered with colorful floral wallpapers. We were excited to look around, but too exhausted from our overnight travels to go out. We just checked in, showered, and slept.

    Included in our bill was breakfast the next morning. A proper English breakfast in England meant eggs, toast, lean bacon (differently cut and leaner than our American bacon), mushrooms, fried potatoes, and broiled toma-

    toes. Of course we had orange juice and coffee as well. I tend to overindulge when it’s “all you can eat,” and this occasion was no exception. I consumed calories enough for all day.

    Della and I took a scenic and informative city tour sitting in the upper level of a red tour bus. The city spread out below us.

    From our guide we learned about the various civi-lizations that had occupied Bath—pre-Roman, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Georgian. Since Roman times, the ground level had risen several feet from accumulated and decayed waste. Doors originally on the ground level were now down short stairways from the sidewalks.

    The naming of the River Avon amused me. Romans heard the natives call it avon, not knowing that avon meant just river in their language. So the Avon River is really River River.

    With our tour group we visited the Roman Baths that gave the city its name. The Romans from the year 100 AD to 300 AD improved the baths by adding under-ground structures and lining pools with lead. Some of them were still functional, geothermal springs supplying hot water. The air inside was humid and smelled of min-erals and sulfur. I was impressed with the history of the place. For two thousand years, people had been “taking the waters” there.

    Bath was also famous for its buildings. We saw Sally Lunn’s house (1480), one of the oldest in Bath. Bath has some of the world’s best sixteenth and seventeenth cen-tury Georgian architecture, referring to the several King Georges of England, included our beloved George III, who prompted us to issue the Declaration of Indepen-dence. We drove past the Royal Crescent (1767–1774) consisting of thirty abutting terraced houses joined in a gentle arc.

    We ate lunch at the Lilliput Tea Shop and supper at an Italian restaurant. Della shopped for cutesy stuff and hats, but thankfully, our minimized luggage capac-ity limited purchases.

    After retiring to the Magdela for the evening, I worked on my presentation for the next day in Leeds while Della refined the design of our house being built back in Minnesota.

    The planned rail route to Leeds was through Bris-tol, Bristol being only a short ride from Bath. We arrived over an hour early for the connecting train and sat on the loading platform, waiting and waiting. A train boarded

  • 5

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    and prepared to leave. A thirty-something young woman came rushing up to the train. She was dressed for some important event with a tasteful hat, neat gray business suit, and high heels, but wasn’t allowed to board.

    “Very Sorry, Ma’am, but the doors are closed,” said the porter.

    The woman was frantic and started crying as the train pulled out. Then she turned and slumped away.

    “Poor woman,” said Della.“Yeah, poor thing, Wonder why she was so upset.

    Missing a wedding, maybe? Maybe a funeral?”“We’ll never know,” said Della. “Why don’t you ask

    the porter when our train is coming?”I approached the porter. “Pardon me, sir, but could

    you tell me when the train to Leeds is leaving? Are we on the right platform?”

    “Yes sir, you are on the right platform, but the train for Leeds was the one that just left. And that’s the last one today.”

    I told Della we had just missed the train.“That’s all right,” she said. “Now we’ll get to sit

    together for a longer time.”Some serious re-routing was required. We had to

    take a train to Birmingham and then another to Don-caster before getting a train to Leeds. We didn’t arrive in Leeds until 7: 15 PM. This time our hotel was too far for us to walk, so we had to take a cab from the train station. We checked into the Fairbairn House where everything in the room was in miniature, including the shower and toilet. There were no washcloths. We had supper at an Indian restaurant in the company of Robert Newbold of RhoPoint, a distributor of NVE’s sensor products. The Indian food didn’t agree with me, and I hardly slept.

    I got up early and put together my presentation. My visual aids were transparencies that required a pro-jector, which would have been impossible to pack along on the trip, but every organization I visited had one on hand. I carried about one hundred transparencies, and from them could put together talks tailored for different audiences. Those damned viewgraphs were heavy, out-weighing by far the clothes I packed.

    At Leeds University I met with Professor Brian Hickey and his post-doc, Chris Morrows. Brian was short and slight. He wore gold-rimmed glasses. The elbows of his sport coat were patched with leather. Chris was a big, strapping fellow wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans.

    I gave my talk to them and a small group of grad-uate students, and we discussed collaborative research projects. Brian, Chris, and I then met up with Della at a French restaurant.

    After a brief introduction, Brian asked Della, “Did you have an accident?”

    “Yes, I fell,” said Della. “But the cab driver this morning asked me about O. J. Simpson and then offered his assistance if I were abused. I had to protest I wasn’t beaten.”

    “Did you have much of a chance to look around Leeds this morning?” asked Chris.

    “Yes, and was I impressed with the hats. I tried on quite a few.”

    We went to our table in the restaurant, and I asked Della, “Where’s your purse?”

    “Oh, I have everything I need in this fanny pack.”Both Chris and Brian were shaken. Then they

    looked at each other and remained silent for an uncom-fortable period before polite conversation resumed.

    After a wonderful lunch, I took them aside and asked, “Why were you shocked when Della talked about a fanny pack?”

    Brian said as tactfully and possible, “Here, fanny is slang for vagina.”

    When told what fanny meant in England, Della turned beat-red and stuttered, “Why, everyone calls it that at home. I . . . I . . . didn’t know.”

    “Don’t worry about it, Della,” I said. “There are different meanings for words here. They call the trunk of a car a boot and the hood a bonnet. Think no more about it.”

    After we bid them a fond farewell, we walked around Leeds, shopped a little, and bought a few post-cards before returning to the Fairbairn House to eat a light supper.

    The next morning we took a cab to the train sta-tion and took a short ride to York, followed by a longer train ride to Newcastle. I was getting near one of the destinations I really wanted to see, Hadrian’s Wall. In the first two centuries AD, the Romans built a seven-ty-three-mile “wall” across the island. It was located approximately along today’s boundary between England and Scotland. The purpose was to keep the fierce Celts from invading from the north. The wall started as a line of lookout posts, but with time, actual “walls” were built between posts. The tops of some walls were used as roads

  • 6

    TR AVELS with DELLA

    for rapid transportation of legions.Unfortunately, we had arrived before the tourist

    season, and tours of the wall weren’t available yet. A small city with the unlikely name Haltwhistle was on the east-west railway line and was close to the wall.

    We were starving on arriving at Haltwhistle. We went to a pub which seemed to be serving, but were met at the door by the manager. “Sorry,” he said. “The pub is open only to those attending the funeral this morning. You might try the Merry Robin three blocks down the street.”

    The special at the Merry Robin happened to be liver, and we thought, “What the hell. Let’s go for it.”

    The liver was by far the best I had ever had. Della liked it, too. It was flavorful and tender enough to cut with a fork. The pub manager called us a cabbie who was willing, for a high fee, to take us a few miles to a segment of Hadrian’s Wall.

    The wall wound along a newly greened sheep pas-ture for about a mile. We walked about fifty yards from the road to the wall. It was built largely of six-inch diameter rocks. Other sections of the wall were much grander than this one. Our wall was only about three feet high and about three feet wide on top. We climbed on top, stood side by side, and had the cabbie snap a picture of us. While standing on the wall, I wondered what a Roman soldier would do if he saw a mob of Celts coming across the field from the north. Run for help, I supposed. He would have thought, “Holy shit, this dinky wall won’t stop ’em.” It was raining, so we didn’t stick around.

    It would be a month before we could have our thir-ty-five-millimeter film developed and see proof we had been on the wall.

    We took the cab back to Haltwhistle and a train to Carlyle. Then we enjoyed a scenic train ride to Glasgow, Scotland. With Della on point, we went from the train station to the proper subway and made our way to Glasgow University. We ate at an Italian restaurant and then checked into our very nice university-supplied housing.

    We had some time to walk around. Spring arrives a little earlier in Glasgow than in Minneapolis, but it was still pretty cold. I noticed decorative bamboo growing along a sidewalk fence. I had thought bamboo only grew in the tropics. Well, live and learn. Our room at the uni-versity was very comfortable. It was March 26, 1998, our

    tenth wedding anniversary.The next morning, we had a restaurant-style break-

    fast in the visitor’s dining hall. Laundry facilities were available, and Della washed and ironed in the morning to give us fresh clothes for the next leg of our journey.

    I visited the physics department at the University of Glasgow. John Chapman’s group developed unique capabilities for “seeing” magnetism in materials using an electron microscope. His prize machine cost two million pounds sterling. We had a great technical discussion and developed a joint research plan.

    Della and I dressed to go to dinner with John and his wife. John had his PhD in physics from Cambridge, where his wife, Judith, got her doctorate in pediatrics. John wore a navy-blue sport coat, a bright white shirt with a collegiate tie. His full brown beard was trimmed uniformly to about a half inch in length. Judith wore a printed silk dress and high heels, her hair in a bun. Della wore a gray sweater and black slacks. I wore my standard uniform of khaki pants, a white golf shirt, and navy wrinkle-proof sport coat. The Chapmans picked us up at our housing and drove to the restaurant in a Jaguar sedan.

    We engaged in some small talk over drinks. Della had some familiarity with electron microscopes from her work at Honeywell, so I tried to find a topic of mutual interest. “Della, you wouldn’t believe John’s lab. He has a two-million-pound electron microscope.”

    “Oh, my,” said Della, “I’ll bet you really had to reinforce the floor to stabilize one that big.”

    An embarrassing moment ensued. Finally I said, “Pounds sterling, dear, not avoirdupois.”

    Poor Della’s face turned a little red, but then we all had a little chuckle.

    The Ubiquitous Chip served French cuisine. Della and I ordered filets and our customary potatoes and salads. The Chapmans ordered pigeon, rare. It was the first time either Della or I saw bloody birds as human food and, frankly, it didn’t improve our appetites. But everything else about the meal was terrific and we really enjoyed the company of this sophisticated couple. The Chapmans dropped us back to our pleasant university housing, and we got a good night’s sleep.

    The next morning we took the subway back to the train station and caught the train east to Edinburgh. Our bed-and-breakfast was too far from the station to walk, so we had to take a cab to Balquhidder Guest

  • 7

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    House. A prim Mrs. Fergusson was a little irked for our arriving well before the room was made up, and she did a double take when she saw Della’s black eyes. But she decided to let us leave our baggage so we could more easily tour Edinburgh.

    We spent most of the day taking in the sights. Holyrood House, the Queen’s palace in Scotland, was a must-see for Della, a chronic Anglophile. The mag-nificent Edinburgh Castle provided impressive views of the city. Among the many historic sites in the Old City, some dating from the fifteenth century, stood a gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe. The New City, built on higher ground overlooking the Old City, was designed about the time our Declaration of Independence was written. That helped me appreciate the relative newness of our country compared with Scot-land. We went back to the Balquhidder to rest a little before dinner.

    Sandy and Wilma Templeton picked us up for dinner. NVE was recruiting Sandy for an important engineering position. Sandy, a jolly soul, stood a thin six-foot-six. He wore a worsted wool, plaid sport coat, white shirt, and tie. Wilma, who only looked short by compar-ison, wore a business suit. Della wore a cream blouse and gray slacks, and I wore my standard uniform again. We piled into the Templeton’s small sedan and headed to Hawes, a seventeenth century inn near the Forth Road Bridge, a famous suspension bridge spanning the Firth of Forth. The bridge was brilliantly lit that evening.

    After a few whiskeys (the Scots call Scotch, whis-key), we ordered haggis. Haggis is any kind of meat scraps mixed with barley, stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, and baked. For sober people, its quality can range from abominable to not quite abominable, depending on the meat quality. After two whiskeys, haggis is palatable, and after three it’s good. Bobbie Burns wrote a tribute to haggis. The first verse (translated to modern English) is:

    Fair and full is your honest, jolly face, Great chieftain of the sausage race! Above them all you take your place,

    Stomach, tripe, or intestines: Well are you worthy of a grace

    As long as my arm.

    The entire poem is read while bagpipes play at sup-pers celebrating Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. Haggis could be interpreting as a symbol of Scotch

    conservatism.“As long as we’re into Scottish customs, Sandy, can

    you tell us what Scots wear under their kilts?” I asked.“I might illustrate with a story,” said Sandy. “You

    remember our wedding, Wilma?”“Yes, Dear,” sighed Wilma, suspecting what was

    to come.“It was a formal affair, and I wore my kilts,”

    explained Sandy. “There was a fair amount of drinking. The men congregated on a balcony over the dance floor, and I was in the front row. The women were mainly below on the dance floor. I noticed the women glancing up toward us and then staring.”

    “Go on, finish it,” said Wilma.“Then I saw women going up to Wilma and offer-

    ing condolences,” said Sandy, “and I figured out what they had been staring at.”

    “Well, I guess that answers our question,” I said.The Templetons returned us to Balquhidder and we

    prepared for bed. “Do you think we should hire Sandy, Dear Della?”

    “Yes, he’s good people,” said Della.Sunday we were first to the small dining room for a

    full Scottish breakfast, not surprisingly similar to a full English breakfast. Our primary sightseeing destination was the National Museum, but it didn’t open until 2: 00 PM, so we shopped for cashmere sweaters. They were too expensive. Della had haggis again for lunch and I had a steak pie, which may have contained kidney. The National Museum displayed paintings by masters: Goya, Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet, and Gauguin. Works by Scottish painters were also displayed. We ate supper at a Chinese restaurant and retired.

    In the morning we took a cab to the rail station and boarded a train to take us across the Forth Road Bridge and then north up the scenic east shore of Scotland to Aberdeen. There we walked around, ate at a pub, and caught the train east to Inverness, where we arrived at 3: 30 PM. Tour buses weren’t running this early in the season, so we went directly to our bed-and-breakfast. The Old Royal Guest House was a small place, less grand than its name, but old. Amazingly, it was run quite efficiently by a lady with two-year-old twin boys and a baby girl. Well, I thought, mother cats make the best mousers. Our room was small, but clean, and had a tub only, no shower, and no washcloths. Back on the street, I liked visiting a shop specializing in equipment

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    for salmon fishing. Della enjoyed a kilt-maker’s shop dis-playing Ferguson and Kerry tartans.

    We had found on trip so far that pubs usually served good food at reasonable prices, and we ate super at yet another good one. We strolled afterwards to the Inverness Castle, which had become a courthouse, and then went to our small room for the evening.

    After breakfast at The Old Royal Guest House, we took a train back south through the sparsely populated Highlands. The country reminded me of Vermont. There was still snow on the highest land. Rough, hilly coun-try was covered with miles and miles of heather. Sheep grazed on pastures at the lower elevations. At Perth we transferred to a Glasgow train and ate at Burger King in Glasgow at the train station. Haggis would have tasted better. Then we took a train to Ayr and another to Stran-raer, where we planned to board the ferry crossing to Belfast, Ireland.

    Our hotel was nice. Really hot water for a change, and they even provided washcloths (face flannels, to them). Nearby, a family-run restaurant served both homemade pasta and whiskey, the latter a first for me. I was getting excited about taking the ferry. The trip from Stranraer to Belfast counted as one punch each on our rail passes, which seemed a great bargain.

    Next morning Della and I boarded the ferry Voy-ager at Stranraer, Scotland, on the first of April. And what a ferry! From the dock we could look through the catamaran between the two main sections of the ship. She was 415 feet long, and we boarded her fully 50 feet above sea level. She was the pride of the Stena Line, put into service in 1996. Her four General Electric turbines ran on aviation gas, and they in turn, powered four water jets. The ferry was capable of making sixty knots, but at that speed she kicked up such an awesome wake and used so much fuel, that she usually cruised at only thirty knots. The Voyager took less than two hours to go from Stranraer to Belfast, whereas the old ferries took six hours, even longer into a headwind.

    Compared with the Voyager, Jonah’s whale would have been a very small minnow. The ferry accommodated up to 1,500 passenger and 375 cars. Trucks (lorries) and buses drove right on board. We foot passengers rode in comfortable seats and viewed the ocean from on high through large windows. When I looked down from our high perch to the ocean waves speeding by, my stomach felt a little queasy. The Voyager’s passengers could visit

    a bar, coffee shop, a quick-serve restaurant, a souvenir shop, or a game room.

    The Voyager glided over four-foot-high waves as smooth as silk, and we reached Belfast right on time. The ferry disgorged her burden in orderly and timely fashion. We took a bus to the central train station and boarded a very beautiful express to Dublin. The train was neat as a pin with fresh white covers for the headrests. Posted between cars was an electronic map of the route with a red light showing our current location.

    My Daughton ancestors were from the south of Ire-land and, strangely, I felt more comfortable in getting out of North Ireland and into what I believed was a more friendly country. My grandfather, Emmett, whose father was born in Ireland during the potato famine, had few kind words for the English. I had studied Irish his-tory and I could understand why. I guess I owned a form of original sin: a prejudice against the English, totally undeserved by the English of the current day.

    A cab from the Dublin station to Trinity College had to navigate through rain-slowed traffic. At the main entrance to the college, the Front Arch, I gave the por-ter my paperwork showing we were guests of Professor J. M. D. (Mike) Coey. The porter had keys to our build-ing and guestroom, which lay across the square from the Front Arch. I told Della to stay out of the rain at the arch while I made a dash to ensure I could open the door. I ran splashing through puddles, pulling my roll-on, and carrying my briefcase, to the proper build-ing and encountered a ten-foot-high door. A four-inch key turned in the lock, and with some effort I swung the heavy, oak door open. I waved for Della to follow. She was dripping wet with her hair matted down by the time she stood beside me at the foot of a staircase.

    A single twenty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling lit a frightening scene. Dust and bits of wallpaper littered the floor. The plaster walls were scraped and gouged. An open bathroom door revealed a sink and commode, both covered with dust. The stairs leading to the upper level was in a similar state.

    Della looked shell-shocked. I said “Don’t worry, Della. Our room is on the second level.”

    “Oh, God, I hope I don’t have to come down here to use the bathroom at night,” she sighed.

    We trudged up the stairs with our burdens. I used a smaller key to open the door to our room. We were astounded. A lovelier sight we couldn’t have imagined:

  • 9

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    tastefully wallpapered walls, oriental rugs on the floor, lace curtains on the windows, a neat little kitchen, a bathroom with a tub, shower, and commode, a fireplace, and best of all, a study I could use to prepare my talk. The bed was big and comfortable. The place was even “Della-clean,” which was really saying something. Going from the stairs into the room reminded me when the movie, Wizard of Oz went from black-and-white scenes to color. I felt like saying, “Della, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

    We cleaned up and got into dry clothes. It had stopped raining, and we went to a local pub for some excellent fish and chips. It seemed to me that people were less reserved and more friendly here than in England and Scotland. Although Trinity College was at one time con-sidered the last Protestant stronghold in Ireland, time had changed Trinity into just an excellent Irish academic institution.

    My talk to the physics department was scheduled for the next afternoon, and I prepared for it in my study that evening.

    The next morning held another surprise. Following directions from Amanda Barry, our arranger at Trinity, we went to another building where we had a full sit-down breakfast with service: white starched napkins, china, and silverware. We felt like royalty. Della located the coin laundry where she would spend the afternoon while I worked. But first we had a few minutes to look around Trinity.

    Our primary destination was the library, only a hundred yards from our room. Among other historic documents housed there was the Book of Kells, written and illustrated by hand about 800 AD. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were beautifully writ-ten in Latin and illustrated in color. In a glass display box, one book was opened to a magnificent color illus-tration. I wondered at the patience and steady hand that had created that masterpiece. In mechanical drawing class back at Grinnell College, black India ink smears had decorated almost every simple work I attempted. The Book of Kells was just a miracle to me.

    The library itself looked like something out of Harry Potter, with ladders necessary to reach to upper stacks. It even smelled like old books. Many of the books were in Latin and published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The library was widely used as a research facility.

    I went off to my meeting, leaving Della to look around the library. I met with members of the physics department. Professor Coey had to be out of the coun-try, but Professor Denis Weaire replaced him as my technical host.

    After my presentation to about twenty students and professors, I was invited by some of the graduate stu-dents (most of whom, I discovered, were Catholic) to an Irish football game. I drank Guinness for the first time and watched this really rough sport in which the play-ers wore no pads. This game recalled a sad incident at a similar football game on “Bloody Sunday” in Dublin back in 1920. A British armored vehicle pulled onto the field and machine-gunned the crowd, killing fourteen innocent civilians. This was done in retaliation for the murder of British agents the night before. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the game I watched.

    Della and I met back in our room. “How’d it go today, Sweet Della?”

    “Just great. Got all our laundry done and went downtown shopping. Jim, you just can’t believe the clothes and hats. The same brands the royalty wear. I must’a tried on twenty hats. Some cost more than seven hundred dollars.”

    I told her about the Irish football game.We had to get ready for dinner quickly because we

    were to be picked up by my Irish cousin, Robert Daugh-ton. He had visited my family in Iowa a few times. The Daughton surname was relatively rare, about nine phone numbers listed in the Irish phone book under that sur-name. Robert had grown up in County Kerry, the same county in which my great grandfather, James Daugh-ton, was born. We knew we were related, but just not exactly how.

    I was very proud to be related to Robert. His family farmed in a very poor area of Kerry. In the spring, cattle had to be brought to a dry lot, or else they would mire down in the mud and peat. Robert quit high school to help his father on the farm. Along with his brother and father, he cut and dried peat for sale in the winter. Rob-ert joined the Irish police force when he was old enough. By taking classes and examinations, he got a high school degree and then a college degree. He performed well and received many promotions, eventually retiring as head of the Irish Police College at the mandatory retirement age of sixty.

    Robert was well built with flashing blue eyes and

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    a full head of brown hair. Marie (Irish for Mary) was very thin, too thin, also with blue eyes and a pleasant smile, seemingly permanently attached. He looked younger than his age and Marie much older. We asked about their children; Michael, Ann, and Cathal (Irish for Charles). Robert happily reported that they were all back in Ireland now that the country’s economy could provide them jobs.

    Robert drove us past many of Dublin’s historic spots. The post office was the most important stop to me. The English destroyed it during the Easter Uprising in 1916. Irish patriots barricaded themselves inside until there was no reason to fight on. The ringleaders were put against the wall and shot, including James Connolly, who couldn’t stand because of a shattered ankle. He had to be tied to a chair. Two key rebels escaped capital pun-ishment: Michael Collins who led revolutionary forces to eventual freedom for the south of Ireland in 1922, and Éamon DeValera, who was to be the major force in Ireland politics for the next forty years. DeValera wasn’t executed because he was born in New York. Michael Collins may have been too young. The post office is a holy site for Irish in the south. I was choked up to see it and talk about it with Robert.

    We had a very pleasant conversation over an Irish dinner. Robert had studied church records in County Kerry and found the marriage of my great great grand-father and great great grandmother, and the births of several of their children. I intended to make a pilgrimage to the church in Ballybunion where they tied the knot.

    We bid Robert and Marie a fond farewell. We were pretty sure we would never see Marie again because she appeared so frail.

    We arose the next morning and left our Trinity College digs by taxi to the train station. We took a train south to Waterford, famous for crystal ware, and a cab to our lodgings for the next night. Mrs. O’Keeffe had a very neat bed-and-breakfast, housing three couples besides Della and me. She very graciously drove us to the crystal factory. Della had seen most of the products back in Minneapolis and was somewhat surprised not to see some different items. A tour of the factory had me really puzzled. They proclaimed their quality was of the highest because they threw away 98 percent of all of the items started in the line due to defects. Broken crys-tal lay in barrels all over the factory. Their philosophy should have been finding ways to avoid all defects—to

    aim for zero defects by eliminating defect causes. So I concluded the opposite of their proclamation. I thought their quality was awful. Della bought four brandy snif-ters that had somehow made it through the line. We had them sent home.

    Back at Mrs. O’Keeffe’s we had tea in the dining room. Other tourist couples were there, all buyers of Waterford crystal and all discussing purchases.

    Della volunteered, “We bought four brandy snuffters this afternoon.” Conversation went on with no one commenting on the mistake.

    Back in the room Della said, “Oh, God, I hope no one noticed I called them snuffters.”

    “No one said anything, Della. I think you got away with it.”

    We walked to an awful restaurant called Little Chef for supper, and walked back to a neat, but Spartan, room. No face flannels, no television.

    The next morning at breakfast the patrons were still discussing their crystal purchases. Della was talking to the couple nearest our table. “You know last night I called brandy snifters, ‘snuffters.’ I was really tired and got tongue-tied. Did you notice?”

    “Oh yes,” said the woman.“We did, too,” said a man on the other side of

    the room.“We thought it was really funny,” said a man at the

    only other table in the room.Della blushed red.“They’re laughing with you, not at you, Della,”

    I said.A chorus of agreements echoed in the little break-

    fast room. Everyone was of good cheer.A short cab ride to the bus station was followed

    by a bus ride to Cork. Cork City is on the best harbor in southwest Ireland, and my great grandfather, James Daughton, sailed from there to America with his par-ents in 1851. The potato blight had damaged the crop in 1848 and completely destroyed it in years following. Ireland still produced enough grain to feed its popula-tion, but the poor had no access the grain, which was owned almost exclusively by rich landowners who were either English or people servile to the English. The grain wagons, accompanied by armed redcoats, were driven to ports for shipment to England while starving women and children were dying on the roadsides. The queen donated twenty pounds to Irish Relief. That was it for

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    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    the help from England.By contrast, Quakers from the United States

    assisted the poor, lived with them, and often died from the epidemics accompanying mass starvation of a weak-ened population. No good census figures are available, but the population of Ireland dropped from about eight million to less than three million in the next genera-tion due to starvation and migration. This tragic period weighed on my mind as we took a train from Cork to Tralee in County Kerry, the home of the Daughtons.

    This train was not as modern as others on our trip, and neither was its schedule as dependable. Preference for highway travel has sharply reduced rail traffic from Cork to Tralee. Our train arrived an hour late to Cork, and no one at the station thought that unusual. A gen-tleman sitting opposite us on the train inquired, “You wouldn’t be from the States, would ya?”

    “Yes,” I said. “We are from Minnesota.”The man was a Barry Fitzgerald look-alike. He wore

    a gray wool sport coat over a brown sweater. A full head of brown hair sat atop a slightly flushed face. His spar-kling blue eyes and a ready laugh put us at ease.

    “I myself am from Tralee. What brings you there?” he asked.

    “My ancestors are from Kerry. We hope to see where they lived.”

    “And what might their names be?” he asked.“I’m Jim Daughton. Have you heard of Daughtons?”“Indeed, I know of the Daughtons. One of them,

    Garret, drives a school bus in Lixnaw.”“What about Robert Daughton?” I asked.“Oh yes, I know him and his brother, too. They

    lived in Ballyduff. I think the brother still farms some-where. Good people.”

    “What part of Kerry do you live in?”“Oh, I live in Tralee now, but I grew up near

    Ballyduff.”He proceeded to tell us of raising cattle and walking

    with them to the fair for sale, of cutting peat, of raising vegetables and, of fishing, mostly in the ocean. He was a friendly, charming man.

    A cab took us from the train station in Tralee to the bed-and-breakfast of Mrs. O’Shea. Our room was big, really stark and plain, but clean and neat. No face flannels, no TV. My steak that evening at Hurty’s Tav-ern was very good and tender, but Della’s was tough. The tavern owner was kind enough to arrange for cab

    to Ballybunion and surrounding areas for the following afternoon.

    The next morning we had a nice breakfast and walked around Tralee. A museum in town had artifacts from both far prehistoric times and from iron and cop-per ages. I was impressed with an historic photo display of more modern times—Easter uprising, war for inde-pendence, and then “The Troubles,” perhaps the saddest of times in Ireland.

    After centuries of seeking independence from England, most of Ireland was finally freed from England by treaty in 1921. But Northern Ireland, which was dominantly Protestant at that time, remained as part of the British Empire. There were those in the south, among them Éamon DeValera, who refused to recog-nize the treaty brokered by Michael Collins, because they thought the island should be one country. A civil war broke out in the south of Ireland, brother against brother. In 1922 Collins was assassinated. The south of Ireland was finally united a few years later under DeVal-era, but “The Troubles” was at least partially responsible for a very slow economic recovery of Ireland through the next several decades.

    We walked through a rose garden to catch a cab ride into my past. Our first stop was Ballyduff, a beau-tiful small town on the ocean. We drove to the church where my great great grandparents, Maurice Daughton and Ellen Mullen, were married and where some of their children were christened. Church records spelled Mau-rice’s last name as Daughton sometimes and sometimes as Dalton or Dataun, but they always spelled Mullen correctly. Perhaps Ellen was more literate than Maurice. Ellen and Maurice were buried in The Irish Pioneers Cemetery near Leon, Iowa.

    The church’s stone walls and belfry were still stand-ing, but the roof was gone. Two horses were grazing where the parishioners sat in the nineteenth century. The front of the church faced east, toward Ireland, and the back looked over the sea west, to where Maurice and Ellen would take their family, including my great grand-father, James. Back at the Irish Pioneers Cemetery (aka St. Mary’s Cemetery), Maurice’s and Ellen’s tombstones lie east of my great grandfather’s tombstone, in my mind’s eye a journey back east in time. I looked at the church and wondered at the courage it took to make the journey. I felt as though I had located my place in time.

    The cab took us by a Gypsy camp near Robert’s

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    farm. The fields were low and flat. It was easy to envision cattle miring down in the rainy season.

    We drove on to Lixnaw and to the home of Garret Daughton. Outside the modest, white clapboard house was parked a station wagon wearing a sign on its back bumper proclaiming “Daughton School Bus.” Garret and his wife invited us into their home and we met their son Patrick.

    “Hello, Patrick.” I said. We are part of the Daugh-ton clan in the United States.”

    “I didn’t know there were Daughtons in the United States,” he said.

    “Oh yes, there are quite a few,” I said. I wondered at the asymmetry of knowledge. When I was his age, I full well knew the Daughtons were Irish.

    Garret said, “I also have an automotive repair busi-ness I operate when I’m not driving the bus.”

    The couple seemed happy and settled in life. The wife, a little heavy, wore an apron over a cotton print dress. Garret wore blue jeans and a black sweater. I promised to write Patrick a letter when I got home.

    We returned by cab to Tralee. The cab bill was thir-ty-five pounds (about fifty dollars), which seemed high at the time.

    We had very nice roast pork for lunch at a pub.It was too early in the season for tours in Kerry, of

    which there would be many later in the year, but local buses were running. We boarded a commercial bus at 3: 30 in the afternoon for a round trip to Dingle. Dingle lies near the west side of a long peninsula, not unnat-urally named the Dingle Peninsula. Fresh green grass covered the hilly terrain. The land was checkered with fences of stone, probably picked up very close by, defin-ing small pastures, some smaller than an acre. Fine division of the land was part of the hunger problem in the mid-nineteenth century. Parents would divide the land among their offspring until the plots got very small. Only potatoes could provide enough food on such little land to sustain the families. Then came the potato blight and utter calamity.

    But now there was happiness all along the highway. New lambs were frolicking in the bright, sunshiny after-noon of early spring. They would run fast and then hop, hop, hop several feet into the air. The ewes grazed qui-

    etly, probably remembering how they did the same years before. The blue Atlantic was visible from many higher points along the road. I returned to Tralee satisfied we had seen the true rural Ireland of my forbears.

    Back in Tralee we splurged on fantastic fish din-ner at a three-star hotel. Then we walked back to our bed-and-breakfast, stuffed and happy, for a good night’s sleep.

    Della had heard that sometimes bad weather could shut down the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales, and if that would happen to us, we might not catch our plane home. So we cut our stay by one night in Tralee to take the ferry a day earlier than planned. We retraced our previous bus and rail trips all the way from Tralee to back to Dublin. There we boarded a fast ferry, very similar to the one we took from Stranraer, Scotland, to Belfast. The trip was longer, three hours fifteen minutes. On board we heard groups of people speaking a strange language. I finally learned the language was Welsh, spo-ken by about half of the population of Wales. It was like no other language I had ever heard.

    The ferry landed on time in Wales. We found a night’s lodging in a small town near the ferry landing. A long walk at sundown in a hilly residential area revealed that every home had a dog and a good-sized garden with a primitive shed for garden tools.

    The next morning we took trains across Wales and England to Crawley, a city near Gatwick Airport, arriv-ing for supper at the Barnwood Hotel. These last train trips used up our rail passes. In the morning we caught the airplane back to Minneapolis.

    We had done it. By pulling small roll-on suitcases and traveling with rail passes, we had seen many sites in England, Scotland, and Ireland. I had met my commit-ments for talks and research planning at four universities. We had no clean clothes left except the ones we wore on the airplane home. We didn’t have much energy left, either. It was time to rest up from a strenuous “Euro-pean” vacation.

    As we retired that evening in our own bed, I said, “Della, you are the most wonderful traveling companion.”

    “You aren’t so bad yourself.” she said yawning.

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    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    The Roman Great Bath at Bath England.

    Della and Jim atop Hadrian’s Wall near Haltwhistle, England.

    Page from the Book of Kells, Dublin, Ireland.

    The Daughton School Bus in Lixnaw, Ireland.

  • 15

    Chapter I.B - A Frenetic Trip East

    For several months after returning from Ireland and the British Isles in April 1998, Della and I were too busy to travel anywhere. My company, NVE Corporation, had growing pains. New products were troubled, and we often met payroll by the skin of our teeth. The compa-ny’s principal income came from government contracts that depended to a large degree on my relationships with government and university researchers. So I had to travel a lot to cultivate our funders. Della was left alone to han-dle most of our domestic affairs.

    Della had worked unselfishly helping me while NVE was starting up. Our new house of her design in Bearpath, a gated community, was my way to reward her. Nearly all of our assets were tied up in this house. If NVE went down, we would have to sell this house, move to a smaller place, and really tighten our belts. I had to do all within my power to make sure NVE succeeded.

    The house was finished in the summer. Della orga-nized the move and had actually transported much of the small stuff to our new abode, one carload at a time. I could tell she was worn down and could use a change of scenery.

    The day everything was in its place, Della and I relaxed on our screened-in porch and reveled in our surroundings.

    “There’s plenty of room in this house for all three kids to stay for Easter and Christmas, Della,” I said.

    “Yes, and we can have Thanksgiving and Christmas here for your and my families together. Did you think we would be able to build a house on this lot when we bought it two years ago?” Della asked.

    “I wasn’t sure. I thought it was funny when you insisted on a picnic on our vacant lot,” I said. “You

    thought that might be the closest we would come to living here. You did a fantastic job designing the house and organizing the move. You could use a little break. We can’t afford an honest-to-God vacation, but why don’t you travel with me on my East Coast trip? I’ll have to work some, but you will see places you haven’t been before.”

    “All right, guess I could use a break.”I planned for both business and sightseeing. To

    save money, we were to travel by car. The trip would take us east and south from Minneapolis to Purdue at West Lafayette, Indiana; further east to George Wash-ington University and NIST in the Washington, DC, area; then north to Vermont for pure sightseeing; and then back south and west to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before returning to Minne-apolis. We would leave on Monday and get home from Pittsburgh just eight days later. Neither of our ten-year-old cars could be trusted to make the journey, so I rented a small Saturn from a discount rental agency.

    Della did the packing. Our car could hold all the clothes needed for the trip, so unlike the “European Vacation,” we wouldn’t need to do laundry. On a Sun-day evening in mid-September we took our faithful toy poodle, Sable, to Auntie Mae’s for boarding and picked up a small, gray Saturn sedan. We were packed before bedtime.

    The next morning we got up in the dark and started out. Backing out of our driveway, I exclaimed, “Oh shit, these headlights don’t cast much of a beam.”

    I could barely navigate the roads out of Bearpath, guided as much by street lights as by the Saturn’s head-lights. I stopped the car. Della got out and verified the

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    TR AVELS with DELLA

    lights were on. Just to be sure I did the same. There was no owner’s manual in the glove compartment.

    “Oh well,” I said, “It’ll be light in an hour or so. Just lean back and enjoy the ride, Della.”

    “It would be a damned sight easier to lean back if the seat worked,” said Della.

    I stopped at the next rest stop and inspected the car seat. Sure enough, the seat wouldn’t recline due to a bro-ken metal bracket. Della, sitting bolt upright, suffered with a stiff back for the rest of the journey. We took to calling our Saturn “crapcar.” Trying to exchange cars would upset my whole itinerary, so we charged ahead.

    We drove east of the Twin Cities on I-94 and con-nected to I-80, trying to avoid some Chicago traffic. I-65 south to West Lafayette was a straight shot, and we got to a nondescript motel before dark. We ate at a Perkins, just a short walk away. I looked at my wife across the table. She looked tired.

    “I’m afraid this hasn’t been an exciting trip so far, Sweet Della.”

    “It’s OK, Jim. At least we have some time together. If I don’t look all perky, it’s because I don’t feel well. I’ve felt this way for the past couple of months.”

    “You’re just tired from the move, Della,” I said. But I wondered if that was all.

    The next morning I left Della at the motel and visited my host at Purdue University, Professor Fritz Friedlaender, a thirty-year veteran of the electrical engi-neering department. He was slender and mostly bald, and he spoke softly with a slight German accent. He was very proper, slightly condescending to those junior, and slightly deferential to peers. I fit somewhere in the mid-dle. He was very well-liked and respected by all. Fritz was highly decorated in the technical world, holding high offices in professional organizations and winning many awards for technical service and teaching. In appearance and manner, he was a typical German gentleman.

    Dr. Friedlaender had scheduled me for two separate talks, one for his department and another for the physics department. I wondered why a single talk wouldn’t have done for both, but didn’t push the issue. There was said to be some problem with departmental schedules. The talks and discussions at both sessions were similar to the many I had given before.

    I had occasion to peer into Professor Friedlaender’s office. Papers, files, and magazines were piled on top of tables and his desk up to a uniform height of about five

    feet. The floor was also covered with these stacks to the same height, leaving only narrow paths for pedestrian traffic.

    “Did you see Dr. Friedlaender’s office?” one of the physics professors asked.

    “Yes, it’s really something,” I said. I thought some-thing more negative, but felt it might fan the flames of an interdepartmental rivalry.

    “But do you know what? You can name any document in there, and he can pull it out almost instan-taneously,” he asserted. “By the way, are you eating supper in West Lafayette?”

    “Yes, my wife is with me, and we plan to eat here.”“Well, there is a place we always recommend to

    visitors for prime rib.” He gave me driving instructions. Then he let me use his office phone to see how things were going at NVE.

    Back at the motel I questioned Della, “What did you do all day?”

    “I read two Majesty magazines and a new book on Princess Diana. It was relaxing. I basically laid in bed all day.”

    “We’re going for prime rib tonight,” I enthused.We got into the car and I turned on the headlights.

    Then I noticed I could turn the headlamp knob another click clockwise. Miracle of miracles, the headlights cast a much brighter light, not a great light, but certainly a better one.

    The physics professor had steered us right. The prime rib was wonderful, almost tender enough to be cut with a fork. The secret, according to the server, was that the meat was slow-cooked for twenty-four hours. Our meal was truly memorable.

    The next morning we motored east all day on I-70 to Wheeling, West Virginia. We crossed over the Ohio River to a motel with a view of the Wheeling Suspen-sion Bridge, which we had just crossed. At the time of its construction in 1849, it was the longest single-span bridge in the world at 1,010 feet.

    We ate supper at the restaurant in the motel with a wonderful view of a bridge lit up like a Christmas tree. Its span cables were strung densely with lights, and their reflections shone like fireflies on the rippling waters of the Ohio River.

    There was a building nearby with large pictures of snakes over the door. I failed to discover the building’s purpose, but I mused of religious rites where the pure of

  • 17

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    heart wouldn’t be bitten by poisonous vipers. That kind of stuff happened in West Virginia.

    The next day promised to be very busy, so we got up before first light and I drove four hours on I-70 to I-270 and Gaithersburg, Maryland. I signed in at the Red Roof Inn, one of my favorite places to stay because of low cost and its proximity to The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NVE not only had several large contracts with them, but several of the staff were very prominent in our technology, and every pro-posal NVE submitted to government agencies was likely to be reviewed by NIST employees.

    Dr. William (Bill) Egelhoff met me at the main entrance, and he joyfully showed me his newest fabri-cation equipment that he was trying to operate around the clock, Bill taking about sixteen hours of the twen-ty-four upon himself. Bill was a true friend of mine and of NVE. He was slightly heavy-set, medium height with a round head. He was totally dedicated to his research. Wearing an enthusiastic smile, Bill talked rapidly. We quickly walked to a room where I was to give my talk, the room already seating about twenty NIST employees. Following a very flattering introduction, I gave my talk. Afterwards, I met with various individuals interested in details of NVE’s research. About 5: 00 PM I met Della back at the Red Roof Inn. After a quick call back to NVE, where things seemed to be going well, Della and I had a light supper together.

    As the sun set, I left Della at the motel and caught the Metro train to George Washington University, which was near the White House. My host was Dr. Mar-tha Pardavi-Horvath of the electrical engineering and computer science department. She wore a light-brown sweater matching the color of her hair, and her tinted glasses made her look scholarly. Martha was a pretty good scientist, but her best skills lay in working with people. On many professional committees and coun-cils relating to magnetism, she knew and was known by everyone. I gave a talk to about fifteen staff members. It was well-received, but the question and answer ses-sion afterwards was mercifully short. I caught the Metro back to Gaithersburg and got to the motel room about 11: 00 PM.

    “It’s only me, Della,” I said, trying not to frighten her.

    Della rolled over in bed. She had left the light in the bathroom on. “Oh good, you’re back,” she said sleep-

    ily. “I was getting a little worried.”“Tomorrow we are really going to do some sight-

    seeing, Della. We’re going to Gettysburg. Aren’t you excited?”

    “I’m too tired to be excited, but I’m glad you’re excited. Now let’s get some sleep.”

    The next morning I drove back north on I-270 to Frederick, Maryland, and then north over the Pennsyl-vania border to the Gettysburg Battlefield. We visited a museum, the graveyard where President Lincoln gave his famous address, and a wonderful tower with windows all around on the top floor. Pasted on the windows were small transparencies representing sites in the landscape visible by looking directly out the window. Lettering on the transparencies called out names familiar to students of the battle: Little Roundtop, The Peach Orchard, The Devil’s Den, and The Wheatfield. This tower helped me understand the battle, but it was torn down a few years after we visited. Some called it an eyesore. I think it a shame it was destroyed.

    In the town of Gettysburg, the building housing the restaurant where we ate lunch had served as a hospi-tal during the battle. Amputated arms and legs had been thrown out the window into piles. The building was reputed to be haunted. Small wonder! You could almost hear the wailing and screaming of the poor young vic-tims of saws and knives suffering without anesthesia.

    Prior to the war, the house had hidden runaway slaves in a secret cellar room as part of the underground railway. We were later in the trip to see a similar room in New York.

    We drove away from Gettysburg, pleased to have seen it, but saddened to have the casualties placed in such stark relief. In just three days, 8,000 Americans were killed and 27,000 more wounded, many of whom died of their wounds soon thereafter.

    I steered the car northeast on US 15 eventually connecting to I-78 outside Harrisburg. The rest of the afternoon and evening drive was a bit of a blur. We crossed into New Jersey west of Allentown and then hit I-95 crossing into New York State, then north along the west bank of the Hudson River and I-87, then crossing the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge to US 9 north, and finally to a motel overlooking the Hudson near Montrose, New York.

    The drive had been mostly tedious, but there were several highlights along the way. Flowers were planted

  • 18

    TR AVELS with DELLA

    along several throughways, and on one stretch in Penn-sylvania, purple, white, and variegated purple-and-white cosmos bloomed in profusion on both sides of the pave-ments. According to state maintenance authorities, it was less expensive to grow wild flowers than to cut grass. Also, we hit the peak of the fall foliage season on this route. Red, orange, and yellow leaves mixed with a few leftover green ones made impressive splashes of color along the route. The Tappan Zee Bridge was also impressive. Four miles long, it also crossed the Hudson at its widest, a one-mile span.

    By the time we reached US 9 we were bone-tired. The signage along the route was sparse, poorly lit, and often misleading. Della The Navigator strained her eyes to read road signs illuminated by the weak headlights of the crapcar.

    Thankfully, we made it safely to our motel about 8: 00 PM, and we were blessed with a grand view of the Hudson and well-lit boat traffic passing up and down the river. I called Bernie Argyle, my host at IBM Research, to report our arrival. I was to meet him the next morning with Della in tow. Bernie’s wife, Barbara, was planning on taking Della sightseeing and shopping. Della might have been happy to read by the river all day, but it was an invitation she couldn’t refuse. Also, Bernie had planned a dinner at his home and had invited quite a few of my former colleagues from the T. J. Watson Research Center.

    Too early the next morning, we arose and drove toward IBM. On the way I passed the two places I had lived in 1963–65, one in the upper floor of the home of Alexander Learner and his wife in Yorktown Heights, and the second at a very small, winterized summer rental in Mohegan Lake. Bernie and Barbara met us at the main entrance to the Research Center, and the two women went on their way while Bernie and I went inside.

    I gave a talk in the auditorium to about fifty staff members, and spent much of the rest of the workday with people interested in NVE technology. I also had some time to see old friends—people I had played with and against in bridge, basketball, and softball. At quit-ting time Bernie let me use his phone to check up on NVE and then gave me careful directions to his house for dinner. I drove to the motel to find Della already back from her jaunt.

    “Well, Della, how did it go?”

    “Oh, Jim. We went to West Point. The Hudson River Valley is just beautiful there, and what a rich his-tory West Point has!” Della was more animated than I had seen her for several weeks.

    She continued, “We toured a very nice museum on the campus. Then we went to a shopping center that sold only high-end clothes. It was really fun. But Barbara had to get home to get supper for the party. What kind of day did you have?”

    “It was almost like I had never left.” I said. “I had a wonderful time.”

    We cleaned up a bit and set out to find the Argyles’ house. It was near the former home of Washington Irving. On the winding hilly roads one could easily imagine Ichabod Crane meeting the headless horseman. After a few wrong turns, we arrived at the proper address. Our hosts greeted us warmly and showed us around their eighteenth century home. An unusual feature was a hiding place under the stairs for runaway slaves. This house had also been part of the underground railway, just like the one we saw in Gettysburg.

    I hadn’t seen one of the dinner guests since leaving Research thirty-three years before. John Slonczewski was the foremost theoretician in magnetism in the United States. He was smart beyond my understanding.

    I had kept in contact with Emerson Pugh, a researcher, author, and president of the IEEE, a profes-sional society with about 400,000 members. When he was quite young, Emerson wrote a classic text on elec-tricity and magnetism along with his father, a physics professor, also named Emerson Pugh. I was highly flat-tered that Emerson and John, along with all the others, saw fit to come to the dinner.

    Dinner was beef stew, fresh baked bread, red wine, salad, and pie for dessert. It wasn’t fancy, but it was fill-ing and delicious. After dinner we discussed old times and IBMers who couldn’t come. About 11: 00 PM we bid Bernie, Barbara, and the others farewell and headed for a night’s sleep back at our motel on the Hudson.

    “The Argyles couldn’t have been more accommo-dating, could they, Della?”

    “They really went all out for us,” said Della.“I’ve been wondering why they went to such

    extraordinary lengths, and I have sort of a theory.”“OK, what’s your theory?”“Well, Bernie didn’t have a PhD when he went to

    work at IBM, although he got one several years later.”

  • 19

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    “So what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” asked Della.

    “Bernie was treated as a second-class citizen by some at Yorktown, even though he was a damned sight smarter than many of the PhDs on the ‘Technical Staff.’ I thought the discrimination was bullshit and made it known that I thought so. Bernie knew how I felt.”

    “Well, maybe,” said Della.“One other thing,” I said. “Guess who hired Bernie

    into IBM?”“Who?”“Emerson Pugh. He was there tonight, too.”The next morning we entered Taconic Parkway

    going north in the mid-Hudson valley. Fall foliage was still in its prime. Rugged hills covered with trees in their autumn spender, lay west like a brightly decorated quilt spread out toward the Hudson River. This scenery brought many sightseers along this route in the fall. We went past the exit to Franklin Roosevelt’s former home at Hyde Park. As we approached Albany, the Hudson River suddenly made a bend to the west. We continued north on I-90 to I-87 to Saratoga Springs.

    Nearby, in the fall of 1777, a colonist victory over British forces led by General John Burgoyne provided a turning point in our Revolutionary War. Burgoyne had led his army south from Montreal, down Lake Champlain, and further south to Saratoga intending to continue all the way to the Hudson River, thus splitting the west colonies from the east. He had expected a com-plementary expedition of British troops to arrive from the south, but they never came. His surrender encouraged France to render much-needed aid to the colonies. This battle ranked with Trenton and Yorktown as the colonies’ most important victories in the war for independence.

    We continued thirty miles further north to Lake George where we had lunch at a lakeside restaurant. The pine-scented wind pushed a few fluffy white clouds across an aqua sky. Tall pines grew along the shore of a clear, blue lake. The lake deserved its reputation as one of the most beautiful in the northeast.

    “Jim,” said Della, “This is more like it.”We drove east on US 4 into Vermont and proceeded

    for several hours north on US 7, through the beautiful college town of Middlebury, and on to Vergennes. Our destination for the evening was The Basin Harbor Inn, just a few miles west of Vergennes on beautiful Lake Champlain. The lake is over one hundred miles long but

    only twelve miles wide at its widest point at Burling-ton. Its average depth is one hundred feet. Its waters are exceptionally cold and clear, but the lake doesn’t freeze over completely most winters despite Vermont’s cold temperatures. Except at the mouths of the two largest rivers, the Winooski and the Lamoille, lake water is safe to drink. I had spent thousands of hours hunting and fishing on that wonderful body of water.

    For one hundred years, The Basin Harbor Inn had been a popular summer retreat, attracting mostly the upper classes. We got some well-deserved rest before dinner in our large and well-appointed room. Della took a shower and curled her hair. Della had packed her best clothes for this dinner, a pink silk blouse and gray wool skirt. The other women in the dining room weren’t dressed to the nines, but maybe to the eights. Although it was early fall and still quite a warm, all men were required to wear a coat and tie to dinner. We enjoyed a nice, but pricey, supper and a chance to watch the sun set over Lake Champlain.

    The next morning we drove north along the lake to Shelburne and the Shelburne Museum. It was Sun-day, and the museum didn’t open until 10: 00 AM, so we drove further north to Burlington, the Queen City. At the foot of Church Street, I went by The First Uni-tarian Church, built in 1816. I attended church there for eight years and sang in the choir on Sundays and special occasions. A Unitarian owned the largest radio station in Burlington, and our Sunday services were broadcast. Our choir was small, and I was proud I could carry a part by myself. I also served the church in several admin-istrative positions. I really wanted to go to church that Sunday, but there wasn’t enough time. Besides, I could tell Della wasn’t that interested.

    We went to Battery Park and looked across the lake to Plattsburg, New York. The ferries were running and we stayed long enough to see one come and one go. We then went back to the Shelburne Museum.

    Thirty-nine buildings (twenty-five of which were historic) sat on forty-five acres. Buildings included a one-room school, barns (one of which was round), houses, a covered bridge, and stores. The buildings housed fur-niture, carriages, folk art, paintings (one by Grandma Moses), quilts, household items, dolls, and a splendid collection of wild fowl decoys. There was even a side-wheeler steam ship, the 220-foot-long Ticonderoga. We could have spent days in the museum, but at 12: 30 we

  • 20

    TR AVELS with DELLA

    called it quits and headed for lunch at the historic Lin-coln Inn in Essex Junction.

    I had lived in Essex Junction from 1965 until 1973, and the Lincoln Inn was a favorite eatery. It was an inex-pensive and friendly place where my little family often ate Sunday lunch.

    After a hurried meal, Della and I drove by the two homes I had lived in. The first was a three-bedroom Cape Cod on River Road, which I contracted to be built by a local builder in 1966 for $18,500. There was no paperwork, just a handshake. The lot the house sat on was 100 feet by 300 feet, and the back yard bordered a forest a mile deep away from the road. Across River Road lay an empty field that I tromped across to reach the Winooksi River whenever I had a few hours to spend fishing. The wooden fence I had built around the prop-erty was still standing, but the house had been painted a solid dull gray over the original white with green trim. Houses now were crowded together on both sides of the road. I liked to remember the way it was.

    We drove by the red four-bedroom colonial house I moved to after a neighbor’s child was killed by a car on River Road, right in front of my first house. I had just grown accustomed to this new place when I left IBM.

    We took an hour to drive to the mountain town of Stow, Vermont. Autumn foliage in Burlington had faded a bit, but at these higher altitudes the trees were almost com-pletely denuded. I parked the car near Smuggler’s Notch, a jagged break in a rocky ridge so named for its role in smug-gling goods from Canada to the United States.

    We stayed the night in the Trapp Family Lodge. The von Trapps fled the Nazis in 1936 just as suggested in the movie, The Sound of Music, and came to the United States. The area around Stowe must have reminded the von Trapps of Austria, and they built a lodge there in 1950. When I lived in Vermont, the Baroness Maria von Trapp could often be seen in a rocking chair on the porch. The original lodge burned in 1987 and was replaced by the structure where we were to spend the night. It was comfortable, but overpriced.

    Very early the next morning we were on our way to Pittsburgh. I drove south on I-89 through Montpelier, Vermont, population 8,000. The city had fewer than half the people of the next least populous state capital in the United States. The Winooski, flowing clear, spread wide and shallow alongside this interstate. A fly fisherman cast his line in riffles above a pool. We joined I-91 at White

    River Junction, driving south between the Green Moun-tains of Vermont on our right and the White Mountains of New Hampshire on our left.

    We encountered a series of interstate highways: I 84 into Connecticut, I-91 to Massachusetts, I-84 into New York and then into Pennsylvania, to I-80 to I-79 to Pittsburgh and I-279 to get near my final destination of Carnegie Mellon University. I parked at the motel that the Carnegie secretary had reserved.

    We had eaten a little along the way, and I was off to meet my hosts, Dr. Jimmy Zhu and Dr. Bob White, both distinguished in the field of magnetic materials and devices. I knew Jimmy when he taught at the Univer-sity of Minnesota, and Bob when he worked at Control Data in Minneapolis, and then again when he was the Undersecretary of Commerce in the Reagan administra-tion. In addition to those two professors, Carnegie was truly blessed with a brilliant staff. My talk went well and we had great discussions. I drove back to the motel and knocked on our motel door at eleven o’clock.

    “Oh God,” Della said as lifted her head from her pillow. “You made it. Boy, am I tired!”

    I said, “I’m pretty tired, too, but we really have to get up early in the morning. There is no rest for the wicked.”

    Once again the night was too short and we were on the road well before sunup. We went north to I-80, went west to Chicago, and on I-94 to the Twin Cities. We encountered a little snow on this 850-mile drive, capping off a 3,000 mile trip in eight days. I was some-what worried about falling asleep at the wheel, and Della was absolutely convinced it was going to happen. She helped me stay awake. We got home at 11: 30 PM, too late to pick up our beloved puppy from Auntie Mae. That would have to wait until the next morning when we returned the crapcar.

    “Della, I’m afraid that trip was a little rushed.” I offered. “But I really enjoyed reconnecting with my life in IBM and Vermont.”

    “I saw some interesting things,” said Della. “The Shelburne Museum and Gettysburg were unforgettable. I liked West Point and the Trapp Family Lodge, too. The prime rib in Indiana was a great memory. But once, just once, I would like to take a vacation with you that isn’t a constant fire drill.”

    “I promise, Della. I promise,” I said as I turned off the lights.

  • 21

    Part I: Pre-Cruise Tr avels

    Wheeling Suspension Bridge, Wheeling West Virginia.

    The new Trapp Family Lodge, Stow, Vermont. The original burned.

  • 22

    TR AVELS with DELLA

    Observation tower at Gettysburg Battleground, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was, unfortunately, torn down after our visit.

    The steamship Ticonderoga at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.

  • 23

    Chapter I.C - Journey Without Travel

    Della and I had planned a joyous 1998 holiday season. We hosted thirty of our family for Thanksgiving in our new Bearpath house. I grilled ham, turkey, and roast beef on my handy-dandy Weber grills leaving hickory chip smoke inside and outside our house. Mashed pota-toes, gravy, stuffing, squash, cranberry sauce, pies, and cakes completed a feast suitable for the Food Channel. The house was big enough that it wasn’t at all crowded. Exceptionally warm weather allowed some guests to eat dinner in the screened-in porch.

    A month later, our children, Michael, Margo, and Judy, together with their spouses or significant others, stayed at our house for Christmas. There was plenty of sleeping room. Della, the maven of decorating and orga-nizing for family and friends, made the house beautiful for our first Christmas. She hung a big wreath by the front door and strung small pine boughs on the stairway and banisters. She erected seven Christmas trees, all well-trimmed with, among other decorations, her substantial collection of Christopher Radko ornaments. Three of the trees sat on a large ledge above the front door and shouted out through a high window that Christmas had come to the Daughton household. We invited friends, family, and everyone from NVE Corporation for a hol-iday party, once again without overcrowding the house, even with sixty guests.

    After the Christmas party ended and the house straightened, we got ready for bed. Della looked fraz-zled. She was pale with little bags under her eyes. “Jim, I’m really tired,” she said.

    “No wonder,” I said. “All that company and parties would tire out anyone.”

    “It may be something more. My left breast doesn’t feel right. I’m going into the doctor as soon as I can get an appointment.”

    Two days later I drove her to Park Nicollet Clinic for a biopsy.

    “Did it hurt a lot, Della?” I asked afterwards.She grimaced at the memory. “It wasn’t any fun, but

    I don’t care. I have to know if it’s cancer. They’ll call us.”We went home and waited. I hoped and prayed for

    the best.The telephone rang. The nurse said, “I’ve set up an

    appointment for 2: 30 this afternoon. Your husband can come, too.”

    “Is it cancer?” Della asked.“I’m afraid you’ll have to discuss the results of the

    biopsy with Dr. Duane,” answered the nurse.I sat with Della that afternoon in a small bare room.

    She was obviously upset, but prepared for the worst. Dr. Duane entered the room wearing a white jacket and a solemn expression. He said, “I’m afraid the growth in your left breast is cancerous. It is ‘stage three,’ which isn’t the most serious, but your breast should be removed as soon as possible.”

    Della squeezed my