Sunday, July 18, 1954

Sunday, July 18

Dear Father & Mother—

It’s Sunday afternoon here in sunny California and it certainly feels good to be spending the day back in here in El Cerrito. As of now I’ve been back more than a day and a half since I arrived back in San Francisco late Friday evening having caught an earlier plane than I had intended. But to go back & relate things more in the order they occurred —

Thursday was a fairly busy day in Holland. In the morning I had a “goodbye” talk with Mr. Broeze of the Delft lab and I also went to the Hague and said some goodbyes there. I got back to the Delft lab before noon tho in time for lunch and a last round of bridge with some of the Delft workers. In the afternoon I stayed around till I had a chance to see Mr. Hinge and had a brief talk with him before leaving. A car from the lab took me to PGS132 where my bags were all waiting — I’d finished the last bit of the packing in the morning, having completed most of it the preceding evening or on Tuesday evening. I said goodbye to Mrs. Swieringa (a mixed Dutch-English conversation) and we were off to the Schiphol airport. Mr. Karelia I had said farewell to in the morning before I left for the lab.

Since the plane I was to leave on didn’t depart till 9:45 I had time on my hands at the airport. I had supper there (courtesy of KLM, the Dutch airline company) and spent the time watching the planes come in and leave. My flight left more or less on time, perhaps a little late. We stopped at Prestwick, Scotland before the cross-water hop which took about 9 hours. At Gander, Newfoundland I stepped off onto the North American continent, and as I told Jean, the ground felt different. The plane got into New York about 2½ hours late, about one o’clock.

Getting thru customs was quite easy compared with what I had been prepared for. After finishing this I thought I would go from Idlewild, the airport where I had come in, to La Guardia where I was supposed to leave from and make sure of the remainder of the trip & also stow away my bags will the time. However when I got there I found that I should have stayed at Idlewild because that was where the plane for the next part of the trip was to leave from, & the instructions to go to La Guardia were a mistake. So disgustedly I retraced my tracks, getting back to Idlewild about 3:55. My flight was to leave at 11:30 in the evening, but I thought I’d just ask if anything earlier was available. The man said there was a flight at 4:00 but was all full, except that one passenger had not showed up and ig he didn’t come I could have his place. He didn’t come so I got to leave NY much earlier than I’d intended. Probably if it hadn’t been for the wild goose chase to La Guardia I’d never have stayed around to see if someone would fail to make the 4:00 flight.

The plane I left on was a new DC-7, which is a fast one, so the time to reach San Francisco was only some 9½ hours including a 20 minute stop in Denver (that being the only stop). With the time change this put me in at S.F. at 10:30. I tried to call Jean from Denver but she was having dinner with the Ackermans (Shell employee acquaintances) so I couldn’t reach her. When I called her from S.F. airport she was expecting a telegram which I had said I might send from N.Y., since I hadn’t known till rather late in the week just what the travel arrangements were, and could only inform her in time that way. So she was quite surprised & delighted to hear where I was. She drove over to S.F. to meet me at the downtown terminal to which I took a bus from the airport.

It was indeed a happy meeting and needless to say not much sleeping got done that night. We didn’t get up till about 10 Sat morning but even so we were ready for bed early last night. During the day we drove down to her folks for a brief visit; I also got a haircut to remedy the last two Dutch ones. Today we were up earlier and went to church at a little church in El Cerrito near here. You may recognize by the description that it was on Stockton, a street we went down many times while you were her, at the intersection with the street going in front of the high school. It’s a small mission congregation; I wasn’t particularly impressed with the preacher but the church itself was quite nice inside.

After lunch (with a real salad instead of Mrs. Swieringa’s good, but uninspired ones) we’re spent the day rather idly — I watered the lawn a bit and saw there is quite a bit to do to get in back in the shape it was before I left. This evening we plan to go out to dinner.

It’s really a relief to be back and I guess neither of us realized how much we were missing the other. I certainly hope nothing like this ever happens to us again. Things are fine here, except for the garden & yard being the worse for neglect. The neighbor boy didn’t do much more than just mow as instructed.

All for now — hope you’ve been feeling well and enjoying the warm weather I heard, in Holland before I left, that the U.S. was enjoying. It wasn’t too warm in N.Y. when I was there & it was raining some in Denver so I guess that most of it had passed by the time I got back.

With love

C.P.

Yes, It’s just wonderful being together again. Now to go get dressed for that dinner date I have tonight with a real boyfriend of mine — my one and only.

Jean