Martha's big adventure Part 3

It got to the point that we would do anything for a little entertainment. But each trip seemed to be disastrous. One day we got the idea to go for a drive and picnic. Katy, Terry, Hubie and I loaded up in their Geon Jeep and headed for nowhere. There are no fences and everything is just open country. People don't really live outside towns or cities, unless they were traveling nomads. We took off the highway, drove awhile and parked in the middle of nowhere! We had just finished our picnic, looked up and here came this huge sand storm. Terry took off toward town or the highway. We ran right into it. Terry couldn't see a damn thing so he opened the door, I guess he thought he would see better with sand hitting him in the face. By the time we got back to town we were all covered in dirt and sand. It was everywhere. Hubie had a big beard back then and it was white as could be. That sand got into every crevice that you can imagine. We finally laughed about it and went in and took a shower. Nothing we did for entertainment ever went right. We spent all the extra money we made just to be a little entertained. We joined a ski club one winter in hopes of having fun. We would take a bus at night around 10:00 to Teheran which was a 6 hour trip. I think they stopped once and if you had to go to the bathroom you just went behind a building out in the open along with everyone else. Katy and I decided to hold it. When we got into the Teheran Bus Station, I couldn't hold it any longer so I went to the bathroom there at the station. Iranian stools aren't western, they lay flat on the floor, you have to straddle and squat. The floor was covered with piles of shit! It just totally grossed me out. Anyway here it was 5:00 a.m. and nothing else was open. We had to wait 3 hours for the car rental place to open. We finally got a car and headed for the mountains. But first we had to buy some equipment to ski in. We had to have everything, like skis, poles, boots and clothes. As you can probably imagine like everything else over there it was twice as high as it was at home. The ski club had rented a house up at the ski place. The water pipes had frozen so we couldn't take a shower, but we weren't going to let that bother us. We improvised and melted buckets of snow for a Navy shower. The first day out on the slopes was trying. We had never skied before but Terry had been a ski instructor and tried to teach us. Hubie fell many times and he busted his ski bibs out. Then he bent his poles. Of course, I fell many times too. In fact, you had to take the ski lift up to go home. You had to take the T-Bar lift to get to the car. I fell on the path and had to walk the rest of the way up. If you got off the beaten path you would sink up to your butt in snow. I was so tired and mad I didn't ever want to ski again and either did Hubie. However, the next day we got out there and did much better. The second time we went skiing it had snowed 12 inches the night before. We didn't think anything about it and headed up to the lifts in our car. This normally took 15 minutes to get to the top. When we got to the top we found out that they had closed the lift because of snow. Go figure!! Anyway we were all disappointed and headed down the mountain. There were about a dozen cars all of us Americans or Europeans. No Iranians. That should have been a clue. Katy, Terry and Hubie decided they wanted to ski down the mountain road. I drove the car. All was well until we got about 1/4 of the way down. All of a sudden a little avalanche fell in front of me. For a few minutes I couldn't see anything. Hubie and Katie had stopped for a few minutes and the snow fell literally right behind their heels. When the snow settled, I panicked, I was on one side of the mound of snow and Hubie, Katie and Terry was on the other side. Hubie stuck his skis and poles in the snow on the side of the road and worked his way back to the car. Katie and Terry decided to ski on down the mountain. They had just rounded the corner and was out of sight when another avalanche fell right where they all had been standing. In fact, it took Hubie's skis and poles down the side of the mountain. There went $400.00 never to be seen again. This mountain road didn't have any guard rails on the roads either. Meanwhile, as we were wondering what we were going to do, someone behind us went back to the ski lodge to get help. They had a road grater and started to work his way down the road to blaze us a trail. As you probably know a road grater makes quite a bit of noise and caused a few more avalanches. In fact, as we were sitting in the car waiting for the grater to move the snow, I looked out across the mountain view and said "isn't this a pretty view?" Hubie opened the door to see how far back the grater was and an avalanche fell on our car within a split second I was up to my armpits in snow. The car was full of snow and Hubie was trapped between the door and the car. He had to climb through to the passenger side to get out. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. The whole time I'm thinking, what we do for a little entertainment!!

We finally dug ourselves out and waited for the grater to pass. We all got in line behind him and started down the him. There were some drifts we passed through that were 20 feet deep. There was no sign of Katy and Terry though. We were really worried about them. We started down the mountain at 10:00 a.m. and got to the ski house at 4:00 p.m. Hubie and I finished off any liquor that was in the car. What a wasted day, but there was Katie and Terry waiting for us. We were all relieved that all of us made it down safely. Believe it or not we kept going back to ski because that was our only form of entertainment in the winter.

Other forms of entertainment was men's flag football and softball for men and women. Hubie played I think one or two football games which was just as rough as tackle football. The ground was harder than a rock and when you fell you felt it all over. I really enjoyed playing softball. We had 2 men coaches. One was married and the other was single. They were very nice people. One night the single guy (I can't remember any one's name to save me) was taking a back road or trail home on his motorcycle. He crashed his bike and they found him the next day dead. It really upset everyone. He was such a nice guy.

The natives didn't know what to think of our games. We would have to call time out every once in a while and shew them off the field, but we really had fun.

We bought a stereo system so we could listen to music. We could go to the music store and buy cassette tapes that had been recorded by the locals. Sometimes you would get all the album and sometimes you wouldn't get all of a song but it was better than nothing. We still have those tapes.

Everyday life was a hassle. Ironing on tables, doing laundry in the bathtub, no TV except for a few hours at night, mostly nature shows. I got so sick of Jacques Cousteau.

Katie got a job with the American School Administration office. An opening came up and she helped me get on as the personnel director. I had never done this type of work before and was really out of my league, but I learned a lot. I can remember we had a little local guy that cut the grass with a sickle. He would put the cut grass in a big piece of cloth, fold it up and load it on a little moped. He would take it home to feed his goats. I heard later he had several wives. We also had a red goat at the Admin office that would graze during the day. Every once in a while he would get loose and end up on top of some one's desk eating whatever you had on your desk or jump on top of your car. The jobs there were very laid back. I wasn't used to that and it was really hard to adjust. At certain times of the day the locals would stop working, lay out their prayer rugs and pray to Allah.