Back to the Story 

Some days I feel like writing and other days I just can't do it.  I am writing these things about Eva and her father Bob Miers because no one can tell this tale besides me and when Eva died she was the last member of her father's family...him, his mother, his father all being gone.  Bob has a brother.  Homer Sidney Miers Junior who would be in his late 70's now and might still be alive.  Everyone called him Bunn.  He married more than once, but his first marriage to Monty he had a son that everyone called Butchie.  I don't know if that is his real name or a nickname and that family lived in Valdosta, Georgia so I never saw much of them and don't remember much.  When I met Bunn he was married to Pat and lived in Las Vegas but I never met her.  One time when Bunn had gone out to the West Coast and lived in Washington State he married a girl named Myra so her name was Myra Miers, same as mine, but we were very different.  Bunn would have been a great uncle to my grandchildren and Butchie would be a first cousin once removed.  Their grandfather Bob...when I left off,  (in about October of 1976) was riding a brand new and huge Global Marine Rig headed to the west coast of Africa and a home base in Nigeria.  Eva and I lived in a little quadruplex house off the Abbeville Highway in Lafayette just behind Brown's Thrift City Furniture.
     Getting to know Eva was the way I spent most of my time, following the pediatrician's orders to feed her only milk until she was about four months old...then begging the doctor to let me give her more.  He put her on a diet of a few spoons of baby food...simple vegetables first, then meats.   Never any cereal or sweets.  Eva sucked her thumb.  Not that it is a good thing, but when your baby can be quieted by finding its own thumb it is sometimes a blessing.  Irene had made Eva a lot of plisse blankets in different colors and Eva loved the feel of them and rubbing the top and bottom layers of the fabric together.
     Bob's drilling superintendent Gary Blackorby had gone along to ride the rig overseas same as Bob.  His wife Callie and their two children Ronnie (about 11) and Sissy (probably 10) moved to Lafayette to spend the time waiting to go overseas.  Eva was a hoot, at first just laying on a blanket on Callie's floor when I went to visit, then learning to scoot and to crawl and looking around she developed a fascination with Callie's painted toenails and would do her best to move over to them.  She finally made it all the way over to examine Callie's sandalled feet one day.  You know she put her mouth on those toes!  Ronnie and Sissy loved the baby and Eva spent a lot of time being tickled and played with and laughing.  When Callie left to go overseas she packed up the whole house into her shipment, flew to California to visit her family one last time and left from there  Global Marine told me that I could not join Bob until he was overseas six months, but in November when Callie left they let me know that the rig would be moving from war-torn Nigeria to safer waters offshore of Dakar, Senegal in West Africa and that I could join him as soon as I was ready or in six weeks whichever came first.
     I had to get a passport and shots and the same for Eva and make my reservations for a time when Bob would be onshore.   Talking on the phone to my sister Marjean, the two of us decided that I could fly to visit her and it would be easy for me to do the things I needed to do in Cleveland instead of Lafayette.  So I called Global Marine in Houston to arrange for them to pick up my shipment of household goods, moved out of my little house and in with Homer and Irene Miers at 128 Rena Drive, locked up my car and gave them the keys and stored my photos and sewing machine in a closet in Bob's old room there.
I was off on the first leg of my journey, headed to Cleveland.My brother Gary met me and Eva at the airport.  It gave me a great opportunity to visit with my sister Marjean and my brother Gary and Marjean's two little ones, Gary Bonar, age 4 and his little sister Jana Bonar, age 2.  Marjean's husband Frank was working out of town selling for Cleveland Trencher but Eva and I enjoyed visiting with everyone.   Marjean was working at a bank in Cleveland but she and I had a few late night shopping trips to the mall with it's Christmas decorations and Santa Claus with his elves while Gary took care of the kids.  Gary slept late in the mornings so I got to have full time fun visits with Jana and Gary until the afternoons when my brother took the kids to daycare, and in the evenings when Marjean took care of the kids Gary and I had a good time seeing the sights of  and checking out the bars in Cleveland even though it was cold and windy and the lake was frozen over and the streets were icy.  One of the things I remember most was that Marjean, when she moved into the house in Cleveland had put a huge chest of drawers down in the basement...and she told me to go thru it and find little clothes for Eva because it was full of things that Gary and Jana had outgrown.  It was a gold mine for me and so was the upstairs attic that was full of empty suitcases that no one cared if I adopted.  I was there for three weeks...a lot of it spent inside looking out at the snow falling or putting on boots and going out to play in the snow because I had not seen such a thing living in Louisiana for the past years.  On December 15, 1967 (Eva was six months old) I left Cleveland.  Frank had come back the night before and he took me to the airport.  When I got there, even though I had an extra weight allowance, my luggage held too much to pass inspection so I took one of my suitcases and filled it with heavy cans of baby formula and lots of baby clothes... because I didn't bring much of anything for myself...it was mostly all for the baby... to lighten the load.  When the inspector saw that I'd filled the suitcase I was going to leave behind with Frank, full of baby things he just passed it on and I didn't have to leave anything behind!  Eva and I  boarded the United Airlines flight to New York where I was to get onto an 8 hour Swiss Air flight to Geneva.

Transcontinental Travelers

The flight to and the airplane change in New York were uneventful.  The airline attendants took care of everything...reserved me the bulkhead seat so I had a little baby bed for Eva, put me onto the plane early before the other passengers, walked with me through customs to be sure I was not late for my flight.  On the plane, they served me supper first because the baby was napping.  Eva was totally content for the whole 8 hours.  I'd gotten her a thick blue fleece zip-up bunting out of the chest of drawers for when it was cold and she had pajamas with feet in them and she had her thumb and her baby bottle and blanket and her mommy and lots of things to look at.  I remember reading a book and thinking that flying wasn't bad at all.  

Early the next morning we arrived in Geneva.  Global Marine had given me a "cash voucher" that guaranteed payment so I could pay for whatever I needed and they'd bill me later if it was not a company expense.  I had an 4 hour layover in Geneva...and it was daytime.  I left everything but my diaper bag with my purse in it to be taken care of by my airline attendants.  Global Marine had made reservations for me to stay at a downtown hotel and when I arrived, the hotel's doorman took my voucher and used it to pay the cab driver, and again when I was in my room, used it to pay the cost of sending an attendant to come up and stay with my baby, and to hail a cab for me to go sightseeing in Switzerland!  I had a great time.  The cab driver spoke a little English and was able to point out some of the sights to me and he waited while I got out to read signs or go shopping for souvenirs, and eat a sausage lunch he'd recommended.  Then it was back to the hotel where I went to my room to relieve the babysitter and get ready to go the next leg of my trip.  I took a nap, and the hotel phone rang to wake me up for the trip back to the airport.  The doorman hailed a cab and paid for it with my voucher that he gave back to me to turn it in to the company.  At the airport, even though the cab driver had told me he spoke English, he began to yell at me in a language that I didn't understand.  I tried to find someone to translate for me and kept telling the driver I didn't understand until finally someone came up and told me that he was demanding money and saying that I had not paid him for the ride.  Me, carrying a baby and pushing my bag along with my foot sorting out my short time visa and my boarding pass understood the problem and told the cab driver in English...I only have American money.  All of a sudden he understood English again and asked me how much...so I gave him my last $7 which I guess was enough because he took the money and walked off.  I made it the rest of the way to the Air Senegalese desk and checked for my next four hour flight that would arrive in Dakar where Bob was supposed to meet me at 6 pm.  

The plane had one stop..in Lagos in Nigeria.  That country was in the midst of a war, but was supposed to be safe for travellers and it was a quick stop, not one where I needed to get off the plane.  When we landed in Lagos, though, the doors opened and about ten soldiers carrying rifles got onto the plane and walked down the center aisle and stopped.  The little boy sitting behind me asked his mom, "...are they going to shoot us?"  To which she replied, "I don't know."  I didn't know either, but they didn't.  They simply stood in the aisle looking at everything, everyone, then marched back off the plane, the doors closed and we were soon in flight again.  

On the flight, the attendant, a woman who spoke perfect English asked me, "Can I bring you something to drink?"  And I asked if she could bring me some milk.  She left and served everyone on the plane, but not me sitting at the bulkhead.  then she came back again and and asked me if I wanted something to drink.  I answered again, "milk" and she walked away again and came back empty handed half an hour later to ask me again if I wanted a drink.  I again asked for milk and behind me a young girl with an oriental accent said loudly in what I found out later was French to the Stewardess that I was asking for milk and that she had better bring it, too because the baby needed milk.  Eva drank formula.  The milk was for me, but the Stewardess brought me a small carton, so it didn't seem to matter that I drank it and asked for another.  In French the word for milk is 'lait' nothing like the English word.  Apparently the Stewardess for Senegalese Air could speak English, but could not understand it when it was spoken to her.  The oriental girl talked to me on the flight after that, telling me that she was a student and had been flying from her home in Indonesia to go to school but I never understood where.  I thought she was saying the name of a town in New Zealand but why would she be going on the same plane as me.  Maybe the School was in the Canary Islands or Gibraltar...don't they speak English there?  The girl's geography was much better than mine...I barely knew where Indonesia was...and I vowed then to look at maps and pictures until I had a better understanding of where places outside the United States were located and what they were known for.  I'm still to this day working on that one.  I have a cousin who lives in Belgium and I had to get a map to look and see if she was close to Italy and Sweden.  Since I am off track telling the stories about Eva as a baby I will stop my writing here and tell you about my arrival in Dakar at a later date.