Category: chapters

   Excerpt from Chapter 10 (Entire chapter is 30 pages)   

 

     One of the bears ambled to the side of the Tundra Buggy, I decided to go out to the rear of the buggy and meet him on the back open-air platform “OK bear,” I told him. “Are you ready for your close-up?” I established eye contact with him. Slowly, he sauntered over and then began to rise up on his hind legs. He was easily 12 feet tall. Leaning over the edge of the platform, looking directly at his face, I shot frame after frame of photos. He rose up closer. He was so close I could no longer focus. And then it happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

Excerpt from Chapter 11 (Entire chapter is 32 pages)

Dinner tonight would not be at another state-owned restaurant, but at a paladar, a privately-owned restaurant. But this outing gave rise to an astonishing discovery. Our driver could not drive there or eat there as he was a state employee. This meant our guide had to procure a fleet of private vehicles for our group’s transportation. At 7 p.m. a spectacular parade of vintage American cars pulled up in the middle of a thunderstorm. Everyone dashed for a car, any car. Alfred and I jumped into a blue 1949 Plymouth for which the windshield wipers were nonexistent. No problem, the driver had a rag with which he wiped off the rain-covered- window as we drove to our destination! We came back to the hotel in a 1955 Chevy. Alfred loved the front seat leg room!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Chapter 12 (Entire chapter is 29 pages)

 

We didn’t always travel during our fifty-six years of marriage and we didn’t eat all our meals in restaurants. We both had professional careers and we usually ate at home, as I’m a very good cook. I’m especially good at Viennese pastries!

I’m also a good “Dog Mother” to the many Golden Retrievers we have had over the years. I’m also a gardener, bird-feeder-filler and free-lance writer. Although I’d had Goldens since childhood, our careers precluded our having a dog, until the day neighbors invited us over to see their new 8-week-old puppy. “I want a puppy” I said to Alfred and I said it over and over for three days until he relented. And with the addition of Diora, I began forty years of dedication to causes devoted to the health and well-being of Golden Retrievers.