Two and a Half Nickels captures the excitement of a family adventure in Europe during the mid 1960's. It's a fun escapade and gastronomic delight for a young family sailing the Adriatic, Aegean and Mediterranean waters in a charted vessel. Each day is filled with culinary fantasies and visits to exotic islands and countries.

TWO AND A HALF NICKLES

By DONALD S. BURNS

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Donald S. Burns
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4724-5

Contents

CHAPTER ONE.......................1CHAPTER TWO.......................4CHAPTER THREE.....................9CHAPTER FOUR......................15CHAPTER FIVE......................21CHAPTER SIX.......................31

Chapter One

When does an adventure start?

Is it in the wee hours of the morning when sleep becomes an elusive demon darting from your grasp? Or is it at a cocktail party when you're nakedly revealing your dreams of visiting with a sensuous half-dressed Polynesian girl on the island of Bora-Bora?

I can't really pin down just when our adventure started, but I know it was long before I signed the charter agreement for the M.Y. Cuhona and made airplane and hotel reservations for the ten of us.

In my case, I believe my adventure started the night that ...

"Luke, I'm fed up with the whole ball of wax. I've lost rapport with people in the company, I've collected my profit sharing, and I'm as nervous as a cat on the proverbial roof, so I've decided to chuck the whole damn mess. Today I'm a man. I resigned. Yep, I told them to shove it in their ear."

"Honey, I'm with you the whole route. Now what are you going to do?" was her agreeable reply.

"Well, I'm not just exactly sure, but now that we've got two and a half nickels to rub together, let's take the kids to Europe and spend a year spending. Since I'll be broke when I get back, I'm really going to enjoy myself before I have to buckle down again. I know I can get a good job to rebuild our finances, so what the hell, are you with me?"

"I'm ahead of you, dear. Let's call the kids at school in Arizona and give them the news."

"Okay. You tell those three, and I'll break the news to the group here."

I think that was the genesis of our adventure.

My eager and fun-loving wife, Lucy—Luke to me and her intimates—really pushed the go button by her immediate acceptance of my dream. The telephone call to our three oldest gals in school added even more fuel to the blast. The three gals at home were perhaps somewhat less enthusiastic, especially Robin, age three, who flatly refused to go unless she could take her "blankie."

Yes, I had committed myself right up to my eyeballs, and I hoped no one would go by in a motorboat to upset our dreams.

The prospects were even brighter after Luke and I made a preliminary trip to Switzerland in February 1966 to look for schools for all six children. The fact that we spent more than half our time looking for new and unspoiled ski areas did not deter us from our school search. As a matter of fact, we were highly successful in locating schools in Switzerland and disposing of each of our big and little demons in various well-watched, well-chaperoned institutions for les jeunes filles. That's not what the evil-minded reader might think—that's a girls' school.

Julie, eighteen and our oldest, a high school graduate who had been accepted at Stanford University in Palo Alto, received a year's deferment and was entered at the Institut Richelieu in Lausanne. There she was to specialize in French and take various other courses in boy watching, business, and the avoidance of the continental pinch, a favorite sport for us old-time continentals.

Patti, sixteen, and Laurie, fifteen, were accepted at a wonderful school in Gstaad, the Institut Montesano. Here the girls specialize in skiing, French, skiing, and as a minor subject, boys.

Wendi, our thirteen-year-old, was to attend Brillantmont, an outstanding girls' school in Lausanne. Here there is no fun in the sun other than highly supervised activities along with a very challenging academic program. To my knowledge, Brillantmont is the only fully accredited school to Stanford in Switzerland.

We had planned to send Lonnie, our eleven-year-old, to Montjoie in Villars S. Ollon, but a change in plans that I will divulge later in this narrative prevented her attendance.

Our crew was rounded out by three-year-old Robin, blanket on one shoulder and thumb in mouth, along with her close friend Chris Karl, twenty-one-year-old glorified babysitter, nurse, student of skiing, sailing, and more particularly, student of life.

"You're out of your cotton-pickin' head" was the spoken consensus of our Newport Beach friends.

"You'll go out of that pinhead of yours traveling with all that girl-type company," commented many of my business associates.

"You won't last ten weeks" was the caustic comment of my faithful and forever enduring secretary.

For that matter, everyone with an encouraging comment such as the foregoing was right!

But that's getting ahead of myself and ruining the supposed suspense that I am trying to build in order to make this story a saleable commodity. After all, if I can peddle this to some unsuspecting editor, I can write off the expense of the adventure.

Chapter Two

My experience in the planning of this grand adventure has proved, beyond that dimly lit shadow called doubt, that the best-laid plans of mice and men too often get all fouled up.

Once the aura of wonderment of realizing that we were really going ahead with this trip had subsided, some of the stark realities of how, when, where, and who bubbled to the surface. These so-called facts had a slight effect in tempering the enjoyment of anticipation, but when you've got your neck out, it has to be full throttle ahead.

We wavered considerably on what to do during the summer, fall, and spring months. Winter was no problem because we knew that skiing and stretch-pants-watching would keep me busy. We thought that the best thing to do was to put our beautiful fifty-three-foot, Garden-designed ketch, Little Revenge, on the market for sale or for an annual charter. Then we would use some of the fabulous charter income or large profit from the sale to help us finance the charter of such a boat as the hundred-foot, American-owned ketch, the Kikki.

After much discussion with the yacht brokers here in the West and a few in the East, I signed the listings and put my dear love on the auction block. There was no real need for concern, because after the initial pitch by the brokers, nothing happened. I guess the stock market went sour, or the real estate market was bad, but no eager large-boat bidders appeared fully rigged with a bone in their teeth. As a matter of fact, we didn't see even one hull down on the horizon.

Correspondence started to flow back and forth over the Atlantic and into the far reaches and corners of the Mediterranean. It was our intention to charter, or perhaps even buy, a cruising ketch in European waters for our cruise, which would occupy the summer, fall, and spring. These letters instituted the first pall of discouragement.

Boats that were older, smaller, less well equipped, and rather ratty in appearance were available at only twice the price that we were asking for our beautiful, fully equipped, modern, and immaculate Little Revenge.

It was obvious that we were walking into a dark den of slick pirates who were out to scalp the rich, jet-set Americans. Frankly, true blue discouragement set in. We were getting buyer's remorse. We began to figure out the daily budget, and after multiplying our daily figure by 365, we found that this astronomical sum was really going to dissipate the estate that I had spent twenty years trying to build.

The only thing that prevented me from swallowing...