“Klepper” Boats at the World’s Fair in Seattle
The World’s Fair opened in Seattle, and it was to be the day today that my Hal and I will take a walk through it. Seattle gained a wonderful complex, an area with marvelous buildings that were erected and a monorail that would bring visitors and Seattleites from downtown to the fairgrounds. We finally had a most modern and beautiful opera house and an interesting science center building, a large awesome fountain and many more structures that would serve Seattle toward its future. The biggest wonder of all was the space needle. A beautiful rotating restaurant way up high and perched on top, an observation deck. I am sure Seattle will make good use in the future of these marvelous structures. My Hal and I went downtown, parked our car in a secure lot and walked to the monorail station. Quickly we arrived at the fairgrounds. So much to see, where to begin. As my Hal and I tried to decide what we wanted to look at next, we noticed a large sign by a booth with quite a large group in line, listening to two gentlemen. The sign said “Klepper Boats.” It brought back so many memories it was overwhelming. I wanted to know if “Klepper” stood for the manufacturer of the fold boats. One I had, growing up in Germany, but they were destroyed by the Allied forces as they landed on the German side of the Rhine River. I told the two gentlemen my story that a group of us young students were biking from Darmstadt to the Rhine River for the weekends to go paddle in that awesome river into the waves made by larger vessels and ended up at what was called “Kuehkopf” a cove that looked like an outline of a cow’s head. Cut out by the river and made a peninsula which we used to stop and took a rest period, maybe eat our lunch and have a lively conversation.
The two gentlemen were very interested in my little story and had quite a few questions. They also thought that Seattle was a terrific boating city and told my Hal that they most likely will come back next year for a boating vacation. Which they did, but due to Hal’s schedule at work we never connected that summer. The next year we received a call from Peter, one of the two gentlemen, this time they brought another friend and we went out on Lake Washington on a rented sailboat. I had invited them to dinner which they enjoyed very much. They told us about their wonderful experiences last summer they were here, but we could not get together. While the young men were having their conversation with my Hal, I started dinner. We had wonderful tenderloin steaks with a beautiful, dark brown shiny “Jack Daniels” sauce. Nice, part crispy asparagus and potatoes Anna on the side. Hal opened a full-bodied La Taché Burgundy which everyone enjoyed. We remembered they loved American ice cream. I made Vanilla bean ice cream as dessert with a brandy, sour cherry sauce on it.
In future years they came a few more times and we always had some visits and also joint them boating, but love came into their lives. We had heard that two of the three fell in love and got married. No more bachelor vacations, maybe no more boating, different lifestyle. We also lost touch, when Hal got transferred south to Longview and then Vancouver, where we made an immense step up in our life: A sailboat named “Ilonka.”
The Write Stuff MLS 