The American College of Switzerland Zoo. James E. Henderson

The American College of Switzerland Zoo - James E. Henderson


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      Prologue

      I started this book one evening while I was taking a course about explosives for my current job. I was sitting in a Spartan dorm room with a glass of wine that I had just carried back from a nearby bar thinking about my son. It was the summer before his senior year in high school, and he had just started college-hunting trips. I began reminiscing about my years in college, especially one year I spent in a small school perched on the side of a mountain in Switzerland. For me, that year was very strange, almost surreal, compared to the life I had led before.

      My father was an army colonel, which had made him the black sheep of an Ohio Quaker family. I grew up as an army brat and, before I entered high school, had lived in a dozen different homes, including a few on military bases, in several different states. In a way, the army was my life, too. The only friends I kept longer than a couple of years were army brats whose dads happened to get stationed on the same base.

      That’s not quite true. My relatives also played an important role in my life. We visited my Quaker grandparents at Christmas and on vacations. My cousins often came in for the holidays, and they were friends that I would keep for life. I can remember eavesdropping on several conversations between my father and his family about how he could justify working in the army despite having been raised to reject war. Voices were never raised, and the dialog included lots of quiet time for listening and attempting to understand each other. However, my impression was that while they listened and accepted, there was little agreement. In fact, my grandmother even stood in protest outside the biological warfare center in Fort Detrick when we were stationed there. Then again, her protesting did not affect the fact that she was nearby, and we picked her up at the line each evening and took her to dinner in Frederick, Maryland.

      When I was old enough to start high school, dad found out that we would have to move twice over the next four years so he offered me a chance to attend Olney, a small Quaker boarding school in Ohio. It was the school that he, my grandparents, and many other relatives had attended. So, at fourteen, I went to Olney, and spent the next four years with several of my cousins learning about my Quaker roots.

      I learned how my father and his parents had kept their cool during their talks as I grew up in this school run by a caring and nurturing staff and surrounded by peaceful rolling hills. Like many students, it took me a while to get used to sitting for an hour in silent meetings for worship, but over the years I found it provided time for inner reflection.

      I liked this simple, peaceful life so well that I went to Earlham, a Quaker college in Indiana. The heavy trees and open green areas of the campus also appealed to my love of nature. However, this college took academics to a new level, and I found it difficult to maintain my grades while being involved with the rest of campus life. By spring term, I was on academic probation and spent all my waking hours on my studies.

      Then, in 1966, as my sophomore year approached, my father was offered an assignment in Germany as a reward for his service and to keep him in the army after he was eligible for retirement. To me, it seemed like a great chance to escape my current predicament and to spend a year in Europe. This story begins then as I found myself transported to another continent and in a third reality.

      Chapter One

      Enter the Prince

      At lunch on the second day of classes my new friend Jim Wilds and I were waiting for the food to be served as our buddy Gil walked in with the brown-eyed blonde of the Fab Four – four beautiful blondes that Wilds and I had spotted on our first day on this Alp. The three of us had yet to inspire the slightest interest from them or from the wealthy and arrogant but even lovelier goddesses who seemed to run the girls' dorm. It would be some time before we'd realize that we were in the wrong class and that “class” had nothing to do with history or French.

      As we watched Gil, we wondered if his blonde hair and sharp profile had just broken the barrier. He said something to the brown-eyed blonde, and she smiled as she headed to join the other three. Wilds and I sat in silent amazement as Gil walked to our table.

      “Have either of you heard about a prince coming today?” Gil asked.

      “Do you know that girl?” I asked.

      “Who, Dee-Dee? Yeah, she’s in my French class,” he responded.

      I looked at Wilds and asked, “What are we doing wrong?”

      Wilds smirked and said, “Maybe we should bleach our hair blonde. What’s this about a prince?”

      “I don’t know. Dee-Dee was talking about how all the girls are getting dolled up for the arrival of the prince, today. I thought maybe one of you had heard something.”

      From behind me a strong feminine voice with an upstate New York or Vermont accent said, “Some prince is supposed to be comin’ in at lunch today. The dorm is in a tizzy!”

      I turned to see a slim girl with a very long light-brown ponytail looking at me. She had a square jaw and small, hazel eyes. On second thought, her eyes weren’t small; she wasn’t wearing the eye makeup that I was getting used to seeing. In fact, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, just a healthy tan and some recent sun on her cheeks. That face took me back to my Quaker boarding school.

      “I’m Jim Henderson,” I said and held out my hand.

      “Kaeti Ecker, pleased to meet ya.” She took my hand with amazing strength.

      “What’s this about a prince?” I asked.

      “Don’t know any more than that, but it looks like we’re going to find out,” she said as she looked over my shoulder.

      As I turned toward the door, I noticed the out-rush of most of the girls in the room. We followed their lead as I introduced Kaeti to my friends. Kaeti was my height in her flats, and slim to the point of having almost no breasts, just a couple of little bumps under her blouse. She wore slacks that hugged her boy-like hips, and she walked with a lithe stride, pushing, cat-like, off her toes. Her walk reminded me of the gymnasts I had worked with.

      “Are you into sports?” I asked as we walked.

      “Just wait until there’s snow up top and you’ll get your answer.”

      “I guess you’re a skier?”

      “Love it! You?”

      “I played JV soccer for my college last year and gymnastics!” I bragged.

      “No, do you ski?”

      “Ah, no, – but I can stand on a sled without killing myself.”

      “So not the same. You just wait!”

      We stood at the balcony overlooking the entry foyer awaiting the prince. The Fab Four were properly arranged in the front, and the rich goddesses were toward the back near the steps up to the girls’ dorm, where they could be seen but not appear overly impressed.

      Wilds asked how to greet the prince. “Should we bow and curtsy?”

      “I’m not curtsying!” Kaeti said.

      “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m a Quaker. We got sent to prison in England for refusing to use the Royal ‘You’ with the King.”

      “Royal who?” Wilds asked.

      I explained that in the 1600’s commoners used “thee” and “thou” with each other and addressed only the King and royalty as “you.” If you said “thee” to the King, you went to jail. Well, the Quakers felt everybody was equal and refused; therefore, they went to jail. Kaeti had a quizzical look on her face when I finished my explanation, but Wilds gave me a goggle-eyed expression that said he had just learned more than he needed to know.

      A black limo pulled in front of the school. I wondered briefly how the driver had navigated the curvy narrow road from the valley up to our little village in that large car. Two men in black suits got out. Both looked powerfully built. One came in the front revolving door as the other waited by the car. They were either bodyguards, or the prince was way older than any of the other students. The one inside surveyed the gathered audience and signaled the other, who opened the door


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