10 minute read
Jean Keatts can’t wait to step out her door
Retired Clarkston businesswoman Jean Keatts shares her travel tales, tips Life’s a journey; enjoy the trip
By KATHY HEDBERG
FOR GOLDEN TIMES
After a lifetime of travel and visiting scores of countries throughout the world, Jean Keatts of Clarkston is ready to share some of her experiences with others.
The 82-year-old woman will begin her travelogues on an occasional basis in the Lewiston Tribune’s monthly Golden Times magazine (see the first one on Page 9). “I like to travel and I did most of my traveling with my younger son (Ken), who lives on the Washington coast,” Keatts said during a recent interview. “He’s been to twice as many countries as I have and I’ve been to a lot of them.”
Keatts said she has traveled mainly as a tourist and has picked up some handy tips for people thinking about going out of the country.
Recently she talked to a friend who wanted to take a trip but didn’t know where to go. “I said, ‘Go to Singapore. It’s the nicest place to visit. They speak English there, they’re friendly, helpful.’ ”
This is the sort of information, along with suggestions of places to see and things to do while in other countries, that she hopes to share with readers.
Keatts grew up on the Jean Keatts sits in her home last month with a list of all the countries she has visited.
August Frank/Golden Times
family farm in Garfield County and graduated as valedictorian of her Pomeroy High School class in 1959. Immediately after high school, Keatts married her first husband, Dave Keatts, and had three children.
While raising her youngsters, Keatts also enrolled as a student at Washington State University and completed a degree in business administration. In 1968, she opened her tax returns and accounting business and ran that for 50 years before retiring in 2008. Keatts’ first marriage ended in divorce, as well as a second marriage, which, she says, was a worse disaster than the first. Currently she’s been keeping company with Bob Williams, a long time educator and superintendent in Northwest schools. Keatts said she and Williams live separately, but enjoy going places together, watching concerts and plays.
At the time of this interview, Keatts was busy working on her first installment for Golden Times and expresssed excitement to see it in print. But the writing, she admits, is “going slowly. I’m still working at it.”
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.
A visit to Ukraine, ‘the Soviet equivalent of the French Riviera’
Aug. 30, 1992
Yalta, Independent Republic of Crimea, which is part of the Independent Republic of Ukraine, Village of Ay Danil
This is by far the best hotel I have seen in the Soviet Union. The room is small, with two narrow cots, but it has a balcony overlooking the hotel gardens, the beach and the Black Sea. This is the Soviet equivalent of the French Riviera. There was a bowl of pears and a gallon of pomegranate juice to welcome us and a refrigerator stocked with mineral water and kefir, a kind of yogurt drink. The bathroom is reasonably clean, and the plumbing actually works — mostly. I couldn’t get enough water pressure to take a decent shower today.
The past week, my son Ken and I have done a lot of entertaining. Irena, a Soviet whom Ken met in Pullman, rode home in the van with us Tuesday night and ate dinner with us. Thursday night, Mark, Ken’s co-worker, and Michelle and Jack, support staff people who work in Ken’s department, came for dinner. Ken is able to buy really good canned crab — whole small leg sections — inexpensively at the market. I prepared Crab Louis, chicken and noodles with dumplings and chocolate cream pie. All the dinner guests were young single people, who mainly eat out of the microwave. They really appreciated a “mom-cooked” meal.
Friday night, Valya and her family — Dima and his wife Irena, and Kolya — joined us for dinner. This is the first Soviet family Ken
met in Moscow, and this was their first experience with American food. I fixed a pot roast and a pineapple upside-down cake T R AV E L O G U E with fresh whipped cream for dessert. The cake was
Jean a big hit. Even 9-year-old Kolya remarked, “Quite Keatts tasty!” As we ate each thing, Valya asked how I had prepared it. In between all these events, I baked four different kinds of cookies for Ken. See KEATTS, Page 10
August Frank/Golden Times
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August Frank/Golden Times Jean Keatts fl ips through a few family pictures last month at her home in Clarkston.
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KEATTS
> Continued from PAGE 9 On reflection, it would be cheaper to bake them at home and ship them over rather than travel over here to bake.
Last Wednesday, I spent a full day sightseeing around the Kremlin with a woman I met at Kennedy Airport in New York City. I overheard her saying, “My mother thinks I’m never going to return.” I fear my own mother had those same thoughts the first (and probably the second) time I came here. Her name is Eleanor White from Philadelphia, and her son, also named Ken, is living in Moscow trying to find work as an attorney with an American corporation. He and his Soviet girlfriend, Tanya, who spoke English very well, joined us as we went through the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Gum Department Store and the Armory museum. We walked so far it took me two days to recover.
The Armory is an incredible collection of metalwork. There are gold and silver plates, chalices and urns; jeweled Bible covers, icon frames, crowns and Fabergé eggs; armor; royal carriages (some jewel-encrusted); and coronation and wedding dresses and robes. The collection covers the 12th century to present. The size and quantity of the jewels are truly awe-inspiring.
At the Armory, I met a family from Seattle. They heard us speaking English and asked for directions. When I told them I was from Clarkston, they asked if I knew Everett Morrow, a relative who farmed at Cloverland but lived in Clarkston. I told them “No,” but I was surprised. In a town of 15,000, I thought I knew everyone. They asked about a couple more Morrow relatives, then mentioned Dick and Shelly (Morrow) Flerchinger. I said, “Yes, I do know them.”
Then I asked if they knew the Morrows in Pomeroy (my hometown, population 1,800). They didn’t, but they had some relatives that used to live there by the name of Richmond. We determined that I went to school with Sheila Richmond. We exchanged business cards. This was the Ken Schubert family: mother, father and three young adult children spending a month’s vacation in the Soviet Union.
Through this conversation, the woman from Philadelphia and the woman from Moscow, Russia, were just agog. Things like this don’t happen when you live in a big city.
The Whites left that evening for St. Petersburg, and Eleanor will return to the U.S. before I get back to Moscow, so I won’t see her again on this trip, but I did enjoy her company. Tanya was an excellent tour guide.
Friday night, Sel and Svetlana, the couple I met on my first trip, called Ken’s apartment. They are currently living
in Southern California. Hoping we might be able to get together here again, I had let them know when I was returning. Lana said she had hoped to return for business purposes on the 28th (the day we spoke), but that didn’t work out. They wished us a pleasant holiday.
I have been having a hard time adjusting to the time difference (11 hours). All afternoon, I am fatigued and yawning. At night, I wake up about 3 a.m.
Friday and Saturday mornings, I called the office (in Clarkston) to make sure things were OK before I left Moscow and telephone contact with the outside world.
We had to rush around Saturday morning to leave by 7:30. From the time our company left Friday night until we left Saturday morning, Ken tore his apartment apart looking for his passport. On our way to the airport, we stopped by the Embassy, and he couldn’t find it there. He has a diplomatic
In this family photo on display at Jean Keatts’ home, she sits next to her daughter Kristina Umbright, left, and sons Ken Keatts, middle, and Kevin Keatts. At the time of this travelogue, she was visiting Ken, who was then working in Russia.
card that is usually all he needs to travel. So far, he hadn’t had any problems.
We got to the airport at 9 a.m. to be told our flight was canceled and we couldn’t leave until 4 p.m. The airport is an hour’s drive out of town. There was no place to leave our luggage, so we were stuck at the airport.
Delayed flights are quite common here, as gas is in short supply. The airports are divided into two sections: one for Russians and one for foreigners. Since the political dissolution, even the Ukrainians are now considered foreigners in Russia. We went into the foreigners’ coffee shop, took a table, occasionally bought something to eat or drink, and spent the day there playing cards, working puzzles and just visiting. We did eat lunch, which worked out well; dinner was very late.
We were told that Aeroflot had only five Airbuses — the biggest airplanes. Our flight from Moscow to Yalta was on one of them. It was so full we couldn’t find two seats together. When we got off, I told Ken that they never offered me anything to eat or drink. “They came around with ice cream and you were asleep,” he said. “They came around with peanuts and chocolate and then again with mineral water and you were asleep. They don’t wake you up. “When you were awake and the cart went by, those items you had to purchase. They announced this, but you didn’t understand what they were saying.”
Keatts is a retired businesswoman who ran an accounting offi ce in Clarkston for many years. She loves to travel and has agreed to share excerpts from notes sent to loved ones detailing her adventures with Golden Times readers. Her next installment will pick up a few days after this entry, covering her trip to Baku, Azerbaijan.
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