Patty Stratton, Deni, Howard Benedict

Near Christmas-time in 2003, while Monta and Don Rahtjen were living with us in Hendersonville NC, we were visited for a few days by Patty Stratton and Benedict Howard from Spain (Patty had lived with us in Darnestown MD years ago). Time for a party, eh?

Unexpectedly, they collaborated on a Christmas gift to us. Our style was to require recipients to guess the contents before opening a gift, with written or verbal clues, and no penalty for bad guesses. In this case the gift was huge—about easy-chair size. No, not an easy-chair. Eventually, we guessed correctly—a dishwasher, including installation! Monta and Don had correctly observed our dishwasher didn't do much, and made an awful racket doing it, and that we weren't going to do anything about it.