by Karan Koelling

The Friendship Egg

It began with a chicken egg and a six-year-old girl’s curiosity. I was that young Kansas farm girl.

One March day in 1947 after gathering the eggs, my mother and I took them to the cool storm cellar. There we cleaned them and placed them in the large cardboard egg carton. As I held a fresh egg in my hand, I began wondering, “Where will this egg go?” “Who will eat it?”

In an effort to answer those questions, Mother helped me print a message on the egg: “Write to Karan Sue Ferguson, Age 6, Longford, Kansas.” We slipped that egg into the cardboard carton, and later my father loaded the carton of eggs in his pick-up truck and hauled it to the Longford Produce to sell.

Months passed. One hot day in June, I walked to the mailbox to get our mail. Standing on tiptoe to reach inside the mailbox, I pulled out a long envelope with a whole row of air mail stamps parading across the top; it was addressed to me! My bare feet raced over the hot rocky driveway, as I took the letter to Mother. It was post marked, “Valparaiso, Chile”, and it came from a cook on board a ship carrying refugees to new homes following World War II. The cook, William Lukesh, had discovered my egg while he was cooking breakfast for the ship’s passengers. He saved the egg shell and took it to his cabin, where he later wrote the letter to me. William and his wife, Marie, lived in New York City. He had seen other eggs with girls’ names on them, but he had never answered them, because he was a married man. However, this egg was from a six-year-old farm girl in Kansas, and he did not want to disappoint her.

William asked if he could send me picture post cards from some of the places where his ship docked. My parents thought that was a wonderful idea, so we purchased a scrapbook and entitled it, “The Egg and I”.

Soon the colorful post cards began arriving. Before they were placed in the scrapbook, I took them to school where Miss Jackie, my second grade teacher, tacked them on our classroom bulletin board. At school we studied a world map to locate the places from which the post cards originated. Although my new friend was not really my relative, I addressed him as “Uncle Bill” when I answered his post cards.

In November, 1947, Uncle Bill sent me the first of twelve dolls. That first one came from his home in New York City. How exciting it was for me to receive those packages of dolls from faraway places: Italy; Peru; Trinidad; Ceylon; Argentina; Germany; and Panama. All were beautiful in their native dress!
The biggest thrill came in July, 1948, when Uncle Bill and Aunt Marie took a Greyhound bus tour across the United States. They left the bus tour when they arrived at Abilene, Kansas. There they boarded a passenger train and rode twenty five miles to the small town of Longford. I remember receiving the telephone call from Uncle Bill, saying “We are at the train depot in Longford.” It didn’t take us long to drive the three miles to Longford and get them. They spent three days on the farm with us. We offered to take them sightseeing, but they insisted that they wanted to stay on the farm. Uncle Bill enjoyed watching the cows being milked and helping to shock oats.

On Sunday during their visit we ate dinner at Grandma’s house in Longford, and Miss Jackie joined us for dinner, along with my Uncle Don, Aunt Frances, and cousin, Donna.

On the third day we took our special guests to Abilene, where we showed them Dwight D. Eisenhower’s boyhood home. I remember feeling sad, as my friends from New York City boarded the bus. Before departing, Uncle Bill handed me an envelope containing a ten dollar bill. He encouraged me to continue piano lessons and to keep up the good grades in school.

Sadly, over the years, we lost contact with our New York friends. A kind and generous man on a distant ship brought a wonderful adventure to a young farm girl, and she has never forgotten his friendship.