I have to backtrack a little for this post. It appears I missed an important event in the life of my family prior to me leaving for college. This little detail comes into major play in an upcoming article.
Before I started college, my parents decided to host a foreign exchange student. My father was a member of Rotary and the organization has a program to bring foreign students here and send domestic students there. My high school had seen a number of foreign exchange students while I was there. There were two my sophomore and junior years, and four my senior year. I know we didn't send that many of our students overseas and I don't know how they wound up in Artesia.
(One interesting aspect of the ones who came to our school when I was a sophomore was that in the American History class, on one of the tests, the only two students who got 100% were the foreign exchange students.)
We found out ahead of time that his name was Johad and he was from Sweden. We went to El Paso to pick him up at the airport. We were given a photocopy of his picture, but the copy showed him to have dark hair. We weren't able to pick him out of the crowd arriving at the airport. Somehow, Loyd saw this guy with blond hair and determined it was him. His English was actually very good. We started back home. It was a little difficult getting the coversation going at first, but things loosened up a bit and we started getting to know one another. His father owned a Volvo dealership. He was very much into Volvos, but hated Saabs.
Along the way, we had to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. The officer came up to my Dad's window and asked, "Is everyone in here an American citizen?" Dad responded, "Not exactly," and explained that Johad was a foreign exchange student from Sweden. The officer requested to see his paperwork. Dad had to get out of the car and open the trunk to get out Johad's suitcase. The officer looked at the papers and let us go. Mom told Dad, "You could have just lied and told him we were all American citizens. He wouldn't have known anything unless Johad started talking."
This was a week before I started college. Johad stayed in the small room at the end of the hall upstairs. Mom had used it as her sewing room, but it got turned into the guest bedroom after Loyd and I decided we couldn't stand being roommates any longer. After I went to college, he got my room and my water bed. I have mentioned before how I didn't like coming home from college very much. This was part of the reason, that I wouldn't get to sleep in my own bed.
Johad was at the house when my father had his 40th birthday party. Mom threw Dad a surprise party in our yard and there were a lot of people who came over. One of them was a teacher who had gone to college with my parents. He had hosted a foreign exchange student from Sweden during my sophomore year. When he came over, he shouted out some obsenity in Swedish and Johad heard him. Johad was originally going to steer clear of the party, but he knew he had to come down to meet this gentleman.
When I was in high school, the male foreign exchange students didn't get a lot of attention. Mom was afraid he'd be somewhat outcast and that Loyd would have to hang around him a lot at school. That turned out not to be a problem. Johad was very good looking and athletic. While he'd only played soccer in Sweden, he found that he was able to parlay that experience into becoming the football team's place kicker. He was instantly an Alpha male at the school. In addition, that was one of the years the football team won the state championship. Without really trying, he became the son I feel my father always wanted. (I should point out that Dad never actually made me feel that way.)
I still got along with him very well. As pre-arranged, he only stayed with my family for about five months and then stayed with another Rotary member and his family for the rest of the school year. He went with us for our spring break visit to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Loyd, Johad and I camped out in a tent for the week while Mom and Dad stayed in the camper. The three of us went to Boquillas, Mexico one day. Loyd, who was 16 at the time, bought some alcohol and snuck it back across the border. That night, he and Johad started drinking. They got drunk. I'd never been around Loyd when he'd been drinking, but he turned out to be really mean. That is, a lot more than he normally was. Loyd started throwing stuff at me while I was trying to sleep, saying, "Shut the f*** up, Fayd! Shut the f*** up!" Johad just kind of laughed along with it. They finally fell asleep.
Johad took part in the graduation ceremony for Artesia High School in 1983 and went back to Sweden. He came back to the United States twice that I knew of. I saw him in 1987, which would have been after he had graduated from college. He visted my family in Artesia and came with them to Clovis to see me and several other members of Mom's family. At this time, I was performing with a church choir for the first ever Clovis Music Festival and he came with them to see that.
That would be the last time I would actually see him. Johad came to the United States again with his family in 2009. My Mom lived in Phoenix at the time and I was visiting her on my way to see Loyd graduated from college. There was a chance that they were going to come visit Mom when I was there, but there was some sort of delay and they didn't make it out there before I had to leave to go see Dad in Artesia, whom he had already visited.
I hope I do get to see him again.
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