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I guess I can say that "we lucked out", because, I asked a Turk just outside our hotel in Izmir, if he could direct us to a travel agency, he spoke good English and asked us where we would like to go. He told us he had lived in Western Turkey all his life, that he was a retired Air Force officer and occasionally escorted visitors to ancient sites. He said his name was Mustafa, and that he had references if we wished to contact them. The deal was sealed when we found that he was a friend of Naki Uner, my Turkish counterpart in 1955 to 1960.
Mustafa made our trip to Turkey the experience we had hoped for, we rode with him for 10 days, in his clean, well maintained, station wagon. Mustafa took good care of us, he would not let us go into a restaurant, rent a room or by anything without his inspection and approval as to safety, quality and price. He was more than a chauffeur, he was our guardian and guide.
We had not been out of Izmir one day until Mustafa asked me what he should call Verna. He asked if it was all right for him to call her "MY LADY", I informed him that it would be perfectly proper, and that I thought she might like that, and from there on Verna was "MY LADY". He would help her in and out of the car, and spared no effort to help her climb around old ruins, and get to any place she wanted to go.
For five years I had traveled the west coast of Turkey. I thought I had seen all the ruins and old city sites. Mustafa had spent several years working with EXREM AKURGAL, an archeologist who spent his life studying Ancient Civilizations and lost cities of Turkey. Verna and I were taken to sites I had never heard of.
For three days we visited people and places around Izmir. We stayed at the school where Verna taught, and she was able to see two more of her students who were now teaching in the school. I was able to see Naki Uner, the Engineer that help design the small equipment, Atif Atilla, the man who made it work, and my farmer friend, that Ishan and I would visit early in the morning, "One-Arm Ahmet" [sic]
[At this point a reproduction of the following article is included in the original document: Kolars, John. "Turkey Revisted." The Christian Science Monitor, (Nov. 22, 1982): 23]
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Metzger Memories
