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On Friday of my first work week, I was invited to stay over for the weekend at the house of the president of Hussey Metals/Copper Range Company at their sprawling estate in Sewickley Heights, near the top of Camp Meeting Road.

The president’s name was Andrew Decker Hunter. He and his wife had two children. Their son, Andrew (Andy), was away studying at university. But their daughter, Alice, was there. Alice and I played scrabble in the evening with a giant dictionary on a pedestal in their living room as the reference to accept or reject words. Because of the many English words with Greek, Latin, French and German roots, I was able to surprise the family with my English vocabulary

Alice had just graduated from Sewickley Academy, a top private local high school. Because of her excellent academics she had been awarded a full scholarship at Stanford University near San Francisco. She was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar in those days. (In recent years the name Woodrow Wilson has been removed because of his racist views.) Alice practiced for years as an MD, specializing in Emergency Medicine in the San Francisco area.

On Saturday afternoon we all went to the Edgeworth Country Club for socializing at the pool and tennis courts. It was a perfect opportunity for me to be introduced to many of the other Club members. Within a short time I had casually met many of them.

Soon two mothers approached me with offers to stay with their families for my remaining eleven weeks at Hussey Metals, free room and board, as a member of the family.

Before I made a choice, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and told me, i.e. “warned” me, that one of the families had two “well-built, good looking daughters,” 19 and 21 years of age.

Remembering why I did not want to get entangled with Swiss girls, I also did not want to live in the same household with two young American girls who had a pushy mother, especially since I had been told that the older girl at age 21 was already divorced from her first husband. So, I gratefully accepted the offer from the other family, who had two school age boys who would be more interested in learning about playing soccer.

I made the right decision and for my remaining time with Hussey Metals I lived with Phil and Janet Forsling, their two sons, Pete and Ted, and Janet’s father, Dr. Mitchell, a retired MD who was one of the first physicians to study the effects of acceleration and reduced oxygen levels on Air Force pilots. He also was a friend of Drs. Banting and Best, the pioneer researchers who discovered Insulin in 1921 at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Mitchell did not speak German or French. Instead, he taught me a lot of English idiomatic expressions, phrases and pronunciation. He was a patient, gentle teacher and source of first-hand information about the rapid change in technology from World War I aviation to 20^th century medicine and orbiting satellites. I could not have dreamed of encountering a more interesting person.

The Forsling family lived in a spacious two story house with a covered porch on three sides, located on a five-acre lot on Camp Meeting Road.

Since I had come with just one suitcase and only business clothes suitable for moderate summer climates, Janet Forsling suggested that I buy a light weight, unlined summer suit. It did not take much convincing. I suggested going to a men’s shop I had noticed in nearby Sewickley, but Mrs. Forsling considered that to be an “inappropriate” location. I was told that I would not want to try on pants which a black person had tried on before me. I was shocked at such an “unwritten rule!” Instead, she drove me to an upscale men’s store on the other side of Pittsburgh, probably Gimbel Brothers. Then she took me to the Bird in Hand art gallery and store in downtown Sewickley where I bought some narrow woolen “artsy” ties, which were fashionable at the time. Janet co-owned the store with Katherine Amsler. Her husband’s ancestors’ name – Amsler -- was familiar to me from my hometown in Switzerland. There was however no connection. His family was originally from Neuchatel, in the French speaking part of Switzerland. (The gallery stayed in business until 2006.)

Phil Forsling was Director of Industrial Relations at Magnetics in Butler, Pennsylvania, which supplied powder metallic cores for early computers. He was also a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Air Reserve. He proudly displayed a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence in their living room together with the original of the Homesteading deed of his Norwegian ancestors who first settled in the Midwest.

One day Mr. Forsling invited me to join him for lunch at the Pittsburgh Press Club where he was a member. There I learned more about the thick smog from the heydays of “Steel Town.” I was told that in those days one could barely see the traffic down below from up at the level of the Press Club dining room and people had to change their white shirts every day.

The Forslings were anxious to show me their America. They also took me to Fort Ligonier for hands-on American history; to my first ever football game with the Pittsburgh Steelers; and my first Major League baseball game with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the famous Roberto Clemente, who instantly became my baseball hero.

Then there was a Hussey Metals company picnic at Conneaut Lake Park, a traditional amusement park in the countryside in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, close to Lake Erie. It was a relaxed, informal picnic with hot dogs, hamburgers and unlimited rides on all attractions. I most enjoyed multiple rides on the wooden roller coaster! Never before had I seen such a large rollercoaster in Switzerland.

For a piece of regional 19^th century history of Pennsylvania, we visited restored “Old Economy Village” in Ambridge. It was founded by Pietists from near Stuttgart in Württemberg, Germany. They were seeking religious and economic freedom, creating in 1824 a utopian communal society patterned on early Christian communities. The religious/commercial entity was dissolved in 1905. Much of the original 3,000 acres were sold to the American Bridge Company which renamed the settlement Ambridge.

To round out my American experience, the Forslings wanted me to see how the “other side” lived, by arranging a dinner and sleepover with a family in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Their children and friends picked me up in a battered Volkswagen bus and drove me to the place. When we got close they told me that it was now time to roll up the car windows, because it was not safe to drive with open windows. That evening they served roasted chicken, which I classified as “rubber chicken,” but did not tell them so.

This was in big contrast to another Saturday garden party at the estate of the Jones family in suburban Pittsburgh, something the Forslings wanted me to experience as well.

This was the home of the millionaire Jones family of the famous “Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation,” which was in operation until 1970. At one time it was the fourth largest steel maker in the US. The grounds were big enough to play baseball. The other guests encouraged me to practice some swings with the bat and gave me advice. I was surprised and impressed by the giant “Doll House” in the garden the Jones had built years earlier for their daughter. It was at least 12 feet tall.

Another lesson was to open my first checking account at Mellon Bank. As soon as I had a check book I placed mail orders for magazine subscriptions. The Forslings already had a subscription to “Time,” so I subscribed to “Newsweek,” “The New Yorker” and “Saturday Review.” We shared all those publications and had some interesting discussions. Of course, we discussed Vietnam.

Since Mr. Forsling was a Lieutenant-Commander in the Naval Air Reserve he occasionally was on duty for a couple of weeks in the Pacific and on refresher weekends at a naval air base in Philadelphia. He flew submarine hunting helicopters.

All that time, I was keen on following the war on detailed maps of Vietnam, which was not possible on the passport picture sized maps in “Time” or “Newsweek.” Therefore, I tried to order a large, table top sized fold-out from a specialized map bookstore. No such luck. I was told that such maps were classified as “Restricted” and were not for sale in the USA. Only later, after I returned to Europe, was I able to purchase the maps I sought. I acquired two map sheets of the Mekong Delta and the western border area of Vietnam with Laos and Cambodia at the more detailed scale of 1:1,000,000.

These maps had originally been prepared by the Map Service of the U.S. Corps of Engineers and included elevation contour lines. My copies had been reprinted unchanged by the Department of Lands & Survey, R.E Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand. In neutral Switzerland, the sale of these map reprints were not subject to any U.S. restrictions. I guess that the U.S. government did not want the general public to be able to follow the war in detail.

As a visiting “Alien,” using the official terminology for foreigners, I kept my mouth shut about the Vietnam War, even though I was already then convinced that the Vietcong were going to win. Based on what I had learned in Swiss Officer’s Training School in Bern; the history of how the French lost their Vietnam War at Dien Bien Phu; texts by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on guerilla warfare; the history of the Algerian Revolution and books on strategy by B.H. Liddell Hart and Général Beaufre, it was clear to me that the United States could not win the Vietnam war. They would have needed not just the normal triple superiority, but a six-fold one, plus the popular support of the vast majority of the South Vietnamese population.