By: Owen Oxley It's been more than sixty-four years since I first went to the 'field ' in 1950 for five years (also spent another year before that in the New York Office at 505 Park Avenue). Most of that time in Arabia I was a photographer in the Public Relations Department, documenting the oil operations as well as the lifestyles of the Americans workers and families in Ras Tanura, Abqaiq, Dhahran and lots of other places. During those several years, I married a lovely girl, Wanda Marshall, on Bahrein Island, and nearly two years later, on January 21, 1955, she gave birth to a lovely girl, named Cassandra Lea. Then, a few months later, I resigned ,from Aramco, returned to America and spent two years at a daily newspaper before entering the public relations field as a consultant, building a client base that included British, Russian, and to the Middle East. By an incredible, extraordinary coincidence, in 1979 I was invited to return to Arabia by a client of mine who had just won a contract to construct a highway through the Rub Al-Khali, a vast desert known as the Empty Quarter. Sadly, while I was back in Arabia, Aramco and / or the Saudi Government changed or delayed plans for the highway, but put the construction company to working on a variety of other projects. In 2000, the first year that Saudi Arabia permitted former Aramcons to return to the Kingdom as tourists, my wife Wanda and our daughter Cassandra returned to Arabia and spent from April 18 - May 2 there, overwhelmed by the changes that had taken place since 1955. At that time, my wife was asked to provide a selection of photographs of mine for an exhibit in Dhahran. It was quite well-received and planted the idea in my head that a book of some sort might be a very real possibility in the near future. Today, in my eighty-eighth year, I am in reasonably good health and good spirits, although I did suffer a mild stroke a couple of years ago, was without speech for most of a day (no pain, just speechless!), and now live with my second daughter, Alyssa, in Vergennes, Vermont. Saudi Arabia: The Great Adventure is available for sale through Aramco ExPats. We have slashed the price!