Chapter 1

Most people in our small Scandinavian town knows me by my nickname, "The Moose" from my rally racing days when I missed a bend and hit a moose. Even my profession as advertising salesman at the local newspaper is well known. Some people even know my real name, Fredrick Ohlson, and that my lovely wife is Emma, nurse at the local hospital. I was 43, Emma was 39 and our son Emil was 12 when this story about Delaware began.

It probably created more gossip in one year than we had during the last 100 years in our small sleepy garrison town. Working at the local newspaper and meeting many important people every day, I found that I got to know so much of the events that I decided to spend some time collecting further information and write this story when things had calmed down.

Important things began to happen when our small Scandinavian town got four new very important residents. Rolf Ericsson had bought the old "Colonel's Manor" just outside the town and intended to settle down there with his wife and two youngest children as soon as the main building was restored.

Rolf Ericsson was a well-known character, 55 years old and recently got lot of space in the tabloid papers after having been fired from a large industry with a huge severance grant, which he could add to all his earlier commissions, bonuses, inside information stock business profits and savings from his fat salaries. He would be the wealthiest man in town.

His reason for the purchase was that the investment company, which owned and misused the property, had been in such desperate need for cash that the price Rolf was offered to buy it was very attractive though it was still sky high. Yet it was a real bargain compared to what he got and purchasing such a property was the best investment he could make to reduce his taxes. One other reason was that it was a great place with a large forest with a good supply of moose and roe deer for hunting, a lake with a good supply of fish and crawfish.

The main building was from 1648, built by a colonel from the local infantry regiment when he came back home as a very wealthy man from the Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics on the European continent. It was a large, very beautiful building, but in acute need of a very expensive restoration, so Rolf was the right man in the right place in the opinion of most local politicians. The average man in town meant that only a robber could afford to take over what another robber built several hundred years ago.

Immediately after the purchase, Rolf contacted all kinds of necessary professional people for the restoring and spared neither money nor any efforts to get the building and the garden in perfect shape. Of course, he even succeeded in getting the manor approved as an important historic building and got a lot of the restoration expenses sponsored by the County Administration Board and the EU. But nobody could deny that his money did a very good job.

His wife, Charlotte, a very charming and beautiful 40 years old ex-actor became very popular in the town in no time. She was Rolf's third wife and had ended her own career after giving birth to their two children. It was she who found out that a slope, which remained from an ancient Greek theatre, could be a perfect site for an outdoor play during some warm summer evenings. She was used to getting what she wanted and soon she had found a retired school teacher who was hired to find out if there was something in the history of the "Colonel's Mansion" which could been used as an idea for her outdoor theater play.

Rolf was for it at once. Not for the history but for the expected possibilities of being surrounded by and what he would do with those handsome women involved in that play.

The teacher didn't need to do much before he found out that the "Colonel's Mansion" had been involved in the history of Delaware, today known as the first state to join the U.S. but during the Colonel's days it was our colony in America until the Dutch took it from us and lost it to England, which lost it to the colonists who founded their own state. Many different flags had waived over that piece of land, originally inhabited by the peaceful Lenni Lenape Indians. However, nobody can deny that our Delaware governor, Johan Prinz, had been the biggest governor both in the history of that state and even all other states in the U.S. because who else can beat his weight of almost 400 pounds.

The Colonel's connection to Delaware took place in 1652 when his youngest son was lieutenant of the local infantry regiment. Obviously he was a spoiled brat, who after several minor scandals had been found in a bed together with a newlywed middle-aged major's young beautiful bride. As both of them had been naked, no explanations were accepted.

The Major, a scared veteran from many hard battles during the war, immediately challenged the young lieutenant to a duel with pistols. The old Colonel had no doubts about the only possible result of such a duel and had used all his influence and connections to bribe the Major, who after some hard negotiations had agreed to skip the duel after getting a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, a fair amount of money and the young Lieutenant given a transfer to our garrison in Delaware with the next ship, which was expected to depart within two months.

Delaware was chosen because it was the site of our most distant garrison available. It was, in fact, not much more than a hamlet for the fur trade with a few hundred colonists and a small garrison of only 24 men. Not much for representing a great nation but as the colony caused more expenses than profit, why it wasn't regarded to be in need of any real military protection.

During the time until departure, the Lieutenant was commanded to enlist four men and take them with him as replacements for deceased and deserted men. It was a real "mission impossible" during those days when the male population already had paid a high price during thirty years of war. Though the war on the continent was over, enlistment for duty in the new possessions beyond the Baltic Sea was still feared more than the pest, because bad food, diseases and hard labor building fortifications had an almost equal effect.

The young Lieutenant had his problems about two hundred years before the main emigration to America, because Delaware for most people was an unknown place a long way from home. Notes in the old journals said that only one man in the town had ever been in there, a heavy drinking ex-sailor whose stories from his trips to the far away countries could be heard at his favorite tavern if somebody bought him drinks.

Though his experiences of Delaware were limited to taverns near the harbor, he had good stories about dangerous huge bears, long poisonous rattling snakes and fierce red-skinned native giants. The dangers used to be magnified with each drink. His stories were hardly of any help for the poor Lieutenant. However the teacher found out that the Lieutenant succeeded in getting his four men, went to America, married a rich Dutch man's daughter, left the army and never came back to the old country.

However Charlotte understood that the amorous Lieutenant and his fear for the far away Delaware was a real bingo for an outdoors comedy play. She hired a well-known author who succeeded in writing a sheer farce with a good mix of little facts and much fiction about the Lieutenant, the Major's wife, the drunken sailor, enlisted men and many beautiful women during the Lieutenant's sincere efforts to get a young woman pregnant and marry her, which would allow him to be excused from going to Delaware.

A local Historic Society was founded and to Charlotte and Rolf's great pleasure many nice people, my wife included, were among the charter members and volunteered to take part in their play, which fit their plans for introducing several of them to their kinky personal pleasures in the near future.

In co-operation with the community, benches, stage and parking lot was built at the arena and Rolf sponsored the décor on the stage. An old friend of Charlotte, Eric Anderson, was hired to direct the play and he began the audition with the volunteering actors. No payment was promised, but if the play made enough profit, it would be used for sponsoring a trip to Delaware for the participants. Charlotte wanted to play the major's wife and Rolf played the old colonel. Both were satisfied with Eric's choices for the other parts of the play.