The Stevicks

Sometime in the late 1970s, Paul and Marian converted a long, flat barge, the Cura, into a floating youth hostel — what they called a "boatel" — and moored it out in front of Amsterdam's main train station. Twice a week, they needed to transverse the city's canal system to take on fresh water across town, and they figured out a clever way to turn the errand into an additional source of income: they billed the trip as a "beer cruise," sold tickets, and served cheap drafts to their passengers for the couple of hours of the roundtrip voyage. Soon after moving to Holland in 1979, I saw the cruise advertised and checked it out — and Captain Paul and I, both Americans with Dutch wives, became fast friends.

Later, they began spending half of each year in Florida, and ultimately made the US their year-round home. They moved around quite a bit, finally settling in the state of Washington, where I visited them in 2001 and took this family photo. At the upper left is Marina, who I knew as a baby. The two other kids in the picture — Joseph and Vicki — came later, and this was the first time I met them. (Older brother Frank was in the Navy and stationed in California, so I missed seeing him.) Paul and Marian still look the same today as they did in the late '70s. How do they do that?

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