This is the third of my stories published in The Notre Dame Review, and  my longest. Some of my stories are the result of my experience, some are based on story heard, some are based on one sentence heard and none is only a result of fantasy or invention. "The Strange Restoration of J.A. Splinter" has been put together from many experiences, sentences heard, events recalled.
    These are the sources: friend (Vlad.J.), Peace Corps volunteer in Phillippines, told me about his colegue who had to promiss to take with him to US all his villigers. It drove him near insanity. He painted a plan of an aircraft and asigned seats to each villiger. Friend (Vaclav C.) told me that America was so rich that African mummies used to be burned in engines of trains as fuel. Other friend (George Ch.) in Switzerland told me about his Korean graduate student whose father remembered American soldiers driving through the village and throwing condoms to peasants, who chewed them, thinking they are chewing gum. My Greek colegue (Jani K.) in the University told me about  "vlahos" in Peloponese, primitive sheepherders, who were instructed to use condoms to prevent veneral diseases. They wore condoms - but removed them before copulation. I remember sleeping in a deserted Indian hut in midst of Choco jungle (Colombia) when, at night, gigantic click beetles flew in. They had fluorescent thorax of such intensity one could read holding the beetle near the text. My Philippino technician (CarmenJ.)brought for lunch eggs boiled just days before hatching. Eating the fully formed fetus she considered delicacy. Her husband told me about feeding the dogs with boiled rice only, then killing them and boiling their guts filled with semi-digested rice. Delicacy! I ate the freshwater prawns steamed in beer  in Tahiti. Very good. I drank local banana beer - not very good. The man siiting with garlic clove in each nostril was Nigerian Igbo in Enugu. He believed it drives away disease. One of my graduate student and M.D. was drafted for two years to Subic Bay Base in Philippines. He dated a local girl and soon two tough felows visited him. They explained, in graphical terms, what will happen to his genitals if he will not marry the girl. So he married her (after return to US she  left him for a rich lawyer in Denver. She was beautifull, I met her.) And so on, etc etc....
    It has been a pleasure to write such story from so many memories. And I hoped that my main criterium of good story would apply:  the story must  be  interesting!