It was a couple of weeks before Christmas when Bill Travon showed his passel of first-class boarding passes to the ticket agent at Friedman Memorial Airport. He was on his way to Stockholm with his daughters - Lindsay and Elaine. The girls were eleven and nine respectively.
They were going to change planes in New York and had a scheduled three-hour layover at Heathrow.
He was proud of his daughters. They had earned a Nobel Prize for physics and were the youngest ever to receive the prestigious endowment. Working as a team, the girls had invented the first anti-gravity device. They strapped a slice of buttered bread on Mama Kitty’s back and dropped her into the living room from the top of the stairs. The frightened feline had hovered about two metres above the floor and slowly rotated from feet up to feet down, her altitude never varying more than a couple of centimetres either way.
Bill had told the story, in the lunchroom at the Idaho National Laboratory, where he worked. Word spread like wildfire among the scientists, and before long the girls found themselves nominated for the Nobel. Bill and his daughters thought it was cute until they received word that Lindsay and Elaine had won. Now it was off to Stockholm to receive the prize.
As they settled into their seats, the sisters got Cokes from the flight attendants. Shortly after take-off, the pilot invited them to see the cockpit. He gave each of the girls a set of plastic pilot wings and asked them to autograph his logbook.
After their first meal, and as they became accustomed to the routine of the flight, Bill turned to his daughters, “Have you guys worked on your acceptance speeches?” he asked them. Both nodded their heads vigorously.
“Have you worked some humour into your speeches?”
Elaine and Lindsay furrowed their brows and huddled together, remaining that way for the rest of the flight.
When the family arrived at Arlanda they took a taxi to the city centre and checked into their hotel. It was December the eighth. They had two days for sightseeing before the ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall. The Nobel Committee took good care of them, offering tours of the city and even a river cruise. Their days were chock full of activities.
On the evening of December tenth, Lindsay was more nervous than her sister as they took their seats in the crowded hall. When they heard their names announced Elaine grabbed Lindsay’s hand and dragged her to the stage. When the microphone height was being adjusted, she leaned forward and spoke to the crowd.
“My sister, my father, and I are happy to be here in Stockholm. We left our cat in Idaho but brought our pet photon with us. None of our friends knows how to care for a photon. When we got to our hotel here in the city, a man loaded our luggage from the taxi onto a rolling cart. He had each of us point out our bags. Dad had the big black one, my sister and I had the pink and green ones. The man asked if our photon had a suitcase, my sister, Lindsay told him, “ ‘no,' “ she went on to explain, " 'he's a photon; he’s traveling light.’ ”
