[Fatso Foggerty's in South Philly, 6/4/18] Like I said about six weeks ago, I’ve been concentrating on publishing books in Vietnam. I have two manuscripts submitted, a collection of my prose from around 1996 to 2006, and a selection of travel writing from the last two years. I’m now busy with a photo book,
So good to see your posts, Linh! I cherish your Work. As a fellow "dive patron", I am always glad to see SOME-damn-body expressing what the real world of fly over folks is like: the good, bad, and ugly; and the gritty beauty of it all. Which I miss sometimes. Now I'm semi-retired, married for a long time, so my thing is staying at home and having a few cold beers. But I work part-time at a big "po' folks" mart, local owned, so I get to work with *my* people, and see *my* people in droves shopping there, three days a week. And it's a great therapy to get out of the office and do some intensive physical labor (as I have always done), be around others to remind me of where I came from. I love it, I really do. I am truly happy for you to have finally made it back Home. Was worried about you for a while there, as it was hard for you to do. But the States really are a tinder box now: essentially, being stoked by the weirdos wanting to out-weird each other, egged along and led by the nose by the ubiquitous Jew, of course. Easy to tell when someone has been on Tik-Tok too much when they come in, blue- haired and pierced in strange places to show the world how weird they are! Yeah, even here. But the majority are plain people, blue-collar (think of that word for a minute: "collared", leashed!?), people that don't go usually to Assholemart up in the nearby city, which I grew up in; now carpet-bagged Foreign Occupied Territory/"Gentri-fucked", off-limits by sneering glares and rude treatment for us Natives by the swarming hordes of yankees that have fled their hell-holes, only to bring it here with them. I'm digressing, perhaps, to a ridiculous degree. But I am so anecdotal that a direct conversation with me with numb minds is like Grandpa reading you a bedtime story: before I'm done, they are snoozing! So, to conclude, I eagerly look forward to your new Work; and I am debating between Namibia, Russia, and maybe Vietnam. The Lady wants to go to a coast, anywhere, a real water-baby, so she keeps ruling out Russia! But the travels you've done is such an inspiration, I love reading every post you make. A beach nearby, a friendly little village with some good dives and real people-and no immediate potential for a fucking war until we naturally perish...Lot to wish for in the Age of the (always-coming!) Dark Winter. But, hey, a guy can try. I'm Spartan as hell, but I do have people I love and are my responsibility. I might have to at least trick them into getting on that last flight out and stay behind to "die with my boots on"- but there won't be anything left here in a year or two anyway, and I do worry that most of the world will not be "hospitable" to Murkin refugees. In the meantime, I hope you rest well now, after this bedtime story :-) ...Have a wonderful, CONTENT, and happy day, Dear Sir,
Linh,You and I are of the same generation .I'm 65 and attended a military academy on L.I. from 69-75. It was quite a surreal experience. The war was raging and the fall of my first year, we had a parade to honor 3 cadets who had graduated in June and were killed in Vietnam by the fall. It all seemed so confusing to me a 12 y/o boy whose only interest in life was baseball and sports in general During my 6 years that I attended, I experienced having eggs, tomato's and rotten fruit thrown at me and my fellow cadets as we marched down 5th avenue past the Metropolitan Museum of Art behind the West Point cadets on Veterans Day. The building housing one of our classrooms was burned down to the ground by angry people against the war. Our school was attacked by people from Huntington High School resulting in a huge riot between the cadets and the students. I was sick in bed with the flu and woke up at about two in the morning as everyone in my room was pulling their bunk beds apart and taking the pipes between the bottom and top bunks to use as weapons. The police came and arrested the trespassers. And I still remember the day in 1974? I think, when our English professor (who had one of the coolest names ever), Aloysius Chandler , came into our classroom with a big smile filled with excitement "Boy's I have great news-the war is over." He led us in prayer. The following year 1975 I graduated, I guess around the time you came to America. I had to get a draft card but never was called. The military went all volunteer. After 6 years in an all boys military academy I had my fill of the military life. After college, I finally found my calling as a NYC police officer. first in the South Bronx and later in my home town of Flushing. I did 11 tours at Ground Zero and that's when I had my awakening. I saw the towers come down as it happened from where I was posted. I wish I could leave this godforsaken cesspool of a country but thanks to 9/11, I can't. Thousands of my fellow first responders have died and who knows if one day it will get me too. So far I'm doing much better than most but I've learned to never take my health for granted. I know that a lot of people today have a strong dislike for cops in general but I was just an ordinary guy doing what I believed was my calling in life. Anyway, a long winded post I know but I've seen so much with so many experiences. I've had a front row seat of so many life changing events that have shaped both our lives' that led me finding your posts. Thanks for the great posts I love reading them.
Since I was always wandering around horrible neighborhoods, it was a relief to see cops around. At Trenton's Tir Na Nog, I met a cop who later gave me a ride to the train station. He didn't think it was such a great idea for me to walk there.
In Jackson, Mississippi, I couldn't find a bar, only a black guy who sold me a bottle for $2 he went inside his house to get. I then saw an old white guy with a metal detector. He said something like, "Son, what are you doing here?" I was looking for a bar, I said. You should get out of here, he replied, this ain't a good neighborhood.
"Well, you're here!"
"I'm a cop."
When I insisted, he did point me to a bar. Inside were half a dozen old black guys. Since it was BBQ day, they gave me food for free. When I left extra money for my meal upon leaving, the bartender said, "You forgot your money!"
On the way to the bus station, a black homeless guy gave me an excellent piece of fried chicken, still hot. Someone had just given him too much food.
Your experience with the cop reminds me of something that happened to me in Philly. It was one of the few times I've ever been to Philadelphia. I was 21 years and I was there with my girlfriend and another couple to see the Rolling Stones concert. My car was in the shop so I borrowed my Dad's Ford Maverick. Coming to Philly I should have checked to car out to make sure it had a good spare tire. I didn't and at about 1am while driving through some part of Philly of course I had to have a flat tire with no spare. The other guy with me was over 6 ft tall but a complete wus as I found out soon enough. I pulled into the parking lot of a Mac Donald's to try to change to the spare. When I saw the spare was flat, I knew I was in trouble. The girls couldn't help and apparently either could 6 ft. plus girly boy either. So I removed the flat and started down the street while the 3 girls stayed behind. Pretty soon a Philadelphia police van pulled up and seeing me pushing a flat tire down the street asked what I was doing. I explained my predicament and they asked me where I was from. They wouldn't give any help whatsoever and drove off. A passing cab driver stopped and the driver, a black guy offered to take me to a gas station. He proceeded to take me to a station, waited for me to get the spare mounted and when he found I only had enough cash to pay for the tire, he shut off his meter, took my back to my car where a group of Polish guys were waiting to rob the girls who had locked themselves in the car. He even stayed while I put the new tire back on the car. I never got his name and couldn't even send him some money for all the trouble he went through but it cemented my belief in the basic decency of most people regardless of their race or background.
I've written about black crimes, which has gotten me labeled a racist by people who stay clear of most blacks.
Black neighborhoods are crime ridden, and it's not just because of poverty. Still, each man deserves to be treated individually. Working class whites, then, have more black friends and even relatives than those condeming them from ivory towers and suburbs. Since poorer people are forced to interact with each other at work, on public transit and even in their neighborhoods, they're much more realistic about race and, paradoxically, are more adept, and even fairer, at dealing with people of different races.
P.S. Here's a bad cop story: a good friend of mine decided to become a prostitute. On her first assigment, she was sent to a Japanese guy in a hotel room, but after one look at her, he slammed the door. Back on the dark street far away from anything familiar, she saw a cop car, but instead of helping her, he tried to rape her after getting her inside, but she got away. Some people just aren't made to peddle night blooming flowers.
Your picture in Fogartys took me back to a long ago Mad Magazine issue ( at least 60 years ago probably more) in which a man is leaning his head on a table surrounded by empty beer bottles and a caption: sadder Budweiser. Your posts are always so refreshingly different. Makes me think of all the good, simple people I have known over the years. Growing up in the bush in Canada, I would always stop to help someone who seemed to need it as my father would. My Belfast-born mate never would, knowing it was just as likely to be a trap in which someone wanted to kill you. Hitchhiking in California in the sixties with a mentally ill friend, picked by a Mexican farm worker who, learning we had no money, stopped at a bar and passed around the hat while we waited in his truck and came out with a little contribution to help us on our way. The kindness of strangers stays with you while the rudeness does not.
You can't say this anymore. Saying you'll shoot someone, is almost guaranteed to see cops intervene, then or later and charges made. Good luck trying to tell a judge you weren't literally going to shoot anyone, or blow anything up.
I miss the days when you could joke about bombs and threaten to shoot everyone without it becoming front page news.
I was eager to read your NYT piece, however it seems to be behind a paywall. Sigh.
Anyway this piece reminded me of "Mad" Bob, of Great Mui Ne fame, who enlisted in the Army - airborne - when drunk at age 18 in 1968, did a 8 months tour at the worst time (Têt offensive...) and then worked 30 years as a firefighter in the SF brigade before retiring back to VN. No news from him for about 6 months since he left VN for Cali. I hope he's OK. Try to picture Walter from The Big Lebowski at age 75, you have "Mad" Bob.
Article is not behind paywall in Vietnam, so I paste it below. The title is not mine...
Saigon’s Fall, 35 Years Later
April 29, 2010
Philadelphia
DEPENDING on which side you were on, Saigon either fell on April 30, 1975, or it was liberated. Inside Vietnam, the day is marked as Liberation Day but outside, among the Vietnamese refugees, it is called Deep Resentment Day. (The resentment is not just over losing a war, but also a country.)
On April 21, 1975, I was 11 and living in Saigon. I turned on the television and saw our president, Nguyen Van Thieu. He had a high forehead, a sign of intelligence, and long ears, indicating longevity. He had a round face with a well-defined jaw the face of a leader unlike his main rival, Nguyen Cao Ky, who resembled a cricket with a mustache. Thieu said, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis, but the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?”
Growing up in Saigon, I did not witness the war, only its apparatus: tanks, jeeps, jets. I often heard the rhythmic, out-of-breath phuoc phuoc phuoc of chopper blades rotating overhead. As it did for many Americans, the war came to me mainly through the news media. Open a newspaper and you would see Vietcong corpses lying in disarray. Turn on the radio and you could hear how our side was winning. Saigon theaters even showed American movies of World War II. Saigonese could sit in air-conditioning and watch expensively staged war scenes.
We considered the VC little more than a nightmare, a rumor, a bogeyman for scaring children. Once, in Saigon’s Phu Lam neighborhood, I saw four blindfolded men standing on a military truck, but there was no way to tell if they were really VC. If someone took a bad photo, you said, “You look just like a VC!” Only after April 30, 1975, did Saigonese realize there were plenty of VC among them.
Before the government fell, my father arranged for me and my brother to flee the country with a Chinese family. He sent his secretary along to take care of us. This secretary was 22, Chinese, with a very short temper, her face round and puffy. Sister Ha, as I called her, would later become my stepmother.
Before I left, my father gave me $2,000, saying, “Two thousand bucks should last you a year.” American bills, I noticed, were less colorful than Vietnamese ones, though longer and crisper. After sewing the money into the hem of my blue shorts, made of rayon and extremely hot, my grandmother advised, “Whatever you do, don’t take these shorts off.”
Before boarding the plane, I stayed at an American compound for four days. On the evening of April 27, I got on a C-130 to fly to Guam. Sitting next to Sister Ha, I watched a kid eat raw instant noodles. When the plane landed, it was pitch dark. No one knew a thing about Guam; we knew only that we had left Vietnam behind.
Thieu said, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis, but the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?”
In case anyone is paying attention, the US has recently made exactly the same promise to several European countries that have emptied their weapons inventories for Ukraine's benefit. They also just recently informed Taiwan, which has paid in advance for a number of weapons systems, that there will be a delay in delivery because Ukraine has "bumped the line" and is being prioritized. Hmm...
That Blue Front Lounge lunch looks terrific to me—all my favorite stuff, and for cheep! (That’s about what you would pay for one pretzel alone at the airport.) I assume the $3.70 doesn’t include the suds, though?
Speaking of Vietnamese refugees, a barracks complex in Guam that I stayed in for a month or so in the late ‘70s (during a temporary port stop for our submarine) had been previously occupied by Vietnamese refugees. The buildings were older and had been allowed to run down a bit--I can’t say what they were like when the refugees were staying there. But the complex was very inconveniently located several road miles from the populated part of the island, and was surrounded by thick jungle. Perhaps by design, to keep them segregated?
From the heights it was on, you could see the road to “town” making a long curving trajectory around the jungle, probably doubling the walking distance. One sharp guy who wanted to walk down to the Exchange to buy some stuff decided that he could take a short cut through the jungle to save himself the extra walk; he entered the jungle behind the barracks, and emerged scratched up and exhausted about 8 hours later, just before dark, about 100 yards from where he had entered. He said he had gotten lost shortly after entering and had spent all that time trying to find his way out again. Small wonder that there were still running half-jokes about Japanese soldiers still hiding out in there from WWII.
Lending credence to the segregation argument is an earlier experience I had when my ship visited Guantanamo Bay in the early 70s and I saw refugee quarters there. They were Quonset huts segregated from the rest of the base, and the area was strictly off-limits to all personnel. All those folks were Cubans who had managed to hop the wire without getting shot by the Cubans or blown up by the land mines the US had surrounding the perimeter.
So good to see your posts, Linh! I cherish your Work. As a fellow "dive patron", I am always glad to see SOME-damn-body expressing what the real world of fly over folks is like: the good, bad, and ugly; and the gritty beauty of it all. Which I miss sometimes. Now I'm semi-retired, married for a long time, so my thing is staying at home and having a few cold beers. But I work part-time at a big "po' folks" mart, local owned, so I get to work with *my* people, and see *my* people in droves shopping there, three days a week. And it's a great therapy to get out of the office and do some intensive physical labor (as I have always done), be around others to remind me of where I came from. I love it, I really do. I am truly happy for you to have finally made it back Home. Was worried about you for a while there, as it was hard for you to do. But the States really are a tinder box now: essentially, being stoked by the weirdos wanting to out-weird each other, egged along and led by the nose by the ubiquitous Jew, of course. Easy to tell when someone has been on Tik-Tok too much when they come in, blue- haired and pierced in strange places to show the world how weird they are! Yeah, even here. But the majority are plain people, blue-collar (think of that word for a minute: "collared", leashed!?), people that don't go usually to Assholemart up in the nearby city, which I grew up in; now carpet-bagged Foreign Occupied Territory/"Gentri-fucked", off-limits by sneering glares and rude treatment for us Natives by the swarming hordes of yankees that have fled their hell-holes, only to bring it here with them. I'm digressing, perhaps, to a ridiculous degree. But I am so anecdotal that a direct conversation with me with numb minds is like Grandpa reading you a bedtime story: before I'm done, they are snoozing! So, to conclude, I eagerly look forward to your new Work; and I am debating between Namibia, Russia, and maybe Vietnam. The Lady wants to go to a coast, anywhere, a real water-baby, so she keeps ruling out Russia! But the travels you've done is such an inspiration, I love reading every post you make. A beach nearby, a friendly little village with some good dives and real people-and no immediate potential for a fucking war until we naturally perish...Lot to wish for in the Age of the (always-coming!) Dark Winter. But, hey, a guy can try. I'm Spartan as hell, but I do have people I love and are my responsibility. I might have to at least trick them into getting on that last flight out and stay behind to "die with my boots on"- but there won't be anything left here in a year or two anyway, and I do worry that most of the world will not be "hospitable" to Murkin refugees. In the meantime, I hope you rest well now, after this bedtime story :-) ...Have a wonderful, CONTENT, and happy day, Dear Sir,
Sincerely, David
Linh,You and I are of the same generation .I'm 65 and attended a military academy on L.I. from 69-75. It was quite a surreal experience. The war was raging and the fall of my first year, we had a parade to honor 3 cadets who had graduated in June and were killed in Vietnam by the fall. It all seemed so confusing to me a 12 y/o boy whose only interest in life was baseball and sports in general During my 6 years that I attended, I experienced having eggs, tomato's and rotten fruit thrown at me and my fellow cadets as we marched down 5th avenue past the Metropolitan Museum of Art behind the West Point cadets on Veterans Day. The building housing one of our classrooms was burned down to the ground by angry people against the war. Our school was attacked by people from Huntington High School resulting in a huge riot between the cadets and the students. I was sick in bed with the flu and woke up at about two in the morning as everyone in my room was pulling their bunk beds apart and taking the pipes between the bottom and top bunks to use as weapons. The police came and arrested the trespassers. And I still remember the day in 1974? I think, when our English professor (who had one of the coolest names ever), Aloysius Chandler , came into our classroom with a big smile filled with excitement "Boy's I have great news-the war is over." He led us in prayer. The following year 1975 I graduated, I guess around the time you came to America. I had to get a draft card but never was called. The military went all volunteer. After 6 years in an all boys military academy I had my fill of the military life. After college, I finally found my calling as a NYC police officer. first in the South Bronx and later in my home town of Flushing. I did 11 tours at Ground Zero and that's when I had my awakening. I saw the towers come down as it happened from where I was posted. I wish I could leave this godforsaken cesspool of a country but thanks to 9/11, I can't. Thousands of my fellow first responders have died and who knows if one day it will get me too. So far I'm doing much better than most but I've learned to never take my health for granted. I know that a lot of people today have a strong dislike for cops in general but I was just an ordinary guy doing what I believed was my calling in life. Anyway, a long winded post I know but I've seen so much with so many experiences. I've had a front row seat of so many life changing events that have shaped both our lives' that led me finding your posts. Thanks for the great posts I love reading them.
Hi Gary,
Since I was always wandering around horrible neighborhoods, it was a relief to see cops around. At Trenton's Tir Na Nog, I met a cop who later gave me a ride to the train station. He didn't think it was such a great idea for me to walk there.
In Jackson, Mississippi, I couldn't find a bar, only a black guy who sold me a bottle for $2 he went inside his house to get. I then saw an old white guy with a metal detector. He said something like, "Son, what are you doing here?" I was looking for a bar, I said. You should get out of here, he replied, this ain't a good neighborhood.
"Well, you're here!"
"I'm a cop."
When I insisted, he did point me to a bar. Inside were half a dozen old black guys. Since it was BBQ day, they gave me food for free. When I left extra money for my meal upon leaving, the bartender said, "You forgot your money!"
On the way to the bus station, a black homeless guy gave me an excellent piece of fried chicken, still hot. Someone had just given him too much food.
Linh
P.S. Speaking of first responders on 9/11, I interviewed Rudy Dent, who was a NYC cop before he became a fireman:
https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2017/04/obscured-american-rudy-dent-9-11-first.html
Your experience with the cop reminds me of something that happened to me in Philly. It was one of the few times I've ever been to Philadelphia. I was 21 years and I was there with my girlfriend and another couple to see the Rolling Stones concert. My car was in the shop so I borrowed my Dad's Ford Maverick. Coming to Philly I should have checked to car out to make sure it had a good spare tire. I didn't and at about 1am while driving through some part of Philly of course I had to have a flat tire with no spare. The other guy with me was over 6 ft tall but a complete wus as I found out soon enough. I pulled into the parking lot of a Mac Donald's to try to change to the spare. When I saw the spare was flat, I knew I was in trouble. The girls couldn't help and apparently either could 6 ft. plus girly boy either. So I removed the flat and started down the street while the 3 girls stayed behind. Pretty soon a Philadelphia police van pulled up and seeing me pushing a flat tire down the street asked what I was doing. I explained my predicament and they asked me where I was from. They wouldn't give any help whatsoever and drove off. A passing cab driver stopped and the driver, a black guy offered to take me to a gas station. He proceeded to take me to a station, waited for me to get the spare mounted and when he found I only had enough cash to pay for the tire, he shut off his meter, took my back to my car where a group of Polish guys were waiting to rob the girls who had locked themselves in the car. He even stayed while I put the new tire back on the car. I never got his name and couldn't even send him some money for all the trouble he went through but it cemented my belief in the basic decency of most people regardless of their race or background.
Hi Gary,
I've written about black crimes, which has gotten me labeled a racist by people who stay clear of most blacks.
Black neighborhoods are crime ridden, and it's not just because of poverty. Still, each man deserves to be treated individually. Working class whites, then, have more black friends and even relatives than those condeming them from ivory towers and suburbs. Since poorer people are forced to interact with each other at work, on public transit and even in their neighborhoods, they're much more realistic about race and, paradoxically, are more adept, and even fairer, at dealing with people of different races.
Linh
P.S. Here's a bad cop story: a good friend of mine decided to become a prostitute. On her first assigment, she was sent to a Japanese guy in a hotel room, but after one look at her, he slammed the door. Back on the dark street far away from anything familiar, she saw a cop car, but instead of helping her, he tried to rape her after getting her inside, but she got away. Some people just aren't made to peddle night blooming flowers.
Your picture in Fogartys took me back to a long ago Mad Magazine issue ( at least 60 years ago probably more) in which a man is leaning his head on a table surrounded by empty beer bottles and a caption: sadder Budweiser. Your posts are always so refreshingly different. Makes me think of all the good, simple people I have known over the years. Growing up in the bush in Canada, I would always stop to help someone who seemed to need it as my father would. My Belfast-born mate never would, knowing it was just as likely to be a trap in which someone wanted to kill you. Hitchhiking in California in the sixties with a mentally ill friend, picked by a Mexican farm worker who, learning we had no money, stopped at a bar and passed around the hat while we waited in his truck and came out with a little contribution to help us on our way. The kindness of strangers stays with you while the rudeness does not.
You can't say this anymore. Saying you'll shoot someone, is almost guaranteed to see cops intervene, then or later and charges made. Good luck trying to tell a judge you weren't literally going to shoot anyone, or blow anything up.
I miss the days when you could joke about bombs and threaten to shoot everyone without it becoming front page news.
Linh
You must've been a Babe Magnet back in the day ...
Bill
Hardly, Bill, I overthought everything, so even when they jumped on top of me, I was dissecting the situation...
Thanks so much....can't wait for the "more soon"!
Thanks for all of this Linh!
I was eager to read your NYT piece, however it seems to be behind a paywall. Sigh.
Anyway this piece reminded me of "Mad" Bob, of Great Mui Ne fame, who enlisted in the Army - airborne - when drunk at age 18 in 1968, did a 8 months tour at the worst time (Têt offensive...) and then worked 30 years as a firefighter in the SF brigade before retiring back to VN. No news from him for about 6 months since he left VN for Cali. I hope he's OK. Try to picture Walter from The Big Lebowski at age 75, you have "Mad" Bob.
Hi Arthur,
Article is not behind paywall in Vietnam, so I paste it below. The title is not mine...
Saigon’s Fall, 35 Years Later
April 29, 2010
Philadelphia
DEPENDING on which side you were on, Saigon either fell on April 30, 1975, or it was liberated. Inside Vietnam, the day is marked as Liberation Day but outside, among the Vietnamese refugees, it is called Deep Resentment Day. (The resentment is not just over losing a war, but also a country.)
On April 21, 1975, I was 11 and living in Saigon. I turned on the television and saw our president, Nguyen Van Thieu. He had a high forehead, a sign of intelligence, and long ears, indicating longevity. He had a round face with a well-defined jaw the face of a leader unlike his main rival, Nguyen Cao Ky, who resembled a cricket with a mustache. Thieu said, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis, but the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?”
Growing up in Saigon, I did not witness the war, only its apparatus: tanks, jeeps, jets. I often heard the rhythmic, out-of-breath phuoc phuoc phuoc of chopper blades rotating overhead. As it did for many Americans, the war came to me mainly through the news media. Open a newspaper and you would see Vietcong corpses lying in disarray. Turn on the radio and you could hear how our side was winning. Saigon theaters even showed American movies of World War II. Saigonese could sit in air-conditioning and watch expensively staged war scenes.
We considered the VC little more than a nightmare, a rumor, a bogeyman for scaring children. Once, in Saigon’s Phu Lam neighborhood, I saw four blindfolded men standing on a military truck, but there was no way to tell if they were really VC. If someone took a bad photo, you said, “You look just like a VC!” Only after April 30, 1975, did Saigonese realize there were plenty of VC among them.
Before the government fell, my father arranged for me and my brother to flee the country with a Chinese family. He sent his secretary along to take care of us. This secretary was 22, Chinese, with a very short temper, her face round and puffy. Sister Ha, as I called her, would later become my stepmother.
Before I left, my father gave me $2,000, saying, “Two thousand bucks should last you a year.” American bills, I noticed, were less colorful than Vietnamese ones, though longer and crisper. After sewing the money into the hem of my blue shorts, made of rayon and extremely hot, my grandmother advised, “Whatever you do, don’t take these shorts off.”
Before boarding the plane, I stayed at an American compound for four days. On the evening of April 27, I got on a C-130 to fly to Guam. Sitting next to Sister Ha, I watched a kid eat raw instant noodles. When the plane landed, it was pitch dark. No one knew a thing about Guam; we knew only that we had left Vietnam behind.
Thieu said, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis, but the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?”
In case anyone is paying attention, the US has recently made exactly the same promise to several European countries that have emptied their weapons inventories for Ukraine's benefit. They also just recently informed Taiwan, which has paid in advance for a number of weapons systems, that there will be a delay in delivery because Ukraine has "bumped the line" and is being prioritized. Hmm...
That Blue Front Lounge lunch looks terrific to me—all my favorite stuff, and for cheep! (That’s about what you would pay for one pretzel alone at the airport.) I assume the $3.70 doesn’t include the suds, though?
Speaking of Vietnamese refugees, a barracks complex in Guam that I stayed in for a month or so in the late ‘70s (during a temporary port stop for our submarine) had been previously occupied by Vietnamese refugees. The buildings were older and had been allowed to run down a bit--I can’t say what they were like when the refugees were staying there. But the complex was very inconveniently located several road miles from the populated part of the island, and was surrounded by thick jungle. Perhaps by design, to keep them segregated?
From the heights it was on, you could see the road to “town” making a long curving trajectory around the jungle, probably doubling the walking distance. One sharp guy who wanted to walk down to the Exchange to buy some stuff decided that he could take a short cut through the jungle to save himself the extra walk; he entered the jungle behind the barracks, and emerged scratched up and exhausted about 8 hours later, just before dark, about 100 yards from where he had entered. He said he had gotten lost shortly after entering and had spent all that time trying to find his way out again. Small wonder that there were still running half-jokes about Japanese soldiers still hiding out in there from WWII.
Lending credence to the segregation argument is an earlier experience I had when my ship visited Guantanamo Bay in the early 70s and I saw refugee quarters there. They were Quonset huts segregated from the rest of the base, and the area was strictly off-limits to all personnel. All those folks were Cubans who had managed to hop the wire without getting shot by the Cubans or blown up by the land mines the US had surrounding the perimeter.
Hi JustPlainBill,
A pint of Yuengling there was $2.50.
I spent a week living in a tent in Guam. Here's a very brief account of my exit from Saigon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30dinh.html
Linh