Monday, March 10, 2008
A Zionist for Obama
I am a Zionist. I voted for Senator Obama in the Democratic primary, and if he is nominated, I will vote for him for president. He has stated that he values the relationship between the USA and Israel as plainly as any of the 3 serious candidates. As for his support by Farrakhan, he has repudiated that. If one is going to follow the logic of opposing him because of views of the church he attends and everyone who supports him, one might also mention that Senator Clinton's husband works for Dubai, a country which participates in an embargo of Israel. Senator Mc Cain has joined forces with president Bush who is particularly friendly toward the oil industry which depends on the Middle East oil producing countries which are unfriendly toward Israel. The reality is that all 3 candidates support the relationship between the USA and Israel and have similar views toward the Middle East and terrorism although perhaps with slightly different slants. I favor Obama for many reasons as an American, but as a Zionist I favor Obama because he has been the most articulate about weaning us away from dependence on oil which has been used by Israel's enemies as a lever against her. I also believe that Senator Obama is the one best able to make his ideas become realities.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Chapter 10. Mr. Professor
The University of Maryland had an extension school at Camp Casey which offered the soldiers some very nice courses. Fred Yamada, a few other guys, and I took a class in beginning Korean. After all, we were living in the country. It would be helpful to know something of the language. The class was surprisingly small. Most of the troops apparently found the study of Korean unimportant, unnecessary, or too intimidating. Mr. Kim, the teacher, taught English to children at the local elementary school during the day, and supplemented his income with night courses to us in Korean. He was a kind man who courageously tried to teach us the fundamentals of the real Korean language, which was quite different than the pidgin of the street that the locals and the G.I.s used for communication. During the course of the semester, the size of the class dwindled down to Fred, another guy, and me. As for continuing into the second semester, the three of us, the last of the scholars, decided that it was hopeless to expect that we would really master the language during the rest of our one year. Anyway, it took too much time away from the after supper activities at the officers' club, like drinking beer and singing "Stewball."
The head of the extension school was a short stocky man who looked very academic. He usually wore a tweedy jacket and bow tie. He lived down the hall from me in the B.O.Q. (Bachelor Officers Quarters). I don't remember his name, but we used to call him Mr. Professor. You couldn't miss him, darting around the post on his motor cycle wearing his motor cycle helmet, his tweedy jacket flowing behind him. Every Friday, he would drive down to Seoul. He had a house there and a girlfriend who lived in it. His was a strange story, strange to the outside world, although as time passed stories like his seemed to become less strange to me. Before World War II, he had majored in languages in college. His love was the study of languages and different cultures. He had always dreamed of traveling. He longed to sample foreign tastes, aromas, sounds, sights and any other stimulations his senses could encounter in foreign lands. To that end he became as fluent as possible in as many languages as possible. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the army and was made an intelligence officer because of his language abilities. One of his assignments took him to German occupied Warsaw where he befriended a Polish family that had become wealthy by siding with the Nazis. He pretended to be a rich German war profiteer who was not in the army because of a bad left leg and good connections. He was able to pull it off by speaking a perfectly accented fluent German and some broken Polish, and always walking with a limp. The family took him into their home and were delighted when he took an interest in their teenage daughter. They figured that the Germans would remain the winners and this would help cement their position with the winning side. They allowed him, in fact encouraged him, to sleep in her bed. After a brief courtship, they were married. He was twenty seven years old and she was fourteen. He remained in Warsaw until a few days before the Russians arrived when he and his teenage wife slipped through the lines to the Russian side. It was a surprise to the wife when she found out that her German profiteer husband was really an American spy with no limp. She accepted it. She grew up in those times when nothing was sincere, and all that mattered was survival at anyone's expense. She had never known anything else. The rest of the family was never heard from again. After the war, the couple went back to Warsaw to look for them but found nothing. Some people thought they were killed by their neighbors. Some thought they were taken off by the Russians, but no one really knew with any certainty.
After the war, Mr. Professor went to graduate school at the University of Maryland and then ultimately became a teacher there. The couple settled into a small comfortable home in a suburb of Washington, D.C. But after a number of years, the urge to travel overtook him again. A ten year stretch of American suburban life was all he could take before becoming restless. When the Korean War ended, an opportunity to teach at the university's extension at Camp Casey in Korea appeared. He grabbed it, and off he went leaving his wife in Maryland with their small daughter. They would see him once a year when he would return to spend Christmas with them.
When Mr. Professor arrived in Korea, he found an impoverished country just beginning to pick up the pieces of a society smashed by years of war. Many people would look at grinding poverty and all the ills that follow it, crime, filth, delapidation, lack of basic facilities, and run away. Others see in it opportunity. They thrive on it. An average man among suppressed people becomes an exceptional man, a superman. One could get by on a college teacher's salary in the States, but in Korea in those days an American with any income was a tycoon. As for the locals, poverty, of course could have an opposite effect. When the stomach calls out for food and there is none, the unthinkable becomes thinkable. That was the case with a woman and her daughter whom Mr. Professor encountered standing together and crying in front of the Lone Star Bar on a narrow crowded street in Seoul one evening. The woman looked very old, hunched over with wrinkled, weather beaten skin and greying hair. Her traditional Korean short jacket and full skirt were frayed and had lost their original whiteness. The daughter looked like a little girl, a ragamuffin with an angelic face. Actually, the woman was not as old as she looked. She was in her forties. And the daughter was not quite as young as she appeared. She was a teenager.
Although Mr. Professor had only recently arrived in the country, he already knew enough Korean to converse reasonably well and used his newly acquired language skills to try to comfort the woman and her daughter. The woman told him that she was a widow. Her husband had been a soldier in the South Korean Army during the war and had been killed, leaving her with five children and no means of support. She had left her village and come to the city in hope of finding work, but there was little to find. The proprietor of the Lone Star Bar had seen the daughter in the street, admired her beauty, saw her potential, and offered the mother a small sum of money to have her daughter as a bar girl. It was a deal too difficult to accept because it meant the unthinkable, selling her daughter into a life of sin. On the other hand it seemed impossible to refuse. It would mean one less mouth to feed and money to buy food for the other four. And so, the two were standing in front of the Lone Star Bar, saying goodbye, as the mother was about to sell her child for survival.
But Mr. Professor had an alternate plan. The beautiful daughter would come to live with him, and he would give the mother a small stipend each month which would allow her and her other four children to live comfortably. In other times, selling her daughter to an American would not have set well, but given the alternative, it was a last minute miracle.
And so, Mr. Professor rented two adjacent houses in Yong Dong Po, a suburb of Seoul, one for him and his fourteen year old mistress, Lee, and the other for his "in-laws." During the week he lived in a room in the bachelor officers quarters at Camp Casey where he worked, and on Friday evenings he would drive his motorcycle down to Seoul to spend the weekends with Lee. Lee turned out to be not only beautiful but also intelligent. Mr. Professor saw to it that she had a proper education. He sent her to the best school he could find. She learned to speak English fluently, even mastering Mr. Professor's Maryland accent. Those were happy years for the two of them. They spent every weekend together, except for the two weeks around Christmas when he went to visit his Polish wife in the U.S. They would visit the palaces, museums, and gardens in Seoul. At times they would take week long trips to Cheggido Island, to Japan, to Hong Kong. She grew from a teenage waif into a beautiful educated young woman. And then she was ready for college. She wanted to study in America. Although Mr. Professor was sad to see her go, he knew it had to be. It was in her best interest. Her mother opposed it, but he encouraged it. He decided that she would study at his school, the University of Maryland, and so he sent her to live with his wife and daughter while she went to school. They accepted her, and the three of them got along well. Nothing was ever said. Outwardly, she was just an exchange student whom Mr. Professor sponsored because he was a friend of her family. I don't know if his wife and daughter ever actually knew what his relationship with her had been, but I suspect that deep down they really did know.
Meanwhile, back in Korea, Mr. Professor quickly became lonely without Lee. He tried to start up with her younger sister who was now in her teens, but that was too much for her mother to take. By this time she had saved up enough money by being creative with Mr. Professor's stipend to move out with her four children and go back to her home village. Mr. Professor never heard from them again. Lee finished college, went on to medical school, married one of her class mates, and became a pediatrician. She now lives with her husband in California. The last I heard about Mr. Professor, he had picked up another Korean teenager and was living with her on the weekends.
The head of the extension school was a short stocky man who looked very academic. He usually wore a tweedy jacket and bow tie. He lived down the hall from me in the B.O.Q. (Bachelor Officers Quarters). I don't remember his name, but we used to call him Mr. Professor. You couldn't miss him, darting around the post on his motor cycle wearing his motor cycle helmet, his tweedy jacket flowing behind him. Every Friday, he would drive down to Seoul. He had a house there and a girlfriend who lived in it. His was a strange story, strange to the outside world, although as time passed stories like his seemed to become less strange to me. Before World War II, he had majored in languages in college. His love was the study of languages and different cultures. He had always dreamed of traveling. He longed to sample foreign tastes, aromas, sounds, sights and any other stimulations his senses could encounter in foreign lands. To that end he became as fluent as possible in as many languages as possible. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the army and was made an intelligence officer because of his language abilities. One of his assignments took him to German occupied Warsaw where he befriended a Polish family that had become wealthy by siding with the Nazis. He pretended to be a rich German war profiteer who was not in the army because of a bad left leg and good connections. He was able to pull it off by speaking a perfectly accented fluent German and some broken Polish, and always walking with a limp. The family took him into their home and were delighted when he took an interest in their teenage daughter. They figured that the Germans would remain the winners and this would help cement their position with the winning side. They allowed him, in fact encouraged him, to sleep in her bed. After a brief courtship, they were married. He was twenty seven years old and she was fourteen. He remained in Warsaw until a few days before the Russians arrived when he and his teenage wife slipped through the lines to the Russian side. It was a surprise to the wife when she found out that her German profiteer husband was really an American spy with no limp. She accepted it. She grew up in those times when nothing was sincere, and all that mattered was survival at anyone's expense. She had never known anything else. The rest of the family was never heard from again. After the war, the couple went back to Warsaw to look for them but found nothing. Some people thought they were killed by their neighbors. Some thought they were taken off by the Russians, but no one really knew with any certainty.
After the war, Mr. Professor went to graduate school at the University of Maryland and then ultimately became a teacher there. The couple settled into a small comfortable home in a suburb of Washington, D.C. But after a number of years, the urge to travel overtook him again. A ten year stretch of American suburban life was all he could take before becoming restless. When the Korean War ended, an opportunity to teach at the university's extension at Camp Casey in Korea appeared. He grabbed it, and off he went leaving his wife in Maryland with their small daughter. They would see him once a year when he would return to spend Christmas with them.
When Mr. Professor arrived in Korea, he found an impoverished country just beginning to pick up the pieces of a society smashed by years of war. Many people would look at grinding poverty and all the ills that follow it, crime, filth, delapidation, lack of basic facilities, and run away. Others see in it opportunity. They thrive on it. An average man among suppressed people becomes an exceptional man, a superman. One could get by on a college teacher's salary in the States, but in Korea in those days an American with any income was a tycoon. As for the locals, poverty, of course could have an opposite effect. When the stomach calls out for food and there is none, the unthinkable becomes thinkable. That was the case with a woman and her daughter whom Mr. Professor encountered standing together and crying in front of the Lone Star Bar on a narrow crowded street in Seoul one evening. The woman looked very old, hunched over with wrinkled, weather beaten skin and greying hair. Her traditional Korean short jacket and full skirt were frayed and had lost their original whiteness. The daughter looked like a little girl, a ragamuffin with an angelic face. Actually, the woman was not as old as she looked. She was in her forties. And the daughter was not quite as young as she appeared. She was a teenager.
Although Mr. Professor had only recently arrived in the country, he already knew enough Korean to converse reasonably well and used his newly acquired language skills to try to comfort the woman and her daughter. The woman told him that she was a widow. Her husband had been a soldier in the South Korean Army during the war and had been killed, leaving her with five children and no means of support. She had left her village and come to the city in hope of finding work, but there was little to find. The proprietor of the Lone Star Bar had seen the daughter in the street, admired her beauty, saw her potential, and offered the mother a small sum of money to have her daughter as a bar girl. It was a deal too difficult to accept because it meant the unthinkable, selling her daughter into a life of sin. On the other hand it seemed impossible to refuse. It would mean one less mouth to feed and money to buy food for the other four. And so, the two were standing in front of the Lone Star Bar, saying goodbye, as the mother was about to sell her child for survival.
But Mr. Professor had an alternate plan. The beautiful daughter would come to live with him, and he would give the mother a small stipend each month which would allow her and her other four children to live comfortably. In other times, selling her daughter to an American would not have set well, but given the alternative, it was a last minute miracle.
And so, Mr. Professor rented two adjacent houses in Yong Dong Po, a suburb of Seoul, one for him and his fourteen year old mistress, Lee, and the other for his "in-laws." During the week he lived in a room in the bachelor officers quarters at Camp Casey where he worked, and on Friday evenings he would drive his motorcycle down to Seoul to spend the weekends with Lee. Lee turned out to be not only beautiful but also intelligent. Mr. Professor saw to it that she had a proper education. He sent her to the best school he could find. She learned to speak English fluently, even mastering Mr. Professor's Maryland accent. Those were happy years for the two of them. They spent every weekend together, except for the two weeks around Christmas when he went to visit his Polish wife in the U.S. They would visit the palaces, museums, and gardens in Seoul. At times they would take week long trips to Cheggido Island, to Japan, to Hong Kong. She grew from a teenage waif into a beautiful educated young woman. And then she was ready for college. She wanted to study in America. Although Mr. Professor was sad to see her go, he knew it had to be. It was in her best interest. Her mother opposed it, but he encouraged it. He decided that she would study at his school, the University of Maryland, and so he sent her to live with his wife and daughter while she went to school. They accepted her, and the three of them got along well. Nothing was ever said. Outwardly, she was just an exchange student whom Mr. Professor sponsored because he was a friend of her family. I don't know if his wife and daughter ever actually knew what his relationship with her had been, but I suspect that deep down they really did know.
Meanwhile, back in Korea, Mr. Professor quickly became lonely without Lee. He tried to start up with her younger sister who was now in her teens, but that was too much for her mother to take. By this time she had saved up enough money by being creative with Mr. Professor's stipend to move out with her four children and go back to her home village. Mr. Professor never heard from them again. Lee finished college, went on to medical school, married one of her class mates, and became a pediatrician. She now lives with her husband in California. The last I heard about Mr. Professor, he had picked up another Korean teenager and was living with her on the weekends.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Obama and the Middle East
Recently, Senator Obama said that the Palestinians have suffered more than anyone. Actually there are many people in this world who have suffered at least as much as they have. The Israeli people certainly have also suffered much. I don't think it should be necessary to have a suffering contest as to who has suffered the most. Anyway, Senator Obama clarified his statement by saying that the suffering of the Palestinian people has been because of the unwillingness of their leaders to make peace with Israel. One might also add the surrounding Arab countries that invaded Israel in 1948 and have used the Palestinians to deflect their public opinion from their own failings, keeping many of the Palestinians in "refugee camps" instead of settling them into their communities as Israel did with the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.
Since Senator Obama's clarification, a number of anti-Israel bloggers have denounced him. Apparently they mistakenly thought he was one of them. I would like to thank those anti-semitic bloggers for confirming my faith in Senator Obama. I believe all 3 of the serious candidates still standing, Obama, Clinton, and Mc Cain have similar foreign policy objectives toward the Middle East (with slightly different tilts), namely to protect America from terrorism post 9/11 and to stand by our true allies like Israel. I believe Senator Obama is the most effective leader to do it.
Since Senator Obama's clarification, a number of anti-Israel bloggers have denounced him. Apparently they mistakenly thought he was one of them. I would like to thank those anti-semitic bloggers for confirming my faith in Senator Obama. I believe all 3 of the serious candidates still standing, Obama, Clinton, and Mc Cain have similar foreign policy objectives toward the Middle East (with slightly different tilts), namely to protect America from terrorism post 9/11 and to stand by our true allies like Israel. I believe Senator Obama is the most effective leader to do it.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Zionism
I am an American, a Jew, and a Zionist. America is my country. I was born in America, have lived here all my life, and have no desire to live anywhere else. I was also born into the Jewish religion and feel comfortable in it. I went into detail about my religious beliefs in an older post, How and Why I believe in God.
Zionism for me is a concern for my relatives and co-religionists who live in Israel, not for shrines of any kind. Although a yearning for a return to Israel has existed in Jewish literature for 2000 years, modern Zionism began with Theodore Herzl in the late 19th Century as an antidote to anti-semitism which still exists in some parts of the world today. Herzl believed that Jews needed a country somewhere where they could go if necessary to escape persecution. The one place that could stimulate enthusiasm on the part of Jews was the ancestral Hebrew homeland between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in what was then the Ottoman Empire and after World War I the British Mandate of Palestine.
Israel has now existed as a nation state for 60 years (3 generations) and the Jewish community there goes back long before that. That in itself is a justification for Israel's existence. The people there have no other nationality. It's their home.
It was the Arab League that invaded the country in 1948, not the Israelis who were living there already. From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they didn't. Jordan and Egypt simply occupied and annexed the territories. It was the surrounding Arab countries more than Israel that created the Palestinians' present predicament. Israel offered the Palestinian Arabs a nation which included most of what they wanted under the Clinton/Barak plan, but Yasser Arafat rejected it and started the Intifada.
We can only hope that the present negotiations between Israel and the West Bank will succeed, and that it will demonstrate to the Gaza people the benefits of peace.
Zionism for me is a concern for my relatives and co-religionists who live in Israel, not for shrines of any kind. Although a yearning for a return to Israel has existed in Jewish literature for 2000 years, modern Zionism began with Theodore Herzl in the late 19th Century as an antidote to anti-semitism which still exists in some parts of the world today. Herzl believed that Jews needed a country somewhere where they could go if necessary to escape persecution. The one place that could stimulate enthusiasm on the part of Jews was the ancestral Hebrew homeland between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in what was then the Ottoman Empire and after World War I the British Mandate of Palestine.
Israel has now existed as a nation state for 60 years (3 generations) and the Jewish community there goes back long before that. That in itself is a justification for Israel's existence. The people there have no other nationality. It's their home.
It was the Arab League that invaded the country in 1948, not the Israelis who were living there already. From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they didn't. Jordan and Egypt simply occupied and annexed the territories. It was the surrounding Arab countries more than Israel that created the Palestinians' present predicament. Israel offered the Palestinian Arabs a nation which included most of what they wanted under the Clinton/Barak plan, but Yasser Arafat rejected it and started the Intifada.
We can only hope that the present negotiations between Israel and the West Bank will succeed, and that it will demonstrate to the Gaza people the benefits of peace.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Chapter 9. The Cannibal Ambulance
Transportation was always a thing, juggling the vehicles and getting enough gasoline. For example, once when one Eighth Army Commanding General rotated back to the States, he ordered himself a huge parade in his honor. They used up so much gasoline that half our vehicles were grounded for a month to make up the deficit. But even in normal times getting a jeep was a problem. I don't mean for leisure use. I mean for work. When I would go to Seoul on a weekend off, I would take an army bus. Some guys made a big deal about being officers with their jeeps and drivers, but actually it was a pain trying to snag a grouchy private to spend his weekend off driving you around. Anyway, you could be more independent and inconspicuous on the bus.
But the bus didn't go to all the places where I had to go for work. I would gladly have bought a bicycle in the Vill, but officers couldn't ride bicycles in uniform. I guess it wouldn't have looked nice. So between sharing the jeep, mooching rides, catching the bus, and just using feet, I managed to get around most of the time.
One day Sergeant Duffy thought he found the answer to our problem when he drove up in front of the office in an ambulance. It was not quite army green, lacked markings of any kind, and leaned slightly to the left. It was beautiful in its simplicity, al least it seemed so in our eyes.
"Its nice. We can sure use it. But where'd you get it."
"From Squeaky, Sir."
"Squeaky?"
"Squeaky in the motor pool. He sold it to me for twenty dollars and thirty five cents."
"Sold it? Doesn't it belong to the Army?"
"Not really. You see Squeaky made it by cannibalizing parts from vehicles that were earmarked for the scrap heap anyway. It took him three months, but he's real smart, that Squeaky is. He can put anything together. If you give him the parts, I'll bet he could make an atomic bomb."
"Why twenty dollars and thirty five cents?"
"That was all I had in my pocket."
"Isn't that kind of cheap?"
"Well, old Squeaky doesn't have any use for it. He just likes to cannibalize things and put them together, and it didn't cost him anything."
"Something has to be wrong. This is too good to be true. There has to be something wrong."
I was just getting used to the idea of regular transportation, when along came Major Fratelli, the Division Surgeon, and we presented the ambulance to him, all bubbling with enthusiasm. Fratelli stared at it, churned the idea in his head, and said, "We have to get rid of it."
"Why? We need it for work, not for fun.
"But it's not authorized. Officially, it doesn't exist."
"So?"
"You can't have something that doesn't officially exist. That's the way it is in the Army. You have to get rid of it."
"It's not fair. Last Fall, Eighth Army burned up a month of our fuel supply just make a parade for the General. But Duffy here buys a vehicle with his own money which his friend made with his own ingenuity out of parts which were going to be thrown away anyway, and that's no good because it doesn't fit into the master plan. My grandfather came to America poor, went into the junk business and made a living out of it. That was the beginning of my family in America, my origins. That's free enterprise. What's the matter with the Army? Is it Communist?"
"It may not be fair or practical or laissez-faire, but if you guys don't get rid of that thing, we're going to get in trouble. So get rid of it. I don't care how or where. Just get rid of it."
Sergeant Duffy spent the next few days looking all over for a customer. Squeaky wouldn't take it back, let alone refund the twenty dollars and thirty five cents. Every sergeant in the Seventh Infantry Division was approached, but not one would touch the thing with a ten foot pole. I tried the Division Chaplain. Chaplains are notorious scroungers. They sometimes can get away with stuff that the rest of us can't because they're the only ones who can claim to listen to a higher authority than army manuals or whatever it is that constitutes military dos and don'ts. But even the holy men couldn't figure out what to do with it.
All seemed hopeless until Saturday night when Duffy, five days short of payday, took his last thirty five cents to the Vill to get drunk and forget about the "damn Ambulance." He passed through the gate, across the highway, over the railroad tracks, and down into the Vill, that is the honky tonk end of town near the gate that catered to the G.I.s. At the main street he turned right. All the Black bars were to the right, and the White ones were to the left. Even here there was segregation. Duffy wandered into his favorite haunt, Freddy's Detroit Bar.
"I only got thirty five cents. What you got that'll get me drunk for thirty five cents?"
"Oh, thirty five cents. That not lot a money. You not even change money to Korean. Cost me extra to change scrip. But I have for you something. Old woman in Vill make. Whole bottle cost thirty three cents, scrip. You still have two cents."
The stuff looked murky and tasted like it was intended for an internal combustion engine rather than a human stomach, but it did the job so that one third of the way down the bottle, Duffy saw the world differently.
At that point, appeared one Suzy, princess of Freddy's Detroit Bar. At least, that's what they used to call her. Her father had been a hero, a giant Black soldier who was disintegrated by an artillery shell on some ridge during the Korean War shortly after Suzy's conception. Her mother was a young Korean business girl who was strangled in a room behind the Detroit Bar by a disgruntled American customer, leaving Suzy an orphan to be raised by Freddy (his real name was Kim Cho Lee) and his business girls. She knew no other life, no other place. She was condemned to this life by her inheritance and her environment. She had no other opportunity. Suzy, at fourteen years of age, was already a big girl, almost six feet tall, the image of her father, with only her mother's Korean eyes and straight black hair. She wore a tight sweater that accentuated her abundant muscles and fat as well as two huge pendulous breasts. Her micro-miniskirt exposed thighs that could have supported the Parthenon. Who's to say what is beautiful? To Duffy she was gorgeous, especially after a few snorts of Freddy's brew.
"Duffy, you buy me drink. We go hootchie. Do something."
"Suzy baby, you're welcome to share my bottle."
"You crazy? I no drink that shit! You no like me. You want poison me."
"But baby, I spent all my money. I only got two pennies left 'til next pay day."
"Duffy baby, you nice guy. But I no work for nothing. Five dollar all night. Two dollar one time. You no have two dollar, goodbye Suzy."
"But Suzy baby, I need you and I need you now, 'cause I'm really low. I got this problem and I'm really low."
"Duffy baby, I do free just for fun, I no eat. You got two dollar, we do something. No two dollar, we no do something."
"How about we do it tonight, and I pay you when I get my money on pay day."
"How I know you pay me?"
"I can give you collateral."
"What you mean?"
"I have an ambulance. That's what I spent my money on. I'll give you the ambulance to hold until pay day."
"You crazy? What I do with ambulance? I no doctor."
Freddy behind the bar was listening to this entire conversation, absorbing it, processing it in his head, and finally breaking in with, "Suzy, Sergeant Duffy good customer. I trust him. Sergeant, you bring ambulance now and take back when you get money. But, you do something now, pay later, like loan from bank. You pay interest. You do Suzy all night, ten dollar. You pay five dollar interest, so you pay fifteen dollar."
"Freddy, you're a crook."
"Freddy just good business man."
Duffy agreed. What else could he do? He ran back to the post, and drove the ambulance out the gate in a rush, claiming that he had an emergency patient that needed to get to the MASH right away, so that the guard neglected to note the lack of markings on the vehicle. He proceeded over to the Detroit Bar where the deal was concluded. By now it was almost the midnight curfew, but Duffy didn't go back to the post until long after the gate opened the next day. He spent the night with Suzy, enjoying the fruits of his bargain.
Duffy returned on pay day, fifteen dollars in hand.
"Freddy, you crook. Here's my money. Give me my wheels."
"What?"
"My wheels! The ambulance, you dumb slope!"
"Oh, ambulance. No have ambulance. Slicky boy come in night. Take ambulance. Sergeant, you keep fifteen dollar. My loss."
Duffy grabbed Freddy by the collar. What do you mean your loss, you honky slope crook? I paid twenty dollars and thirty five cents for that ambulance, and it's worth a lot more than that!"
"No be so mad, Sergeant. Freddy can fix problem. You say true, I owe you ambulance or twenty dollar and thirty five cent scrip. You owe me fifteen dollars won. So, I must count."
Freddy wrote in the air as though he were computing some complex mathematical formula. He appeared to make a mistake, slurping with his mouth, erasing in the air, and then writing again. Finally, the calculations were completed. "Twenty dollar, thirty five cent ambulance cost, take away fifteen dollar Suzy cost, leave five dollar, thirty five cent scrip. Cost me four dollar change fifteen dollar scrip to won. I give you one dollar, thirty five cent scrip. Then we O.K."
"Hell no, you cheat! It don't cost any four dollars to change fifteen dollars!"
"Police very careful now. Very dangerous to change money now. Freddy can go jail."
"By this time, Duffy was getting tired of the haggling, and two tough looking associates of Freddy sitting at a table in the corner were starting to appear edgey. So Duffy took the dollar and thirty five cents and left.
Some time later a freshly painted white ambulance appeared in Tongduchon. The rumor that floated around was that Freddy worked out a deal with a local clinic, the ambulance in exchange for two hundred dollars worth of V.D. checks on his girls.
But the bus didn't go to all the places where I had to go for work. I would gladly have bought a bicycle in the Vill, but officers couldn't ride bicycles in uniform. I guess it wouldn't have looked nice. So between sharing the jeep, mooching rides, catching the bus, and just using feet, I managed to get around most of the time.
One day Sergeant Duffy thought he found the answer to our problem when he drove up in front of the office in an ambulance. It was not quite army green, lacked markings of any kind, and leaned slightly to the left. It was beautiful in its simplicity, al least it seemed so in our eyes.
"Its nice. We can sure use it. But where'd you get it."
"From Squeaky, Sir."
"Squeaky?"
"Squeaky in the motor pool. He sold it to me for twenty dollars and thirty five cents."
"Sold it? Doesn't it belong to the Army?"
"Not really. You see Squeaky made it by cannibalizing parts from vehicles that were earmarked for the scrap heap anyway. It took him three months, but he's real smart, that Squeaky is. He can put anything together. If you give him the parts, I'll bet he could make an atomic bomb."
"Why twenty dollars and thirty five cents?"
"That was all I had in my pocket."
"Isn't that kind of cheap?"
"Well, old Squeaky doesn't have any use for it. He just likes to cannibalize things and put them together, and it didn't cost him anything."
"Something has to be wrong. This is too good to be true. There has to be something wrong."
I was just getting used to the idea of regular transportation, when along came Major Fratelli, the Division Surgeon, and we presented the ambulance to him, all bubbling with enthusiasm. Fratelli stared at it, churned the idea in his head, and said, "We have to get rid of it."
"Why? We need it for work, not for fun.
"But it's not authorized. Officially, it doesn't exist."
"So?"
"You can't have something that doesn't officially exist. That's the way it is in the Army. You have to get rid of it."
"It's not fair. Last Fall, Eighth Army burned up a month of our fuel supply just make a parade for the General. But Duffy here buys a vehicle with his own money which his friend made with his own ingenuity out of parts which were going to be thrown away anyway, and that's no good because it doesn't fit into the master plan. My grandfather came to America poor, went into the junk business and made a living out of it. That was the beginning of my family in America, my origins. That's free enterprise. What's the matter with the Army? Is it Communist?"
"It may not be fair or practical or laissez-faire, but if you guys don't get rid of that thing, we're going to get in trouble. So get rid of it. I don't care how or where. Just get rid of it."
Sergeant Duffy spent the next few days looking all over for a customer. Squeaky wouldn't take it back, let alone refund the twenty dollars and thirty five cents. Every sergeant in the Seventh Infantry Division was approached, but not one would touch the thing with a ten foot pole. I tried the Division Chaplain. Chaplains are notorious scroungers. They sometimes can get away with stuff that the rest of us can't because they're the only ones who can claim to listen to a higher authority than army manuals or whatever it is that constitutes military dos and don'ts. But even the holy men couldn't figure out what to do with it.
All seemed hopeless until Saturday night when Duffy, five days short of payday, took his last thirty five cents to the Vill to get drunk and forget about the "damn Ambulance." He passed through the gate, across the highway, over the railroad tracks, and down into the Vill, that is the honky tonk end of town near the gate that catered to the G.I.s. At the main street he turned right. All the Black bars were to the right, and the White ones were to the left. Even here there was segregation. Duffy wandered into his favorite haunt, Freddy's Detroit Bar.
"I only got thirty five cents. What you got that'll get me drunk for thirty five cents?"
"Oh, thirty five cents. That not lot a money. You not even change money to Korean. Cost me extra to change scrip. But I have for you something. Old woman in Vill make. Whole bottle cost thirty three cents, scrip. You still have two cents."
The stuff looked murky and tasted like it was intended for an internal combustion engine rather than a human stomach, but it did the job so that one third of the way down the bottle, Duffy saw the world differently.
At that point, appeared one Suzy, princess of Freddy's Detroit Bar. At least, that's what they used to call her. Her father had been a hero, a giant Black soldier who was disintegrated by an artillery shell on some ridge during the Korean War shortly after Suzy's conception. Her mother was a young Korean business girl who was strangled in a room behind the Detroit Bar by a disgruntled American customer, leaving Suzy an orphan to be raised by Freddy (his real name was Kim Cho Lee) and his business girls. She knew no other life, no other place. She was condemned to this life by her inheritance and her environment. She had no other opportunity. Suzy, at fourteen years of age, was already a big girl, almost six feet tall, the image of her father, with only her mother's Korean eyes and straight black hair. She wore a tight sweater that accentuated her abundant muscles and fat as well as two huge pendulous breasts. Her micro-miniskirt exposed thighs that could have supported the Parthenon. Who's to say what is beautiful? To Duffy she was gorgeous, especially after a few snorts of Freddy's brew.
"Duffy, you buy me drink. We go hootchie. Do something."
"Suzy baby, you're welcome to share my bottle."
"You crazy? I no drink that shit! You no like me. You want poison me."
"But baby, I spent all my money. I only got two pennies left 'til next pay day."
"Duffy baby, you nice guy. But I no work for nothing. Five dollar all night. Two dollar one time. You no have two dollar, goodbye Suzy."
"But Suzy baby, I need you and I need you now, 'cause I'm really low. I got this problem and I'm really low."
"Duffy baby, I do free just for fun, I no eat. You got two dollar, we do something. No two dollar, we no do something."
"How about we do it tonight, and I pay you when I get my money on pay day."
"How I know you pay me?"
"I can give you collateral."
"What you mean?"
"I have an ambulance. That's what I spent my money on. I'll give you the ambulance to hold until pay day."
"You crazy? What I do with ambulance? I no doctor."
Freddy behind the bar was listening to this entire conversation, absorbing it, processing it in his head, and finally breaking in with, "Suzy, Sergeant Duffy good customer. I trust him. Sergeant, you bring ambulance now and take back when you get money. But, you do something now, pay later, like loan from bank. You pay interest. You do Suzy all night, ten dollar. You pay five dollar interest, so you pay fifteen dollar."
"Freddy, you're a crook."
"Freddy just good business man."
Duffy agreed. What else could he do? He ran back to the post, and drove the ambulance out the gate in a rush, claiming that he had an emergency patient that needed to get to the MASH right away, so that the guard neglected to note the lack of markings on the vehicle. He proceeded over to the Detroit Bar where the deal was concluded. By now it was almost the midnight curfew, but Duffy didn't go back to the post until long after the gate opened the next day. He spent the night with Suzy, enjoying the fruits of his bargain.
Duffy returned on pay day, fifteen dollars in hand.
"Freddy, you crook. Here's my money. Give me my wheels."
"What?"
"My wheels! The ambulance, you dumb slope!"
"Oh, ambulance. No have ambulance. Slicky boy come in night. Take ambulance. Sergeant, you keep fifteen dollar. My loss."
Duffy grabbed Freddy by the collar. What do you mean your loss, you honky slope crook? I paid twenty dollars and thirty five cents for that ambulance, and it's worth a lot more than that!"
"No be so mad, Sergeant. Freddy can fix problem. You say true, I owe you ambulance or twenty dollar and thirty five cent scrip. You owe me fifteen dollars won. So, I must count."
Freddy wrote in the air as though he were computing some complex mathematical formula. He appeared to make a mistake, slurping with his mouth, erasing in the air, and then writing again. Finally, the calculations were completed. "Twenty dollar, thirty five cent ambulance cost, take away fifteen dollar Suzy cost, leave five dollar, thirty five cent scrip. Cost me four dollar change fifteen dollar scrip to won. I give you one dollar, thirty five cent scrip. Then we O.K."
"Hell no, you cheat! It don't cost any four dollars to change fifteen dollars!"
"Police very careful now. Very dangerous to change money now. Freddy can go jail."
"By this time, Duffy was getting tired of the haggling, and two tough looking associates of Freddy sitting at a table in the corner were starting to appear edgey. So Duffy took the dollar and thirty five cents and left.
Some time later a freshly painted white ambulance appeared in Tongduchon. The rumor that floated around was that Freddy worked out a deal with a local clinic, the ambulance in exchange for two hundred dollars worth of V.D. checks on his girls.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Obama
I favor Barack Obama over all the candidates in either party. Although I think of myself as an Independant, I do tilt toward the Democrats. So I will confine my remarks to the Democratic primaries. I don't care for Edwards. He is the one Democrat who could turn me into a Republican. As for health care, he seems to be on a crusade against the people whom he perceives to be the bad guys. He has a simplistic plan for a complex problem. As for Hilary Clinton, she and Obama are not so different on policy. Maybe that's why they went after each other at yesterday's debate. What else was there to talk about? I think it really comes down to who would do a better job. Clinton claims that she is ready to start on day one because she hung around the White House in the past, and Obama is a relative newcomer. History does not support that. Richard Nixon and both George Bushes had ties to the White House before becoming president. John Kennedy and Bill Clinton were newcomers. Hilary Clinton might be OK, but I would like my president to be more than just OK. Obama is charismatic, interesting, and exciting. He listens to people who have an opposing point of view and can work with them. As for the war on terror, he wants to bring our troops home from Iraq, but has made it clear that he is ready to strike at anyone who tries to do harm to the American people. As for health care, his plan is flexible enough to really work. He has the ability to bring people together to solve problems which he has demonstrated during his time in the Senate.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Twins
I am enthusiastically happy to announce that my daughter-in-law gave birth to beautiful, healthy twins, a boy and a girl. So I now have 4 grandchildren. How blessed can one be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
