M Y O B

MY LIFE IN VIETNAM

I begin here a long series of pages relating events in my life while in VietNam. I wrote many letters which were circulated among family and friends, and which my Dad saved: I still have them.

Because I was writing to many people (Dad copied and re-mailed many letters to a distribution list I supplied), there is little of the gay side of those times included. That aspect has been covered in a couple of my stories (on Nifty), but will be included where appropriate in the pages which follow.

I consider myself reasonably articulate and observant: yet, prior to arriving in VietNam, I’d have been hard-pressed to take a stand on the war there. It was something that was, for those not directly involved, pretty much in the background. President Johnson’s “guns and butter” philosophy was designed to keep the war in the background: the kind of war-time sacrifices (rationing, “War stamps” and all that sort of thing I grew up with during WW II) were not imposed, so it was easy for Americans to ignore the Vietnam War. As I would soon discover, it was not so easy for the Vietnamese to ignore.

War Savings Stamp (WWII)

What  I think is significant, (and clearly revealed in my letters), is how quickly I perceived what a colossal mistake the whole war was! Now, what particularly appalls me is that we clearly learned nothing from the experience, for we continue to this day to wage war where we should be waging peace.

For any of my readers unfamiliar with the Tet Offensive of 1968, I recommend reading the WikiPedia synopsis before going on with my narrative and letters. As far as I know, these letters will be the first on the net from a civilian who was there, at least for a while.

27 January, 1968

Dear ones all –

We made it, but it was a long haul. The group, 16 in number, embarked LA about 8PM on the 25th, and 21 hours later touched down at Ton Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, VN. It was, of course, dark all the way to Guam (we stopped at Honolulu and Wake) but there the sun caught up with us and we were able to witness a beautiful tropical sunrise at about 7:30 local time. From Guam we flew directly to Saigon, by-passing (but flying directly over) Manila. The actual flying time was about 17 hours; the distance 8920 miles (according to PanAm charts). Although tourist class and filled every inch of the way, the flight wasn’t too bad—just long. Somewhere along the way I made an estimate of my total flying miles and was disappointed to find it’s only about 40,000 miles.

Pan Am Ticket Stub

Our arrival at Ton Son Nhut was about 10:00 am local time, and after the usual clumsy customs and immigration clearance, we were transported to PA&E HQ (nearby) for a quick briefing and a little paperwork. Then on into Saigon proper for billeting at Loc Building, 318 Phan-thanh-Gian; this is a hotel, and quite a good one by local standards; H & C running water, good food & reasonable rates. Quite modern and up to date, though architecturally unlike anything we know in the states. Naturally!

It is Saturday here, the first day of Tet, the celebration of the New [lunar] Year (of the monkey). We’re told the streets of Saigon are not the place to be the next 5 days, so haven’t seen much so far. I’ll have plenty of time to get familiar with it all, apparently.

My only observation so far is that the US “Military Presence” is all-pervading and EVERYWHERE!! Since there is active fighting within 50 miles of Saigon, it’s a pretty tightly controlled place. Ton Son Nhut Airbase (Airport, really, but converted to a base) is a veritable beehive of aircraft operations, visited not only by half a dozen international carriers, but by hundreds of Military aircraft as well.

Our briefing was exactly that—brief—and not too instructive. However, it does appear I am the first “chemist” to arrive here under PA&E contract, and it appears I’ll be based at Long BInh. This is the largest [US]army installation in VN, situated about 12 miles out of Saigon. Reportedly, it is one of the safest places to be in all VN, and of course is handy to Saigon. All this will become clearer as full briefing gets under way Monday. (Tet notwithstanding, PA&E works on!)

The weather—right now—is terrific. About 75, and not overpoweringly humid. January is, of course, Saigon’s best month, and it will get steadily hotter until late in May when monsoons arrive. But for the moment weather is great and a welcome change from the cold dampness of SF. (If I had elected to fly down Thursday from SF, I’d have gotten fogged in and barely made it, as one of our group found out).

The time change is catching up with me; so, though it is early here, I’ve got to hit the sack for a while. Please find an old shoebox or equivalent to toss the various items included [with this letter] into—I’m an inveterate saver of such reminders of various adventures; also circulate this letter to family and somebody retain it later on.

Whatever else, don’t worry! Though there’s plenty of trouble to be gotten into here, one has to seek it out—it rarely works the other way. I’m not here looking for it, so the law of averages works in my favor!

Love to all from (of all places!) Saigon, VN

Bruce

Here endeth the first letter, of many yet to come!

PARENTHETICAL INFORMATION

An odd fact was that for a number of years, Saigon was the only place outside the northern hemisphere where my two brothers and I had all been at one time or another. My oldest brother passed through in 1958, and my older brother visited Saigon on business while I was there. I met him at Ton Son Nhut as I would at any other airport. But the building he stayed in took a rocket hit that night and he was “urged to depart”, which he did! When older bro finally went to Europe, Saigon lost this distinction.

INITIAL IMPRESSION

Within just a few hours of arrival in VietNam, I realized I was going to like it! Everywhere I turned there were scantily-clad youngsters, most often bare-legged.  As a confirmed chicken-queen, I thought I’d found heaven!

Wrong kind!

Unfortunately, I had only a cheap little Instamatic camera, so I got far too few photos of much of anything in Vietnam. It would be some time before any of us got away from the Loc Building, because of the Tet madness, about which more later!

My second letter from VietNam will appear soon.

August 12, 2009

Letters are coming about once a week now.

Sat. 7 April 1968

Dear Everybody~

Pardon my using up this ti ti paper! I seem to have run out of the larger stuff I had around.

The week began well enough, with receipt of a letter from the IRS acknowledging their error and promising to refund all my money plus interest. Indeed, I have received one check already. It only took them two months, along with five letters from me to get it straightened out!

Early in the week I busied myself with more refrigerator work and similar stuff. Midweek, however, I was called to see the Inst. Mgr. (Dan Smythe), and it seems that when the Army inspected us on March 14, they didn’t find the Lab situation too pleasing, and so rapped (or “gigged”, as the Army puts it) him pretty hard. Naturally, he produced reams of “CYA” material (CYA = Cover Your Ass“) through which he laid all the blame on CMO, and after we’d gone over that thoroughly, he laid the monkey squarely in my lap: ”just what I’ve been waiting for. He hasn’t yet any idea of the pandora’s box he’s opened, but since he is soon to be relieved as near as anyone can tell, it won’t really matter. Today I finally got to see the right people at USARV, and received a most sympathetic and even enthusiastic response there. All sorts of possibilities are opening up, though the implementation will take boocoo time, no doubt. Eventually, there’s even the possibility I may go to Japan to buy equipment (I’d have to think that over very carefully!); the presently projected staff to comply with Dan’s ideas is about 14, and to comply with what the Army seems to have in mind will be even more! Naturally, I’ve elevated my self to Chief of Water Lab (actually, Dan so addresses me)! Among other things that I hope will become involved here is transfer of the Lab to new quarters as near as possible to Tan Son Nhut (to facilitate transportation of samples and field support teams), and to get away from that infernal dust at LB. It’s all at a very nebulous stage now, and will stay that way for awhile through the technical discussion period. The plan is to start tunneling from two ends: USARV and CMO and hope we meet somewhere along the line.

The news from home this week has certainly been fast breaking and heart breaking. I was only mildly surprised at Johnson.s decision not to run, because several commentators had suggested the possibility, and because Johnson is, above all else, a politician: politically, he has taken the surest road to coming out of it all smelling like a rose no matter what happens. If he allows himself to be drafted, and loses, he can always say, “Well, I wanted out back in April; if he wins, no one will even bring the matter up. And of course, if he actually refuses a draft, he will have served notice far enough in advance. Above it all is his “lofty purpose,” to which he can always pridefully point: to be President uninterrupted right through his full term. And BEHIND it all, is the fact that his “new” policy on VN may becalm the Kennedy and McCarthy sloops. This sudden and dramatic about-face on VN may well take a lot of wind out of all his opponents’ sails, and if he actually gets any concrete response from Hanoi, he’s assured, I think, of a popular-acclaim draft for another term (in spite of the fact I still don’t think he deserves it).

The saddest aspect of it that I can see is what I interpret as pretty solid evidence that his TIMING in the matter was almost solely timed for political expediency, rather than for the good of the country. And as subsequent events have shown, he has sold America down the river as a result. His lukewarm response to his own commission’s riot report (which as I write this is probably being reappraised by him and will be the major topic in his address to Congress Monday) certainly did not help matters a bit.

As to the prospects for his halt-the-bombing step resulting in any real progress, the feeling here runs from a high of exceedingly cautious optimism down to total rejection. I would place my own feelings in the former group. I think the most significant thing in Johnson’s speech may have been his pointed omission of anything related to what he may do if Hanoi does not respond positively, or if Hanoi takes the opportunity (as most everyone here expects they will) to re-trench.

The news of Dr. King;s assassination was received here with considerable unofficial jubilation. Racism is more rampant here among the americans than at home–if that be possible. The ignorance revealed by most peoples’ notion that Dr. King’s demise will calm things down in america is, of course, made apparent by reports of renewed violence, which is bound to become worse before any relief is gained. America seems bound for a revolution at last, and perhaps the only thing that can be said for it is that the sooner it runs its course the sooner some sort of normalcy (hopefully with some important improvements) can be resumed. That revolution has been in the works for some time, and that it probably could not have been prevented by anyone seems evident to me: but I believe wiser leadership by the President might have made it a less destructive and more constructive sort of revolution. It remains to be seen, of course, but I have the feeling that little constructive progress in the field of human relations is going to appear in the US for some years. I have no reason to think that Kennedy or Nixon—should either get elected, will (or can) do much about this, and I fear that McCarthy lacks the drive to back up  his determination.

The weather here has grown steadily hotter, though by no means unbearable as far as I am concerned. We logged 108° F a few days ago, but had an hour of rain at LB one night (though none in Saigon!).

Schools reopened in Saigon April lst, and in the AM & PM both, the streets are awash with youngsters, for the most part dolled up in blue pants or shorts and white shirt (boys) and black pajamas with white ao dai’s (girls). Where all these kids have been keeping themselves the past weeks I don’t know, but with all of them out on the streets now, traffic is hampered considerably. All schools are on double session: 8-12 and 2-6. They run the full year ’round, with a break only at Tet and numerous one-day holidays throughout the year. The week is six days long.

I had letters on Wednesday from all branches of the family. For everybody’s information, a water point is simply a well, creek, etc. where water is produced for consumption, either potable for drinking purposes or non potable for industrial use. Over here, it is usually a well-pump-generator set up, with a chlorinator. Nothing to it really, and I haven’t yet had to run one.

Guess that’s 30. Oh: I continue to enjoy the radio, and we’ve been having some power outages here lately that drop out all the fluorescent-light static, and reception is very good! I suspect I may have my tapes shipped over, though: machines are very cheap,here, and I miss a lot of my music.

Love to all
Bruce

At this point in my narrative, I had been in Vietnam for about 9 weeks. Suddenly, I became “legal€”my USARV pass was issued. I wear this on a chain, along with several other items, but usually tucked them all into my shirt pocket.

Saigon USARV Pass

I don’t recall any occasion when someone actually asked to see it, but there must have been a few times when it got me into some place I might not otherwise have been allowed.

I also got to carry the document shown below: It ID’s me as working in country for PA&E.

I also carried the document shown below: I think it is a local Driver’s License.

Virtually all documents we were required to carry got encapsulated in plastic one way or another: otherwise, humidity and mildew were likely to cause them to disintegrate quite rapidly.

Here is another letter, written a week later: note at ten weeks, the first mention of leaving Vietnam!

Easter Sunday,14 April (here)

Dear Everyone~

Just a week ago I sat here writing of the fairly eventful week that preceded last Sunday. The week I now write about has been less eventful here, but (predictably) fairly eventful at home. Until Teusday night, AFVN suspended normal programming in deference to Dr. King’s demise, and all flags (including the Vietnamese ones) flew at half-mast. The news from all corners of the world was of the intense and bloody reaction that followed the assassination. Though I never heard San Francisco specifically mentioned, word from friends there indicates that there was some disorderliness there, which, of course, I would have found surprising had none occurred. All this is only a presage of things to come; revolutions generally follow pretty predictable courses, so there is bound to be much more activity, much more bloodshed, and much more hard feeling.

Throughout the week, these events at home came up in conversation often. The general concensus was always to the general effect that “we” were going to have to kill off a whole lot more of “those n——-s” in order to straighten out this thing. Quite predictably, when I suggested the simple alternative of just treating the black people like people, which they are, instead of like animals, which they are not, these conversations came to a quick halt (precisely what I desired). Actually, moving into these circles here is like stepping backwards in time about twenty years. Where, in the US, one can usually count on generating a little sympathy for the black man’s cause in just about any group, here, among the professional expatriates who make up the bulk of the american population, one is considered wildly radical if he departs from the hard-line racism in the slightest degree. Hence, I am considered a dangerous liberal: if most of my acquaintances here (I consider none of them friends!) were to know just how far my liberalism goes, I would probably be totally ostracised. Fortunately, I was not unprepared to be trapped in this mire of ignorance: my internal idealism and seemingly perpetual optimism are both bearing up well. My faith in the fortuitous process of dieing-out of the current generation with the slow but inexorable consequence of change in attitudes is not diminished; this, coupled with the determination of many people of many colors to erase the color line will, I am sure, combine to bring about a better time for everyone: the tragedy lies in the fact that what should be so simple a task turns out to be so difficult.

As far as work goes, I can’t report much progress, but at least I have managed to generate some sympathy for my predicament both in fairly high eschelons of the Army and at CMO. Taking Dan Smyth’s mandate as a starting point, and interpreting both it and our contract with the Army as broadly as possibly, I am developing a program of magnitude that will, I am sure, set Dan back on his heels! Briefly, the essence of it includes three basic concepts: 1) that responsibility for the laboratory be returned to the Installations Department of CMO; 2) an entirely new laboratory be constructed from the ground up; and 3) supplies and equipment for at least a years’ operation be procured under my direction through direct US purchase and flown over by the AF; meanwhile going through the normal Fed Stock System in the hopes that future re-supply can be so obtained.

A program of this magnitude is about equivalent to setting up a central water laboratory facility for the state of California, and will involve in its first year the expenditure of about half a million dollars. The staff will grow rapidly to some twenty persons; the lab will occupy about 10,000 sq ft (as compared with about 1000 in the present structure). New applicable Army Regulations deal heavily with “CBR” agents (Chemical, Biological, and Radiological), which require vast quantities of expensive equipment and very sophisticated personnel to run it.

Assuming the program is adopted and implemented (and several people at USARV are most enthusiastic), there is a distinct possibility I might have to go TDY to the states to supervise the initial procurement. When this will be is impossible to foretell now. Almost certainly, one or more trips to Japan would also be required, since that is the logical place to procure the more bulky lab furnishings, as well as some items of instrumentation. I contemplate definitely getting an AA unit like we had at my previous employer.

All the vagueries of this entire situation here, however, combine to make all this very tenuous at best, and quite possibly no action at all will be taken towards implementing this program. In that event, I won’t stay here in Vietnam past June 30th, when the company must perforce give everyone a “completed contract” in order to close out its FY contract with the Army. At such time there is always a shake-up in personnel for all sorts of reasons. If I see no future in my position by then, I shall, in local parlance, di di mau, though not to the states you can be sure: most probably my next stop would be Indonesia, where a number of more or less international oil firms are quite busy, and where I think I might have a good possibility of getting on. Time will tell!

The weather is beginning to change subtly. It remains hot, of course, which, as I have repeatedly mentioned, is a delight for me. The humidity is beginning to rise above its usual 80%, or so, which results is surprisingly little discomfort if one can dress properly for it. Already it has rained occasionally, twice in Saigon and three times in LB so far. So far it has been light by tropical standards. These are the first rains since 10 December, and it will continue sporadically now, becoming more frequent through May and June, with almost daily showers through July and August, and almost continuous rains through September.

I haven’t yet found an issue of the Geographic with the Saigon article. Todd is correct when he says that one goes out Le Van Duyet to get to Hiway 1; I have been incorrect in referring to the Hiway I ride daily to Long Binh as Hiway 1: 1 think it is 1A, but the local name is simply Xa Lo Bien Hoa (X VN = S Eng) or Bien Hoa Hiway. (Bien Hoa is pronounced “been wah”). Hence, one goes North-East on Phan-thanh-Gian, which becomes the hiway to Bien Hoa, which is adjacent to Long Binh. I’ll draw a little map to enclose which may make all this a little clearer.

That about does it, except for whatever personal notes I may add to individual letters. I expect there will be letters awaiting me at LB tomorrow AM, as there have been none this week: as Todd says, we’ve been crossing in the mails, aided by the fact it takes longer for letters to get from there to here than from here to there. Cest la Post!

Love to all~
Bruce

Here is the map I drew:

The map is deceiving, because there’s no scale. Where it says “much of Saigon not shown” is an understatement. From that point to Long Binh was about 20 miles or so.

More letters in a few days!

NEXT

FIFTH BIRTHDAY:

I hate cooked carrots: I love’ ’em raw, or in carrot & raisin salad, but they (and most root-veggies) take on a bad flavor when cooked. Now, my folks generally would put up with my tantrum when Mom served carrots, asking me to”just eat a few” but I was a stubborn tyke and they usually gave up. So, I thought it was a particularly bad choice to serve carrots on my BIRTHDAY, and I absolutely refused to eat any of them. My Dad must have had a bad day, because he was determined; so, as never before (or ever again), he took me out into the kitchen and forced those damn carrots down my throat! I suspect you know what’s coming: as soon as Dad turned his back, I launched those friggin carrots (and everything else in my stomach) all over the floor. My Mom (who I am sure was aghast at Dad’s behavior) made him clean up the mess. I never had to eat carrots again!

ALMONDS:

Our little spread of five acres had mostly almond trees, which — by golly –produced almonds! The problem was, we could not afford to have them harvested by others: we did it ourselves. Mostly, I was too young to get involved with the heavy work, but I could be pressed into service removing the hulls. (We sold the nuts to a co-op: they fetched a better price if they had no hulls, and money was tight in those days). Gad, how I hated that work! It was dirty, the fuzz got into your eyes, nose, and elsewhere causing severe itching. It should come as no surprise that I still do not like almonds!

OLIVES:

Across the road from our place was a group of olive trees. No one ever harvested them: they were just there. But, although olives eventually turn black while still on the tree, they taste HORRIBLE: olives must be “cured” before they become edible. But one of our favorite little tricks was to put a couple of the UNcured olives in the dish of olives Mom like to have if we had guests. We boys knew which ones were uncured, but the guests didn’t. With much giggling we’d watch a guest try to get one of the bad olives down without revealing they tasted awful. Mom, of course got on to us soon enough and would carefully inspect the dishes of olives she put out, thus ending that little prank.

CREAM:

But we had lots of other pranks! One was to put a table-spoon of vinegar into the coffee urn at church socials. It does nothing to the flavor of the coffee, but it makes any added cream curdle. Here we were in the middle of farm country, where fresh cream was the very finest, but it curdled. We three really were hellions, and soon became suspect whenever anything “went wrong.

ENTRAILS:

All of us loathed beef-kidneys and beef-liver. I still do! But Dad loved them, so Mom would buy them from time to time. She always left them out prominently, so the three of us would be absolutely beastly all day, and would be punished by being put to bed without any dinner. Mom always relented, and allowed us to come down later to eat bread and milk with sugar and cinnamon on top, which we all loved. Only many years later did I realize the whole thing with entrails was a charade: when Mom & Dad wanted a quiet dinner alone, serving something we hated was their way of getting it!

TONGUE:

On the other hand, we all loved tongue, and in a farm community, they were plentiful and cheap.

The only problem was, we kids got the back part, where there were all those veins and things that were kinda “icky”. It took me many years to appreciate the fact Mom saved the front–the good part–to put in Dad’s sandwiches which he always took to work. It was the same thing with chicken: we had one in some form every Sunday. But there were three of us boys and only two drumsticks. So we fought over who got what part and who had the take the back (yuck). The second-joint (thigh) we never saw! These were set aside for Dad to take to work. Once I got away from home and discovered chicken thighs, I couldn’t get enough of them. I still can’t.

TONGUE:

On the other hand, we all loved tongue, and in a farm community, they were plentiful and cheap.

The only problem was, we kids got the back part, where there were all those veins and things that were kinda “icky”. It took me many years to appreciate the fact Mom saved the front—the good part—to put in Dad’s sandwiches which he always took to work.It was the same thing with chicken: we had one in some form every Sunday. But there were three of us boys and only two drumsticks. So we fought over who got what part and who had the take the back (yuck). The second-joint (thigh) we never saw! These were set aside for Dad to take to work. Once I got away from home and discovered chicken thighs, I couldn’t get enough of them. I still can’t.

Mom took very good care of my Dad: he got the goodies while we got the scraps. Not that we were not well fed: all through the war we had beef on the table because we raised and slaughtered our own cows.

Mom took very good care of my Dad: he got the goodies while we got the scraps. Not that we were not well fed: all through the war we had beef on the table because we raised and slaughtered our own cows.

Mom took very good care of my Dad: he got the goodies while we got the scraps. Not that we were not well fed: all through the war we had beef on the table because we raised and slaughtered our own cows.

WORLD‘S FAIR:

Shortly after we moved to Carmichael, I tripped while running and happened to fall on a board that had a rusty nail sticking up: that nail went right into my left knee. Ouch! The local Doctor fixed me up, and as I was young, things healed quickly enough. Nevertheless, I malingered long after I was able to walk without a limp, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom on all-four. So, one day,  Mom casually remarked, “If that knee of yours doesn’t heal, you won’t be able to go with us to the Fair.

“The Fair” was the World’s Fair on Treasure Island, held over into most of 1941. Needless to say, my “wounded knee” healed right up, and our little family of five spent a day at the Fair. I still have the 16mm films Dad took there, which form the real basis for my memories of the event.

FARM BOY

My upbringing on the farm led to my writing Animal Crackers, (1993) (it’s on Nifty), and a neighbor’s old Fordson tractor, like this one

Old Fordson Tractor 1942

is mentioned in Heartbreak Motel (2002), except that Ted’s Fordson, once new like this, had long since become a massive pile of rust. Still, the first harbinger of Spring for me was always finding Ted grinding the valves, getting it ready for spring discing, as I dropped in to beg for cookies from his wife.

BULLS:

A neighbor had a bull that he kept for breeding purposes. When there was a cow in heat around, he acted as all bulls do, but the rest of the time he was as docile as a lamb.

Dad used to have students from the city out to the farm now and then: city-slickers, we called them, and we had a series of tricks to pull, besides the raw olives mentioned earlier. One of these was to visit the American River that flowed not far from us. There were any number of ways to get there, but our favorite was through our neighbor’s paddock. As we walked along the fence to a stile, we would explain that the bull was ferocious, and if he moved towards us, we had to run as fast as we could back to the stile.

The bull was curious, of course, about anyone who came into his territory, so inevitably he’d start moving toward our little group: “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” we’d shout and watch our friends run helter-skelter back to and over the fence. When they stopped and looked back, we’d be hanging all over that bull; I was usually up on his back.

ANIMALS:

We didn’t have any horses ourselves, but many people in the community did, so learning about horses came naturally. One of the girls I’ll call Betty at our school lived on a spread with quite a few horses, and she was as “horsey” a person as I’ve ever known. Her “doodling” in the margins of papers and so forth was always sketches of horses. She was a tall, lanky blond, and with my interest already turning away from females, I was not much interested in her. But I was interested in the horses, particularly in the huge dongs the stallions had.

I never knew  why, but whenever I visited Betty’s place and she showed me her horses, the stallions always dropped for her. It was probably a matter of pheromones, but of course she might have been diddling those beasts herself, something I really wanted to try but was too ashamed to admit and afraid to ask.

That pleasure — jerking off a real horse–  was provided by a guy in my 5th-grade class I”ll call Carl. He had this ancient old beast, near dead, that could still “get it up (more down than up with a horse) when Carl went to work under his belly, and once or twice he let me “get a grip”. These events found their way into two of my stories. Likewise, the old black dog that we called “Bouncer” and several others through the years provided a bit of kinky entertainment for me, as well as “entertainment value” in some of my stories.

VACATIONS:

While Dad was teaching, he had summers free. He loved to drive, but during the war, with gasoline rationed, our excursions were somewhat curtailed. Nevertheless, most summers we managed to get to Bliss Park at the south-west end of Lake Tahoe, where we spent the entire season. In those war years, we might see one or two other families camping there in the course of a whole summer! Nowadays, you have to make reservations in advance! As a closely knit family, the lack of other folks around didn’t bother us a bit!

SAN FRANCISCO:

From time to time, we would drive to San Francisco, mostly I think to let Mom do a bit of shopping. I don’t recall what my brothers did, but Dad would give me a pocket-full of nickels and I would ride cable-cars and iron monsters all morning, all by my self. I had to be at Compton’s Cafeteria for lunch, then I could get a few more hours of riding before we set off for home. Those old streetcars were fabulous machines, very basic but built to last. Hurtling through the dark tunnels was exciting, but the cable-cars on the hills were great fun as well. In those days a little kid like me could ride the running-board just like the “big folks” and no one said boo about it!

We occasionally went out to Ocean Beach, since the ocean was something we did not see every day:

That’s little me at Ocean Beach, oblivious to the rip-tides.

Although the Oakland Bay Bridge was in place, Dad loved the ferries, and we usually got to San Francisco on the Vallejo or Benicia auto ferry. Once the car was secured, the rest of my folks would go topside to enjoy the views and freshets. Not me! I made a bee-line for the nearest opening through which I could watch the huge steam engines at work down in the hold. Even then I was already a size-queen! I never saw the San Francisco sky-line: when the whole ferry shuddered as the engines reversed, I knew the folks would soon be by to collect me to continue the trip.

SCHOOL PAGEANT:

I no longer know what the pageant was about, but it seems I was “Uncle Sam”, and I could very well have “wanted” George, there on my left: he was very handsome and liked to toss me over his shoulders for rides around the house.

Me&George

George was one of Dad’s students who had been to our home often, and who was home on leave from the US Army: this was 1942. My folks were absolutely color-blind: we had all sorts of students out to the farm as the years rolled by, which probably accounts for my own eclectic preferences later on. About those, much more will be said in due time.

UNDERWEAR:

Toward the end of my sixth year in Elementary School, Dad began dickering on a pair of cabins near Lake Tahoe: there were two cabins on a single lot, one just for sleeping. The owner let us use the cabins one weekend, hoping to seal the deal no doubt, but for other reasons that did not happen. I remember the occasion well, however for ONE event that remains seared in my memory, and which likewise explains some of my later, and current, preferences.

A college classmate of my Dad was passing through the weekend we spent in that cabin, so they went along with us. These folks had several kids, including one fellow they had adopted while working in India. He was about 16 at the time, quite tall and very brown. As I lay half-awake one morning on my cot in the sleeping room of the cabin, Prasad walked through the room on his way to the toilet, clad only in a pair of bright white Y-fronts pushed out to their limit by his morning piss-hard. What a splendid sight!

A lovely sight!

I thought it one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, even though I did not fully understand what was going on beneath that sparkling fabric. I’ve since learned, of course, and I thank the internet daily for the thousands of similar images of hunky guys clad in shorts that I have on my hard-drive. I actually have more pictures of guys dressed (well, more or less) than of them nude.

SUMMER OF ’46:

Dad taught at UC Berkeley that summer: we exchanged homes with a Cal Prof, so we lived in El Cerrito. I quickly found the end-of-the-line station for the Key-System trains that ran to San Francisco, and spent whole days riding back and forth: if I did not de-train at either end, I could ride paying only once. Usually I was right up front, and now and then the motorman would put up the shade that covered the window into his cab, so I could watch his operation. I was in hog-heaven! Naturally, I wanted to be a Motorman  “when I grew up.”

The key-System trains were massive affairs, built like the proverbial brick latrines, and they ran for years and years. Just three sets remain: two at the Railway Museum in Rio Vista, CA, and one badly deteriorated one in the Orange County Railway Museum, Perris, CA:

Superficially, these resembled the Boeing-Vertol train-sets now used by MUNI, but they were more massively built. Most were scrapped when the system was shut down in 1958. In its place we have BART, train-sets of which are now being replaced after less than 20 years of use. We once knew how to build things to last, but not any more!

The summer of 46 was also noteworthy, because while living in El Cerrito, we learned Mom had cancer, which proved fatal five years later.

Go to HIGHSCHOOL, continued

In 1940, Dad choose to move us to Carmichael, then a small community about twelve miles northeast of Sacramento proper. He found a ten-acre plot mostly planted in almonds, with a sizable old house and some wonderful oak trees. By pre-arrangement, he sold five acres to his cousin Harry, who had four kids more-or-less our ages. Harry built a house on his property, but no sooner was it completed that he moved to a new job in Santa Maria: the notion that our two families could prosper together evaporated.

i have long regretted that I never asked Dad why he moved us to a farm: he was the personification of a city-slicker, and there was a steep learning-curve ahead for him. Nevertheless, over the next few years he was able to rebuild and expand the old house; add an addition above the existing garage as a “rumpus room” for us kids; expand the barn so we could have cows, chickens, ducks and rabbits; and still drive to work in Sacramento every day.

Then came the war. Gasoline and many other things were rationed. As a teacher, Dad got a good allowance of gas coupons, and he sold milk from our cows to his colleagues (possibly for “points” rather than cash). We were close to being self-sufficient in food: “chicken every Sunday,” plenty of veggies and even meat when we slaughtered a cow. In general, none of us were all that much put out by the war: we even took long vacations in the summers to places like Lake Tahoe since as a teacher Dad had summers free. Dad was an Air warden, and Mom an airplane “spotter.” We kids, though, were little affected by any of it. We all went to Carmichael Elementary School, and my brothers on to San Juan High School.

Then came an opportunity for Dad to “move up” to college administration in Modesto. California.

Go next to CARMICHAEL, continiued

Arrow points to Kuala Lipis

Arrow points to Kota Bharu

Friday 1st November 1968

Yes, happily it was steam all the way—the same engine up and back, a British (natch) 3-cylinder rotary-valve affair built in 1935. They burn an extremely poor grade of “Bunker C” here, with a very high sulfur content, so the exhaust is very acrid & dirty; in the tunnels it gets positively suffocating! But I did hit good weather, and some lovely views, and of course 180 miles or so of jungle scenery, all very pretty, with many flowers, orchids and so forth and some pretty birds. Kota Bharu had a slightly different flavor but not so much as I’d expected, and it is by no means the cleanest city I’ve seen in Malaysia. The local refuse system seems heavily augmented by many goats that roam the town!

The train I rode to K. Bharu

Steaming through the steamy jungle

There were many tunnels

Passing the “down” train

I had a slight mishap while looking around the town: I mis-stepped crossing a deep gutter & in the ensuing scramble for balance the left side of my head came into smart contact with a sign. No damage to speak of to head or sign, but evidently I sprained my left thumb slightly and a few muscles in my back, which resulted in a poor night’s sleep later on. The railway ride back today pretty well loosened up both again, though: the Malays run their trains much faster than the Thais, over road-beds that are nowhere in as good condition as those in Thailand. Hence it is pretty rough riding! And the car I rode in was built in 1913 for the (then) Federated Malay States Railway, so the springing was not so good either. We passed near K. Bharu the site of a de-railment, where 4 freight cars are still being righted from beside the temporary new track. All in all, though, it was a worthwhile trip.

I loved the flame trees…

… but the photo was likely taken (from the train) to catch the handsome guys, lower left.

Another lovely view from the train

Forgot to mention that for what little good it will do, I voted in K. Lumpur. Humph had better pull a “Harry Truman 1952″ act,  or he’ll never make it. News tonight of the possible bombing-halt in VN—encouraging, perhaps, but only time will tell if it is the right thing to do. News here is heavily overshadowed by the Sabah “confrontation”. I’ve been asked many times here—and am at loss to answer—why we, with our considerable influence in the Philippines, have not done more to get Marcos to lay off. The P. I. “claim” on Sabah is about as pertinent today as a Khmer “claim” on West malaysia would be—both have the same sort of background and in light of subsequent history both are absurd. Tension between Indonesia & Singapore also has been headlined here, but that seems to be easing somewhat.

Malaysia makes a big thing of the fact it is multiracial (is certainly is!) and has no racial tension; I’ve also been put on the spot by several Malaysians wanting to know about the “race problem” in the states. Of course, they can’t understand it, and I can’t excuse it. At least two people I’ve met have cancelled plans to visit USA because of the situation there—they are afraid of running into a riot or something. Unfortunately, unlikely though it may be, I can’t assure them they won’t run into something. [Likewise], I can’t assure them the situation is likely to improve much in the next few years, regardless of the election outcome.

There is an article in tonight’s Straits Times about the approx 2000 babies born of Thai girls and american GI “husbands” which are coming in for some attention from the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. The Thais are rather unhappy about the problem; I was pleased to observe that this article (in a Malaysian paper, of course) closed by pointing out that the Thai Queen’s-Cobra Regiment, recently returned from VN, left behind several hundred Thai-Vietnamese babies to be cared for. The disparity between the american ideals we talk about and the “ideals” we actually export is phenomenal. Many people are disgusted by both—including me. Our emphasis on technology the past hundred or more years has interfered with our development of humanity; because we really know so little about ourselves (and have such absurd delusions of grandeur), no wonder we can’t understand (or even make the attempt most of the time) other people with different cultural backgrounds. I am less convinced than ever that industrialization of Asia alá Japan is the best course for the future. Particularly in Thailand, I found many people apologizing to me because they are poor. This shows success for the first phases of “developing” a nation, for once people become dis-satisfied with what has satisfied them for centuries, you have created a market for modern produce. The next step should be to show and help the people learn how to produce locally what they want; but the next step all too often is simply to flood the country with imports; Thailand is only now waking up to the facts and trying desperately to stop the flow of money out of the country, but it’s a difficult thing to do after so much damage has been done.

Enuf of this for now—I’ve got to go to bed for an early start tomorrow. Will go to Temerloh & from there, I’m not sure at this moment—weather will decide, probably between Kuantan & K.L

Sunday 3 November 1968

I can’t seem to get used to the idea it is November already! Two more days and I shall have been “on the road” two months—and you all should be voting for the “candidates of your choice”—ha! Anyhow—I got my usual early start from Kuala Lipis, except that for the first time in weeks, I ran into morning rain! It was light, and by the time I’d retraced my tracks to Benta, it had degenerated into a light mist, not at all bothersome. At Benta I turned more or less southward towards Jeruntan; the road was fairly good, & the only obstacles to care-free driving were numerous ox-droppings in the roadway. Obviously (this not being one of the main hiways) oxen & water-Bs utilize the road more than vehicles do. So I spent an hour or so dodging “pies” successfully; but there is enough manure spread around by larger vehicles (who worry less about hitting it) that by the time I reached Jeruntan the Honda was rather well “covered all over with ’sweet violets’”. Nature came to my rescue, though, with light rain between Jeruntan and Temerloh, so by the time I got there most of the bike (& me) was clean again. The road from Jeruntan to T’loh must have been built by a subsidiary of Standard Materials—the macadam is not more than half an inch thick (where it remains at all) and despite extensive patching & re-patching the roadway is pretty bad in spots. Nonetheless I reached Temerloh slightly past noon & stopped at the Gov’t Rest House for lunch—and subsequently over night, as the rain did not stop until just after I booked the room. Temerloh is a very pretty town, very small, but with a huge new National Mosque situated on the banks of the Pahang River. Over this there is a nice large concrete bridge, about 1/3 of which is missing since last year’s monsoon floods—there is  temporary steel-work over the gap!

This may be the Mosque near Temerloh. . .

. . .then again, it may not. Perhaps someone reading this blog can enlighten me!

A bus crosses the temporary bridge carefully

In that direction (east) lay Kuantan and much more rain! I turned around and headed back to the coast.

Though it was Saturday night, the town was extremely quiet, and the rest house seemed quieter. So I had a very restful sleep & arose early again this morning. Fog, but no rain, though obviously in the direction (east) of Kuantan it was stormy. So I decided to pass up Kuantan this trip & come on west again to K. L. The roads are better and the pass from Bentong over the mountains is only 2066 feet, so I arrived before noon. When the fog lifted it was mostly clear & pleasantly warm; my poor nose (which has peeled twice since I last mentioned it) apparently burned again,  judging from the feel of it now.

A Governor’s Mansion or a church—I forget which

I drove around K. L. for about an hour & a half, located a cheap hotel (Tivoli!), had lunch, tuned and washed the Honda, walked about a bit (everything closed, as it is Sunday). K. L. is much more interesting architecturally than Bangkok; the modern buildings being designed by local architects blend much better with the old , and the old parliament, railway and other government buildings downtown are very interesting. There is a national “Muzium” to spend some time in, & lots of shops to browse, but I suspect 3 or 4 days will suffice here. Thence to Seremban (where I will try to contact Lt. Col. W. K. Bramson, the only Bramson in the W. Malaysian phone book—to see if by any chance he’s a relative) and on to Port Dickson and Melacca. From there I may cross the country once more to Mersing, then proceed to Johore (Ye Gods!—from my old stamp collecting days I always though Johore was in India!!) and Singapore.

Receipt from the tivoli Hotel

This phase of my current hajj is, obviously, drawing to a close. The mileage will wind up around 5500 miles. What next awaits stock-taking & investigating in Singapore—I have several ideas, the practicality of any of which is yet to be determined. I’ve spent a little more money in Malaysia than elsewhere because I began picking up a few souvenirs; still, the trip all-told has so far cost less than $1200.

Time to close up this installment and get it on its way tomorrow. Hope it finds you all well, as usual.

Love to everybody~

Bruce

In my next post, I describe a few days in Kuala Lumpur: stay tuned!

NEXT

For the first year that I owned the house, I continued to take my meals with Ted: the only good way to rid a building of roaches and mice is to starve them out, so we had NO food of any kind in the place for the entire year. I began assembling some furniture, all of it used. Most of the first year was spent tearing out horrible additions that had been made to the building at one time or another. For many years it had been broken up into “apartments”, with kitchens stuffed into corners. Hung all over the outside of the house was plumbing, now useless, that had fed those kitchens. All this stuff had to be taken down.

Plumbing in the house was perilous, still in old galvanized pipe. I slowly began replacing it with copper, but it was many years before the entire system was in place. Little by little, the place became more livable, and beginning with the second year Ted moved into a suite of two rooms on the second floor. Towards the end of the second year I had the apartment in the basement level complete, so we moved our cooking and eating down there and attacked the main kitchen upstairs: it had had a wall added to reduce its size, and the ceiling lowered, so it was necessary to essentially gut the room and start over. This took most of the third year. Since I was working regular hours, most work took place on weekends, and Ted’s students were often recruited to help. Their “pay” was usually a fine dinner (Ted loved to cook) with lots of fine California Red to wash it down.

We found a few interesting items which had fallen behind base-boards, or had been sealed in walls that were re-plastered, probably after the 1906 earthquake.

A Transfer from 1908

Can I still use the unpunched rides?

If proof were needed that we had “wing-nuts” long ago, just as we have today, here is a post-card-sized item found in the walls of the house:

A bunch of baloney

More baloney

These items pre-date the occupancy by the drug addicts. Here are two items from that period.

Affixed to the second-floor toilet

Talk about brainwashing! But the item below I found most interesting. In the attic where all the boys (no girls, please note) lived, there was a tiny room about 8-feet square: a couple of sticks in the form of a cross had been nailed to the door, and it was labeled “Prayer Room”. It was the only room in the house where boys could lock themselves in (and others out). Judging from the wads of tissue, sox and hankies found stuffed into the walls, this should have been labeled “Masturbation Room”! The graffito shown below was found about a foot above the floor-line, scrawled on a piece of masonite: my guess is the “author” doodled this while getting porked by one of the other guys—but that’s only a guess:

“Pray for Homosexuals to be delivered from sinful lives”

So the years rolled by. My work at the lab was rewarding, my salary advanced, and in general, life was good. Things began to nose-dive late in 1975, when the last remaining founder of the company I worked for passed on, and he was replaced by someone I did not care much for. The lab needed some attention he was unwilling to pay to it, and several months of doldrums set in. Then one day, I awoke with a headache (not in itself unusual) except that by the next day, the headache was still there and getting worse. Late that week I put myself in the hands of my doctor, who ran me through a whole bunch of tests, scans, and so forth, my head feeling all the time like it might explode. At the end of a grueling day of tests, the Doctor sat down with me and explained he could find absolutely nothing wrong, and that his diagnosis was a classic “tension headache”. He promised to get rid of it, but explained that it was up to me to ferret out the cause. He sent me home with a week’s worth of dynamite pills that put me to sleep for a week: when I came out of the fog, the headache was gone.

On my first day back at work, the headache had returned by mid-morning. I dictated a letter of resignation to my Secretary: I had found the source of my headaches, and there was NO WAY I was
going to stay in a situation that adversely affected my health!

I must have know something was up: I had built up my bank account, and so was able to weather quite a long spell without any work at all. My old wander-lust emerged, and so I sent out resumés asking for possible work overseas. In the fullness of time, I was taken on my one of my old firm’s arch-rivals and sent to work in Egypt. I left the house in the capable hands of Ted who looked after it and my interests.

I arrived in Alexandria April 1, 1977, and in a future page or two I’ll amuse you with some of what I found there. For the moment, here I am, somewhere in Egypt.

Lousy photo: Mediterranean in the background

Next page: spend some time in Egypt with me.

NEXT

March 17th, 2010

There will be a brief hiatus in my posts while I undergo surgery and recover.

Here’s the story – is there a Doctor in the house?

The essence is, torn meniscus in left knee

Arthroscopic surgery scheduled for Monday

At the moment, I can scarcely hobble around, and this computer is up three flights of stairs!

Hang in! I have lots more adventures to share…

NEXT

AROUND THE COUNTRY

To get our minds off Mom’s demise Dad took us on a trip around the country: basically, we went to Quebec by way of New Orleans. This was the summer of 1951: “Jim Crow” was in full swing, and Dad hated everything about the South, but felt we boys ought to see it. I’m glad he lived long enough to see much of the discrimination reduced.

We traveled in our 1948 Chrysler Windsor, pulling a Higgins trailer. Ours was blue, like the one in the photo, and as far as I know, they all were.

A Higgins trailer like the one we had

These were popular in the late forties and early 50s, and our family, now of four, fit inside just fine. We saved a lot of money not staying in motels. The two halves of the trailer lid opened out on hinges and a canvas tent popped up on metal stays. Sleeping-bags went on the  two opened flaps, and there was room for two more on the floor of the thing. Here’s a view inside: I slept right up there, and my older brother slept on the one opposite.

The two halves of the trailer lid opened out on hinges and a canvas tent popped up on metal stays.

Dad and my oldest brother flopped on the floor. We had cooking equipment and carried our own food, so we  slept and ate nearly all of our meals in and around this contraption for the  whole summer.

My biggest problem under this regime was to find times when I could exercise my new ability to jack off. I expect my brothers had the same problem, but none of us ever thought of taking matters in hand together. So the summer was spent whacking off in gas-station rest-rooms, behind trees at camp-grounds, and at other places that presented the opportunity.

On the way home, Dad remained in Denver for some conferences, so my brothers and I continued on our own by way of Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. I often jerked off in the back seat of the car, believing my bothers did not notice. I expect they did, though, but chose not to say anything about it. I recall wandering off alone in Yellowstone one day (a fascinating place for a budding chemist): watching a small geyser erupt, I could not help myself. I pulled my pud and erupted right along with it! Far as I know no one was watching, but who knows? Maybe I gave a voyeur something to remember.

GROWING UP

With hormones now ruling my life, I grew up another foot, and out by an inch or two where it really counts. Better yet, I began to find some hair here and there where there had been none. So, when I entered my sophomore year at MHS, I was catching up to my peers in ways that made me feel a little better about myself. Nevertheless, there were residual effects from the hazing I got for being so immature: I became completely pee-shy, unable to piss in the presence of another person (unless I sat in a stall).

This pretty well put an end to my cruising for dick in the boys’ rooms, and in fact led to a permanent aversion to “tea-room” sex.

SOPHOMORE YEAR

The science course in my second year was Biology. We dissected frogs and did all the usual icky stuff. We also got some rudimentary sex “education”, in a class separated by sex. The girls, who probably would have benefited from some insight into how boys work, saw films about girls. The boys, who might have found useful some insight into how girls work, saw films about boys! If what the girls saw was as unenlightening as what we did, the whole exercise was futile. How  can you spend a half hour discussing sex with a bunch of horny teen-aged boys and NOT EVEN MENTION masturbation? Sheeesh! However, the episode did give me an inkling that I might not be so different from my peers as I had come to think.

I endured PE, this time with the help of a lanky fellow named Bill who enjoyed playing hand-ball as much as I did. We actually got pretty good at it, kept score, and once in a while induced another guy to attempt it with one or the other of us. I got a passing grade in PE for the first time in my life!

Still, I remained very much a “loner”. I had only a few friends, one of them a devout and proper Catholic boy who I liked a lot intellectually, though I was not attracted to him physically. He was a bit pudgy; my aversion to adipose tissue was already evident. But at the end of that school year, Gary went off to Bellarmine Prep School, determined to be a priest, so he went out of my life. The tall and lanky basket-ball players remained my favorites and fantasy-fodder for innumerable jack-off sessions—by myself, as usual—and while I often contemplated broaching the subject of mutual JO to other boys, I never did so. I generally got my rocks off twice a day: once after getting home from school, and once before going to sleep. On week-ends, with many hours spent alone in my little “laboratory”, I might scatter my seed on the floor several times. My last act of every day was to whack off in bed, where I just rolled on my side and shot my wad on the wall. I’d be asleep in minutes: masturbation is nothing if not a good soporific!

I was beginning to form some fixations that have lasted to this day. One was a fascination with arms (and legs) which I have already mentioned. Another was a fascination with boys’ adams-apples, since my own did not yet show.

But my primary fixation was on the phallus: furtive glances in the gym were not what I had in mind! It would be a while before I got my hands on one other than my own!

ANOTHER MOVE

As that school year drew to a close, Dad moved us to a rebuilt house on the outskirts, nearer to his job and nearer to the railroad.

The move resulted in one of the most embarrassing moments of my youth. When the bed in my room was removed by the moving crew, the wall beside it (which had once been all white) was found festooned with yellowing cum-stains! Their location on the wall made it abundantly clear that little Bruciebabe had been spraying his load repeatedly on that wall! It’s twoo, it’s twoo!  I’d been shooting off every night for a year or more; the incrustation was not only obvious, it shouted out to anyone who looked: that little kid’s been spankin’ the monkey! I was mortified, but not a soul mentioned it. Whoever bought the house musta painted that little bedroom quickly.

Ironically, we had a half acre of almond trees again, but never harvested them ourselves: Dad sold the crop to the neighbor who also had almonds. The impetus for a new house was his remarriage, too soon after Mom’s passing as it turned out. His new wife was a real bitch, and she had a bratty kid from a former marriage who was too young to be of much interest to me.

However, our move put me closer to a fellow I admired named Jim. He and I shared many interests in mechanical things and, above all, CARS! Jim had several, and through his influence I was able to find a beat-up 1926 Dodge sedan that cost me all of fifty bucks. The windows (except windshield) were missing, and the upholstery was in tatters, but it ran well and I loved it. That car was the first of a bunch of them, all unusual in some way. I had a lot of fun with a 1933 Oldsmobile straight-8 sedan: the engine was so worn out it got only 18 miles to the quart of oil. A few trips the length of the town’s main drag on a hot summer night would lay down a formidable smoke-screen of blue haze. It did not look anything like this restored one, except for the shape: mine was black and ready for the junkyard. (Oh, wait: that’s where I got it)!

Restored 1933 Oldsmobile Straight-8 Sedan

Jim and I bummed around a lot the summer following my sophomore year. Dad and his new shrew wife were off on what I later learned was anything but a honeymoon, so we had plenty of time to go places and do things. One night we were tinkering in his work-room when he asked me a question I certainly had not expected: “Have you ever jacked-off a dog?” Holy cow! It was the first time he’d mentioned anything even remotely about sex! I had to answer truthfully, (see my story Animal Crackers at Nifty), “Yes, why do you ask?”

In the end, we went behind his garage and I showed him how to JO his mutt, at the conclusion of which it was obvious Jim had a hard-on, just as I did. We went inside the garage, sat side-by-side with our backs to the wall, opened our pants and fondled ourselves for a few minutes. Then it happened: Jim reached over and grabbed my prick! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven: it felt absolutely incredible, and utterly unlike how it felt when I held myself. Within seconds, I had his dick in my fist and … well, you know what happened.

Absolutely Wonderful

Though it felt absolutely wonderful to jack each other, we completed the “off” part individually, much as we would have done if alone. In fact, that remained the pattern whenever we got together, which was often. I discovered Jim got horny when driving, just as I did (and, I think, many men do), so most of our jaunts into the Sierra foothills on back roads resulted in one or more JO sessions together. It was a fun and busy summer: the wall in my new bedroom remained clean since Jim and I got off together often, and because when I pounded one out at home, I used an old towel I kept under the bed.

JUNIOR YEAR

At the end of summer my Dad and his new bride shrew returned and life should have returned to normal. Several events occurred to render the school year different. It quickly became apparent  that Dad’s love-life did not exist, and his marriage was headed for divorce. Lillian, a fiery red-head, might have been a hot number once, but towards my Dad she was utterly frigid. When it came some months on, the divorce was based on the fact their marriage had never been consummated! Now that I was learning the importance of getting off, I had a new appreciation for Dad’s dilemma: his needs were obviously not being fulfilled by this witch. Can you spell  G-O-L-D   D-I-G-G-E-R ?

More importantly, now that Jim and I were on intimate terms, I learned he had been using his expensive polaroid camera to photograph as many hard-ons as he could find! Mine joined his rogues’ gallery soon enough, but the erection that fascinated me most was attached to a fellow nick-named Butch—I forget his real name now. Imagine my surprise, then, when I learned Butch was only a seventh-grader, and a classmate of my (for the moment) step-brother! For some reason, Jim had lost interest in Butch, but I was fascinated by the photo of his toad-stabber, and through the agency of little Dougie was able to make Butch’s acquaintance. He lived only a couple of blocks away, had a car, and loved to let me play with his salami! Despite his being younger than I, Butch was taller, far more precocious, and well ahead of me physically. I coulda cared less: he was willing to let me play with his prick, which was enough for me (it was enough for two, to tell the truth, but I kept him for myself)! [Jim and his photos, and Butch, found their way into my story, Piece on Earth: read it at Nifty].

Dad was busy most nights and his “wife” would take her kid and go somewhere (I didn’t care where, as long as they were away!) so I had the house to myself. I’d call Butch, he’d drive over, and we’d play for several hours. Don’t ask me why: we never tried sucking or fucking! We just played with each other’s hard-on and felt each other up elsewhere (remember, I already loved legs and arms, and Butch had some fine examples). He seemed to get a kick out of my lack of precocity, just as I was fascinated by his abundance of it. When he got tired of playing, he’d announce a “race” to see who could cum first: I always won. It seemed with all that length to deal with (I did measure, and he was fully 8½ when hard) it took him a long time to reach nirvana. Perhaps watching me shoot helped, for soon after I shot my wad on to the wooden floor he would blast his likewise. That signaled the end of  our tryst: he’d hike up his jeans and drive home. I was so wound up, I’d often whack off again, then wipe up the mess before going to bed.

Those grand romps came to an abrupt halt: some gal got him up one night and stuck that lovely thing in her snatch, and it was all over: little Bruciebabe couldn’t hold a candle to the “real thing”.  Damn!

As a Junior, I was taking Chemistry as my science subject. However, since I’d already done all the experiments and knew the subject well, the instructor appointed me as “lab assistant”, so while he was lecturing I was prepping his “show and tell”.  Perhaps the association of chemistry in my little home lab with the number of times I whacked off there was the cause: whatever, I jacked off in the school lab frequently while the lecture in the adjoining room was in progress.

I was also on television that year, on a program called “Science in Action”. This is described in some detail in my story, Central Valley High: read it on Nifty.

FRUSTRATION!

The divorce was finalized mid-year and Lillian & Doug were gone. For good! My sex-life consisted of an occasional wank with Jim and non-stop wanks at home. One day in Latin class a fellow I liked a lot stuck his leg out into the aisle, which caused his jeans to ride up, revealing some leg above his socks. I was fascinated by the hairiness there, since my own ankles were as yet glabrous and skinny. I wanted desperately to see more of that leg—and him, so set about developing a plan. It eventuated that he accompanied my Dad and myself when I drove Dad to a conference in the Bay Area. Ed and I were alone in the car on the way home, and as night fell I managed to get our discussion worked around to sex. I got hornier and hornier, and so did he, so we finally agreed to jack off together (or so I thought). I drove off the highway to a spot I knew where we would not be bothered, hoping to slide across the seat and extricate his meat in preparation for some funzies, but before I could move he was out the door and into the back seat! Damn! It was dark, so I couldn’t even see what he was whacking at back there. We shot our respective wads into paper towels (I was prepared), he returned to the front seat and we drove home, our desultory conversation turned to less interesting things. I never made another attempt on him, and think maybe my aversion to body-hair may have originated from the frustration of not having had a good time with him. He was the only fellow in high school I even tried to lure into my clutches.

To be continued …

NEXT

Go to LAST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL

Here’s a picture of me on my first day home from the hospital:

First day home

Do I look unhappy?  Perhaps I was.

However, my recovery from the hip replacement has been rapid and remarkably pain-free. The Doc attributes this to the total replacement, metal-on-metal. I am getting around with only a cane, and expect to be able to abandon that soon. I will be going back to limited work starting the 13th, which should help pass the remaining weeks before the knee replacement takes place.

Here’s a picture of my scar (which I cannot see directly):

It was a “glue job”, no staples or sutures

Meanwhile, despite the cool summer we’ve had here, I did get a nice crop of “Naked Ladies”, otherwise known as Amaryllis:

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, for the time being.

NEXT

The red arrow points to Melbourne

Arriving back in the States shortly before Christmas meant getting back in touch with family. I spent a few days with my Dad and his wife in Modesto, then we all travelled to southern California. Todd arrived with his little Toyota truck with a miniscule camper. After Christmas a three-vehicle entourage set out for Guaymas, Mexico. I no longer remember why we went, but Todd drove in his camper, I drove Robb’s old Jeep 4WD, and Robb and family rode in a mammoth Suburban he owned at the time. Robb’s wife hated camping, so she bitched and moaned most of the way, and we were additionally plagued by car-trouble: the alternator failed in the Suburban, which meant from time to time we all had to stop and pump up the battery in that vehicle. I had no trouble with camping, and loved driving that old Jeep, but otherwise I thought the trip was a waste of time. Nevertheless, it helped me maintain my “out of country” status for income-tax purposes.

The location of Guaymas is indicated

Soon after arrival back to Robb’s home in LA, I finalized the agreement to return to Australia to work on the Port Phillip Bay study. I booked a non-stop flight from Honolulu to Sydney: in those days it was still in a 707, and I was surprised it could be kept in the air long enough. It was one of the least comfortable trips I ever made, because there was not an empty seat on the plane. The only thing that lightened it up was one of the stewardesses on her final flight: she proceeded to get quite sloshed, and had fun telling people to “get your own bloody water” and so forth. She was a hoot, but I resolved never to take that long flight again.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Melbourne is located on Port Phillip Bay, which has been called the “arsehole of the earth” by some because of its nearly round shape. There is one small opening to the sea. It is a fine harbor, which accounts for the location of Melbourne nearby. As can be seen in a fairly recent aerial photo, Port Phillip Bay is pretty much surrounded by urban development. In the 1970s, most of the waste from the urban development at that time found its way into the bay, often poorly treated, if at all. The result was declining fisheries, algal blooms and other untoward disturbances. So, a study was undertaken to map the fate of the nutrients which found their way into the bay, and attempts were made to estimate the amount of exchange of new sea-water through the narrow entrance, which tends to limit that exchange quite severely.

A recent photo shows dense urban development all around PPB

One of the conservative ingredients often used to track pollution in open water is ammonia nitrogen. A huge undertaking was put in place to sample the bay daily in many places and depths, and perform numerous analyses, the object being to create a base-line against which attempts to clean up the bay later could be measured. By the time I got to Melbourne, the study had been going on for some time, and a problem had become evident which no one on the scene could fathom. Whereas early in the study typical concentrations of ammonia-N had been found, as time went by, the amounts became less and less, and for some months none whatever had been found. Since there had been no change in inputs, this made no sense.

Unfortunately, it was a problem too easy to solve using common techniques that those in charge of the study should have known. First, I “spiked” a sample with some ammonia-N, and found the reagent did not react with it. Then I made up a fresh batch of reagent, and—viola—we found ammonia-N. Although instructions were clear that the reagent had to be made in small batches so it would be fresh and used-up quickly, this admonition had been ignored, and the reagent had been made up by the gallon: the many gallons on hand were all useless. At least one (properly, several) spiked sample should have been included with every batch of analyses, but none were, so the failing reagent was not detected.

This finding (which took only a few minutes to deduce) did not exactly gain me any “brownie points” with the laboratory administrators: I did my best to keep the situation low-key, but for the next 6 months I was shunted into regular staff duties just running hundreds of analyses day after day. In the short term I didn’t mind this, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do long-term, so, having solved their problem, I decided to move on.

When I booked my return trip, I decided to fly Qantas, which I had never done. They offered me a “non-stop flight from Sydney to Honolulu”, which I declined, explaining I had done it once and would never do it again. So I got to put my feet on the ground in Pago Pago once more as the slower flight refueled.

Frankly, I was not impressed by Australians in general, though I did meet a few chaps who were terrific fellows. The sloppy administration of the laboratory seemed to be symptomatic of sloppy administration everywhere, which, taken with a general “don’t give a shit” attitude, made me a bit queazy. I loved the trams and interurban trains, and rode them often. But certainly one problem I had was that I was an american, and americans were not exactly popular in Melbourne in those days, largely because of the situation in VietNam, where Australians were dying in combat. That war was even less popular in Australia than in America!

I spent about 7 months altogether in Melbourne. In that time, I was invited out to dinner to homes of laboratory personnel exactly twice. In the second instance, a dinner for ten, a “companion” for me at table had been found. I found her boorish in the extreme, but of course it was all set up in advance: I took the tram out to the the dinner, but “she” had a car so “she” could take me home. By way of her own apartment, of course. There were two other couples already screwing in the lounge when we got there, and she dragged me into her bedroom, intent on rape. I could not have gotten a hard-on for this bird under any circumstance! I no longer remember what excuse I made, but I departed quickly: fortunately, I had paid attention and knew I was not far from the hotel where I stayed, so I walked there in the wee hours of the morning, my virginity intact.

I quickly established a routine: I would rest and read after reaching my hotel at the end of the day, then I would ride back into town and dine at the Australia Bistro, located then in the basement of the Australia Hotel. The food there was terrific, and I would wash it down with a fifth of good Australian Red. Then I would walk through a convenient tunnel to the Australia Bar, also in the basement of the Hotel. This was a gay bar, and there I eventually met a fellow I’ll call George. George and I hit it off very well, and after a pony of beer we’d go to my hotel for an evening of wonderful sex. George stayed over occasionally, but usually departed and found his way home.

When it came time to leave Melbourne, leaving George behind was difficult. I took him to the Bistro one night, and when we surfaced after our ponies of beer, instead of heading to my hotel, I simply told George I was leaving the next day: “I hope you will remember me the way I am now, slightly sloshed, horny as usual, and sad that I won’t be sucking you off ever again.” I turned on my heal and walked away: I never saw George again.

I took only a few photos in Melbourne: this is one of them.

Melbourne’s most famous landmark

I found this on the web: “Rumours abound that the plans for Bombay railway station and Flinders St. railway station were mixed up in the designers’ office in London, and as a result the Bombay railway station now sits in Melbourne and the original Flinders St. railway station was built in Bombay. While there’s no actual evidence to support this claim, Flinders Street Station has in fact had its influences reach further ashore. The Luz Station in Sao Paulo, Brazil was based on a design inspired by the lines of Flinders Street Station.”

Here’s a recent photo of this Australian Icon:

It is still there!

I walked into Flinders Street Station many times. Among its amenities was the only ice-cream shop I ever found in Melbourne that knew how to make a true american-style chocolate milk-shake!

Australian bills were not very exciting. Throughout my brief tenure with the MMBW lab, I was given a pay-packet every two weeks with my salary in cash!

That’s all I have to say about Australia, except that I know Melbourne is a very different place today. A large influx of Vietnamese and other South-East Asians has widened Melbourne’s outlook immensely. I might actually enjoy it now, but in 1969-70, I found it appallingly provincial.

1970, however, would turn out to be an important year in my life, as I will describe soon.