M Y O B

September 5, 2009

It is nearly 41 years to the day that I found myself unable to make up my mind what to do in VietNam. I really did want to leave VN feeling I had accomplished something useful, either to my employer, the US Army, or the Vietnamese. Seven of my 18-months were gone, and I had nothing whatever to show for it. My health was deteriorating, and my wander-lust was increasing. I was all ready to go:

Ready to depart Saigon, September, 1968, on a Honda CB-125

All I needed was cooperation from PA&E!

_____________________________

Thursday PM, 22 AUG 1968
Dear everyone~

Nearly two weeks has passed since my last letter: as far as my job is concerned, there has been no change to speak of. On Monday I met by chance the General Manager of the Company, who seemed to know of my situation, and who indicated that the matter would be cleared up. Later, arother person indicated they hoped to be able to work out a way to keep me satisfied in country, intimating that perhaps they want to revive the lab program. I have heard nothing since.

Since taking over my new “responsibilities”, I have been plagued by a malady which appears to be some strain of flu, but which has remarkably malaria-like symptoms: chills, fever, aches, etc. It is aggravated greatly by having to spend the day freezing (even with a coat on) in the air conditioned office. The temperature difference is usually at least 20 degrees, and my system is just not used to it. I spent today at home, popping pills, drinking liquids, etc, on advice of the company doctor.

You have doubtless already read that the VC rocketed downtown Saigon again, beginning about 4:30 this AM. It is a rude way to be awakened, I must say! The National Assembly Building, at the end of LeLoi Avenue, was hit by two rockets, causing a fair amount of damage to it, and collapsing many windows in the Caravelle. The room Robb’s friend stayed in at the Caravelle (Robb took a photo of me on its balcony) was showered with broken glass. Four large plate windows on the ground floor were blown in, but inasmuch as they had been extensively taped on the inside, surprisingly little glass was spread around.

At Bien Hoa, close by Long Binh, I understand an ammo dump was hit, causing a huge explosion which, among other things, broke nearly all the windows in the rather new USARV HQ complex at Long Binh. The Generals spent the day complaining that their offices were too warm, because without windows, their air conditioning was not very effective. Tough!

Naturally, rumors are rife that tonight will see the launching of the long awaited third offensive against Saigon. I don’t have access to any actual intelligence to support this: of course it is possible, but rumors are so plentiful here that one learns to ignore them.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslavokia has dominated the news from all over the world today. I am inclined to think it presents us (and SVN) with a wonderful oportunity to launch a massive invasion of NVN with the excuse that Ho Chi Minh had invited us in to suppress a wave of revisionism there. With their present posture in Cz’a, how could Russia possibly refute this? And might it not give Russia pause to find us willing to pull the same sort of stunts they pull with the same flimsy excuses? Our reactions to any situation are so damned predictable that a cunning group can easily outsmart us. If we began acting irrationally for a change it would put the communists on the defensive. Most news commentaries are remarking that the latest developments will set back east-west relations: but consider how little effect the similar events in Hungary had. Despite all the wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth at that time, the matter was quite quickly forgotten.

Appalling as it seems when I think about it, I find myself tempted to agree with some of the most unlikely people in the Presidential race this year. For instance, Mr. Reagan has a point when he points out that nuclear warheads and so forth really are NOT a deterrent to war if people are committed NOT to use them. And there is something to be said, I think, for Gov. Wallace’s harping on the matter of trade with the Soviet bloc, or with our so called allies who do the same. There is a fundamental inconsistency in our policies here that ought to be cleared up. I find myself tending to disagree more and more with Clean Gene and Hubert on the matter of a coalition government here: why should this be a satisfactory arrangement here, when we obviously would never consider it at home? Despite the alleged freedoms in the US, the communist party is essentially outlawed, its members are required to register in a way that members of no other party are, and the party and its members are under constant surveillance. So far as is known, no confessed communist has ever been elected to any important national office in the US. Yet we propose that a coalition is the answer in VN.

No one could possibly want this war over here ended more than I. But I marvel at the obtuse way we have conducted it, and I marvel at how easily people can overlook the fact that once entrenched, communism simply does not under any circumstances allow any individual freedoms: Hungary proved that, and now Cz’a has once again underscored that proof. Thus, if we are SERIOUS about guaranteeing individual freedoms, we must back that up with the necessary force to keep communism OUT of VN. The ONLY way we can do that now, given the situation as we have allowed it to deteriorate thus far, is to declare that “the picnic is over” and get busy with the actual job of winning this thing permanently. I disagree with those who contend that a military victory here is impossible, though I agree that so long as we try to win it with one hand tied behind our backs, and our legs hobbled as well, there is no hope.

There have been obvious improvements in the Saigon government under PM Houng; there is still much to be accomplished, but he is getting the upper hand in the corruption bit, has improved the efficiency of the the governmental apparatus considerably, and is making his presence felt even among the lowliest peasants, both in the cities and in the provs. This has been accomplished in only twelve weeks.

As for my own situation, I am going to see if I can’t bring this matter to a head tomorrow. There is—no question about it—a certain risk in being here in this place at this time. While I’m not particularly worried or fearful, I do feel foolish remaining in an obviously dangerous situation when I am doing nothing worthwhile to warrant staying. If the company really wants to get behind the lab program and can give me some concrete evidence of its willingness to back it fully, then I’m happy enough to stay and help them accomplish it. But if they have anything else in mind I shall (assuming they won’t surplus me) have to resign at last and move on.

So that’s how matters stand at the moment—not really very different from when I wrote last. I’ve been living out of a suitcase for nearly a month again, since I was all ready packing when they said I would be going. Part of the urgency for me in getting my situation decided one way or the other is so I can (or can not) re-settle into the apartment before Sept 1—or as the case may be, can vacate it without having to pay another month’s rent and move to a hotel for whatever short time might remain. That’s a pretty confused sentence, but I guess you can figure out what I mean!

Luv to all~
Bruce

Looking back 41 years later, I find it hard to believe I wrote as I did in the letter above! It must have driven my Dad to distraction: he was a staunch pacifist. I think the sentiments reflect my inability to bring anything useful to fruition, with nearly half my time in country used up.

Spare time was spent outfitting the cycle. I attached two saddle-bags in such a way that they could be removed fairly easily, buckled together, and tossed over the satchel. I could then pick up all my luggage with one hand, to carry it into hotels and so forth.

Saigon

Here is the motorcycle, loaded, with the Continental Palace Hotel in the background (the CPH was across the street from the Rex). The former owner of the bike had outfitted it with a number-plate “X 04631″ which may have meant something to him, but only served as an identifying mark for me. Not that it was needed: I probably had the only CB160 in all VN at the time, and I saw very few others anywhere. It usually drew a crowd when parked.

Classy Little Moto

It was a pretty classy little machine!

_________________

Sunday, 25 August 1968
Dear everyone~

Well, the workings of PA&E are wondrous to behold, but there is still not a great deal to report. The man at CMO who represented the largest stumbling block to progress of the lab has been relieved, and as a result of my efforts to get the General Manager interested in the lab, I was shunted in to see the NEW manager of the Installations Department last Friday. It was not an entirely satisfactory meeting. The new man is brand new in country, and shares a degree of optimism both about the Army and the supply system here that is typical of new hires, but which belies his innocence. As I’d suspected, there is hope of reviving the lab, and (for the moment, in an unofficial capacity) they want me to help. I have agreement in principal that the functional control of the program should be transferred out from under Dan Smythe, but that is only a small part of the battle. I’m not convinced yet that the route this man proposes to use is best, principally because if he succeeds in getting the army’s concurrence, it will place the burden of actually bringing the lab to fruition on PA&E  and I have no illusions about this company’s ability to do this: the management and other abilities necessary to coordinate and breathe life into the program are simply in too short supply here, despite the large number of bodies on the payroll.

In a sense, the limited commitment of the company to do something removes the grounds for surplusing me, although technically there still is no job “slot” in my field, and it will take some time for one to be created. This leaves only one way out—if I decide to abandon the ship—a resignation. This will, besides costing some money, leave something of a blot on my work record, though I don’t expect to ever again apply to anyone who would be particularly concerned about that. The money is not important either. If I stay to complete this contract (and because of some peculiarities of the new R&U contract PA&E has with the army, I will not be offered a second contract) it means another 11 months of shuffling papers like everybody else, accomplishing nothing constructive, with a certain risk of life and limb involved that is, at best, somewhat greater than some other parts of the world. At completion of my time, all I will have to show for the time spent is a good bank account, which counts for something, I suppose; but I wonder now whether I can survive the 11 months of inactivity?

Unquestionably, if I stick with it, I will be on the verge of resigning precipitately for the entire time. The urge is especially strong this day as I managed to pick up a copy of the August Playboy, and read the “Interview” with Wm Sloan Coffin.  I doubt it has been evident in recent letters, which I seem to recall have been preoccupied with this silly game of musical-jobs at PA&E, but my feelings about the entire question of american involvement here are becoming more firmly against it with time, after going through a period of some ambivalence while I got my bearings. The more I see of how miserably we have bungled the job, and how little is being done to correct all the blunders, the less I want to be associated with it, even as peripherally as I really am.

Mulling these matters over at dinner tonight, I was struck by the fact that some of the most articulate and reasoned objections I’ve heard voiced against this business here have come from men on active duty IN the military. I suppose this is to be expected, since by no means all of the mil pers here are here by choice (!), while most of the civilians are.

And I, of course, am in the latter category. In the largest sense, in trying to leave behind one milieu in which I was consistently uncomfortable, I have moved into another! This was not entirely unforeseen—and since there is a plainly discernable time when it will no longer be necessary to remain in this situation (the end of my contract), I suppose I, too, can start marking off the days like so many people do here. The only thing that wrangles is the fact that for the duration I will be a part of something that I and many others think is wrong and indefensible. The only thing that partially offsets this is the knowledge that the money I’m getting is being paid for next-to-nothing useful to the movement—which is, in a sense, subversion, even if I am powerless to prevent it.

As you can see, I am going through a period of some confusion about just what to do. I don’t look forward to vacillating thus for 11 months! I’ve got to resolve the matter soon one way or another. One thing that would help would be to have some way to do something directly for the people here (outside of work). But I’m now on a 6-day week, which leaves precious little time for such activity: Sunday has to be a pretty quiet day—a little shopping, washing, etc.

Well—enuf of this for the moment. I’ve had almost no letters in nearly a month—largely as a result of my request to the PO to send my mail to Robb.

Luv to all~
Bruce

PS: Have you had any more word from Tai?

__________________

The answer to that last question was “no”: Tai was never seen or heard-from again.

Shortly before I departed, that awful statue of the VN soldier pointing his gun at the National Assembly Building was removed. It had been an eye-sore from day-one. Under it was a fountain!

A Fountain Underneath

My situation at PA&E was deteriorating. The office in which I sat eight hours per day was air-conditioned to a uniform 65º F, although the hallways between the offices remained above ambient due to sun beating down on the Quonset-hut. Ambient was generally above 100º. Despite wearing coats and sweaters, I realized one day I was on the verge of pneumonia due to the frequent temperature changes. Not only was my health impacted in this way, but the VC continued to rocket Saigon now and then, so one never knew when he might be “in the wrong place at the right time”.

I no longer recall what—if anything—happened to precipitate my decision. The long and short of it was, one day I turned to the gent there in the office with me (apparently, I was working under him, even though no one had made that clear) and said, “No offense meant, but you can take this job and shove it!” His reply was, “No offense taken, done!”

I filled out the necessary form later that day, and the rest, as they say, is history! Over the next few days, I made all the arrangements to depart on an Air Vietnam flight to Phnom Penh, with my Honda as excess baggage. The only thing I left to PA&E was to obtain my exit visa, and therein lies yet another tale, to be related soon.

Stay tuned!

June 17, 2009

Before continuing, I want to remind my readers (if any) of the name of this blog: “MYOB”, which stands for “Mind Your Own Business!”  Nowhere was this exhortation driven home to me more forcefully than in VietNam!

Saigon 1968 Street Scenen

CONTINUING WITH LETTERS FROM VIETNAM

Looking back over these letters written 41 years ago, I am struck by my belief that we were safe in VietNam. In part, this was deliberate, trying to keep family from worrying about me. But it was also because I had CA’s council, and he knew far more about the country than I. For example, our compound on Phan-than-Gian street was large, and the hotel portion was behind a big old mansion: the hotel could not be seen from the street at all. The VC, CA said, weren’t looking for us in any case, and probably did not even know we were there.  Additionally, directly behind us was a garrison of Korean soldiers.

In addition to Americans, there were in VietNam soldiers from Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and Filipinos who were non-combatants working mostly in hospitals. Of these, the Viet Cong  feared the Koreans most  because they had a policy of never taking prisoners: they ruthlessly shot anything that moved when on patrol. They rarely went on patrol, however, and spent most of their time running the bars and brothels in Saigon. They also controlled the PX, which meant they had first dibs on anything that came into the country destined for anyone who had access to the PX (which was almost everyone except the Vietnamese). CA explained that the VC would not even consider taking on the Koreans bivouacked behind us.

It is also worth noting that, having arrived on a Saturday, some of us got to our duty-stations on Sunday the 28th, others on Monday the 29th for initial briefing. I got to Long Binh on the 30th. But there were rumors that “something was up”, though no one had the faintest notion of the scale of of the offensive, which began officially on the 30th, the first day of the lunar new year. It was recognized that zillions of fire-crackers going off would make fine cover for gun-shots, so we were requested to stay put “until Tet was over”.

Another thing to mention by way of background is that folks at home probably had more up-to-date information on what was happening than we did — we who were right in the thick of it! Locally, all there was in english was Armed Forces Radio, and they told only what the brass and local government wanted told. Most of the time they played pop music, which seemed quite inappropriate. Once mail began to flow, I got clippings from my folks, weeks out of date, which described things I’d had no inkling of as they played out around me.

So, here goes with the next letter: unable to send it out, I simply continued it from day to day as events unfolded.

Tuesday, 30 January 1968
1st day, year of the monkey

Dear folks,

By the time you receive this letter, you’ll all have heard a lot of rumors about what is happening here in Saigon, Unfortunately, as of this writing, I can’t fill you in too much. We are under an unofficial curfew. Today in Saigon two american civilians were killed—under what circumstances we don’t know. Additionally, during a heavy attack on Qui Nhon, two PA&E employees were also killed, although they were—for unknown reasons—quite far from their installation.

As you know, the “truce” was officially ended this morning. For reasons known only to themselves, the VC launched numerous attacks on VN installations today; as I write I can hear distant heavy artillery, even above the incredibly numerous fire-crackers that are an integral part of the Tet celebration.

This Tet business makes our “safe and sane” fireworks into a laughing stock. So many fireworks have already been set off that the streets are literally deep in the red paper remains. I saw, for instance, whole packages of firecrackers strung together from the top of a three-story building down to the ground, waiting to be set off at the bottom. Each package is about 50 of the little crackers we’re accustomed to, and there must have been about 50 of these packages strung together!! There are also available fire-crackers about 3 inches long and an inch wide that pack quite a wallop—to say nothing of rockets, sparklers, etc. There may be a few evil people left after all this, but certainly no evil spirits!! Tet lasts until next Thursday night, so there are two more nights of this “siege” (which lasts far into the night) for us. Very few of the populace work during this period, so everything really slows down. We have no idea what other difficulties the next few days will hold . . .

I visited the site of my assignment today—Long Binh. PA&E installed some while back a “water laboratory” on the Long Binh post. Apparently, through mismanagement & other circumstances, it has been largely unable to perform any useful function. My job—presumably — will be to get it under way again. The “presumably” is in there because there are some political overtones in the situation that may come into play. This remains to be seen. . .

The next few days will be spent in final processing at the PA&E CMO [Contract Management Office] at Tan Son Nhut; following the completion of Tet, I’ll be able (on Sunday) to locate quarters which will be in Saigon, there being none on the base, which is OK because it is a pretty bleak place. It is, incidentally, an 85,000 acre installation, so you can imagine the size and complexity of it. The complexity of the administration of it staggers the mind, and the paperwork involved is overwhelming!! I’ve already filled out so much paperwork it would probably stretch from here to Long Binh (laid end to end), a distance of about 22km (12 miles, give or take).

Having re-read this epistle so far, I think I may have accidently given rise to some fear for my security. Please don’t be alarmed. The situation is very far from normal in any respect: the Tet celebration has no equivalent at home. During all this carrying-on the town is over-run by “white mice” (the local euphemism for Saigon local police; a very slightly derogatory allusion both to their diminutive stature and their “colorful” uniform). VC infiltrators generally are not aiming at us civilians, but the fire-crackers bit already described serves as excellent cover for sniping, in which innocent people may become involved if they place themselves in a position to become so: I shan’t do so.

Saigon is essentially regarded as a town under siege. The perimeter is lit with flares all night long, and everything is heavily patrolled, both by white mice as described, by VN security police, by US MPs, and others. Essentially, trouble comes only to those who go looking for it—and of course, there are some people so inclined.

Of course, some very well publicized incidents have occurred, and some more are bound to before all this comes to some sort of conclusion. From my present quarters I can see the burned out hulk of a hotel allegedly set afire by the VC; the ammo dump at Long Binh has been blown up twice (no injuries); the Brinks BOQ has been bombed; the town itself has been shelled from time to time. But still, the odds on my surviving for several years here are very excellent—especially as I am one given to the use of good common sense to a greater degree than many of the expatriates here. Furthermore, I’ve been very fortunate to be billeted so far with a gent who has spent a previous TD [Tour of Duty] of 4.5 years here—and I’ve been able to learn a great deal of the “ropes” through him. My personal safety on Saigon streets—when I do venture out—is virtually assured. Please don’t worry—I don’t!!

So, that’s the news from the “Paris of the Orient” right now —

Love to all,
Bruce

Note my reference to “surviving several years” in Saigon. American civilians working for PA&E (and other contractors) were generally on eighteen-month contracts, largely because in those days Americans who stayed out of the country for that length of time owed no income tax on their earnings. After my run-in with the IRS, the idea of avoiding taxes for several years was attractive, and at this point I was ready to re-up for a second stint if it became possible.

The letter continues:

Next day, Wednesday, 31 January 1968

Continued

Well—there’s nothing like being right in the middle of the action! The irony is that we know as little as anyone as to just what is actually going on. The first reports this morning on the storming of the [American] Embassy reported that it was taken by the VC and that it was re-taken by paratroopers landed on the roof who worked their way down floor by floor. Later reports conflict this, and say only that the VC held the compound for a while, but did not enter the building.

After completing last night’s letter I went to bed but slept only fitfully. I heard much of the distant action as well as some closer by. Tan Son Nhut AFB was temporarily entered by the VC, and sustained slight damage. Since PA&E’s CMO [Contract Management Office] is there, we might normally have been on hand. Today, we’ve been confined to quarters, however—there is no one at the CMO, and for all we know, there may not even be one left!!

Since we cannot venture out of our hotel, I couldn’t mail last night’s letter, & so decided to add to it instead.

Enemy positions about a mile from our hotel were strafed, rocketed and mortared this afternoon, setting off quite a fire. At least four other fires could be seen from here [by going up on the roof of the hotel]. The air is alive with US helicopters, keeping their eye on what little movement of the population has been allowed, and occasional gun-fire and mortar rounds can be heard from the general down-town Saigon area. Things are relatively quiet now, but I suspect tonight will be pretty active—and is likely to continue through Thursday night, when Tet ends. After that is anybody’s guess, but the feeling seems to be that things will quiet down again & the siege will lift. Just how soon we can return to our processing and assignments also remains to be seen.

9:30 PM

The above was written about 2:00 PM. Since then, our street has been completely cordoned off and all traffic has stopped. About an hour ago there were some shots fired, apparently because someone who moved failed to halt on demand.

Meanwhile, Tan Son Nhut AFB has been receiving heavy mortar fire from enemy emplacements in the Delta, and the New Port facilities, which were afire most of the afternoon, have been re-kindled. Long Binh is under siege, I’m told, but I cannot confirm this.

11:00 PM

Things are a little quieter; the heavy offensive against Tan Son Nhut appears to have been repulsed, but since no planes are going in or out, we assume the runway has been damaged heavily. Except for a helicopter that crashed on top of a nearby building earlier (no apparent casualties) we’ve observed no loss of planes.

Going to bed now with hopes of sleeping – more tomorrow.

All 16 of us were holed up in the Loc Building, two to a room. I was bunked with CA, whose familiarity with the country I found most useful, even comforting. I was ready to “go with the flow”, as he recommended. Others in our group, despite receiving the same council from CA (we all ate dinner together) had different reactions, running the gamut from “ho hum” to “what the fuck is going on?” to “get us outa here!” I was the youngest of the group, there were several in their mid thirties, several approaching mid forties, and CA was the oldest, well past 55. Several chaps were attempting to phone the CMO almost every half hour, but there was no response. It was clear that some of the guys were afraid, but unwilling to show it.

Throughout these days, the hotel staff managed to feed us well and bring in a constant supply of Ba-mui-Ba beer. Beer “33″. It was horrible stuff, and I could not stomach it (not being much a beer drinker anyway). But regular drinkers managed to swill it down, with predictable results. Most of  our group, except CA and myself, were regular drinkers.

We discovered before too long that our group had been extremely lucky to have been billeted in the Loc Building: ordinarily, PA&E used the Tourist Hotel, right down town, which was a pretty awful place by then. It seems every war we start involves taking over at least one local hotel for purposes of housing Americans coming and going, for whatever reason. Travelers housed in-coming and out-going PA&E personnel, foreign correspondents and many others. More about the Travelers as my tale unfolds.

Again, unable to get mail out, I continued the letter begun on the 30th:

Next AM,

Thursday 1 February, 1100 hrs

Remainder of the night was relatively quiet. This AM Pres. Thieu had declared Martial Law, and we are still confined to quarters. Some traffic was allowed past our hotel for a while, & much of it was carrying D & W (dead and wounded) from the area to the west [Cho-Lon] where we observed heavy strafing and rocket attacks. We will never know the extent of the casualties, but they obviously had to be heavy.

The 11:00 am news carried the first reports of last night’s heavy action we observed on the outskirts of town, but only sketchy descriptions. Tet ends officially at midnight tonight, and we hope things will calm don thereafter—there’s no guarantee of this, of course.

There’s a lot of wild speculation about the meaning behind the widespread coordinated attacks by the VC at this particular time. For one thing, it is almost a tradition that a lot of terrorist activity takes place during Tet, because it affords such excellent cover for it. Privately, I’m inclined to feel that the intensity of this year’s offensive is Ho’s [Ho Chi Minh] answer to our refusal to halt bombing raids in the North. The truth may never be known.

So here we sit, awaiting orders from the PA&E management on what happens next. The second-in-command side-kick to the Contract Manager lives here in the same building, so we’ll doubtless get the word as soon as anyone. Although there is no official reason why we can’t leave, there are at least a couple of dozen trigger-happy guards in the street—we still hear occasional weapons fire there (mostly warning shots)—who are a very strong deterrent, so far as I am concerned!! More later . . .

4:00 PM

You may—or may not—hear it referred to as “The siege of Saigon”, but that’s just what it is. An estimated 2000 VC are within the city, and no one knows how many outside it. Streets have been completely cleared all day except for mil. personnel & ambulances. From our particular vantage point (not a very good one) we can hear—but never see—street skirmishes in all directions. Several major fires erupted, one of which may have been the main PX—as of now we really don’t know. Six BOQs [Bachelor Officers Quarters] have been assaulted in one way or another; 2 VN police precinct stations last night were attacked.

Strangely, today has been quieter, though, than yesterday. The ARVN has been active today, with the “Free World Forces” (i.e., U.S.) very lightly deployed. This is certain to change with nightfall, as our more sophisticated equipment will take over, and I rather imagine tonight will be quite a show.   More later . . .

Next AM –
February 2, Friday

The show I expected (locally) didn’t come off. The night was fairly quiet, with a heavy curfew enforced. We had ARVN soldiers in the building, watching for snipers from the roof-tops. A few mortar rounds fell fairly close (a couple of miles) and occasional street skirmishes were heard all night. The curfew applying to us is still in effect; it might be lifted at noon, but we doubt it.

I hope you aren’t too worried about me—except for boredom, there are no real threats here. I can’t get any mail out, so there’s no way to reassure you except to chronicle these events—dull as they are, really—and get this to a PO as soon as the curfew is lifted. The package I mailed ahead is waiting for me, along with any letters that may have gotten through—assuming that CMO HQ is still there!! We simply have NO news.

The local radio station—AFVN—is heavily censored by the local government. As soon as I can, I will get a short-wave set which will pick up VOA [Voice of America] from Manila, which gives much better coverage. But no one in the building has an all-wave set, so we sit here right in the thick of it with practically no idea of what is actually happening. By now, you at home probably know more about it than we do! Well—the orient has its own way of doing things!! More later…

10:30 AM

A “banana chopper” came by this AM to take away the helicopter that crashed day-before-yesterday on the building a few blocks away. It was a typical “ooops!” operation however. Instead of making a direct lift-off upwards, they dragged it off a bit sideways. Unfortunately, a broken-off  tail section was attached by a secondary sling, and that caught on the railing of the building that had fouled up the ‘copter in the first place; the result was they lost the whole thing down on to whatever was below. This may have been a street, but was probably low buildings. All we saw was a cloud of dust . . .

Not a half-hour later, two VC snipers were captured in the street in front of us after quite a bit of gun-play. There are now ARVN soldiers and white mice stationed atop our building and many others nearby. “How about that?” as Snubs would say. More later . . .

6:30 PM

A major pitched-battle 2 long blocks westward of us routed & killed quite a number of VC this afternoon, & touched off a fire that consumed a number of houses. Air action has been very limited, and sniper activity since this morning in our area is essentially non existent.

We have been entirely confined since Tuesday afternoon. Prior to that time, I’d made only two or three trips away from here—and hence have seen very little. Went to the McCarthy BOQ twice for meals—it’s right down town and is one which has since been attacked by VC.

Got over to the 5 Oceans BOQ [with CA] once for an excellent steak dinner; it has also seen some action since then. When I was out, before the 24 hr curfew was clamped on, there was less of an “armed camp” atmosphere than there is now. But all the streets are littered with concertina-wire now, and heavily armed ARVN and white mice are literally everywhere.

Amidst all this, Bougainvillea blooms in profusion, and in a variety of shades I’ve never seen: many are orange, rather than the brilliant magenta we usually see at home. Some sort of tropical tree with very lovely 5-petaled flowers is also to be found everywhere, and potted “mums” in all shades line every drive and walkway in the more prosperous sections of town.

I’ve had to stay indoors more today than yesterday because of a bit of facial sunburn I got then, which gets uncomfortable whenever sun befalls it again. But the weather has really been fine, and such a welcome change. Well, more tomorrow unless we can get to a PO tomorrow, which seems unlikely.

This letter was continued over several more days, and it will appear here on future pages. In the meantime, here are a few snapshots taken in Saigon soon after we managed to get “out and about”: I have no pictures taken during the Tet Offensive, since we were confined to barracks as it were.

Police confiscate a seller’s cart for some infraction (probably selling black-market items)

Saigon Police Load Confiscated Street Vendor’s Cart

A typical scene at the Saigon port. No deep-water vessels could get near, so everything came ashore in lighters.

Pandemonium at the Port. No doubt the folks there knew what was going on, but the general appearance was one of confusion.

Vegetable Sellers on the Street in Saigon.

More of the Tet Offensive and the part I played in it (which was nothing) will follow.

PeeYes: Anyone wondering about this line: “How about that?” as Snubs would say” in my letter can write me at [email protected] for an explanation.

HARD TO BELIEVE:

Despite growing up on a farm, watching animals being bred, watching Betty’s horses, and working with Carl, the notion of doing something other than taking a leak with my own little wiener never occurred to me. Even after an older Cousin, who must have been about 15 at the time, let me watch him jack off and reach an orgasm (he was into keeping his loads in a little bottle in the refrigerator for some reason) I did not put “two and two together”. Throughout my extended youth (I would turn out to be a “late bloomer”) not one person of any age ever touched me — dammit! [Why, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have joined the Catholic Church (except there wasn’t one in Carmichael then)]. The blessed event that was my own first orgasm came much later. Meanwhile…

BACK TO A CITY

Dad took a new job in Modesto, roughly 90 miles south of Sacramento, so all our stuff got packed up and shipped in a huge van to a new house in a small corner of Modesto. There were a number of adaptations that had to be made, not the least of which was receiving milk by delivery in quart bottles: like, 20 at a time? On the farm, we had our own cows, and kept their milk in gallon jugs: my bothers and I would polish off an entire one at every meal, and that was whole milk, not pasteurized or skimmed. But the stuff we got in the bottles was skimmed milk, and we thought it was like drinking water: our intake of milk dropped off rapidly.

JUNIOR HIGH

The 7th grade was a whole new experience for me, much of it quite negative. For one thing, I was a natural hellion, and disliked regimen in almost any form. I also disliked sports, since I was very uncoordinated, but also could not see any real point to the kinds of sports we were required to play: baseball? I couldn’t hit the ball even off a stand! Football? I couldn’t hang on to it and run at the same time. And so it went. But the real problem was the requirement to dress for PE. Actually, we had to UNdress, put our clothes in a locker, change into little grey shorts, go out and play, then come back, UNdress again, shower, dry off, and put our street-clothes back on and go to the next class.

The problems came particularly in the shower-room: there were guys there who were men! They had hair down there! They had huge penises! And they loved to beat up little Bruciebabe, who was still a child.

Further complications arose because I loved to look at all the nude guys, but didn’t want any of them to see me watching! Of course I got caught peeping, so I also got towel-snaps and occasionally more brutal forms of abusive bullying. I tried getting a Doctor’s excuse: no deal—there was nothing wrong with me. I tried making myself appear sick: no deal—the Doctor saw through that in a heartbeat. So, I stumbled along, knowing there was something wrong with me because I hated sports but loved the nude guys! Such angst! I formed no friendships, kept to myself and somehow managed to get through the first year intact. I dreaded the approach of the eighth grade.

NOT ALL BAD

Modesto did have a few redeeming features; most notably (for me) its location on the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Our house was just a few blocks away, and when I was not in school, I was usually somewhere around the railroad. I met the southbound Daylight every afternoon: it was due in at 4:50 or so, and usually made it. For this little tyke, standing beside one of those gorgeous GS-4 locomotives all decked out in the smart orange and red scheme of the Daylight trains, this was the high point of each day. Once in a while a kindly fireman would beckon me up into the cab, where all the heat, fire, handles and gadgets were simply awesome!

GS-4 Orange and Red

The Daylights ware Southern Pacific’s Premier trains in the hey-day of passenger trains. In my youth they ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles via the coast (The Coast Daylight), and between San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles (the San Joaquin Daylights); later they also ran North from Oakland to Portland (The Shasta Daylights). Still regarded as the most beautiful passenger trains to operate anywhere in the world, they are, of course all gone. Just one example of their famous locomotives still exists:

All other examples of this spectacular machine have been scrapped.

For most of my years in Modesto I continued to meet the afternoon Daylight as often as I could, usually every day. I could watch the train depart and ride my bike home in time for dinner. There was not a lot of other excitement around Modesto’s station, although once the local steam switch-engine failed to clear the high-iron for a northbound freight, resulting in a spectacular wreck. I lingered past dinner time to watch crews trying to untangle the mess, and caught holy hell for not being home on time.

The SP also occasionally sent one of their famous cab-forward locomotives down the valley if they had a particularly long train to handle. What went south had to come north, and this usually occurred in the afternoon when I was out of school. I would hear the distinctive sound of the air pumps on those huge machines and ride my bike over in time to see them getting under way again after having taken on water. These things were amazing:

SP Cab-Forward Locomotive

They are essentially two locomotives on a single frame and designed for heavy drag-freight use. They were used almost exclusively on Donner Pass. Putting the cabs in front prevented asphyxiating the crew when passing through snow-sheds which were essentially wooden tunnels designed to divert the avalanches so common in the high Sierra. On our trips to Tahoe it was not uncommon to see a freight-train with three of these mammoths working their balls off: one in front, one in the middle of the train, and one at the rear. The three crews could not communicate: they simply had to know when the engine was doing the right thing.

f the 400 or so of these built, just ONE remains – in the Railway Museum in Sacramento.

Watching one of these get under way was incredibly exciting (with tender, these are a city-block long)! All the machinery is exposed and beefy. I could ride along the tracks for a quarter of a mile or so before the thing out-ran me: I’d stop and watch as 125 cars rumbled by, gathering speed, so the caboose receded into the distance rapidly. Naturally, I wanted to become a locomotive engineer, but while I was in college, steam died. Diesel locomotives just don’t have the charisma of steam!

EIGHTH GRADE

Too soon, September rolled around and I entered the eighth grade. But, something had happened along the way: I was beginning to grow up!

So, the eighth grade was perhaps a little less stressful than the seventh. I remember less about it, though I know my feelings of inadequacy and differentness persisted. By the end of Junior High school I was at least beginning to mature, and there were a few stirrings of the hormones beginning to rage. But, I was still far behind most of my peers physically: academically, I was ahead of many, being something of a bookworm, or what we now call a nerd. High School terrified me, because I knew the Physical Ed bullshit would continue for another four years!

To be continued …

In 1994, I wrote The Orphanage. While it was on alt.sex.stories, it was reviewed by a reader who remarked about its “sly political humor”. As with all my stories, it wound up on the Nifty Archive.

In 2004, I wrote the sequel, The Orphanage Revisited and sent it to Nifty. Here is the penultimate paragraph:

“But in the end, it was Wayne Henry Lane who was right: the Hilltop scene couldn’t last, and it didn’t. The complete melt-down of the Middle East in 2005 and the world-wide economic collapse in 2006 put us and thousands like us out of business, but also put the skids under Dubya and his neocons and his “Religious Wrong”. There’s never before been an impeachment of both the President and the vice-President. The Republicans were crippled, and when in 2009 President Obama declared a state of emergency, it was so the New Deal could be dusted off and people could get to work to un-do the damage of the previous seven years.”

So, I was off a bit in my timing of the economic collapse (which we are living right now), and so far, the Middle East hasn’t quite melted down (yet), but it seems I WAS right about Senator Obama’s successful run to be our President. I’m delighted he made it!

My only regret is that Dubya will leave office, rather than being thrown out of office. Likewise, it annoys me greatly that none of the perps responsible for our current economic meltdown are in jail, or are even likely to be. There’s no accountability any more for ANYthing: I hope Barack can do something about that once he is actually seated in the White House.

Like many others, I’d made up my mind to leave this country if Mr. Obama lost to the Repugnant Party. This posed a little problem, because my house-mate (thinking likewise) thought New Zealand might be nice, but I thought Portugal was a better choice for me. I read a blog that includes wonderful photos of Portugal. Most of the men are too butch and beefy for my taste, but it looks like Lisbon closely resembles San Francisco; it has hills, a bay, bridges, antique trams, and pretty mild weather. However, except possibly to visit, I doubt I’ll go there.

Likewise, I decided that if Mr. Obama won, I’d have the engine in my Chrysler rebuilt: the car has gone just shy of 200K miles. I know I’ll never go out and blow 20-30-40 kilo-bucks for a modern plastic car that I don’t fit in, so $6K  to have the engine running well seems like a bargain.

My Chrysler

This car will run until I crash it or my body crashes! The engine rebuild is complete, and I’m still breaking it in. Too bad I can’t be rebuilt in like fashion.
My regular narrative will resume on the next page.

FIFTH BIRTHDAY:

Carrots!

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…

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.

Beef Tongue

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.”

Worlds Fair Treasure Island 1940

“The Fair” was the World’s Fair on Treasure Island, held over into most of 1940. 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” 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.

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.

George was one of Dad’s students who had been to our home often, and who was home on leave

Me and George

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, Presad 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!

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 “F” 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:

The Key-System Trains

Key-Systems Train detail

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.

To be continued …

PeeYes: I’ll try to add to this blog most Fridays, that being a day off for me.

I INTERRUPT MY NARRATIVE …

… to discuss a matter of some importance to several large segments of our population: pornography.

I’m old enough to remember vividly the days when there was NO commercial porn. What porn there was consisted mostly of typewritten material, often second-and third- carbon-copies, occasionally with crude drawings included. A friend of mine had a HUGE collection of this stuff. Later, when the firm for which we both worked got a dry copier, he made Xerox copies in large quantities. Since he was the “key operator” for the machine, he got away with it for many months, until he left an “original” on the platen which someone else found. There was a bit of a dust-up, of course, but only a very few knew he was the perp, so he went on with it, being more careful! But I digress…

As I completed college, I found there were some magazines available here and there: these were not really pornographic in today’s sense of the word. There were no “dirty-book stores”: only a few magazine-stands would carry these off-color rags. One of these was a tiny (like, 5″ X 7″) black and white booklet called Tomorrow’s Man. It was mainly devoted to body-builders, posing (often oiled) in miniscule thongs and jock-straps. Penises were generally stuffed out of the way, which gave rise to the notion that most body-builders are not well hung. (The porn revolution has busted that myth!) Fizeek was another of these magazines, very similar in design and scope and there were several others.

Then there was AMG (Athletic Model Guild), in a slightly larger format, also black and white. This was produced in Southern California and appeared to contain mostly navy guys (”seafood”) earning a little extra cash (to buy booze and girls, of course). I suppose a collection of these magazines would be worth some money nowadays. In the early issues the boys were mostly dressed, usually shirtless, and showing some basket (sometimes enormous ones—I often suspected salamis had been substituted for the real thing). The intent of these photos was certainly to provoke a salacious reaction in the reader, and I suppose it was successful for some: but the other intent was to “push the envelope” and get porn main-streamed. As time went on, the guys wore less and less and various symbols (often scratched on the negatives) were used to indicate sexual preferences, physical statistics and so forth. It is difficult, now, to believe that to state (or even suggest) that someone was “gay” or -gasp- homosekshull, was forbidden! [When someone implied Liberace was homosexual, he sued (libel), and WON!] The cute stuff in AMG was all designed to avoid prosecution for distributing “obscene” material under a whole bunch of court rulings generally lumped together and called “obscenity laws”

TM eventually disappeared (a copy from 1954 was available recently for $95.00), but AMG pushed on pushing, their material becoming more prurient and occasionally in color. Then, in 1973, came “Miller v. California”, which, while not opening the flood-gates exactly, did make it obvious the definition of obscene was not an easy task. It gradually dawned on people in general and on the courts, that obscenity was as much “in the eye of the beholder” as in the producer: by this time, AMG was definitely obscene, and was to become far more-so before it folded.

However, from the 70’s on, pornography “took off”. Large-format magazines that had kept the air-brushes busy removing “lumps” began including explicit (and occasionally real) hard-ons: the air-brushes went to work enhancing rather that deleting! With the useful addition of “adult” bookstores where all this stuff could be displayed and sold, the pornography market exploded. Specialty-subject mags appeared, including kiddie-porn, which as quickly as it appeared was legislated out of existence. My favorite title of the “niche rags” was Stump, and I leave it to my readers to imagine its contents!

Professional pornographers were quick to exploit technology: even amateurs quickly saw the possibilities of the Polaroid camera! I had a neighbor in the early 50’s who took photos of every hard-on he could find (he’s immortalized in Piece on Earth at Nifty). Prior to that, all porno had been produced on conventional film, an expensive and laborious process given that one had to find places to develop film that would NOT call the cops if they found a hard-on (or worse). The advent of the electronic camera for production (professional and otherwise), and the internet (for distribution) has radically changed the whole “porno” scene. Kids growing up today have this phenomenal wealth of porn available if they want it, and the ready means to produce and distribute it themselves if so inclined:  and they do, as I’m sure my readers know.

It’s all pretty amazing stuff for old farts like me who have watched it all unfold. For a walk through memory lane, there’s a website that sells the old magazines here. My own career, such as it is, writing “fuck stories” began in 1987 with First and Second Cousins: it has been on Nifty practically from its inception.

PeeYes: I’m also old enough to remember that the Nifty (gay) Archive was originally accumulated by someone at Cornell University: whether student or faculty I’ve never known. Its original URL ended in cornell.edu! I suppose someone eventually discovered it and forced it off-site! But it still exists here and contains thousands of original gay stories; many are fine examples of “one-handed-reading”.

Change we can bereave in

I have a real knack for breaking computers and software; if anyone can force a “restart”, I can! So, while my blog is being rebuilt by an expert (in a new and better format), I’ll take this moment to post my next “occasional rant”.

/rant mode ON

Readers of this blog will be well aware how delighted I was that Barack Obama was elected as President. Alas, the bloom is off the rose. As with most politicians, once in office, he has found it convenient to forget many of his campaign promises. There’s nothing new about this, but like many others, I believed Barack was somehow “different”.

And, different he is. His ability to string together a group of words to form a sentence is *so refreshing after 8 years of Bush’s incoherent ramblings. But George could keep his party in line (with Cheney as “enforcer”): Mr. Obama seems  unable to bring the democrats into line to give him the support any president needs to succeed. Perhaps those who thought he should remain in the Senate a few more years before running for President were right.

Making the war in Afghanistan his own will prove to be a terrible mistake. The Afghanis have successfully driven out every invader of their territory, starting with Alexander the Great! We should go. Now! The money we spend there now could buy up the entire poppy production for years; we could refine the product into useful morphine, and **burn the rest of it. The money could then be spent by the Afghanis as they see fit.

If one accepts the need to sacrifice 30K more men to this fruitless enterprise, (I don’t) he could at least have taken the opportunity to explain that to get that many men into uniform we will have to accept men and women regardless of their sexual orientation: no dice.

As for the group of jerks we collectively call Congress, they should all be utterly ashamed of themselves. Harry Reid is a wimp. The Senate majority “whip” (Dickless Durbin) couldn’t swat a fly. After months of wrangling, the bought-and-paid-for in the Senate have destroyed current hopes of a true reform of health care and have delivered the American public into the hands of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Against a proven majority, the Republinuts have won!

President Obama should long ago have made it clear he will not sign a health-care bill that does not included a “robust” public option. He should do so immediately, even though it is probably too late.

The list of visages on the TV that make me want to vomit has grown very large in recent days. It began with George Bush, whose appearance always made me switch channels lest I blow chunks on the carpet. He’s now been joined by John “Beaner” and Mitch McConnell, both right up there with Sarah “Pailin” and turn-coat Joe Lieberman. *Especially Joe Lieberman, raking in millions to deliver health-care to the “industry”. What a jerk!

Here’s my opinion of the whole friggin lot of politicians in Washington, who with almost no exceptions are willing to sell the population down the river to save their own fat perks.

(photo)

/rant mode OFF

I have a real knack for breaking computers and software; if anyone can force a “restart”, I can! So, while my blog is being rebuilt by an expert (in a new and better format), I’ll take this moment to post my next “occasional rant”.

/rant mode ON

Readers of this blog will be well aware how delighted I was that Barack Obama was elected as President. Alas, the bloom is off the rose. As with most politicians, once in office, he has found it convenient to forget many of his campaign promises. There’s nothing new about this, but like many others, I believed Barack was somehow “different”.

And, different he is. His ability to string together a group of words to form a sentence is so refreshing after 8 years of Bush’s incoherent ramblings. But George could keep his party in line (with Cheney as “enforcer”): Mr. Obama seems unable to bring the democrats into line to give him the support any president needs to succeed. Perhaps those who thought he should remain in the Senate a few more years before running for President were right.

Making the war in Afghanistan his own will prove to be a terrible mistake. The Afghanis have successfully driven out every invader of their territory, starting with Alexander the Great! We should go. Now! The money we spend there now could buy up the entire poppy production for years; we could refine the product into useful morphine, and burn the rest of it. The money could then be spent by the Afghanis as they see fit.

If one accepts the need to sacrifice 30K more men to this fruitless enterprise, (I don’t) he could at least have taken the opportunity to explain that to get that many grunts into uniform we will have to accept men and women regardless of their sexual orientation: another chance missed.

As for the group of jerks we collectively call Congress, they should all be utterly ashamed of themselves. Harry Reid is a wimp. The Senate majority “whip” (Dickless Durbin) couldn’t swat a fly. After months of wrangling, the bought-and-paid-for in the Senate have destroyed current hopes of a true reform of health care and have delivered the American public into the hands of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Against a proven majority, the Republinuts have won!

President Obama should long ago have made it clear he will not sign a health-care bill that does not included a “robust” public option. He should do so immediately, even though it is probably too late.

The list of visages on the TV that make me want to vomit has grown very large in recent days. It began with George Bush, whose appearance always made me switch channels lest I blow chunks on the carpet. He’s now been joined by John “Beaner” and Mitch McConnell, both right up there with Sarah “Pailin” and turn-coat Joe Lieberman. Especially Joe Lieberman, raking in millions to deliver health-care to the “industry”. What a jerk!

Here’s my opinion of the whole friggin lot of politicians in Washington, who with almost no exceptions are willing to sell the population down the river to save their own fat perks.

Our politicians aren’t worth even this much…

/rant mode OFF

Continuing with Vietnam and the Tet Offensive, still not quite over.

Monday-
19 February- 1968

Dear Everyone –

Went to work as usual this AM. The first news I got was that yesterday (Sunday) my immediate spvsr (Chief of Operations) had decided to transfer. Since the Post Installation Mgr & he didn’t get along well anyhow, this was OK with the former. It was also OK with me, since Mr. [redacted] was not a very dynamic sort of person & it was obvious to me that he and I were going to clash before long. A new CO was on hand by noon—the fastest work I’ve seen accomplished here yet!—and I think he will be a much more successful person. The Post Installation Mgr? Well, he made a big thing of telling me, when I first met him, that he had been a PIM longer than anyone in VN—which I took immediately to mean either a) he was such a fine PIM that he couldn’t be replaced or b) he was such a bad one that he’d never managed to get himself promoted. The latter assessment of the situation begins to show itself as the more likely one, now. He’s handled his personnel in this crisis very poorly, we feel. He’d better show some real management ability to me soon, or we are going to clash!!

Enclosed copy of today’s Sgn DN [Daily News] is interesting both for its content and its omissions, which are due to government censorship. You can see what we’re up against in the way of news!!

Enclosed also is a very poor little map, showing more or less, central Saigon. I’ve appended my location and a very few details. I’ve seen so little of it, really, that I can’t mark very many places.

Map of Downtown Saigon, 1968

Your worries about my food are needless. I thought I’d lost some weight during “the siege”, but—alas—I haven’t lost a single kilo!

The “siege”—third stage—continues, though with less intensity locally. There was an incident yesterday morning on the Long Binh – Bien Hoa hiway, which closed it temporarily. I didn’t go to work anyway, so wasn’t involved, and it was all cleaned up by morning. Tonight as we drove in about 5:30 helicopter gunships were working over another portion of Go-vap, an outlying section of Sgn which, like Cho-lon, has seen some pretty intense fighting. Tan Son Nhut is being mortared pretty regularly, and I’m not sure what this has done for the tenuous commercial flights recently reinstated.

As you can see, the direct route from Saigon Port to Long Binh & Bien Hoa is directly up the main street of Sgn! New Port, more directly accessible to LB-BH, was severely damaged by VC raids, hence a lot of freight, vehicles and so forth are being moved each day right through down-town Saigon. Needless to say, the sight is appalling, and traffic is snarled up maddeningly as a result. Tu Do Street is hardly 3 US-car-widths wide, and there is always a double line of small cars parked at the curb on each side. 7 days a week, tons of cargo move right up the main street, around the cathedral, and on to Bien Hoa or Long Binh. Quite a sight, as I said!

One of the more delightful things about which I’ve said very little so far is the gekkos—small lizards that live everywhere and—happily—eat bugs by the millions. They’re everywhere, though they hide out during the heat of the day. But at night they come out and gather around the lights.The silly rascals can crawl—run, actually—along any surface, straight up, or upside-down on the ceiling, with perfect ease. They have about 270 deg of vision, and any bug that lands anywhere near them is doomed to be a a gekko’s dinner. They look something like Chameleons, but are a uniform color. Occasionally they make a sort of chirping sound amazingly like that silly noise I [used to] make, but usually are silent—and very diligent in their duty.

Bugs aren’t much of a problem here. Mosquitos are the worst offenders, but if one keeps a sufficient stiff breeze in the room by means of a fan (usually a ceiling fan) they aren’t very bothersome. I got badly bitten one night when the electricity was off, but the bites were only unsightly, not painful. Roaches are to be found occasionally—frequently in dumpy places like the Tourist Hotel, and more frequently still in shanties, I’m sure—and they are usually real big ones. Despite their harmless nature, they are still ugly and one of the few beasts to whom I take a real dislike! But I’ve only seen a couple so far, which is good, and I understand it’s pretty easy to keep them out of one’s quarters if a determined effort is made.

Love to all—

Bruce

Statue of a Soldier, Saigon 1968

This hideous statue of a VN soldier stood in the middle of Le Loi Boulevard between Nguyen Hue and Tu Do Streets. His gun was aimed directly at the National Assembly building, at the photographer’s back. The Rex BOQ (formerly Hotel) is to the right.

2 February 1968

Dear Everyone~

Today is Washington’s Birthday (here), and although I guess I could have gone to Long Binh as usual and sat on my hands at double-time, I elected to stay home & look for an apartment. Spent most of the day at it, without finding anything. So I’ve decided to take a single room here at the Loc Building, 318 Phan-thanh-Gian. (In Vietnamese that comes out approximately “fantanyan”). It’s a comfortable place, clean, well kept, and secure. About a 20 minute walk to downtown, or a 20p – 10 min cab ride. I’ll take most of my meals out, though there is a restaurant here, of sorts.

I found out why I’ve been having GI [gastrointestinal] trouble— found three daphnia (a small water-flea typical of polluted water) in a bottle of Bireley’s orange drink here the other day! Although it is supposedly “pasteurized”, it’s probably done in bulk, before going into the bottles. At any rate, I’m off Bireley’s. Cokes are bottled at the same plant—so I guess they’re out, too. I’m beginning to see why “33″ is so popular—nothing could possibly live in that “pickling bath”—but I’ll drink water only before I’d take that stuff again!

The formula for US Army iced tea is as follows: fill one bucket (preferably with lots of rust) with water. Add a tablespoon of Clorox to sterilize. Add ice to chill. Serve. One tea-bag may be added for color if desired.

There are so many marvelous little changes here that few people bother to observe, but which contribute to what little charm the place has left. For one thing, everything is scaled down in size to fit the population’s general smallness. (cf. previous letters) Elevators, for instance, are tiny. The one in the Rex [BOQ, formerly hotel] was rated by Otis [India] for 8 persons. 8 americans got in it one night, and it plunged all the way to the basement. (The Rex has no basement). So now it is posted for 4 persons (or, as some pfc, no doubt, added, “2 Officers”). Chairs and tables in restaurants tend to be miniscule, as do seats on busses. The long Binh bus (a Mercedes) seats 80 Vietnamese comfortably—about half that number of americans, UNcomfortably. I practically have to crawl in and out of it—a good case of “Flebus” would help immeasurably!

Oddly, the beds here in this hotel, though slightly narrower than US standard, are longer—and quite comfortable for me. The bathroom fixtures, on the other hand, are sort of “sports-car” equipment, and one has to assume some unaccustomed positions to use them. And since Vietnamese are almost totally devoid of body-hair, they put very fine screens in the floor-drains, which plug up immediately when I take a shower!

Under separate cover, I’m sending a bundle of newspapers that I gathered up, mostly, after others were through with them. You may be the only house in town with the Saigon Post in the stack with the New York Times! But since you are still plagued by the SF strike, I thought you could use some news!!

I’ve decided to get an 8 mm movie camera. Bell & Howell has a very nice one that’s virtually automatic and not too expensive. Hence, you should look around for one of those small 8 mm viewer contraptions. It will be month or so before I get it, but it will enable us to share a few experiences, visually at least.

You’ve probably figured out by now that when you get to Hawaii for  your long-awaited trip, you’ll be about 1/3rd of the way to Bangkok—why not plan to fly over for a week—with luck & plenty of advance notice, I could probably get there at the same time. On the other hand, you could doubtless get an entrance visa to Vietnam itself if you should feel compelled (!!) to view Saigon University. I pass it every day—it’s out of town a ways on Hiway 1—right smack-dab in the middle of Charlie territory. Several large buildings are completed, but idle . . .

I’d marginally planned (or hoped) to spend Christmas in Australia. On talking to an Aussie this morning, though, it seems that December & January are holiday months there, and prices skyrocket. So I’ll probably plan that for next February or so. Any leave I take before then will be to HK or BK, I suspect.

My new immediate spvsr at Long Binh is a much better man than his predecessor and think there is a much better chance, with his help, I can get a program started. It’s obvious that I’m going to have a brief personality-clash with the [Post] Installation Manager—but I think I can handle it in such a way that it won’t happen more than once. Among the milder remarks by others that I’ve heard about him are the following choice items:

“There is nothing like a good Post Installation Manager, and Mr. Smythe is nothing like a good  Post Installation Manager!”

“Mr.  Smythe suffers from delusions of adequacy”

“In a recent popularity poll, Mr. Smythe came in just slightly above Ho Chi Minh!”

The rest of the comments don’t bear repeating. All I can say from my own personal experience is that so far, he has yet to show me any indication of real management ability. We shall see!! He makes a big thing about the fact he’s been a PIM longer than anyone here (which he likes to intimate is because he’s such a good one). The fact is, he’s been demoted twice, and is so genuinely disliked by so many people that it’s all he can do to remain a PIM. He broadcasts his insecurity every time he opens his mouth. Cèst la viê!!

The chap I’ve been billeted with here was supposed to go to his assignment in Qui Nhon, today, but it’s a 50-50 chance that the transportation  actually works out and he gets there. I’ve been fortunate to learn a great deal from him, and he was always in good humor and pleasant, with  a great sense of camaraderie, and a long collection of amusing anecdotes.

Time to go to bed soon. There’s an unusually pretty sunset right now. One doesn’t see them too often. Morning half-light here lasts only about 15 minutes, and against the lightening sky the clouds (usually present) are a curious black color. The length of days doesn’t vary much here, and the sun rises and sets quickly. Sunsets are brief and usually not spectacular, twilight is short, and darkness overtakes the city almost suddenly. Against the present reddish clouds, there is already a flare aloft to light the way for some sort of action, or to allow surveillance against infiltration or strikes…

Last night around midnight there was a good deal of action due North. At least 3 Charlie emplacements were lobbing mortars and rockets in all directions, and despite heavy “FWF” attack, were still lobbing them out at a great rate when I crawled into bed at midnight. The action was, as best I could judge by timing the flashes & sounds, about 15 miles away.

On that delightful note, I’ll close. As Walter Cronkite would say, “that’s how it is…”

Love to all~

Bruce

My narrative will continue as soon as I can find time to transcribe more letters.

MISCELLANEOUS

• I read a lot of blogs, including some by youngsters dealing with finding themselves gay. Of course, every situation is different, so there’s no universal advice to be given. Except to say, “hang in: as my own blog will eventually relate, I figured things out to my own satisfaction and had a full and interesting life. It does take time…“

• While I empathize with these kids, I envy their ability to put together blog pages and web sites that are absolutely smashing! The process has pretty much defeated me so far. Maybe some cute young thing who likes old men (yeah, right!) will come along and give me a hand. With the blog, I mean…

• As it is developing, my format seems to be a chronological exposé of my life:  So far, I’m not even out of high school! But, the pace will pick up as I got out into the world. A buddy (well, he started out as a lover but things quickly degenerated) went to Europe the summer of 1963. This was my first glimpse into other life-styles. Later, I spent time in Vietnam, rode a motorcycle from Phnom-Penh to Singapore, worked in Australia, Philippines, Egypt, Ecuador and elsewhere, so there is much to tell. Here are a few photos to give you some idea of what’s in store:

Ready to depart Saigon, September, 1968, on a Honda CB-125

Ready to depart Saigon, September, 1968. I have two saddle-bags and a cheap suitcase strapped on the luggage rack. The bike is a Honda CB-125 bought used from a compatriot leaving the country. The national assembly building in the background had been hit by a rocket a week earlier: note the canvas roof, top right.

All wood Siemens Train, Athens 1979

These beautifully maintained all-wood Siemens train-sets were still in use in Athens in 1978. I loved riding them. I hope some have been preserved.

Guayaquil & Quito Railroad, Ecuador, 1979

Perched on the tender of Engine Number 11 of the Guayaquil & Quito railroad, Ecuador, 1979. I had a fabulous time riding almost everything they had working at the time. I went back in 1994 to find very little of it running, and now there seems to be almost nothing left.

• Throughout it all I was queer—not flaming, but not really hiding it either. I had my share of “interactions”, and have no regrets, now that things are winding down.

• The chronology will be interrupted from time to time by observations on the current scene, political or other sorts of rants, and whatever else occurs that I think worthy of note.

• WordPress has informed me three people have registered with my blog. You know who you are, and I hope you find my recollections entertaining. Someday I may find out how to give proper credit, but right now I remain a novice. I managed to figure out how to number the pages so they come in the right order, and that is a big accomplishment for a newbie. But for the time being my readers are stuck with the plain-jane WP theme. Any cuties out there wanna give me a hand?

To be continued …

DEVELOPMENTS

I lived the first four years of my life in Sacramento. Of many memories, there are two that I believe contributed to the later “me”.

My God-parents lived nearby: they had a daughter somewhat older than I. Bobbie was probably about seven when I was three-going-on four. We all lived near William Land Park, at one corner of which was a cluster of large bushes. We kids could get in under those and assume no one could see us: it was the typical “hideout” kids like to make. But what we did in there, instigated by Bobbie, was examine each other’s private parts, and “do number one and do number two”! Bobbie would raid her bathroom for huge wads of toilet-paper (I wonder what her parents thought). I was the only boy in the group, so of course had that “handy little gadget” that made peeing much easier for me. But Bobbie and her girl-friends were not much interested in my little pee-pee. I, likewise, was not much interested in what they had between their legs: it seemed so UNfunctional!

I attribute these amusements to my lifelong interest in urination, and assume the beginnings of my lack of interest in females began here as well. The lack of any significant difference in how boys and girls defecate left me with far less interest in that function of the body.

The other memory from that time involves my maternal Grandmother who liked to take me out on Sunday afternoons to ride the C-street trolly line. Even then, the tracks were not in good shape, and the little single-truck Birney cars were notoriously rough-riding. Birney “Safety Cars” looked like this:

Single Truck Birney “Safety Car”

This little model shows how the car extended past the four-wheel truck, which meant that any little dip in the tracks was communicated to the car itself. But I loved to ride those bouncy little trollies! They were called “Safety Cars” because the door and brake controls had been cleverly incorporated into a single lever: the door could not be opened until the lever had moved past the “full stop” position of the brake. There was no way the doors could be opened if the car was moving. A Birney car can be seen in operation here during the filming of “The Changeling”.

I attribute my lifelong interest in trains and trams to these early experiences, even though our move out of Sacramento (and the death of both Grandmothers) put a stop to those Sunday excursions. I’ll have much more to say about trams and trains later in this blog.

CARMICHAEL

Dad moved us to Carmichael early in 1940: I had my fourth birthday there. Why we moved, I’m not sure. Both my parents were essentially “city-slickers” with no farming experience. Perhaps Dad saw WWII coming.

We had five acres, mostly planted in almonds, an old farm-house, a large, dilapidated garage and some barns. The first couple of years were devoted to rebuilding first the house, then the garage, and minor improvements to the milking-shed of the barn. Not yet in school, I was under-foot for much of this renovation work, and suppose my interest in old houses and handiwork in general stems from that experience.

My mother had taught for a few years, but when we moved to Carmichael, she devoted herself to her family while Dad was the bread-winner. Both took very good care of us (three boys — I was the “baby”). Dad taught in Sacramento, so was gone all day, but we had week-ends and summers together: yet even on a single salary we were considered fairly well off. Mom suffered from terrible migraine headaches, but between these took good care of us, and cooked all our meals. Any sort of restaurant of note was miles away in Sacramento, so dining “out” was rare!

Dad’s salary did get Mom some labor-saving devices: she had a fine Singer sewing-machine, of course, and she made a lot of our clothes. She also had an Iron-rite “mangle” — a machine for ironing clothes not unlike this one:

Iron-Rite “Mangle”

Making, washing, fixing, ironing and sewing buttons on all the clothes for three growing boys was nearly a full-time job, and I often found Mom seated at her ironer when I came in from play or home from school. I wore many hand-me-downs in those days: by the time I got through with them they were just rags.

Mom also had a Bendix washer, first of the front-loaders. It looked similar to this one. I could not find a photo of our model, which was less sophisticated and earlier than this 1947 model. Ours had a triangular

1947 Bendix Front Loader Washing Machine

base painted black, and a clunky arrangement of the lint-trap: if the clip holding it in place got snagged and pulled open accidently, it dumped the contents of the drum all over the floor of our back porch.

While the Bendix was an improvement over the old tub-and-wringer setup, it did have several idiosyncrasies. One was that soap had to be added by hand at the proper time (so much for the “automatic” feature), and if too much was put in, the thing erupted in suds which poured out of the filler-spout down over everything. The porch floor got frequent cleaning because of this.

The other problem involved balance: the tub was rigidly attached to the frame, so if clothes got wadded up, when the spin-cycle began the machine would walk right across the floor, eventually pulling the power-cord out of its socket, or pulling one of the hoses loose (which resulted in water spraying everywhere).

The “cure” for the balance problem was to bolt the machine to a large block of concrete cast for this purpose. Even this was only partially successful: a severely  out of balance load would result in the whole block being lifted up and down, pounding the be-jesus out of the porch floor. It sounded like the house falling down, and always resulted in a mad rush to get the thing unplugged before it fell into the basement!

We had that washer for years. We even took it to Modesto when we moved there. By that time I was beginning to grow up, and I found riding that wobbling machine, the filler-spout jammed in my crotch, strangely exhilarating! But, I’m getting ahead of myself!

To be continued …

ORGANIZING MY DEPARTURE

Once I had resigned from PA&E, I had to firm up my plans in a hurry.  It was necessary to get an Exit Visa from the Vietnamese immigration authorities. I left this to PA&E, since they had functionaries who dealt with immigration all the time. I  filled out a form in long-hand, gave them  my  passport and took a receipt. All other preparations for departure I undertook myself, distrustful of PA&E’s ability to handle my exit which was so different from those of their other employees. I put off my actual departure until the Thursday flight to Phnom Penh, scheduled out at 4:00 pm, to be sure I had time to get everything ready.

Meanwhile, I closed down my apartment, sold off whatever I could not carry, and moved to a hotel. A suitcase full of clothing was packed and sent unaccompanied—one could do that in those days—to Bangkok. There remained only one problem: that .38 revolver given to me by the fellow who freaked out soon after our arrival had been stored in the bottom of my suitcase. I had to dispose of the gun. I could probably have turned it in to some authority, but which of the many “authorities” available could deal with it? What kind of questions would they ask, and what amount of hot-water would I get myself into?

In the end, I wrapped the 6 bullets in newspaper and stuffed them into the holster with a stone: I tossed this into the Saigon Canal, confident that the numerous bugs in that polluted water would chew up the holster in a hurry. The stone and bullets would sink into the muck, never to be found. The gun itself I dropped into the elevated wall-cistern for the toilet in my hotel room. I figured that by the time anyone discovered it, it would be a mass of rust beyond any hope of use. For all I know, that gun may still be there!

PA&E, on the other hand, was slow in preparing my paycheck and getting the exit visa. Good thing I left extra time!

DIARY ENTRY:  Wednesday, 4 September 1968: Well, PA&E nearly fucked up the works, but through perseverance I managed to get nearly everything set to go tomorrow. The paycheck wasn’t ready until after lunch, which left precious little time to get travelers checks and plane tickets. Whereas I had to wait 4 hours just for two signatures to be applied to my final paycheck, I got the travelers checks and airplane tickets done in just under two hours—and that included three separate calls at AIR VN & @ the bank! They talk about orientals being slow??? Have to get some form or other @ Air VN regarding my bag—certifying it can go through Customs locked; have to get passport @ Australian Embassy, & have to get to TSN tomorrow—all should be relatively easy. Of course, I won’t really be sure this scheme is going to work until I & the Honda are safely ensconced on the plane!!

There was a charming young lady at Air Vietnam who explained in detail exactly the steps I had to take to buy a ticket for myself and for the motorcycle and to purchase travelers checks. The machine had to be weighed: she told me exactly where to go to get that done, and it went without a hitch. (Of course, I rode the bike to all these places: it would not actually be prepared and drained until the very day I left). Buying and paying for the tickets and checks was complicated by the restrictions on money, and involved several trips to the bank—a branch of Bank of America!—but in the space of an afternoon all of this was done. As always, I found that by following directions and smiling a lot, I had no problems.

I was told the bike had to be “drained”, that is, no fuel in the tank when it went on the plane. But this meant that at the other end I would have no idea where to purchase fuel and hence how to get the bike back on the road. So I took a small bottle of gasoline tightly sealed in one of the saddle-bags, and these I carried on with my satchel. The form from Air VN certifying that my bag need not be inspected allowed me to get away with this little subterfuge.

On my last night in Vietnam, I had a nice dinner at the only fancy restaurant going at the time: it was french cuisine (not my favorite), but did have white table-cloths and good presentation. Afterwards, I had one last quickie with my friend Nguyen, which helped me sleep.

Come morning, I would be off on a new adventure! With my passport in hand. . .

Passport

. . . I had my visa for going INTO Vietnam “voided”, on the theory that I might run into someone who objected to my having been there. . .

Voided visa

. . . and I had my visa for Cambodia:

Cambodia visa

The chop in upper left is my departure stamp, which took some doing to get! Stay tuned!

HUA HIN TO CHUMPHON

Map of Thailand

Wednesday
9 October 1968

Following an early breakfast (there is one restaurant in Hua Hin that specializes—if you can call it that—in European food) I got on the road about 7:30. The day was spectacular—but of course in the tropics a beautiful day can degenerate quickly into a dreadful one; even the smallest cloud can suddenly drop prodigious quantities of water, and if one happens to be in the way, one gets wet. Today however it rained only once, & I had no more stopped & put on my rain coat than I drove out of it & had to stop again and shed. Had I known, I wouldn’t have bothered with the coat at all. From Hua Hin the road moves inland, through a series of large fertile valleys. Pineapples, bananas & coconuts appear to be the principal crops. The road has some ups and downs, but not much, as the hills are all low, but craggy and very pretty.

South Thailand Countryside, 1968

Driving along, I noticed a hill with a radio transmitting tower on top. As the road up there was not gated, I drove up for a wonderful view. This composite view gives a good idea of how the lush Thai countryside looked. Another view is below:

Road to Chumphon, South Thailand, 1968

There being little to delay me (except one very large lizard—nearly two feet long—that was crossing the road, and which I coasted quite close to before it saw me and disappeared into the bushes) I made unusually good time, arriving at Chumphon just before 1 PM!! Now, Chumphon is a division-point on the RSR [Royal Siam Railroad], so most of my afternoon was spent in the rail yards—and much of this evening as well. I shot up most of a roll of film, losing (for sure) only one or two, I hope, when the camera jammed a bit. It rained around 4, so I took the opportunity to wash up and take the camera apart. These Kodak gadgets are as much glued together as held any other way; although I began the trip with a tube of glue, it long since sprang a leak & had to be discarded. So I had to scout around here and find some glue, which I managed alright, and the camera is now back together, its critical part cleaned of dirt & lubricated.

NOTE TO READERS: Like any other railroad division point, Chumphon was a busy place. The station and yards were then out of town a ways, up a gently sloping divided road. In the median-strip there were several preserved locomotives on permanent display: their running-lights were wired for electricity and lit up at night. It was a lovely scene, but wouldn’t you know: the two photos I took were ruined when the camera jammed. I doubt if there is any trace of those locomotives left now.

Locomotives in the wood-pile! Chumphon, 1968

Strange things happen to luggage on a motorbike. Everything packs down into remarkably little space in the course of a day, but once disturbed it can’t be put back again. Pills disintegrate unless packed very tightly with cotton. Some toilet-paper I used to pad my shaving gear in its little plastic box is now a mass of shredded paper. Plastic bottles can chafe on something & wear right through, and tooth-paste tubes will do the same. It can all get pretty messy!

Already a change in plans is contemplated, I can no longer resist and if all goes well, I shall take the 7 am train to Phunphin, hopefully returning the same day. Phunphin is a town I do not otherwise expect to reach, but of course that is not the real reason for going there! Since I don’t want to miss what looks like a lovely (perhaps wet, but lovely) mountainous crossing to Ranong  by moto, the train trip will be a round-trip side-trip. We’ll see how it goes. Unless I get to bed soon, I’ll never wake up in time, so…

More tomorrow,

Bruce

NOTE TO READERS: I am having some problems with the software, so will break this post now and continue on the next page. Please bear with me: I’m not much of a computer whiz at all. By the way: the big lizard was a Monitor Lizard, and the only one I saw!

BANGKOK to HUA HIN

South Thailand Bangkok to Hua Hin

7 October 1968
Dear all~

After tracking down the pawn-shop where my camera was lodged & getting it out of hock—sans the film that had been in it, which I had not begun to use—I departed Bangkok gratefully about 9:30 AM. Times will be approximate from here on out—no watch! Despite a hopelessly inaccurate map provided by Shell Oil Co, I managed to find my way. I’ll have to assume the highway was renumbered (from 5 to 4) after the map was made up. Breaking in the Honda held me down to 30 mph for the first 50 miles. and I was able to then pick up a little better speed as the day progressed. First stop was Nakorn Prathom (the english names for these towns are spelled differently on every map I’ve seen—yours probably are different, so use your imagination!), where I posted mail and viewed the positively immense Wat there. It’s a big stupa that gives the impression from a distance of being turned from a single block of marble. But of course it is not marble at all—it is brick like most of them, hollow, and has a covering of tiny tiles in the peculiar pink-orange shade of red marble. The effect is enhanced (at a distance) by large patches of grey which proved to be places where the tiles are falling off. But the thing is gigantic—easily 100 ft or more diameter at the base. The day was lovely, sunny & warm, and I pushed on through Petchaburi (or Rajaburi—same place) to Phetburi, which has a nice cluster of temples, Wats and stupas situated atop a small hill. The day continuing fine, I moved on—the road degenerating into a more enjoyable 2-lane sort reminiscent of Cambodia—& arrived at Hua  Hin about 4 o’clock; 253 km from BK.

Somewhere South of Bangkok

Now, Hua Hin is a delightful spot, situated on the east Thai coast (or western shore of the Gulf of Thailand). It has miles of white sand beaches, and is backed up by mountains—the end of the chain going up into Burma. The town is also right on the railroad, and the delightful chug of steam engines pervades my hotel room at times. There are a number of resort-type hotels, but of course I’m at a chinese hotel nearer the center of town. Poked about on the beach a while—will swim tomorrow—and watched trains and (alternately) lovely sunset behind the mountains. For a while it was possible to see a spectacular sun-set in one direction and an equally spectacular moon-rise over the water in the other direction. I got no rain today at all—the first such day for some while—although it was stormy close-by over the hills. And of course I am a bit reddish here and there from the sun, though not seriously burned. I remembered to “grease up” fairly early. Although the roads are good, they are dirty, and my shirt was black (from diesel smoke) in places when I got here. I washed it out first thing. Then me—I was black in spots too! Had a pleasant and cheap Thai-food dinner. Happily, I am seeing some smiling faces again, and the atmosphere is getting more rural.

Beach at Hua Hin

Recall I mentioned deterioration of the film which I carried for many weeks before having it developed. This photo is a good example. With about an hour of work, I can enhance it to look like this:

The Beach at Hua Hin, South Thailand, 1968

It looks as though I shall break down and take some pictures of Thailand after all, though I took none—and want none—of Bangkok. There is a nice steam-engine on display here, a 3-cylinder “Superheat” (brand) made in the USA ca. 1920. All the engines I’ve seen seem to be this type. What a delight to see them, and smell hot, wet oil—and burning wood—again.

3-Cylinder “Superheat” (brand) Made in the USA ca. 1920

The Thais maintained these engines wonderfully, even when they were retired and on display.

Between Phetburi and here one passes through an area where a lot of charcoal is made, in curious brick bee-hive-like charcoal ovens. The smell is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled, but is certainly agreeable. Along the beach there are countless small sand-crabs that apparently spend their whole lives digging holes in the sand; that which they displace they make into small balls, which gives whole stretches of the beach a curious “pebbly” appearance. And there are immense jelly-fish, which apparently are harmless, since many people fool with them.

Will probably slow down a bit now that I’m away from BK. The route seems to criss-cross the isthmus several times. My best guess is that I’ll stay, at least overnight if not longer, in Chumpon next, then Ranong or Kapoe, then Phuket (on an island and said to be very pretty). At Kra buri I will apparently be right across the river from Burma. Ranong of course is on the other shore of the Isthmus, but between Krabi and Songhla I will cross back over again through Sadao to Penang (also an island). By then of course I will be in Malaysia. But I rather imagine I shall take at least a week to get there, assuming the “natives are friendly”—or at least more hospitable than in BK. Honda is performing better, but has a whole new group of sounds to get used to. In BK I dismantled the seat, discarding all the springs in it (too stiff) and stuffed a whole foam-rubber pillow into it. Considerably more comfortable than formerly.

Have no address to advise in Singapore. Will probably cable as before. 30 for tonight—early to bed; if I stay here tomorrow it will have to be all day, since the next hop is a long one & will require an early start. But I think I’d better swim here where the weather is good—my experience in Sihanoukville being what it was!

Love to all~

Bruce

________________

Tuesday 8 October

Arose as nearly as I can figure about 7:30 AM. After a leisurely breakfast, I drove around town (which didn’t take long as there is not much of it) a bit, then found a nice beach & went swimming & sunning for the better part of an hour. Couldn’t over-do is as most of me is still pretty unaccustomed to the tropical sun, which will burn very quickly. Poked around the RR station for a while & saw some nice engines. The RR has quite a lot of activity on it.

A very big staple in the diet of all the countries I’ve visited is dried squid; catching & drying them is a big business here. Fresh from the water they are spread out on loosely-woven mats and these are put anywhere the direct sun will strike them. Drying doesn’t take long, but it is a very odoriferous process, as you can imagine.

Drying Squid in Hua Hin, 1968. Pee-yew!

In the afternoon I found a nice road going back into the mountains. Actually, it goes over the first saddle into quite a large valley, perhaps 2-300 feet above sea-level, & meanders around in this before suddenly ending in a cluster of foot-paths, right in the middle of a farm. It was stormy over the mountains further inland, and later the storm moved near town, though only light sprinkles of rain actually hit the town. I took the opportunity to do a bit of cleaning, tuning and checking of the Honda. I’d forgotten to check the spark-plug gaps before leaving BK, and was sure from the performance that they’d been set at the factory recommended 0.024″. For some reason on my machine this results in poor pick-up at wide throttle; re-setting the plugs to 0.020″ cures this nicely, so now I can be a little more sure of response when I twist the handle-grip. On the roads that lie ahead, this probably won’t be needed anyhow. Except for an annoying rattle inside (hence totally inaccessible) the right muffler, all is well. The rattle developed some while ago, & the only cure is a new muffler, which is hardly necessary. I can put up with the rattle, knowing it is not a serious problem. Depart early tomorrow for Chumpon—unless something interesting deters me; — about 267 km distant. Only a little farther than the BK-Hua Hin stretch, but poorer roads (thank goodness—they’re much more fun) so a bit slower going I expect.

Love to all~

Bruce

Next leg of trip: Chumpon. Lots of steam!