This One Time, In Korea…
By Kitty Pitman
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Kitty Pitman
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I donated six years of my life to the United States Air Force, including three hundred and sixty-six days at Osan Air Base, South Korea. You count days while you're there. When you have less than a hundred days in country, you're a double-digit midget. When you get your orders to your next duty assignment, you write "FIGMO" diagonally across them with a fat black marker and post them on the door of your dorm room. I'll leave you to your Google skills to find out what "FIGMO" stands for.
My time in Korea was a time before the world wide web and cell phones, but not before microwave ovens and cable TV. We didn't have the luxury of spending hours on Skype with our loved ones; we were lucky to get one hour a month over a crappy phone line. So, with a lack of easy communication tools and things to do, we drank like fish--a pastime military members have enjoyed for generations.
I've been a civilian now for over ten years. Drinking is something that I very rarely partake in nowadays. On the rare occasion I do, stories pour out of me; and most of said stories start with "This one time, in Korea..." Most of the stories are light-hearted and funny, but occasionally there's the sad one or tear-jerker. Some of them are pages long, and some of them are a paragraph short.
The names have been changed to protect the (innocent?) and the blanks have been filled in where I don't remember the details. However, unlike a hash-naming where only ten percent of the story needs to be true, these stories will hit about ninety percent.
Enjoy,
Kitty Pitman
* * *
The mode of transportation to Osan was a great big gray plane. I didn't know anything about planes. I had been in the service for about a year and a half, and I had no idea what I was walking into. All I knew was how to operate a telephone switchboard, the job they had put me on before I got my security clearance.
The flight to Korea was not fun. It was twelve hours long, and it was hot. Halfway through the first movie, the VCR jammed (this was about five years before DVDs), and that meant there were no more movies for the rest of the flight. By the time I got to Osan Air Base, I was worn out, tired, cranky, and hungry.
I got off the plane with who knows how many other airmen, onto a military base called Osan that I knew nothing about. All I knew was that a SSgt. Olsen was supposed to be meeting me there. He did.
About three feet from his green six-pack pickup truck, he lit up a cigarette. "Do you smoke?" he asked me.
"No." For the most part that was true. I had stolen a single cancer stick from my mother to try it out. I didn’t think that counted as "smoking."
"You will before you leave here," he said.
He was right. While I wasn't a pack-a-day smoker by the time I left, I was still going through about a pack a week. (For the record, I did quit for good on September 1, 2004.)
"Do you drink?" he asked me next. The cigarette shifted to the left corner of his mouth as he took my A-bag from me and hefted it into the back of the pickup.
"No, I'm only eighteen, I've never drank before."
"You will before you leave here."
He was right. In fact, my first ever drink would be only a night or two away, followed promptly by my first ever drunk.
"Are you married?" he asked, opening the driver's door of the truck.
"Yes," I said, looking at him skeptically.
"You won't be when you leave here," he said, climbing into the truck.
He was right. It had been a little foolish to get married at eighteen in the first place; but we had, with the knowledge that we could move right into base housing and out of the dorms. After just three months of marriage, he had gotten orders to Greenland, and I had gotten orders to Korea. It just wasn't meant to be.
After that conversation, he drove me silently to the Enlisted Club for lunch. I kept thinking about what an asshole he was; but over time, I would gain a lot of respect for him.
* * *
I went to in-process on Friday afternoon. This is basically handing your paperwork over to the equivalent of a civilian HR department and saying, "I'm here." One of the things you do when you in-process is have your weight checked. The military has strict height-weight guidelines that you have to fall within to maintain their image. If you get close to being overweight, you get "taped"-- measured with a with tape measure. If you're overweight, you get put on the Fat Boy Program.
I stepped up on the scale, and the girl tapped the weight-thing towards the right. I knew I was a bit chubby-cheeked, but I didn't know I was close to the high-end limit. When the scale weight stopped moving and balanced, the girl waved me off the scale. She pushed my in-processing paperwork at my chest, indicating that I should take it from her.
"You were never here," she said sharply. "Go downtown, buy a pair of Hi-Tecs, walk all over the place, and don't eat all weekend. Come back Monday and get back on the scale. If you're five pounds lighter, you won't have to get taped."
I did pretty much what she said. I bought myself a cool looking pair of brown high-top Hi-Tech hiking boots and tromped around the base all weekend. It gave me a chance to get a little lay of the land.
I weighed in Monday morning, about five or six pounds lighter, and they waved me on without a single comment about my weight.
* * *
My husband's name was Denny. He was a Security Policeman, or SP. They run in packs, kind of like wolves, and probably about with the same mental structure. That's not to say they're stupid or anything--but rather to say they play hard, and they take care of their own.
I was at the Enlisted Club. It was shortly after dinner on my second day in country. I was thinking of a simple Coke at the bar, but someone else had another idea. He was an SP. "Hey, you're Denny's wife, right?" he asked me. Who the heck was this guy? "Yeah, I was stationed with him back at Vandenberg. He's a good guy. Say, what you drinking there?"
"Just a Coke."
"Here, let me fix you up," he said. I still didn't know this guy's name.
He stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink from the young Korean girl. She handed him a glass of yellowish, opaque liquid with a straw and a lime.
"Try this," he said. "It's a vodka sour." When I turned up my nose a bit, he continued, "Don't worry. It just tastes like lemonade."
I took a little sip, and I realized he was right. It did just taste like lemonade, but with a little wwwwwhuuh kick to it. It was something simple, something a newbie could handle. I kind of liked it.
"Hey, tomorrow's Saturday; why don't you meet me back here around eight o'clock tomorrow night? Me and a couple of the guys will take you downtown."
Now fifteen years later I still cannot remember that guy's name; but as the wife of an SP, going out with a gang of other SP's was the safest way to go out. So with a little hesitation to what lied ahead, I agreed.
* * *
I met that SP back at the Enlisted Club the next night. He had two of his SP buddies with him; they were both canine units. Denny had done some work with canine units back at Vandenberg--namely as their chew toy. They would wrap Denny up in what was essentially a sumo wrestler's suit, and they would train the dogs to attack him at certain commands or actions. It was a prestigious line of Security Police work, and these SPs instantly had my trust.
It was a good thing they did. I got blistering drunk that night. “Blistering drunk” was interesting for me, since I had no prior experience. I distinctly remember walking home. It was dark. I should have been freezing cold, since it was November; but I wasn't. I was holding one of the SP's hands; I'm not sure which one. After about ten steps forward, I would say,"Wait, wait," then latch both of my hands onto that SP's wrist until the horizon went back to center bubble again. Then I was ready for another ten steps. We walked the whole mile or so back to the dorms that way; a dozen steps, stop and grab the wrist until the world leveled out, a dozen more steps. Despite my inebriation, however, I never did get sick that night.
* * *
I don't know if I'd ever eat it sober; but when I was drunk, there was this great stuff that they sold at little roadside carts while you were walking back to base. It was called Yaki-Mandu. They fried it up in front of you and gave it to you in tiny Walmart-looking handle bags the size of your hand. The comical thing about them was that the baggies were lined with paper--paper that had dot-matrix writing on it--paper that had apparently been taken from a dumpster somewhere on base.
There was also the "MacDonald's" little road side cart on the way back to base. Something seemed to be odd and wrong with that one. I never stopped there.
* * *
In elementary school, I remember watching what we called "bus movies." They were bloody short films meant to scare us into behaving on the school bus. We were shuffled into the gym and sat down with our grade in front of the stage, and a projector would show the movie on a drop-down projector screen. Inevitably, the movies were always before lunch; and a random person would always barf or pass out while waiting in the lunch line.
Along those same lines was the “goat movie.” It was a 1960s movie, complete with the 1960s announcer's voice and filmed in black and white. A group of about fifty of us watched the movie in silence from our seats in a dark, low-ceilinged room. The purpose of the movie was to show soldiers the effects of chemical weapons on animals, letting our minds fill in the blank of what would happen to a human.
A pigeon and a goat were in a sandbagged foxhole. An explosive went off, and the animals were protected from shrapnel by the sandbags. The pigeon began flapping its wings, then died. The goat took about thirty seconds longer to die. The announcer stopped talking, and we let the seconds tick away in silence as we watched the goat stop twitching. There was only one phrase I took away from the movie.
"The goat is dead."
I can't remember if I laughed at the time, but I have laughed a hundred times since then over that phrase.
It was blatantly obvious, yet it was incredibly comical when said aloud. "The goat is dead." For years, no civilian would understand when I tried to describe that movie. Then one day, thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, I was able to see the video again. You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0zvp_xhTfg&playnext_from=TL&videos=1faPPAyR5XA
There is a movie that just came out recently called "The Men Who Stare At Goats." I can see how most non-military people wouldn't get the humor; but I laughed until I cried, and cried, and cried.
* * *
Immediately following that feature presentation was a trip to the gas chamber. We were in full chemical warfare gear, complete with the heavy charcoal suit and alien mask. The group funneled into the gas chamber in groups of two or four. After a minute, we had to take off the mask, stand there for a minute or two exposed to it, then exit the building.
No big deal, right? Well... the gas affects different people different ways. Some people itch, some people have snot running down their face.
My big problem was the itch part. We weren't allowed to touch our faces, since we were wearing gloves. I walked up to one of the gas chamber instructors.
"Hey man, can you scratch my face?"
The guy smiled. He was a young fella with dark hair. "Where at?" he asked me.
I pointed with my gloved hand. He started scratching that spot, on my right cheek, but the itch was more than just that one spot. I started to move my face around like a little dog, trying to take care of all my itchiness. The guy laughed... a lot.
From then on, whenever I would bump into him at the Enlisted Club, we would say, "Hey how you doing," then he would stick his finger out in an scratching motion, which I would gladly move my face beneath for scratch placement.
* * *
A trip to downtown Sontang was a fun thing to do once or twice a week. The bars that were upstairs had little narrow stairways, with stairs that were half as steep as normal American stairs. My friends thought I was nuts; but I found the only way to get down them without falling while drunk was to run down them at full blast. I never fell.
One night at an upstairs bar, a small ensemble of boisterous fellows stumbled their way in. It was apparently the "brown bean" of the guy in the middle--he was leaving the country in a day or two. It was the other end of my previously described night with my SP friends, which was called a "green bean." the thing that struck me about this guy was his Boston Bruins jacket.
I walked up to him. "Hey, that’s a cool jacket. I'm from New England. Where are you from?"
"Massachusetts."
I smiled. "Me too! What part?"
"Out in the middle of the state." This guy was feeling no pain.
"Me too! What town?"
"West Boylston."
"Really?"
He was from my home town. I had gone to high school with his younger sister. His parents owned the candy store down the street from my house. Yet here I was, thousand of miles from home, running into this guy while he's drunk on one of his last nights in country.
It's a small world, after all.
* * *
I arrived in the middle of November, and I left in the middle of November a year later. It barely snowed at all the winter I was there. A flake here and a flake there were all I really saw, except for this one night in Korea when there had been an ice storm.
I was working night shift at the time. We were in an exercise. I don't mean we were doing jumping jacks and jogging; we were wearing our heavy green chem gear and keeping our gas masks by our side. The one and only thing that's good about chem gear is this: man, that stuff really keeps you warm. You feel like a five year old in a snow suit.
There were about three of us that left after that night shift, and we were walking towards our dorms together. The roads were really slick, and the building we worked in was at the top of a tall hill. "Hey, watch this!" I hollered, and I took off down the hill.
I slid in my black combat boots on the ice, right down the middle of the road, right down the hill. I ran a couple more steps and slid another ten feet. I could hear one of my friends hollering, "You're going to get yourself killed," but I completely ignored him. I was Joe Cool, sliding downhill in my combat boots across ice down the middle of the street.
When I got close to the bottom of the hill, I stopped. My friends were about two-thirds of the way down the hill, on the sidewalk along the edge of the road. I waited for them. When they got close, I beamed a big grin and stepped one foot, then two up onto the sidewalk with them...
…and promptly fell right on my butt.
* * *
In the United States, you cannot buy a turtle from a pet shop under four inches in diameter. I think it has to do with the salmonella thing, and the child-swallowing-the-turtle thing. In Korea, they apparently don't give a crap. You can buy a turtle about as small as a half dollar.
I did. In fact, I bought two of them. They came with what was essentially a little plastic bowl. In the middle of the bowl, it was sloped upwards like an island, and there was a plastic palm tree sticking up from the middle. It was very fake, but very cute.
I loved those turtles. I have no idea what I named them. I changed out their water every couple days, and I fed them little turtle pellets. They swam around, and ate, and... well, that was about it.
One of my friends thought the turtles were cool, so I offered to let him turtle-sit. I brought their bowl to his dorm room and left them there for a few days.
One morning I went to that friend's room and knocked on his door. He had apparently been sleeping really late, and I woke him up. He invited me in, and I was hit with a chill when I walked in. His window was open, and it was really cold outside.
"Why is your window open?" I asked him.
"Oh, I like to sleep with it cold in here."
I looked towards the window. There was the turtle bowl! "Oh nooo..." I said in a very girl-like disturbed way. I hurried towards the window, and my worst fears were confirmed.
The two turtles were frozen solid in the bowl of water.
I carried the little bowl to the sink, close to tears. I turned on each faucet slowly until luke warm water ran out of the faucet. The turtle bowl got put underneath. I just watched, not really expecting anything to happen.
Something did happen. They started to move. Very slowly, they started waving their little legs, trying to swim, trying to break free. They did break free. They lived through it. I know that personally I wouldn't want to live through being frozen solid.
The two turtles and their bowl were promptly removed from my friend's dorm room.
* * *
I spent a lot of hours at the Enlisted Club. I ate lots of french fries with teriyaki sauce. I drank many a drink, signing my name for each one, creating my doctor-like signature after so many times of writing it. I think I figured out that between food and alcohol, I spent about a total of six thousand dollars at the Enlisted Club while I was in Korea.
I got talked into trying karaoke one afternoon, in one of the smaller club/pub/rooms. The machine had a coin slot and a TV; you picked the song you wanted and typed in the number for it, and when it was your turn the song would play and you sang.
When I was a kid, I was more of the lip-synching type. I'd play song after song really loud in my room, but the cassette tape playing through the speakers would be all you could hear. My lips moved, but my vocal chords didn't.
Singing, I think, is how I finally started coming out of my shell. I figured out that one night a week, in a different club/pub/room, they had a karaoke contest; and if you won, there'd be fifty bucks in your pocket. I decided to give it a whirl.
Within that November to November window in Korea, I won about two hundred fifty dollars by singing karaoke. You won by audience applause/cheering; whoever got cheered the loudest is who won. I'd have to say I had sex in my favor; by being female alone I bet won me a lot more fanfare from the masses.
One particular night, in Korea, there was this other fellow singing in the karaoke contest. He had an awesome voice. He thought I had an awesome voice. It ended up in a tie for first place--we both ended up splitting the proceeds. In celebration, we sang a song together--a duet, though not written to be one--"The River," by Garth Brooks. Garth was big back then.
* * *
A lot of fun was had at that Enlisted Club. Night after night, the same people came, but different stories unfolded. Someone got a hold of a pitcher of ice one night, and we took turns stuffing ice down the back of each other's shirts, peeling in laughter. Snap-crotch shirts were popular with girls back then--a shirt that you wear pretty much like a baby onesie, so that it never comes untucked. Of course, when it was my turn to get ice down my shirt, it went all the way down to my underwear; and my memory could be exaggerating it, but I swear it was a whole half a pitcher worth of ice. I ran to the bathroom to try to unload, but the damage was done. I had freezing cold and soaked buns.
* * *
The USO took care of us at the Enlisted Club, too. They would send different music acts to come out and play for us. One of them was this hilarious comedian with a flamingo guitar. No, I don't mean "flamenco." His guitar was shaped like a flamingo. He sang the funniest parodies you ever heard. I was literally in tears while he sang.
Another act that the USO sent our way was Elvis. Of course, this was 1995, so it wasn't the real Elvis. It was a pretty darn good impersonator though, of Elvis in his Vegas days.
"Hey, let's go rush the stage!" I said to a couple of my girlfriends as he played an upbeat song. We ran up to the stage with an EEEEEEE and flailing arms, and he touched each of our hands in turn before we ran away giggling back to our dark spot in the crowd.
A little while later, Elvis sang us a slow song. There was a cardboard box on stage in front of him, and an "assistant" took a scarf out of the box and put it around his neck. Oh boy, scarfs! We all ran up to the stage. Elvis would lean down, let a girl take a scarf, then give her a kiss. Then another girl reached up, took a scarf, and got a kiss on the cheek. It was my turn next. I reached up to slip the scarf away from Elvis's neck. He reached his hand out, put it behind my head, and did a full face-plant on me. I mean... it was a really big kiss. I was in total shock.
Stunned, I walked slowly back to my group of girlfriends. "Uh... you need to go to the restroom," one of them said.
"No, I don't."
She leaned in close to me. "Yes, you do. Go look in the mirror."
Okay...
I walked to the restroom, wondering what the heck she was talking about. Once in front of the mirror, I became confused. I had big black marks across my face.
That girlfriend of mine came into the bathroom behind me. "Those were his sideburns," she said. They were apparently made out of shoe polish.
* * *
Have you ever tapped one beer bottle on top of another? If the bottom beer is full, it will cause it to froth up over the top like a mini-volcano. My friends and I partook in this little joke on each other all the time; and the only way to avert this type of disaster was to stick the bottle in your mouth and suck down the frothy stuff.
This one time though, in Korea, I didn't perform said tapping stunt on a friend's beer bottle. Instead, I performed it on Harry's wine glass. I have no idea what I was thinking. Odds are that in my brain's state at the time I wasn't thinking at all. "Hey, Harry!" I said, and I tapped the top of his wine glass--kind of hard--and the glass completely shattered. He stepped back a bit and just stared at me in shock.
"Sorry."
* * *
I lived in Korea during a time before everyone had email addresses, cell phones, and Internet access. Instead of playing games over the Internet, my friends would play Doom over a cross-over cable running down the hallway, connected between their computers in two different dorm rooms. You'd walk down the hall, and every now and then you'd hear, "CRAP!" as someone got slaughtered.
At one point, Harry figured out where the .wav files were that defined the frightening sounds that were made by the monsters in the game. He replaced one of those frightening sounds with a cat meow sound; so whenever this one kind of monster was coming towards you, it would meow louder and louder until it was right in front of you. We laughed until we cried.
So our contact with the outside world was limited to what kids would nowadays call "snail mail." Harry and I would walk to the post office every couple days. He would say he was feeding his pet spider (because of the cobwebs accumulating from the lack of mail). I would once in a while pull out a letter from my husband, who SSgt. Olsen said I would someday be divorced from.
The letters were hand-written on notebook paper, sweet words and stories of what he was doing in Greenland. They were interesting, I guess; but I slowly lost interest in him. We married when I was 18, with the knowledge if we got married, we could move into base housing. Just a few short months after our justice of the peace marriage (his best man was majorly hung over), he got orders to Greenland, and I ended up getting orders to Korea. We didn't fight, and he wasn't mean to me; it just wasn't meant to be.
See, I told you these stories wouldn't all be giggles and butterflies and rainbows.
* * *
So then there's this thing called "hashing." It doesn't involve drugs. If you don't believe me, Google it. It has the tag line "drinkers with a running problem." The main goal is to run a long way and the drink a bunch of beer.
Two guys, called "hares," like in horse racing, take off about ten minutes before the hash run. They lay the trail we all would follow, using "hash" (which is actually flour) thrown on the ground, and arrows at intersections drawn with chalk to point you in the right direction. That doesn't mean that the arrows are always correct, and it also doesn't mean that people don't get lost. That's a different story, though.
The first time I went on a hash run, I wasn't considered a hasher--I was a “basher.” I brought my bike. So did a couple friends, including Harry. We cruised along, avoiding runners, following the trail. It was a hot day, as most were in Korea, and I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts.
Now hash runs aren't always on roads. Sometimes they are through rice paddies, sometimes they are through the woods, and sometimes they are just plain off-road. We came to just such a place--a foot bridge. It appeared simple enough. The walking path we were on led smoothly right up to the foot bridge.
Harry crossed it first. It was about twenty feet long. When he was off the other end and back on the walking trail, he turned around and hollered something at me. I couldn't hear him, and I just followed after him onto the foot bridge.
He had yelled, "Big Drop."
I pretty much face-planted at the end of the foot bridge. It was about a one foot drop off at the end of the bridge, just enough to send an unsuspecting rider sailing through the air. It drew blood. It did not, however, break bones or damage my bike. I got up, brushed off, and continued on the trail with Harry to the end.
Somewhere I have a picture of that afternoon. I'm shirtless (but wearing a sports bra so it didn't really matter), and I have both my hands behind my head so you can see my skinned, bloody elbows. There's a big smile on my face.
That was also the first and only time I ever rode a bike while drunk. I'd like to admit that it's pretty dangerous. If I hadn't had Harry in front of me to follow, I don't think I ever would have made it back to my dorm.
* * *
When you purchase alcohol in the United States, you can gauge your projected level of inebriation based on your past experiences. This is absolutely not true with this stuff called Soju. The closest thing I can kind of relate it to is vodka... but it's nothing like vodka. Normally you'd see Soju ordered with 7-up. I've drank one entire bottle of Soju by myself and been all right; yet I've also seen four pretty large military dudes split one of those twenty-something-ounce glass bottles, and it knocked them all on their ass.
Harry wasn't a drinker. I saw him have a glass of white wine only once or twice, and at the time it was so odd to me, when blended in with the thousands of bottles of beer on the wall that everyone was drinking around him. Despite his lack of alcohol consumption, I did manage to talk him into going downtown with me once or twice.
Downtown clubs were definitely different from the enlisted club on base. There was usually a stage. There were scantily-clad, tiny dancers. There were very odd shoes--something that sticks out in my memory--something that reminds me of those shoes that Pee Wee wore while dancing to "Tequila" in that bar in that movie about his adventures.
This one time, in Korea, we were in one such bar. The only table available was right in front of the stage, so there we sat. There were a couple other airmen with us too. It was extremely loud. I remember yelling across the table at Harry so he could hear me. He would occasionally yell something back over his glass of soda.
I was closest to the stage--I could practically rest my left arm on it. I was hollering on about something, and I watched as the expression on his face changed.
"Suzy."
"What?" I yelled.
"Suzy!" Harry pointed at the stage to the left of me.
I turned to my left. Now keep in mind I was sitting down, and the stage was at arm-resting level. This means that the dancing girls crotches were about at eye level.
One of the tiny dancers had apparently decided to take advantage of my proximity. She was gyrating, thrusting, her little blue bikini crotch right in my face.
So from that night on, whenever we needed an exclamation in our conversation, one of us would put our palm right up in front of our nose so it was blocking our face, and we'd say, "IT WAS RIGHT THERE!"
* * *
A week after my first hash run, I was right back in the saddle of my bike to be a basher again. This time there were a few more bashers with us, including a guy named Al I had been stationed with at Keesler a year or two ago. We were warned that the trail was rough, and we headed out with a yeah-whatever.
It started out like any other hash run, I suppose. Then it did get harder. It wove up through the woods along a trail that was kind of hard to follow.
Then it went straight up a hill.
Let me rephrase. This wasn't just a little hill. You practically needed climbing gear to get up this thing. Al was riding his bike along with me, and as we saw the hash trail lead up this hill, he braked to a stop, looked up the hill, and shrugged.
We hefted our bike frames up onto our shoulders and began the slow ascent through little trees up the twenty foot climb. Al was ahead of me, and he got to the top with a "whew." I was about three quarters of the way up when I tripped. I fell. It was a tripping, falling, sliding motion, back down the hill.
Al let loose a profanity or two and galloped down the hill after me. My bike was trashed. The front tire was bent, and the bike was un-ride-able. We talked about the situation for a moment. Even if I hefted the bike up the hill, I couldn't ride it anyways. We couldn't get help, because we were in the middle of nowhere, and we had apparently fallen behind everyone else. So Al helped me hide the bike under some brush; when we got to the end of the hash, we'd enlist some friends to go back with us.
We never went back for the bike.
I made it up the hill easily enough without the bike, but I was a little scraped up and a lot pissed off. I was 2 for 2 with getting bloody at hash runs. To make matters more fun, we had a problem at the top of the hill. There was a dirt foot path, but it was impossible to tell which direction we were supposed to go--left or right.
We went left.
To this day, I don't know if we went the right way. We ended up getting lost anyways. We went deeper and deeper into the woods, it seemed. We had no food, and we had no water, and it was hot. It was oppressively humid, too.
Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
At first, I swear to God, I thought I was going nuts. Al was pushing his bike, and I walked along with him. A minute went by, then I heard it again.
Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
"Did you HEAR that?" I asked desperately.
"Did I hear what?"
Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
I was totally not in the mood to be screwed with. I was about to say a few more choice words to Al when he said, "Oh, I think I heard that."
There were cuckoo birds in the woods. I have done no research on cuckoo birds to see if they actually live in Korea. I think I was scared to learn the truth.
After what seemed like another hour, but was probably more like fifteen minutes, we finally heard the whooping and hollering of the down-down--the end of the hash. We walked into the clearing.
"Hey, they're here!" someone yelled, and everyone started cheering loudly. Apparently they were about to send a search crew into the woods, because they were starting to really worry about us.
I walked through the cheering crowd, straight up to the beer keg.
* * *
On your fifth hash run, you received your hash name. At the end of the run, everyone would stand around and tell stories about you--and only ten percent of the story had to be true. The hash names were crazy--like Fire On My Hole, I Shoulda Swallowed, Ribbed For Her Pleasure, and Porks Fat Chicks In The Snow.
That time of year in Korea, roses grew wild everywhere. I loved the look and smell of them. On that fifth hash run, I stopped along the way to cut off three or four roses with my Swiss Army knife. I carried them with me to the end, and I walked up to this guy I liked and gave him the roses. While the hash crowd was saying their "Aaaaawwww"s, I was hustled away with a couple other hashers who were being named that day.
A few minutes later, they retrieved us and brought us back into the bunch. Each of us in turn got our story told, and then they announced that person's hash name, to many laughs and cheers.
Then it was my turn.
Several stories were turned down, they said, in favor of this one comment by a member of the crowd. Well, she brought those roses to that guy today, someone said... Then a guy from the back of the crowd apparently hollered, "What's better than two roses on a piano?"
"Tulips On An Organ!"
And so I was named.
* * *
Now that I live in Texas, I know what a tornado siren is. I still can't help but call them air raid sirens, though; because that's what they are. I don't care what you non-military-past people say. When I hear an "air raid siren," this is what I hear in my mind:
CONDITION RED. MOPP FOUR. TAKE COVER. ATTACK IS IMMINENT OR IN PROGRESS.
In fact, when I first got home from Korea (home being the United States) and heard an air raid siren, I sat bolt upright in bed. Where was I? I found out later from friends that the sound I had heard was a siren telling the people who worked in the shipyards to go to work. I was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, about a half hour drive from the coast and the shipyards.
When you hear the air raid siren and you're not in the middle of an exercise, it means there's a recall--get your uniform on, and get to work. Don't shower, don't shave, don't do anything--just get to work. This led to comical sights occasionally—like the guy who had been off work for two days and had decided to grow a nice little face full of stubble. Stubble looks weird in uniform.
One morning, in Korea, I was leaving work, walking back to the dorms with Harry. We were at the top of the hill, and we were heading towards the back way to the dorms, where there was a long steep staircase down the hill and through some trees.
We didn't make it to the stairs before we started hearing the rumbling sound. It sounded like an elephant farting, I kid you not. Of course, I don't think I've ever heard an elephant fart, but one can imagine. We kind of stopped walking, and Harry was in deep thought for about half a split second.
Then he looked me straight in the eyes, his own eyes full tilt, and he said, "RUN!"
He took off towards the hill and the stairs, and I took off after him. The farting sound grew louder, and it slowly began to rise in pitch. This unusual sound we were hearing was the air raid siren winding up; it had been about to go off when we were standing right next to the twenty-foot-high pole, directly beneath it.
Since I mentioned I could hear that shipyard's siren a half hour drive away, you can imagine that it's got to be pretty freaking loud to carry that far. It is. If Harry hadn't told me to run, I can guarantee you that my ear drums would have perforated, and I would be completely deaf today.
* * *
On another morning, on a different day, at about 3am, the air raid siren went off while I was sound asleep, and I had to jump into my uniform and head to work.
Everyone was exhausted. We sat around the shop, all three shifts of us, and kind of stared at the floor. I was a chipper little eighteen year old at the time, I suppose, and I walked up to a new friend of ours.
Ben was six-foot-six. I am five-foot-four, and so is Harry. Together, the three of us looked like Snow White and the two dwarfs. Ben would scare Harry by grabbing him by the shoulder material of his BDU shirt, screaming in his ear, and holding him out over the six-foot-deep banjo ditches next to the sidewalks, just to yank him back a second later.
I put my hand up in front of Ben, looked up at him, and said, "Hey, let me see your hand." He stuck his hand out, and I put my hand up to his. His monstrous fingers made my little sausages look like they were from an infant's hand. I kind of chuckled and walked away.
Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, Ben walked around the shop and found me. "Let me see your hand again," he said. I held it up, fingers splayed out like I was showing him the number five.
He put his hand up to mine, palm to palm, and each finger was at least an inch longer than mine. He bent those long fingers over the tops of mine a little bit, bent in close to my face, and said, "...and you thought you could please yourself..." Someone nearby let out that OHHH sound like Andrew Dice Clay, and with a laugh our conversation was over.
I laughed, but I was a little flustered. For once, I actually didn't have a comeback.
* * *
Ben was a complete goofball. It just seemed like the weirdest things happened to him. Part of it was because of his crazy tall height, and part of it was because... he was Ben.
One night we were all walking into work together. It was really dark, and it had been raining, so it was damp outside. In the benjo ditch, we started to hear frogs croaking.
This was around the time that the Budweiser Frog Commercials were popular. You know... "Bud... Weis... err..." It was a big joke with everyone. The frogs in the benjo ditch sounded like they were saying, "Err. Err."
Ben took advantage of the situation. He leaned towards the benjo ditch and said, "Bud."
There was a moment of silence. Then, from somewhere in the bowels of the deep dark ditch, we heard, "Err."
Ben said "Bud." The single frog said Err. He said "Bud" again. The frog said Err.
Harry and I were choking back our laughter.
Ben said, "Bud! Bud! Bud!"
...and I swear to you... the frog said, "Err. Err. Err."
* * *
Then there was the time that Ben was in the building next door where our Korean associates worked, where everything is... well, made for shorter people. He was being a goof once again, running down the hall for some reason or another, and he went flying around a sharp corner, just to be clotheslined--he whacked forehead-first into a camera bracket that was mounted rather low on the wall--at least low to a six-foot-six guy.
* * *
One of my trophies from my military days is a tattoo of a baby dragon sitting on a swing. He's on the outside of my left leg, and when I wear shorts it looks like he's swinging from them.
You can get anything you want made in Korea--shoes, suits, blankets, jackets, you name it. One particular afternoon, I went in search of a jacket shop. I told the Korean shop owner that I would like a high school varsity type jacket with a picture of my tattoo on the back. I showed it to him, just below my shorts on my left leg.
He looked at my tattoo for a minute, then said to me, "Come. Come." he took me by the elbow and led me out of the shop.
Now at this point, things could have gone terribly wrong--he could have kidnapped me, killed me, who knows; but my instincts told me to just go along with him.
He led me around the corner and up the narrow, empty street. At the top of the street, he tugged me into another shop. A quick glance around told me this was a camera shop. The man was already in the back of the store, talking quietly and quickly in Korean to the other store owner.
"Come, come," he said again, and I started to understand what was going on. I was taken behind the counter. This store's owner pulled out a camera and turned on a couple of small lights attached to a pole. He pointed the lights at my tattoo and snapped two or three pictures.
"Come back, one week," the jacket shop owner said to me. So I left.
A few days later, I wandered back downtown. I happened by the jacket shop, but I didn't go in. Instead I stood outside the window and watched as the man worked on a jacket he was making.
It didn't take me long to figure out it was my jacket he was working on. He had a picture of my tattoo hung up in front of him with a clothes pin. In his hands was a embroidery hoop, and he was moving it around beneath a sewing machine. I leaned towards the window a little bit to see the pattern; and it was nothing short of amazing. He was working completely freehand, from the picture to his brain to the material. I was mesmerized.
I left without a word and picked up my amazing jacket the next week.
* * *
I think it's pretty darn funny that I learned how to country-and-western dance in Korea. Line dancing was the fad of the mid-nineties, and after the first time I was shoved out onto the floor with some of the other girls while I was half drunk, I wasn't as afraid of it anymore.
That close-to-overweight problem I had when I got to Korea was not a problem anymore. Night after night of dancing for hours made the sweat pour out of me and the pounds melt away. Harry said one time that when I was drunk, I wasn't a bad dancer-I just danced *harder*.
I didn't know much about "cowboys," having grown up in New England; and the only time I had spent in Texas was locked up in basic training. I learned, however, that certain people showed up in Korea and became wannabe cowboys--or AAFES cowboys, as the guys I knew called them. They'd go to the base department store and buy a cowboy hat and boots there, then show up at the Enlisted Club on country night and act like they had been cowboys their whole lives.
"If you look," one of the real cowboys told me, "at the bottom of their boots, and if the part in front of the heel isn't worn, then they're not real cowboys--because that's where the horse’s stirrup would be."
On any given country night, the DJ would always play certain songs that were popular at the time. When a song would come on, everyone on the dance floor would scatter like cockroaches. There was a particular person they were looking for to dance with for that one song.
Tim McGraw's song "Indian Outlaw" found me night after night in the arms of this tall cowboy with a long feather in his hat. He'd spin me round and round so darn fast at the chorus part that people would say, "Holy crap, look at them!" George Strait's song "Adalida" found me dancing gaily with an older sergeant guy that I swear was an inch shorter than me--but he had the sweetest, crookedest redneck smile that only the meanest girl on earth could say no to.
Some of the dancing things I learned started to get pretty crazy, at least by my standards. I had people swinging me around on the floor, and then I had someone teach me how to be flipped. It scared the crap out of me the first time. Having your feet over your head, especially with a good buzz going, is not the place one normally wants to be.
One night, walking back to our dorm rooms, I felt invincible. I bet you can imagine why. Harry's room was down the hall and around the corner from mine. I called out, "Flip me, Harry!" I wanted to show him how to do it; and really, it wasn't that hard... right?
"I don't know if this is a good idea..."
"Oh, come on, flip me, Harry!"
So we stood in the middle of the concrete hallway, I bent over in front of him and put my hands between my legs for him to reach over me and grab onto. Harry, if you remember, is the same height as me. This is not a desired trait when you want to flip someone. He did as I wished, mostly because I wouldn't leave him alone, and tried to flip me.
I cracked my head on the concrete floor. There wasn't any blood, and I'm still here to tell about it, so I guess it wasn't all that bad.
* * *
ROKAF stands for Republic of Korea Air Force. I pronounce it "Rock-Aff." We worked with ROKAF soldiers in my shop. I know this sounds stereotypical, but I swear--every soldier was about eighteen, about five feet tall, and about six inches around. I never met one I didn't like.
There were two ROKAF kids that worked night shift in my shop with me. One spoke good English, one not-so-much. The one that spoke good English was funny--he was always joking with us Americans.
One night I was hovering over a photo album I had bought off-base. It was the old fashioned kind with the plastic peel-back pages that you had to be careful to lay back down so you wouldn't get bubbles. My mom had mailed me a stack of photos, including pictures of her three dogs. I was lining them up on the page, being careful to lay them down straight on the sticky backing.
The ROKAF soldier walked up behind me and watched over my shoulder. "These your dogs?" he asked me.
I turned around and smiled at him. "Yeah," I said. I pointed to each of the three pictures I was working on. "This is Fred, Shep, and Barney."
"Oh!" he said, pointing at them each in turn himself. "Breakfast, lunch, and dinner!"
* * *
On a different afternoon, I ordered a small pepperoni pizza from the NCO club. Their pizzas were really good--there were chunks of diced tomatoes underneath the cheese. I loved them, and I ate them on a regular basis.
This fact was another source of humor to the two ROKAF soldiers. One afternoon, shortly after I got to work, I was polishing off a small pepperoni pizza all by myself. They were sitting together at the other end of the shop, looking at me and giggling.
I waved over the one that spoke pretty good English. "What? What are you guys laughing at?"
"No no no no," he said, shaking his head and smiling.
"Tell me what you guys are laughing at!" I said, grinning along with him, but wondering what we were grinning at.
The kid who didn't speak very good English, still sitting at the other end of the shop, shouted out, "You, twaegi!" He burst out in laughter.
"Twaegi? What's that?" I asked the ROKAF soldier beside me.
"No no no no," he said again, this time laughing as he said it.
I looked across the shop, and I hollered, "WHAT?" I threw my hands up in the air.
"You... snuk snuk snuk snuk," he said, putting his finger on his nose, pushing it up, and making an oinking sound.
He was calling me a pig. I cracked up along with them.
* * *
I didn't learn a whole lot of the Korean language. I learned how to say hello, goodbye, sir, ma'am, yes, no... and, of course, pig.
There were other American soldiers, though, that did learn the language, either by hanging out with the locals or taking a class. One of the guys who worked in my shop thought it would be cool to do the latter. He was learning the pronunciation of all the characters of the Korean language. Those characters on buildings and billboards made me understand what it felt like to be illiterate--to not be able to read anything around me.
One afternoon, he thought he'd show off his skills. "Here, let me see that menu," he said. "I'll order a pizza from the NCO club." The menu was in English and Korean. His bright idea was to call up on the phone and order pizza based on the Korean characters on the menu.
He picked up the phone, dialed the NCO club, and waited. When a woman answered, he said into the phone, in Korean, "Yes, I'd like an..." and then we watched as he dragged his finger across the Korean characters on the page, pronouncing them as he read them. "Peh--pah--roh--nee--pee--zaa."
He looked up at us, still holding the phone in his hand, and heaved a big, sad sigh. We all busted out laughing.
* * *
Photography used to be an expensive hobby for a military person. Ten bucks for a roll of film, ten bucks to get it developed, and you only got about thirty-five photos. Now, with the advent of digital photography, you can take thousands of pictures for free, and only pay a few cents for a picture or two that you actually want on paper.
So, being a broke military person, I didn't take thousands of pictures. I did take more than the average bear, though. Probably once every two weeks I was in the little camera shop off base, turning in a roll of film to get developed, and leaving with a new one for my camera.
One Saturday morning, probably around ten, I walked into the camera shop with my roll of film.
"What are you doing today?" the shop owner asked me.
I kind of stood there, staring at him blankly. "Nothing," I said.
It was true. It was Saturday, and I was off. I didn't have anything planned, other than getting this roll of film developed.
"Come. Come with me. We are going to take pictures. My brother come too. Come," he said, waving his hand in front of him, motioning for him to follow me.
Now at this point, things could have gone terribly wrong--he could have kidnapped me, killed me, who knows; but my instincts told me to just go along with him.
I climbed into the passenger seat of a tiny car. The camera shop owner drove, and his brother climbed into the back seat. We started to drive, first through town, then out of civilization, through the woods, past lush, beautiful greenery.
After about ten minutes of wondering where the hell we were going, I learned that the camera shop owner's brother spoke quite a bit more English than he did. "My brother got a new lens for his camera," he told me, leaning forward from the back seat. "He wants to try some portraits, try it out by taking some pictures. We are going to the botanical gardens."
Well, that sounded pretty simple, and it was. We walked through the gardens, stopping here and there to take pictures, the shop owner showing me with motions of his hands and by moving his own head, how he wanted me to pose. Everything around me was green and beautiful. I had my hair cut really short at the time, and I was pretty darn skinny at that point from all the country dancing I had been doing. A group of elementary school students were touring the gardens, and they twittered in their language that was local to them and foreign to me. It was a wonderful day.
We rode back towards the base in silence. Before I went on my way, the shop keeper told me to come back in a couple days, he would have something for me. He ended up giving me one copy of each of the pictures he had taken--about a hundred of them--for free, for my trouble. I gave most of them away to my friends; I only have two or three of them left.
If those days had known digital cameras and scanners and such, I could have scanned the pictures before I gave them to my friends; but as it was, once I gave one away, that was it--once I let go of one of those pieces of photo paper, I was never to see it again.
One of those pictures is on the cover of this book.
* * *
One night, in Korea, in the enlisted club, in the dark back room that held the slot machines, I dropped in two quarters... and won about two hundred bucks. I was pretty darn drunk. I just stood there, dumbfounded, watching the red numbers go up and up and listening to the machine go ding ding ding. Cool.
This was a month or two after the incident in which the scratch-my-face guy walked up behind me, stuck two or three quarters into the slot machine I had just walked away from, and instantly won a few hundred bucks. I stood there with my mouth open, and he said "Sorry... Sorry..." though he wasn't about to share in the winnings.
* * *
I was in Korea. I only had about two months left. I had been blessed most of the time I had been there without having a roommate at all.
Then she showed up.
At first, like the really nice person I am, I tried to be nice to her. She didn’t know anyone, and she listened to really cool gospel music. The day before payday, she asked me if she could borrow $250 until the next day (think it was like a weekend or whatever) so she could go downtown and mail some stuff home.
Like a freakin’ moron, I obliged.
On payday, she gave me back $50. I never saw the rest.
Then other things started happening. I’m a neat person, but not a neat freak; she got pissed when she found some cookie and brownie crumbs in our fridge. When I say pissed, I mean pissed. I apologized to her.
Then Harry noticed what a neat freak she was. He pointed to her shoes, lined up neatly in front of the television stand. I bent down, and while he was saying “no no don’t do it,” I turned all her shoes around. That’s all I did. Instead of the toes facing the cabinet, they now faced the middle of the room. No big deal.
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