Marley revisit

One or two sample days, at this time of the year, a long time ago.


Dec 64

Sukuran, Okinawa...

USO tour demonstration of fencing techniques by some guy and his wife, don't remember their names. He was an Olympic champ, and she was pretty good, too. Foil, epee, sabre, and how they can be fairly dangerous, flashing quickly, better than a rifle with a bayonet, and his wife, the roundeye, looked really good in that tight outfit. Merry Christmas on the bulletin board in the barracks, chow hall rules are that you have to wear Class A uniform, or appropriate civvies to the meal. Turkey, ham, sweet potatoes. Okinawans are good cooks. Some movie down at the movie house, a couple of blocks from our barracks. That afternoon after the movie I sat on the turtle shell tomb with Joe Skaarup, and we laughed about something until we were sore. Took a taxi downtown to Gate Two Street, to pawn some stuff for about eleven dollars, went to the bar to drink Suntory whiskey with my girlfriend, walked home with her later that night to our little house on the side of the hill just above the Moromi area, near the little hotel that had the steam baths. Merry Christmas with an Okinawa accent mark. Long black hairs in my hairbrush.

Dec 65...

We were still soggy from that deal in the La Nga river valley, but we went right back out, this time to the Courtenay Plantation. This was not good stuff. But I was on a new team, having been shuffled in with the survivors from my first team, and the survivors from Team Quail, and a new guy. It was a good mix. We did everything in the dark. That new kid got shot through both feet when we were moving across the dirt runway. I can't think of his name now. That's disturbing. I carried him for a kilometer on my back, doing the airborne dogtrot in the dark, plodding like a goddam pack horse, head down, thinking about my feet, hearing the teams making noises all around me. He never made a sound. We stopped and gave him some surettes in the dark, bam, bam, one in each thigh, and he patted me on the shoulder. Rakemouth Jones carried him the rest of the way, two or three kilometers, held him in his arms like a baby. I know his face like I know my own, but for some reason I just can't think of his name.

Courtenay was mostly flat, trees in rows, service roads, not many places for us to hide, but it was dark and we moved easy. I kept my eye on my azimuth, my slackman kept a hand on my back and watched for me when I stopped to read the compass. The cav had moved their night position forward about two hundred meters without telling us. They didn't know we were coming until some guy saw us moving in his starlight scope and told his M-60 gunner to fire his FPL. Everyone on their line followed the tracers to us. We got down behind the low mud berms, hid behind the little rubber trees, the rounds came snapping in. It was a miracle that we didn't get hit. I was in a white-out, had one of the gunners in my starlight scope, was really thinking hard why I shouldn't just shoot him. But they stopped shooting. Two more times we went into Courtenay that week, before the Aussies hit that big ambush. Creepy Courtenay Rubber Plantation.

We rode out of Courtenay in choppers, a good thing, because the rest of the brigade had to ride back in trucks. Twenty minutes at 2000 ft, cool air, one foot on the skid. We landed at the huge Bien Hoa airport, three teams that went to Courtenay, and piled into a deuce and a half, filled the truck and then some, some sitting on laps, others on the floor, a big heap of muddy boonie rats. Big to-do near the runway, hundreds of guys in the bleachers. Turned out Bob Hope and his boys were there. We made the driver stop, walked in along the flank of the bleachers and sat down near the the front of the crowd, at the foot of the stage. The band was cool: Les Brown and his band of renown, all have gauze bandages across their noses and some even have their cheeks and foreheads covered. Sunburn. Troopers all I guess. Bob Hope is lame as usual, but we think it's cool. Laugh and clap. Joey Heatherton dances, we pound the ground with our fists and whoop it up. One of the guys shucks his web gear and jumps up on the stage with a couple other GIs from the crowd, and he does the jitterbug with Joey Heatherton, actually touches her on the belly on one of the turns. Later on back in the hootch we all form a line and kneel in front of him so we can kiss the hand that touched her belly. But it doesn't last, because the MPs come up and ask us to leave, on account of how we are covered in mud and carry lethal weapons. We are stunned. We just got thrown out of the bobfuckinghope show. Bob watches without comment, barely a pause in his patter, and I notice for the first time that his eyes are flat, like a snake's eyes are flat.

I don't remember any specific comments about it, but I think somebody, somewhere, mentioned that it was Christmas. Anyhow, we didn't see Santa Claus. It don't mean nothing.

Oregon 06. Hooda thunkit?

This year we are in the throes, making the rounds. For the first time in a long time (not counting Christmas two years ago, when we were in Seattle) that RedBud isn't cooking up a dinner. One of her daughters put on a spread last night at her house, and we went there. It was good. Grandkids and a pile of wrappings all over the living room floor. Today we are going over to her mother's house for another round of holiday gathering. We are intransitive: we holiday gather every now and then. This is all good. Even the rain has gotten warm and gentle today.

Somewhere some grunt is not having a good time today. I hope he gets the chance to look back on it all and laugh.

November, Thanks

Home is where the heart is.

This year we're going to RedBud's mother's house. This event moves around from home to home, depending on whatever the wind blows at us when the appropriate Thursday comes around. All the family--the in laws, outlaws, hangers on--show up with side dishes, mobs form and dissolve, tidal conversations move from room to room, kids eyeing grand-kids, who wander around among the forest of legs; they work the room with aplomb, confidant that they are what it's all about. They aren't far from the truth. Later on extra food disappears into containers, taken home mostly by those with the kids. It's all good, sure a lot better than the La Nga River Valley, 1965, thermite cans a few days late, but the cook from Troop E, 17th Cav, put out his "A" rations buffet for us in an LZ the precise size of the diameter of the main rotor of a Huey, and it was good then too. You can't buy this stuff anywhere.

Good food, people you love to share with it.

Life is good. I hope the rest of you are as lucky as I am.

To noodle

You noodle the catfish. Carry the neater snakes home in a minnow bucket.

Noodling...it's a harmless pastime. My okie nephews were great noodlers. Since the time I was about five years old until I was 12 or so, we visited the relatives around Holdenville possibly every-other year. Every time I went back to okiehomie to visit I went noodling with my sister's kids, in the swamp near their house. Two nephews and a niece were just my age.

Summer in Oklahoma. Kids out running around, even at night. Informal. We wore cut-off denims, no shoes or shirts. It's a small town, and it gets rural right at the last stop sign. We'd go to the swamp, where the boys had built a board skiff. It was water tight, and carried three, or two with one guy pushing. That sort of thing. We caught water snakes, turtles, and catfish.

An alligator snapper can easily weigh 50 pounds, have a head as wide as my foot. You can keep them in a burlap sack in the boat, and they'll lie quietly. But when you carry them home, you have to hold the tail, because they have very long necks, and if you try to hold them anywhere on their shell, they'll snap you good. They can take off a finger. You hold them by the tail, and they stick their necks up along the shell, mouth agape, looking around for you, and your companions stay well out of range of that head, because it strikes like a snake. You let the snapper get hold of your pants if you're wearing long pants. They'll hang on for a long time, keep the mouth busy, won't bite anything else. You have to pay attention, because if they let go the pant leg, they might get interested in your bare toes. When we go home we realize we smell like fish and swamp water. We put all the critters, except the catfish, into a pit in the back yard. Most of them are gone in the morning. The catfish went for dinner.

Most times we are accompanied by the blond cocker, Dusty. Dusty was a companion, not much of a pet. He'd play fetch with you if you insisted, but you had to put up with his condescending looks when he brought back the ball. I figured he liked to go with us mostly because, at the swamp, the boys let him ride in the boat. Also was Friday, the duck. He was Dusty's companion, and where ever Dusty went, so did Friday. He mostly walked, although he was a good flier. Every now and then he'd perch on Dusty's butt, and Dusty would let him ride. Sometimes Dusty and Friday slept in a pile. Friday was sociable. He liked for you to scratch him behind his eyes. Sometimes he would put his head in our laps, close his eyes, hold real still, waiting for his scratches. Friday loved the swamp.

Lots of fun. Drove my sister nuts, though, with all the critters. Lots of those snakes went under the house, possibly at least one cottonmouth.