A Priest in Prison

     The transition from being a defendant in a courtroom to becoming incarcerated in the McPherson County jail was undramatic.  It wasn’t like the movies, where there is screaming or crying; the sheriff simply put the handcuffs on Padre’s wrists and led him to the jail.  The problem was that there had been a spate of criminal activity and McPherson County was not prepared for the influx of prisoners.  The jail was overcrowded at 140 percent capacity and all of the beds were taken.  When Fr. Early was shown to his cell the guard merely pointed to the mattress on the floor.  The only concession that the county gave him for his own personal comfort was a pillow and a blanket.  To make matters worse, the heating and air conditioning barely worked and the inmates liked to tell stories about how they put a glass of water near the ceiling during the winter and the water froze.  Still, the citizens of McPherson County were genuinely unsympathetic towards the inmates of their jail and the complaints from prisoners were largely ignored.

   The ordeal of the trial was over and now Fr. Early had to settle into his new reality.  At first he slept a lot.  Laying on his mattress on the floor with his blanket pulled over his head was better than having to look at the inside of his cell.  The only people that he would talk to were the guards and even then it was only when necessary.  Fr. Early resented the guards for their arbitrary enforcement of the rules and for making a tough situation even harder by having a forced lock down.  If someone in one cell does something wrong then the whole cell block goes on lockdown.  It didn’t make any sense and was patently unfair but the jail was understaffed and a forced lock down was an easy way to solve a difficult situation.

   The guards mostly left Fr. Early alone but the old priest got a lot of unwanted attention from his fellow inmates.  There were some truly bad men in jail and they would like nothing better than to take out their anger and misery on a pedophile priest.  Fr. Early became an easy target and he was beaten up several times for something as simple as refusing to give up his lunch money.  Once again, the guards could have intervened on Fr. Early’s behalf but they were overburdened as it was so they found it easier to look the other way.  And besides, no one on the outside was going to care that an inmate had a black eye or some bruises, especially a priest who had been convicted of pedophilia.

   Fr. Early still had his religion but little else.  He had the time in jail to take stock of his current situation.  Banshee had died years ago so Padre didn’t have to worry about anyone having to take care of his dog.  If he ever got out then he swore that he would buy another one.  He had lost teaching job, his part time work at the parish, and Camp Van Dorn had closed down.  So Fr. Early clung to his religion and found comfort in “The Book of Job” where God had tested a man’s faith by making him penniless and taking away his family and all material comforts.  There were a lot of parallels.   

   Fr. Early has to wait for months at the McPherson County jail before being transferred to prison because they had to find a bed for him.  The closest facility was Riverbend in Nashville but it is one of the toughest prisons in the system so Fr. Early petitioned to go to the federal correctional institute in Memphis.  The problem with taking the safe path was that Memphis was too far away for people to visit so Padre rarely saw people from the outside.  However, once he was transferred to prison, life became a lot better for Fr. Early.  He had a permanent cell with a permanent cell mate and he had his own bed which was not on the floor.  When he was in jail he was in constant fear of being beaten up and having his personal items stolen from him.  That rarely happened in prison because the inmates knew that they were going to spend years, if not decades, with the other men and they did not want to soil the nest.  There were some nuisances, like each man was only allowed one potato per meal because the guards were afraid that the prisoners would make vodka out of it, but that was a minor inconvenience compared with what Fr. Early had to put up with in jail.

   Meanwhile, another former camper had come forward to accuse Fr. Early of sexual abuse.  Instead of enduring another trail, the priest agreed to an Alford plea where he accepted an additional sentence of five years rather than risk a trial where he could face a maximum sentence of twenty years.     With the Alford plea, Fr. Early could maintain his innocence but it also guaranteed that he would spend the rest of his life in prison.  That was fine with the old priest because, even if he were free. he had absolutely nothing in Knoxville waiting for him.

   Considering the circumstances, it would be understandable for the priest to give up on religion.  In fact, not only did Fr. Early not turn his back on his religion, he used his time in prison to deepen his faith.  Just like when he was a teacher and the camp director, Fr. Early started his day in prayer.  He volunteered to work in the chapel and would eventually take over when the former leader died.  Old Jube was his nickname in prison.  No one seemed to know his real name and no one called him Father Early or even Padre.  He was just Old Jube.  And like “The Book of Job,” Fr. Early had his faith tested and was proud of the fact that his relationship with his Lord and Savior had become even stronger.  In quiet moments when he had time to think, Fr. Early liked to recite 2 Timothy 4: 7-8.  “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept my faith.  Henceforth there is laid upon me a crown of righteousness…”

   As the years went by the old priest became even more humble.  He had been shorn of all authority.  It was as though he had never been a teacher or the camp director; those days had passed and he preferred not to think about them at all.  His whole past had evaporated and even the infrequent visits by the church ladies ended.  To a casual observer, his personality seemed to have bleached out to the point where there was nothing left.  Actually, Fr. Early was working on inner peace by, in addition to reading the Bible, studying Buddhism and Taoism.  To live like the Buddha was to live a life without desire. Taoism encouraged Fr. Early to give up on his ego and to live in the present.  Fr. Early believed that by studying other religions he could add some depth to his faith.  He had become a wraith, living somewhere between before and after death; forgotten but still alive.  In retrospect, Fr. Early had spent his whole life trying to obtain this moment in time, this feeling of peace, and now that he had it only the grave would make him let it go

On The Hippie Trail

    When I had heard that Rick Steves, the famous travel writer who also has a television and radio show, had written a new book, I immediately picked it up because I want to whet my appetite for our next trip to Asia.  When everything closed down during COVID, Steves found that he had a lot of time on his hands and when he came across an old journal that he had written in 1978, he decided to turn in into a book.  “On the Hippie Trail” is about his journey that started in Frankfurt, crossed through Istanbul, Tehran, Kabul, and Delhi, and finished in Kathmandu, Nepal.  He travelled by bus, train, and plane, and even hitch hiked through part of the trail.  Little did Steves know that 1978 would be the last year that anyone could go on the Hippie Trail because in 1979 the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, so those two countries were too dangerous to tour.  All Rick Steves knew was that at he was up for an adventure and was ready to “catch memories like butterflies.”

   According to Steves, there are two kinds of travel; escape and reality.  Escape travel for me is to have my wife lay on a beach at the Carib Hilton in San Juan while I take long walks along the shore.  We didn’t learn anything or have any broadening experiences, we just got out of town for a week.  But now we are retired and are more interested in reality travel because we want to expose ourselves to places and people whom we would not experience at home.  Reality travel to us, for example, is to walk through the public market in Manila.  We had been to the crowded streets of Cairo and Saigon before but we only saw them from the comfort of our luxury bus.  Mingling among the sights, smells, and crowds of a major city made the experience come alive for us.  As Rick Steves wrote; “I want to go home a little bit different, a little less afraid, a little more thankful.”

   There are limits as to what we are willing to endure on our reality travel trips, however.  I like not having to worry about getting a hotel room or even being concerned about where we are going to stay, so my wife and I enjoy cruising. We like taking cruises because when we get tired of the crowds and the beggars then we can just retreat to ship.  When he was on the Hippie Trail, Rick Steves was young and had no money so he ordered his hotel rooms on the fly where he had to worry about mosquitoes coming through the screen-less open windows, cockroaches on the floor, and worms in the water.  He wrote; “you have to build a hard shell around you. If things get too heavy you must be able to pull inside and mentally repel the onslaught.”  It takes a strong person to repel the heat, the dust, the beggars, and the constant stares by the locals. 

     Rick Steves also wrote: “Europe is the wading pool for world exploration and I was aching to dive into the deep end.”  My wife and I like to joke that all white people have to go to Ireland before they die because almost all white people can trace at least part of their ancestry to that island.  We wanted to stretch ourselves by visiting places that very few of our friends have been to.  Brunei, for example, where we saw a whole village built on stilts.  Paul Theroux, another famous travel writer, once said that he learned that “when everyone tells you not to go to a place then that is the place where you should visit.” My buddies told me not to go to Mexico City because they were worried about crime and the drug cartels.  Yet Mexico City was wonderful and the people could not have been more inviting.  The lesson that I had to relearn is that the most powerful travel experiences are going to places where we are not supposed to go.

   Another great quote by Rick Steves is, “You can go to your grave wearing a big barbecue apron, spending your vacations on your boat at the lake, and think that life was good for you, and not learn anything, and really think that you are the center of this planet, which is fine. I’ve just got this curiosity to get to know the rest of the world.”  He writes that “a tourist goes to shop and take a selfie.  A traveler goes to immerse himself in the culture.”  Unfortunately, my wife and I don’t have the inclination to live in a village in China, for example, for a year.  We are not going to immerse ourselves in a culture.  All that we want to do is to visit a place that is new to us so that the simple things in life can take on a fresh outlook.  For example, we have used the “squat” toilets in Asia and Africa and it makes me appreciate the “sit down” toilets that we have in the U.S.  This is just one of the simple things that we can only appreciate by traveling out of the country.

   Finally, I like reading the books by Rick Steves and Paul Theroux because they inspire me to travel to places where I have never been to before.  My wife and I have made plans to visit Japan and Australia, for example, and I really want to go to India.  One of the reasons as to why I like to travel is because a change of venues triggers different memories and emotions.  It takes me away from my problems and allows me to write about something different, although my efforts in trying to describe the sights and experiences often fall flat.  Still, it is worth the effort.  When I get back home I type all of my notes into my blog in the hope that I can inspire others to travel.  

Fraternity of the Pitiful

“The Fraternity of the Pitiful”         

   While George Scarborough and Scott Hancock were entering their senior year at Farragut High School, Bill Yancy began his freshman year in college.  His experiment in leaving home to live in a dorm only lasted for two semesters, but it was an intense period of personal growth.  He chose Union University because it was close to home and it was a small school so he would get a lot of attention.  

The thing that Bill wasn’t prepared for was that each dorm at Union was known to have a select group of people in it.  For example, Joe Gilliam Tower held all of the jocks.  The other groups may not have had a whole dorm assigned to them but they could have a wing, or a floor, at the dorm.  The “Brain Trust,” for example, was the group of nerds who lived on the first floor of “Breckinridge Hall.”  These were the really smart guys who knew that they were going places in this world as soon as they left Union.  Unfortunately, because they were so smart and their competitions were based on their GPAs, there was always a lot in fighting between them.  Their leaders were the roommate duo of David Hunter and John Pelham and these two guys could not stop arguing with each other, mainly over trivial things.  They acted more like a married couple than best friends.  Somehow, the dorm director had decided that Bill should live in “Breckinridge Hall” on the floor where the outcasts lived.  There were a wide variety in this warren of unusual people, so much so that Bill would privately refer to them as the “Fraternity of the Pitiful!” 

   Rich Taylor was the first person to greet Bill as he moved his things into the dorm.  Bill had already spent the summer before college living with his peers at Camp Van Dorn, so he wasn’t too nervous about moving in with a bunch of strangers and he only brought the necessities with him to the dorm, which led Rich to comment on how few things Bill had brought with him and how easy it would be to move in.  Rich Taylor was two years older than Bill and the best that could be said of him was that he was quirky.  His first two years in working towards his undergraduate degree had been spent at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), but it was a bad fit because the strict discipline there disagreed with his free spirit lifestyle.  For example, Rich was always losing important things and would often admonish himself by saying “I spend half of my days looking for my keys.”  A psychologist may say that his propensity to lose things was a sign of rebellion of the strict military at VMI and of his parents domineering personalities.  He left the military school after two years, transferred to Union in his junior year, and was hired as a resident assistant because he was mature for his age and had an outgoing personality.  Rich was going to be a, ESL (English as Second Language) teacher and had been to Colombia in South America to volunteer to teach English during the previous summer.  To the incoming students loading their things into the freshman dorm, Rich seemed seemed to be worldly.  And yet, to prove that he was just like the other students, Rich would say the oddest things.  For example, he was fond of quoting Mr. Rogers and old black and white movies that were rerun on the afternoon movies on television.  When he had a few beers, he amused himself by burping and farting as loudly as possible.  Needless to say, Rich wasn’t dating anyone but told the “Fraternity of the Pitiful” that if they ever got a chance to move to Colombia then they should do so because “the South American girls love white boys.”

   Bill’s roommate for his freshman years was Don Buell, a proud working class boy whose father owned Buell Trucking Company in Knoxville.  With a crackling wit and a boisterous personality, and whose brother taught part time in the English department, Buell could have easily become a big man on campus.  What gained him entry into the “Fraternity of the Pitiful” was the fact that he had scars over half of his body from when he threw gasoline on the barbecue to get a fire started.  A flame shot up through the stream of gas and exploded in the glass container that Buell was holding.  Knowing that he should stop, drop, and roll to extinguish the flames, Buell's mistake was that he did this procedure on the carpeting, which is made of plastic.  The carpet melted, stuck to his skin, and his body remained ravaged by the plastic that melted onto his skin.  He should have died.  Only through extensive physical therapy did Buell pull through and go on to lead a fairly normal life.  In fact, when he had his shirt on, the only scars that you could see were on his neck so he could pass for being normal.  However, when he came back from the shower, the grotesque scars could be seen everywhere on his body.  He rarely talked about it but when he did, Buell’s eyes would tear up with the knowledge that he had caused his own deformity doing something stupid and would spend the rest of his life paying for a momentary lapse in judgement.

   ​    Buell was a good roommate but Bill’s suite-mates, with whom he had to share a bathroom, were not such a good match.  Tom Jackson was one of the suite-mates.  He was a “Gung Ho” marine who kept his hair cropped short and who looked like he had just stepped out of a recruiting poster.  He paid his tuition with an ROTC scholarship so his post college career had already been assigned to him.  Aside from his studies, Jackson’s past time was working on a newsletter which he sent to local businesses in the hopes that they would pay a subscription fee.  It didn’t work but at least he tried to do something to distinguish himself.  Jackson went on to graduate, served his time with the Marines, and was honorably discharged.  He happily retired to Tampa Bay where he and the other jarheads whom were in his retirement community spent their days at the local dive bar.

   Jackson’s room mate, and Bill’s other suite-mate, was Bobby Rhett and the two could not have been more different.  While Jackson was uptight, driven, opinionated, and angry all of the time, Bobby was laid back and nothing seemed to bother him.  For some reason there were a lot of Puerto Ricans at Union University and Bobby had become pretty good at mimicking their accent.  He would yell across the cafeteria, "I want your sister!"  It didn’t make any sense, and it was offensive, but Bobby was so good at the accent and his imitations were so perfect that his friends laughed anyway.  The Puerto Ricans, who take the idea of family seriously, did not laugh.  Bobby always took his joke too far and was on the lam for saying that he wanted to have sex with the sisters of some of the athletes in Joe Gilliam Tower.  He earned his membership in the “Fraternity of the Pitiful” by barely leaving his dorm room because he was afraid of getting beat up by the jocks and Puerto Ricans who didn’t appreciate his weird sense of humor.  Bobby dropped out after a semester and no one heard from him again.

   Just down the hall was the room which held Simon Buckner and A.J. Smith.  Simon was the true oddity of the “Fraternity of the Pitiful.”  Tall and lanky, lacking in personal hygiene, and speaking with a high voice that always broke in mid-sentence, Simon dreamed of becoming a sportscaster.  It was an impossibility for him because, although he loved sports, he had no background in athletics and a demeanor which no fan would find charming or masculine.  When his friends kidded him about having an unusual name, Simon would just smile and say “my parents gave me that name for my birthday so I had to keep it.”  It was his one good joke and he used it often.  Simon never cracked open a book and spent most of his days sleeping or watching television, and he dropped out of Union after the first semester of his sophomore year.  His roommate for his first year was A.J. Smith, a redneck from Monroe, Ohio.  He liked to play his country music as loudly as possible and he could hold his liquor better than anyone that Bill had ever known.  Further, A.J. was as big as a mountain and could physically challenge anyone at Union.  He was a good man to have on your side and A.J. and Bill became close friends by spending a lot of evenings at the university center bar talking about girls and life, but mostly about girls.

   ​    Jim Stuart was the quiet and shy intellect.  He played soccer in high school, tried boxing in college, but also enjoyed his beer.  That last bit is important because it explains his friendship with David Porter, or Ports, who was a true alcoholic.  Ports was almost always drunk and if he wasn't drunk then he was planning on how he could get drunk.  He counted out his money in terms of how many six packs that he could buy.  All of this drinking led to Ports leaving Union and returning to Knoxville to join an Alcoholic Anomynous group.

   ​    Ed Pickett was in the company of Ports because they both liked to drink.The difference was that Pickett was a mean drunk.  Once, while in the park and waiting for a concert to begin, Pickett hit his girlfriend a couple of times on the back when she was play wrestling with him.  If a guy does something like that them he could not be Bill’s friend.  Also, while in a drunken stupor, Pickett stole a record player from the library and planned to sell it to get money to drink. Pickett was convicted of shooting a police officer and was sentenced to 49 years behind bars for attempted murder.

 
   Rounding out the Fraternity of the Pitiful were Preston Brooks, Richard Ewell, and William Pendleton.  Preston was a dwarf who didn’t have a room mate.  He was studying to be a librarian, and whose past times included reading Tarot cards for his friends.  Preston’s dorm room had to have some accommodations made so that he could do the daily grooming like using the sink, for example.  Then came Richard Ewell and William Pendleton, the former was an anal retentive book worm and the latter a drunken druggie.  They didn’t know each other before they enrolled at Union and were such an unlikely pair that they began to hate each other.  Within a month both Ewell and Pendleton had requested a new room mate and they moved off of the wing.

   ​    It was a diverse group of teenage boys.  However, no matter which group we were in, no matter how smart or slow, the subject that came up most was girls.  Their testosterone levels were at their peek and they stank of hormones.  Some guys played sports to relieve the tension, others buried themselves in their studies, still others drank to excess.  It was late adolescence at its peek and they were all flush with adrenaline and frustration.  Really, what a stupid time of life to throw young people together.  It is a system designed for failure.  They didn’t know who they were yet, had not grown up, and brains still developing.  They thought that they were ready but they were not ready.  The thoughts that occupied their brains the most were about sex; that fact didn’t change whether they were a cheerleader, athlete, or in the Fraternity of the Pitiful

   To escape the Fraternity of the Pitiful, Bill spent a lot of time at the library.  Convinced that he had ADD but was undiagnosed, he had to find ways to compensate for his limited attention span.  For example, Bill sat in the middle of the big room in the library.  The cacophony of all of the different voices meant that Bill could not focus on one conversation because they all drowned each other out.  Also, by sitting where everyone could see him, he would shame himself if he fell asleep handy  Sitting in the wide open, where everyone could see me, forced Bill to concentrate, and he put on big headphones to telegraph to everyone around him that he was not to be disturbed.  This was when he learned to love classical music and jazz.

   Dorm life was clearly not for Bill.  All of the unusual personalities, and the confines of living in a small room with a complete stranger, did not work out well for him.  After one year he decided to leave Union and go back to Knoxville where he attended community college.  It was a fresh start so he decided not to drink and not go to any parties.  The friends that he made were clearly not healthy people and it was time to get serious and leave behind the social experiment that was the Fraternity of the Pitiful.  After a chaotic year, Bill felt a need to get some normalcy in his life, so he decided to go back to Camp Van Dorn for a second summer.  It provided a respite for him; a place to retreat to in the summer months between the Union University experiment and before retreating to community college.  Bill needed to spend some time trying to figure out who he was and where he was going and Camp Van Dorn provided a place to relax and regroup

Philippines

    Our cruise to the Philippines was, without a doubt, the most difficult trip that we have ever been on.  The cruise itself was fine but the actual travel from Louisville to Asia was hell.  If I had known how tough the flights were going to be before we left then I doubt that we would even have gone.  My coping strategy for preparing myself psychologically for a big trip is to not think about it.  I will memorize the date of departure along with the flight number of our carrier and the time that we take off.  I don’t want to know any other details because all that would do is to bring me anxiety.  It helps if I think of myself as a big bag of water that had to be taken from one airport to another.  A bag of water has no influence over flight delays or lost luggage and even if it were aware, there is nothing that it could do about it anyway.  The best thing to do is to be like the jellyfish and go with the flow.

   There are many reasons as to why we continue to take on these tough trips.  The first is that they have strengthened our marriage.  Tracey and I have endured the unendurable and can take a lot of pride in how we have weathered the storm together.  Another reason to travel is because these trips make us appreciate our lives.  We visited some places in Asia that are desperately poor and it reminded me of how lucky we are living a life that most people can dream about.  Finally, traveling extensively makes us unique.  I don’t know of anyone who has been to Singapore, for example, and we have been there twice.  And while we were eating lunch in Singapore I noticed that we were the only white faces in the restaurant.  It is fun to be different and I just know that some of those people who saw us are going home and they will share their stories about how they saw “The Blind Woman and the Ironman.”
   
Friday, Saturday, Sunday; December 20th-22nd.  Our flight left on Friday at 3:30 pm but we didn’t board the ship until Sunday at 11:00 am.  While it looks like we travelled for three days, our actual travel time was 30 hours.  It should not have taken that long but we had a couple of long layovers.  The time changed messes with our internal clocks and I am aware that some people will arrive at the port city a day or two before the ship sails just so that they can make the adjustments before the cruise begins.  However, it was so cold and rainy in Taipei that I was glad that we didn’t spend any extra time in our city of embarkation.
   When we landed in the Taipei airport I asked a porter where a representative from the Norwegian Cruise Line ship, “The Spirit,” would meet us.  He exclaimed, “A cruise ship?  Out of Taipei?”  It was at that exact moment that I knew that we were doing something unusual in cruising Asia.

Monday, December 23:  With a population of over two million, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, is about the same size as Cincinnati, and yet I have never heard of it.  Another reason to travel is because it helps me realize how big the world is.  The highlight of the day was visiting “The Tree House,” which earned its name by having Banyan trees growing inside of it.  One of the rooms in the house was filled with calligraphy and we learned that if you want to get a government job in Taiwan then you have to pass a test on calligraphy.
   Vincent was our guide for our first day in Kaohsiung and he smiled when he said, “Where there is water there is prosperity.”  It had been raining on us the whole time that we were in Taiwan and he was trying to spin our constantly being soaked into something good.  Nice try, Vincent, but we were tired of being cold and wet and miserable and were ready to leave Taiwan.

Tuesday, December 24:  “The Taiwan Indigenous People’s Cultural Park” was the highlight of our second day in Kaohsiung.  Members of the Apana Tribe entertained us with a live show and what made it so good was the fact that the tribe was obviously proud of their dance and their homemade costumes.  I learned that the tribe wove and dyed their own cloth and then used the material to sew their costumes.  It was an authentic show and that is what made the Apana Tribe so special.

Wednesday, December 25:  While in Currimao, Philippines, we visited the Vigan Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as the Bantay Watch Tower and St. Augustine Church.  Finally, we went to a pottery shop to watch the craftsmen throw pots.  All that I ask for on our excursions is to get one or two good pictures of my wife and I got a great one of Tracey listening to the spinning wheel while the clay was being thrown in the shop.

Thursday, December 26:  We went to a market in Manila’s Chinatown and it was an assault on the senses.  There were bright colored umbrellas everywhere because the vendors used them to attract pedestrians.  The whole place smelled like an armpit and it was difficult to walk down the sidewalk because there were so many people crammed into such a small area.  Elgin was our guide and he said that it was a good thing that we didn’t try to visit the market on a weekend because that was when it would really be packed.  “This isn’t jammed packed?” asked Tracey, innocently.  “No!  Not even close,” replied Elgin.
   My wife and I have faced similar circumstances in places like Cairo and Saigon, where the streets were packed with pedestrians, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, bicycles, cars, trucks, and buses.  The difference is that we were able to to observe the chaos from the comfort of our motor coach.  Now we were walking in the middle of the chaos and it was scary.  For example, we had a tuk-tuk (think of a motorcycle with a trailer) breeze by us while we were walking on a sidewalk and it was literally just an inch or two away from her elbow.  I was very proud of my blind wife for not becoming overwhelmed by this attack on her senses.
   I once read a book on the fall of Manila in WWII and was surprised when our guide did not acknowledge St. Thomas School when we passed it.  Over 4,000 civilians, most of whom were American, were kept in this school when it became an internment camp run by the Japanese.  They were kept prisoners from 1942 to 1945.  The civilians were nurses, teachers, and families of diplomats and many of them died while in captivity.  By contrast, the American soldiers who surrendered on Corregidor and Bataan became slave labor and were worked to death.  This deserved at least a brief mention on our tour of Manila.

Friday, December 27: Tracey planned all of our excursions months before “The Spirit” left Taipei.  We  like to go through the ship so that we have the best chance odds of having a good tour.  Our fellow passengers never tired of telling us that we could get a tour a lot cheaper by grabbing a cab on the dock.  However, we know that we will never go back to the Philippines so we need a guaranteed good time with a knowledgeable guide.  Ryan was was the perfect guide for us because, when we had some down time at the Maquinit Hot Springs, he sat and talked with Tracey for over a half hour while I walked around and took pictures.  Believe me when I tell you that I tipped Ryan well for his special service and attention.
   It is always the unexpected things that make an impression.  Those unplanned moments that you had no idea were coming.  When we got off the coach to get to the market in Coron, Philippines, two little girls approached us and grabbed our hands.  Then, out of a sign of respect, they placed the back of our hands onto their foreheads.  Their teachers had told them to do this to their elders and I felt honored.  I cannot imagine that school children in America would ever do this to adults.

Saturday, December 28: We got off of the ship to take the tender to the pier to board a boat to meet the bus that drove us to “The Motag Living Museum” on Boracay, Philippines.  Motag was about as far out of the way as an attraction can get but our philosophy has always been to relax and enjoy each experience as it comes, so the commute didn’t bother us.  The highlight of the day was when the tour guide asked our group if anyone would like to ride a water buffalo.  I was shocked when Tracey raised her hand to volunteer.  Sure enough, she climbed aboard the huge, nasty, stinking beast that was covered in fleas.  There was no saddle and the only thing to hold onto was the covering blanket.  Tracey laughed in delight for the whole ride while I took her picture and, when she got off of the water buffalo, she gushed when I told her how proud I was of her.  It was a nice moment that was made even more special because neither one of us knew that it was coming.
   Motag had an authentic reproduction of an aborigines house made entirely from bamboo, including the walls, floors, and ceiling.  There were no nails but instead rope made from rattan was used to hold all of the pieces together.  Amy was our guide and she began, and ended, our tour by having members of her family sing to us as they did a little dance.  Finally, Lola was, at 100 years old, the senior member of the family and while she didn’t speak English, we were encouraged to walk up to her and say hello.

Sunday, December 29th:  While in Puerto Princesa, Philippines, we went to a prison where the inmates did a dance for us, then toured a butterfly garden, but the best part of the day was going to the WWII museum.  Tracey and I had our picture taken after we hopped on a Soviet motorcycle with a sidecar.  There were a couple of Jeeps in the showroom but they were too hard to get into.  There were separate rooms which held displays from the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Italy and Tracey got to feel helmets, weapons, and ammunition from each of these countries.  Another highlight was when Tracey got to feel a real steering wheel from a Japanese battleship.

Monday, December 30th:  We did an architectural tour of Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia and drove by “The Floating Mosque,” which is a huge structure, surrounded by water, and can hold up to 2,000 people for services.  Our first stop was at the “Tun Mustapha Tower,” a unique building because it has a stem in the middle which holds up all of the floors so all that an onlooker can see is a tower of windows.  Our last stop was to the Marriott Sky Lounge which is a rooftop bar that offers a spectacular view of the South China Sea.

Tuesday, December 31st: The Water Village in Brunei was beautiful but dangerous.  The houses were built on stilts that were about fifteen feet high and the only thing that connected them was a flimsy catwalk.  There were no guardrails for the tourists to grab onto for support.  Our guide said that these were private houses and the locals would not change their lifestyle to accommodate the tourists.  I was so proud of my blind wife for navigating the catwalks that even the sighted people were having trouble with.  Tracey put her complete trust in me as I guided her through the maze of catwalks and retaining her trust is a responsibility that I take very seriously.
   Brunei is an oil rich country where health care, housing, and education is either free or greatly subsidized.  And yet it is difficult to attract foreigners because Brunei is a Muslim country that doesn’t allow smoking or drinking and everything closes down by 10:00 pm.  Aside from The Water Village, the other attractions that we saw on our cultural tour was the Sultan’s Museum and a huge convention center that is barely used because of the ban on alcohol.

Wednesday, January 1st:  “Have as good of a time that you can today.”  This is what the captain of “The Spirit” said about our day at sea during his morning announcements.  There were huge swells that made the ship rock back and forth and from side to side.  Sometimes there would be a knocking sound coming from the bottom of the ship as we hit some debris and I never tired of saying, “I think that we just hit an iceberg!”  The weather was truly horrible as we entered the South China Sea to sail from Brunei to Vietnam.  It was so bad that the staff put barf bags in all of the stairwells and I noticed that quite a few people had taken one.  

Thursday, January 2nd:  We had been to Ho Chi Minh City a year ago so we didn’t take the city tour again but instead visited the Cu Chi Tunnel where the Viet Cong based their operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968.  Next to the tunnel was a massive graveyard and a memorial pagoda.  In the afternoon we went to The Museum of the American War where Tracey got to feel real (not reproductions) tanks, mortars, jets, and a Chinook and Huey helicopter.  She got to pretend that she was shooting down planes while manning a real anti-aircraft gun.  Also, there was a “Peace Bell” made out of a real mortar shell that Tracey got to ring.  The sound of the bell was supposed to remind everyone who could hear it that we don’t ever want to have another war.
   In a nice moment, a veteran was having his wife take his picture in front of a mortar which was just like the one he carried in the war.  He called out to me to tell me about it and I lamely replied, “thank you for your service.”  What I really wanted to do was to buy the vet a beer and spend the afternoon talking to him about his experiences in the Vietnam War.

Friday, January 3rd: “The Spirit” was spending the day at sea so Tracey and I did nothing but drink daiquiris, play trivia, and eat three meals at “The Windows,” our favorite restaurant.  The wait staff treated us like royalty even though we were just another retired couple on the ship.  It felt good to be fawned over.  Also, I have always liked the ceremony of eating out at a nice restaurant.  My father taught me the skill of using a knife and fork properly; to sit up straight, chew with my mouth closed, and to keep my elbows off of the table.  He used to say that once we had learned these skills then we can eat at a table with kings and queens and still be comfortable.
   If “The Windows” is eating in first class then “The Garden” is steerage.  This restaurant is a buffet so the people pile their plates high with bacon and fries and then end up wasting half of it.  I saw a lady try to shove a whole bagel into her mouth and it wasn’t pretty.  Glassy eyed children were encouraged to play on their iPads so that they didn’t disturb their parents who were chewing their cud while standing in line for seconds.  And, while Tracey and I like to treat the staff with respect by adding a “please” and “thank you” while ordering, the passengers in “The Garden” lord over the waiters by treating them like slaves.  It was almost as if you had to sign a waiver agreeing to be rude and using bad manners..

Saturday, January 4th:  We were in Singapore a year ago and didn’t want to repeat the experience of going to Chinatown and the harbor so we took a six hour tour of the attractions outside of the city.  The highlight was going to the Kranji War Memorial and Cemetery.  When General Percival surrendered Singapore to the Japanese without a fight in WWII, Winston Churchill called it “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.”  About 130,000 Commonwealth soldiers were captured and many of them died in captivity or were used as forced labor on projects like the Siam-Burma Railroad (see “The Bridge on the River Kwai”).  Many of the soldiers who died are buried at the Kranji War Memorial and Cemetery.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday; January 5th-7th:  We had to disembark from “The Spirit” by 9:00 am on Sunday but our flight didn’t take off until 5:00 pm so we spent the whole day in the airport.  After an eight hour flight from Singapore to Sidney we had a five hour layover.  The flight from Sidney to Dallas was 14 hours.  When we arrived in Dallas we learned that we were snowed out of Louisville because American Airlines had cancelled all of the morning flights.  Fortunately, American started flying again in the late afternoon and we got the last two tickets through Charlotte.  After spending all day in Dallas we finally got back to our condo at 2:30 am on Tuesday.  We had to spend an additional hour at the Louisville International Airport because American lost our luggage.  They found it and delivered it on Thursday and that was fine because we spent the first three days back home sleeping.  A quick, back of the envelope, calculation found that we spent fifty hours getting from the ship to our condo.
   This was, without a doubt, the hardest trip that Tracey and I have ever made.  I remember that I could no longer read because I couldn’t concentrate and, besides, my eyes could no longer focus on the words.  And yet, I discovered a wealth of patience that I never knew that I had.  I didn’t lose my temper even though we were under very stressful circumstances that would have been a trial for even Job.  Tracey gave me a huge compliment when she said that she was able to remain calm because I had remained calm.  We have been in similar situations before and I always thought that the pleasure was worth the pain.  As time passes, we will forget about the hardships of our flights back from Asia but will remember the good times, like watching my wife ride a water buffalo.

   In the aggregate, and by ignoring our travel difficulties and the fact that we were sick for half of the cruise, our trip to Asia was fantastic.  We now have bragging rights about walking through the open market in Manila’s Chinatown and scaling the catwalk in the Water Village.  For the first time, we visited Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and the Philippines, and after having our appetites whetted, we want to go back to those countries.  We were so encouraged that we booked a cruise to Australia for Christmas, which means that we will begin and end 2025 on “The Spirit,” and we are even thinking about using Norwegian Cruise Line to go to Japan and India.  Life is good and, as I told Tracey mid cruise, “I have never been so happy!”


Quotes
• “We do not eat cats and dogs.  We love them.  They are a part of our family.”  Vincent said this while we were in Taiwan.  He was defensive as, apparently, other tourists had heard that Asians eat cats and dogs.
• “That sucks,” said the tween girl when I told her that Tracey has been blind since she was sixteen.  It was refreshing to get such an honest reaction as opposed to the pity that Tracey usually gets..”
• “We are NPR listening, PBS watching, Flaneurs!”  I made up this line to pat myself of the back for getting so good at long distance travel    
• “Come up and show me your teeeckets.  I will give you a steeeker.  Make sure that they are veeesible.”  We heard this line from the manager with a heavy accent every morning as we were waiting for our excursion to leave.
• “You told me that if I said something loudly and confidently then everyone would believe me.”  Jin tried to fake her way into pronouncing “Triumvirate.”  “It doesn’t always work,” I replied.
• “God made the world in six days.  The Chinese made everything else.”
• “Your daughter is adorable,” is what I said to the parents of a four year old girl who just happened to share an elevator ride with us.  “She wasn’t adorable when she was throwing up yesterday.”  The little girl suffered from sea sickness.
• One of our guides call me “The Professor” because I was able to answer a lot of his questions.  I really liked it.
• One of our guides asked us what would happed if a tourist missed the ship and they are stranded.  I said, “That’s between them and God.”  He liked that answer.
• “Of course you are Canadian.  That explains why you are so nice.”  A fellow traveler allowed us to cut in front of him in line.  I saw the Canadian flag and his luggage.  He gave me a wink and a wry smile after I said this, which is another very Canadian thing to do.
• I reminded Tracey that I would put myself between her and danger.  “They would have to go through me to get to you and I am a pretty big guy.”  This wasn’t false machismo .  I really meant it
• Nazareen was guide.  She tried hard but couldn’t quite get who were were.  “So,” she asked, “you are all from Norway?”  She didn’t understand that we came from the Norwegian Cruise Line and that that we were all from the country of Norway.
• “I know that the threat is there but I don’t feel endangered.”  Vincent said this after a tourists asked him if he wasn’t afraid that the Chinese would take over his country of Taiwan.



Non Sequitar
• Funny.  Tracey getting into the sidecar and her dress rode up.  Suddenly we heard a wolf whistle.  She thought how rude it was to whistle at a women at her most vulnerable.  As it turned out, the whistle came from a parrot
• Squat toilets
• Our parents would be proud of us.
• Unwelcome surprise: the gym was packed all day.  I was too sick to work out anyway.  A little worried because I didn’t miss it.
• Motorcycles with sidecars carrying up to four people or cargo.  The sidecars went from everywhere from luxury to homemade out of cheap wood. 
• Tracey easily memorized the floor plan of “The Spirit,” which is good because we will be on that same ship for our cruise of Australia.  
• The Caribbean and Europe seem so small now that we have been to Asia.
• For the first time that I can remember, I wasn’t ready to go back as we finished our cruise 
• We are now confident that we could do a back to back cruise for 28 days.
• If you get hung up on going to one place or one event then you are going to be disappointed.  Just open up to new experiences. No bucket list.

Amtrak: New Orleans to Chicago

 Wednesday, November 27, 2024:  The WWII Museum is the best tourist attraction in New Orleans.  The amount of money, time, and effort, that the city and benefactors has poured into the museum was incredible.  For example, the Boeing Center is a major attraction in the museum because it houses a Mustang fighter, a Dauntless bomber, and many other planes, that are hanging from the ceiling.  There are catwalks placed among the planes so that the tourist could get up close and personal.  I stood in awe and just appreciated being in their presence because these were not reproductions but were the actual planes that fought in the war.

   Just like any other reputable historical attraction, the WWII museum included the uniforms and artifacts of the people who lived in that period of time.  But what made this museum special was the two major shows that it put on.  The first show was a multimedia experience focusing on FDR’s “Four Freedoms.”  There were visuals projected on ten different screens.  It was like other documentaries that I have seen in the past but this one was on steroids.  In pivotal moments, like D-Day, blindingly bright lights flashed throughout the theater.  The movie was well produced in that the sound, visuals, and narrative, all worked together to make the “Four Freedoms” come alive.  The second show was “Beyond All Boundaries” and it was narrated by Tom Hanks.  It was 4D because it included a real guard tower, an anti-aircraft gun, and the nose of a B-1 bomber.  Snow descended from the ceiling, in the form of soap bubbles, when the story turned to the siege of Bastogne.  The seats vibrated at key moments like the bombing of Hiroshima.  It was like nothing that I have ever experienced before.

   The WWII Museum had even more to offer aside from the planes and the movies.  The “USS Tang” experience, for example, allowed the visitor to see what it was like to be on a submarine during the war.  Also, there was an interactive oral history experience that allows guests to have a conversation with a member of the WWII generation.  It uses immersive technology made possible with artificial intelligence.  Finally, “The Liberation Pavilion” was a brand new, huge outdoor theater that included a statue of General Eisenhower.  The whole museum experience was almost overwhelming and I could have easily spent another day there.   

Thursday, November 28, 2024:  For Thanksgiving morning, the only thing on my agenda was to walk around the French Quarter.  The weather was perfect as I enjoyed taking pictures of the iconic buildings and did some people watching.  There were constant reminders of when I took the kids to New Orleans twenty five years ago.  The things that I remember were the puppet show at Jackson Square, the horse and carriage ride to the graveyard, and taking pictures of the kids in front of the colorful houses on Ursuline Street.

   The big event of the day was to get on the train.  I enjoy Amtrak because I love to sit and stare out the window and watch the world go by.  It was fun to watch the sun go down and then rise again the next morning.  Unlike driving on the interstate, the trains literally run through the woods with the trees being at an arms distance.  We pass over the swamps and bayous which end at the base of the tracks.  It is just beautiful.  Also, I enjoy the gentle rocking back and forth while riding the train because it is very relaxing and I sleep like the dead.

   Amtrak is not for everybody.  For example, you have to be an acrobat to get into the upper bunk to go to sleep.  The seats down below are supposed to fold together to make a lower bunk but I haven’t been able to make that work.  The food wasn’t very good on this trip and I expected more for Thanksgiving.  Finally, it is tough to see the underbelly of civilization.  We rode past the trailer parks and the homeless camps that line the outside of the cities.  After seeing the poverty and living conditions of the less fortunate, I was reminded, once again, how privileged I am.

Friday, November 29, 2024:  Amtrak actually arrived in Chicago early so I had the time to do “The Skydeck” on the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower and to go out on “The Ledge.”  There were no lines because they let me in even before the actual 9:00 opening.  It is hard to scare me but even I was afraid to step off of “The Ledge” while looking down but, once you knew that you were safe, it wasn’t so bad.  Visiting “The Skydeck” was great fun and wasn’t even on the agenda but, because I was traveling by myself, I could be flexible in terms of what attractions I attended.

   The anchor event of the day was to take a tour of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Joel was our guide and he was great because he was so enthusiastic.  We started our tour before the crowds arrived so we had an unobstructed view of “A Sunday on LaGrande Jatte” by Seurat, “American Gothic” by Grant Wood, and “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.  I love to show off so I told Joel about some facts of the paintings that even he didn’t know.  By now, I have been to many art museums and have a liberal arts education, so I know a little about a lot of topics.  It is fun to surprise others.  Just because I wear a beard, have a ponytail, and look like I work on the docks; I let the others know that I am not just some rube from Kentucky.    

Saturday, November 30, 2024:  I had some time before my food tour so I took a walk along Michigan Avenue for an hour and a half.  It felt good to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the day with the sun glistening off the traffic and the people crowded on the sidewalks.  It was a totally different scene from the French Quarter but still beautiful in its own way.  Then I met Mickey, our guide for the food tour of Chicago.  He was fun because he was a “short, hairy nerd” and seemed to revel in being weird.  We visited “Giordano’s” for pizza,  “Garrett’s” for popcorn, ate a “Chicago Hot Dog,” and then sampled a brownie at “The Palmer House.”  It was my fourth flawless day in a row and you really do need to appreciate it when everything goes right.

   By the time that our tour was over, I was done with Chicago.  I went to the airport to catch an earlier flight back to Louisville.  The nice thing about solo travel is that I get to set the agenda and if I feel like flying back early then there is no reason not to.  Further, I like to go to bed early and get up early to take my morning coffee at the hotel breakfast room when it opens.  Tracey and I have done a lot of traveling since we retired and I have had to learn the same lessons over and over again.  I have learned to be patient and to go with the flow.  Initially, I wasn’t even supposed to go to the Art Institute or the Willis Tower but I made plans on the fly.  Also, I have learned to be comfortable with doing nothing for awhile.  For example, I left the French Quarter early to sit at the train depot for two hours.  I killed the time by happily reading the newspaper and I was prepared to do the same thing at the airport if I couldn’t get an earlier flight.  It is nice to be older and have acquired more patience and self control.

   In closing, this “backpack vacation” on Amtrak was great because each day was totally different from the one before.  It was like having four mini-vacations bundled into one.  I am so encouraged that I will probably do another Amtrak vacation for Thanksgiving 2025.

        And now it is on to the Philippines.  

WWII and D-Day

   I am on my third reading of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy on WWII.  In fact, I have been independently studying WWII so much this year that I feel like I have been told that I am going to have to pass an exam on the subject in order to get into heaven.  For example, in the last six months I have read the biographies on Guderian, Manstein, and Rundstedt and have been watching “Battlefield,” “The Soviet Storm,” and the 1973 series entitled, “The World at War.”  There are many reasons as to why I would commit so much time to a conflict that ended eighty years ago but, for me, it is as simple as my father would have loved these books and television series.  After all, we watched “The World at War” together when it first was telecast and I remember laying on the floor, my mouth agape, as I learned about the atrocities and the battles.  It made me want to become a history teacher.  And it helped to form a bond between my father and I because he clearly enjoyed explaining the complexities of WWII  to me.

   When asked about what people should do in retirement, an expert on the subject said, “try to remember what brought you joy when you were ten years old and do that.”  That was good advice and, since I have always loved to read and write, and now that I have the time, an awful lot of my day is spent doing these two activities.  It has been eight years since I taught history and what I was afraid of when I quit was that my brain would become ossified from non use.  To aerate my brain, I started reading challenging books and took a lot of mental notes on what separates good writing from great writing.  I paid attention as I noticed that Rick Atkinson took his time in leading up to major events, like OVERLORD, but he filled the pages with interesting information like what it was like to fight on the front lines, medicine, the misery inflicted on civilians, and a typical soldier’s experience with “rest and relaxation” in London.  His narrative is peppered with side stories that include mini biographies of the politicians and generals so that I feel like I have become to know them personally as he has quoted extensively from their diaries.

   Examples of how Atkinson is a master of using direct quotes to drive the narrative home comes from his section on D-Day.  One soldier wrote that machine gun bullets tore through his grounded Higgins boat so that “men were tumbling out just like corn cobs off of a conveyor belt.”  Mortar fragments said to be the size of shovel blades “skimmed the shore, trimming away arms, legs, and heads.”  Steel-jacketed rounds kicked up sand “like wretched living things,” or swarmed overhead in an “insectile whine.”  It wasn’t all valor.  Atkinson reminds us that these soldiers weren’t much older than boys and they found their amusements wherever they could.  When they found a German corpse with a distended stomach they would step on the man to make the dead Nazi fart.  One soldier wrote in his diary, on D-Day +1, “Dear God, please come down here and help us.  Don’t send your son, Jesus, because this is no place for a boy.”  I love these anecdotes because they remind me that the soldiers who fought in WWII were real people who used humor as a coping mechanism.  

  
   There are a lot of reasons as to why I have confined my reading to WWII lately.  Learning about the misery of the American soldiers as they suffered through one barrage after another at Anzio, for example, makes me appreciate what a good life I have in 2024.  Also, WWII has nothing to do with my present life so there aren’t any triggers to bring me back to reality.  D-Day was eighty years ago so I don’t have to worry about Atkinson sneaking in references about social issues or our current political environment.  Finally, there has been no glory in the global conflicts since WWII.  The history of the United States fighting in Asia and the Middle East in the last eighty years is glum and I would rather read the inspirational stories that Atkinson shares in his trilogy on WWII.

Armistice Day 11:11:11

    Armistice Day celebrates the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of 1918, when the Germans declared a cease fire in a railroad car in Compiegne, France.  For most people, Armistice Day doesn’t have that much meaning because they have no connection to it, but my grandfather was in World War I.  Donald Cheyne Strachan joined the 106th Infantry (L) as a 1st Lieutenant and then transferred to the American Expeditionary Force in May, 1918.  He had previously served in the National Guard Mexican Border service and later was in World War II as a member of the Judge Advocate in North Africa.  He received an honorable discharge as a major in October, 1942.

   No one seems to know much about the American battles in WWI so I have written a short primer on the topic.  In “Operation Michael,” Hindenburg was the commanding German general and in 1918 he planned one last great offensive to take over Paris.  The Second Battle of the Marne shattered the trench deadlock that had gripped the opposing armies for three years.  The offensive was stopped at the key battle of Reims.  The objective had been to capture the railroad junction, separate the Allies, and send the British packing.  It was a desperate thing to do but the Germans were starving and needed to end the war quickly.  The offensive failed. 

   The first battle for the American Expeditionary Force was at Saint Mihiel, which we won, but it was anti-climatic because the Germans claimed that they were already retreating from the place.  Our first clear victory was when we stopped the German advance at Chateau-Thierry, which was a main railroad line on the Marne River that led to Paris.  Our final participation in “Operation Michael” was to push against the German line at Belleau Wood, where the Germans had sidled to after Chateau-Thierry.  The Americans were replacing the French, who were beaten and running away while yelling, “Retreat!”  A member of our Marine Corps famously yelled back, “Retreat Hell!  We just got here!”  It was the first battle where the odds were even and the Americans beat the Germans fair and square.

   After Belleau Wood, our attention was turned further east to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.  The Americans crossed the Meuse River to get to Sedan, severing the German rail links that supplied the rest of their front.  Situated in the Argonne Forest, this battle was a stalemate at first, but the Americans eventually forced the Germans to retreat.  A little known battle was at Montfaucon, or Falcon Mountain.  Its importance was being the “Little Gibraltar” of the Argonne Forest, lying northwest of Verdun and Metz, and as part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.  The Americans eventually took this fortress at the southern edge of the western front but only with great effort and loss of life.

   I think that no one knows about World War I because there were no epic battles like Normandy or Guadalcanal.  Also, after Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we as a society have become anti-war and don’t want to celebrate our victories.  My grandfather lost his youth in World War I and his health in World War II and I think that he, like all veterans, would like to be remembered on this one day of the year.