Your life stories

[florida]

The thing I love most about this forum is the wisdom and down to earth attitudes.  I say this in all honesty, in my opinion it's guys like you all who are the bedrock of our country. When things get bad nobody is going to be calling the lawyer or salesman  down the street to put things back together. Value will be in  people who can do things, put stuff together and make things work. Most of you have been doing it all your lives so you don't give it a thought but like a bee hive the combined knowledge and life experiences here are encyclopedic.

All this to say I wish any and all of you would start writing down some of your experiences and life stories.  I've been doing it for 10 or 12 years and have about 250 pages written so far with no end in sight. Lots of it may never be of any interest to anyone but me but it's fun to put my memories to paper. You all have a lot to share, lots of stuff you've learned over the years that could disappear  once you're gone. Many of you have grown up in circumstances that makes you look like a pioneer in the eyes of younger people.

Most of us aren't writers but it's the content that counts, not the grammar. if you already have a story please post it and if not please try one. It doesn't have to be long to be interesting.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I heartily agree.

   I have a 98 y/o old neighbor who is probably the last surviving WWII veteran in our county. He is active, still drives and works around the farm and his mind is clear. We have told his granddaughter she needs to records his tales for posterity.

  I spent most of my working career overseas in some pretty remote areas and started writing journal articles for a former HS classmate who published them in a local hometown paper as long as she worked there. From that I continued writing about the people, customs, culture, working and living conditions, etc. where I worked and on our trips and vacations. Now I have about 800 pages of them from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Central African republic, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ecuador (Galapagos & Amazon jungle), Peru (Up the Amazon), Mongolia, Alaska, Fla everglades, Thailand, Norway, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, et. al. I need to double check and be sure the latest ones are all incorporated into one long tale.

   I have been thinking now about writing some of the tales I grew up with from my dad and grandfather to pass along to my grandchildren. I tell them to the kids as bedtime stories but it would be better if they were written down.

   I hope others do the same thing.

[woodworker9]

I agree with your idea, and not be different, but I'm not much of a writer.  Instead, I have chosen to document things on my YouTube channel, which I started the beginning of this year.  I figure that long after I'm gone, my grandkids and great grandkids can see what the old guy (me) was like, and see my work, too.

I know that making video's is not for everyone, but it suits me just fine, and I dislike writing.

[florida]

WV Sawmiller- fantastic! I knew you had to have a lot of good stories. Please post one!

Woodworker9- video is great. Give us a link to one of your stories.

[PineHill4488]

Here is a story from my college days, my Sophomore year when springtime rolled around, I had a hankering for some poke salad. One Saturday morning, I drove a couple back roads picking a good sized grocery bag full. To my apartment I went with what was sure to be some good eating, as remembered from living at home before serving in the Navy for six years, washed them in cold water like I had seen Mom do, boiled them for a half hour or so, then put some in a skillet with a few beaten eggs till they set. Served them up with some pepper vinegar and ate like a KING. Come middle of the night I couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough. They tonicked me right good, I had forgotten that Mom rinsed them between several boilings, I now know that pokeweed is a member of the nighshade family and when eaten will purge your innards.

[WV Sawmiller]

 Florida,

   Be careful what you ask for! Below is one from my last assignment where I hired a boat and went up the river to a couple of villages and stopped to visit an illegal diamond mining operation along the way. I was managing a camp on the Kissadougou River in Guinea in West Africa at the time. I'll even add a few related pictures.

November 11, 2012

   Happy Veterans Day (or if you are British - Happy Remembrance Day)! I had a restless night with rain waking me and I read a while. It stopped raining by 0700 so I got up and had breakfast, got ice and water and my packed lunch and put it in a cooler to take on the boat trip. My guide, Girrilla, was on time and we walked to the boat landing about 100 meters from the front gate. The boat was on time but not acceptable. It did not have a front seat like the one I was promised so he swapped with another there at the landing and we started our journey. It was near high tide and there was very little current. We were heading east up the river.

   My boat handlers were Osman Suma and Alma Abdulakaba. They were armed with a push pole and two square pointed/contractor shovels. Their normal jobs are to haul sand from the river. I was expecting paddles but I guess there is as much surface area on a shovel as a paddle blade and it seemed to work okay. I see them use shovels here at the landing all the time but they are only paddling a few hundred meters from the middle of the river to the landing.

   We immediately began to see hawk–like birds Girrilla said were eagles. Evidently they feed mostly on fish but sometimes take small chickens and such too.

   Off in the distance I spotted two shapes in the top of a bare tree. I got out my 12X25 TASCO binoculars and found it was two monkeys. I assume they were lookouts and there were more monkeys in the area.

   The shore was lined with small mangrove trees with their distinctive twisted roots. We passed lots of assorted kinds of palm trees, rice fields and even some couscous. I had never seen couscous growing before. It is a tall grass with a large seed head growing seven to eight feet above ground.

   There was plenty of water in my boat so I had to keep my feet on the ribs to keep my boots dry. I spied a large snail on one of the plank sides of the boat. Off in the distance I can see haze shrouded, flat top mountains.

   The boat is interesting and pretty amazing to be made entirely by hand. The ribs are pieces of tree limbs and trunks shaped to the right curvature using a hand adze and plane. The boards for the sides were cut using a chain saw. They have been carefully shaped and placed to minimize the openings at the seams. Once built the seams were packed with twine and oakum or some other sealant to make the boat more or less water tight. I have seen Styrofoam melted and poured in as a sealant. This boat was about 25' long and maybe four feet wide at the center/widest point. There is a long pointed bow extending at the front of the boat. The anchor is a round piece of concrete about six inches in diameter and twelve inches long. It is wrapped in a piece of green netting like a cargo net and tied to a spliced together nylon rope.

   After a couple hours we see several dugout canoes tied at a river landing. We go ashore and walk to a village called Molygia. It is a kilometer or so from the shore. We pass recently harvested rice bundles along the trail, couscous, orange trees with lots of ripe fruit, bananas, cassava, etc.


 

   The villagers seem to be surprised to see us, especially me, walking up the trail from the river. They are friendly and I ask one man about a bunch of one inch diameter sticks he has. He shows me these are used for cordage. He splits the very straight grained stalks with a knife into smaller and smaller strips and they are very flexible and strong. They will use this to tie the rice bundles together. Girrilla advises this is what they tie the poles together to build their houses. The ties will outlast the poles.

 


   In the yard I spot a couple of large green gourds or calabashes as they are called here. I look for the vine and discover they come from a gourd tree. We had these in Cameroon but I had forgotten about them and never saw gourds this big on the ones we had. They are very commonly used for bowls over here.

   I see a small building with a floor about two feet above the ground. The sides are small diameter poles and it has a corrugated metal roof. I thought it was a chicken house but when I got closer I found it was full of sheep and goats.

 


   We pass a pile of wood in a big circle and I learn they will add more and make charcoal. I gather they set it on fire then cover it with earth to smother it down.

   I photograph a couple of old hens with several chicks as they scratch through the damp leaf matter looking for bugs and worms and seeds and such.

   On a woven mat are two very young girls sitting upright. I find they are twins which is not common over here. These look very healthy and I get their picture along with their very young mother when she comes out of the house.

   All the children line up on a bamboo bench with Girilla on one end and I get a picture then we give each child a bonbon. I get another picture with the grandmother on one end of the bench. There is a square made of these long benches evidently used as a sort of community center.

 


   We get pictures of the villagers at their work cooking and cleaning and preparing foods and head back to the boat. The chief has had the kids pick us a bucket full of oranges to take back with us. He includes a couple of cassava roots. This is unexpected but Girrilla says it is normal they won't let strangers leave without a gift.

   At the landing we watch a dugout return and the paddler shows us several fish he caught in his nets. They look like a bream or tilapia of some sort and look to weigh between one to two pounds for the larger ones. He doesn't need a live well as there is plenty of water in the bottom of his boat for them to swim in.

   We continue upstream towards the next village. We pass trees in the edge of the water with beans on them. These are bush beans but they evidently are not harvested or eaten. Later on I see other trees with very large beans on them.

   I see a couple of water monitors or Nile Monitor lizards. The largest is about three feet long and was on a limber branch. He tried to move when we approached and fell into the river. I don't get pictures of either. There are a few crocodiles here in the river but evidently they are mostly the pygmy crocodile and not much threat to the villagers.

   We paddle on several more hours and finally up ahead we see people on the shore. Girrilla advises these are diamond miners. I ask and confirm this activity is illegal so I am a little concerned about our welcome. I need not have worried. When we approach one man asks if I am interested in buying diamonds. I tell him I am not but would like to observe.


  

 


   Everyone is fine with me watching but a couple of the men don't want pictures made of them. The others don't care. I find the men dig up bags of red clay and gravel in the distance then transport the load on their heads to the river bank. The men dump their load then they, or their partners, shovel the gravel into round screens about 18" in diameter and three inches deep. They dip the gravel in the river and swirl it around and pick through the gravel looking for diamonds. I do not see them find any while I am there but obviously they do. 

The men invite me to observe where the gravel comes from but after a couple hundred meters I find there are muddy streams to cross so I abort the attempt. They are barefoot and walking through knee deep mud and water is not an issue for them.
I find these men work for a sponsor who buys the diamonds and evidently provides them a "grub stake" of sorts to keep them going in lean times. The men have no idea of the value of the rough diamonds and are at the mercy of their sponsor when they take the diamonds to sell. Girrilla tells me there are places in the market in town where these are sold so I will look for them in the future.

   We cross the river and walk another kilometer to a village or more appropriately a family housing area. I see about 20-30 villagers of various ages. One of the first things I see is the women processing palm oil nuts over open fires. The red ones are processed to make orange colored oil used for cooking. In a cast iron pot the black kernels are cooking. This will yield the black oil used for medicine and such.

   In a nearby pile I see rice and when I pick up a handful I find it is hot. Evidently they roast it over an open fire then spread it out to dry. Later it will be put in a mortar and pestle and the husks will be knocked off.

   I start getting the typical family pictures of the children, men and women. We get several with me with the villagers and they really like this. The chief wants his picture made with a couple of scythes he has evidently made at his home forge. We give all a bonbon each then give them the remainder in the bag.

   We head back and the tide is going out so current is with us so we make much better time on the return. I open my pack lunch and share it with the rest of the crew as well as some bananas I brought along for us to munch on.

   Along the way I see nets placed over the mouths of small creeks and coves. Evidently when the tide goes out the fish get trapped in the nets.

   We arrive back at the landing a little before 1500 and I give the ice and water to the boatmen and Girrilla. I tip each of them for their work and thank them for a nice trip. I wish I had my big aluminum johnboat and 25 hp outboard here so I could travel much further and faster. There were many good looking fishing spots along the way and if I were returning I'd bring a good fishing rod and spend some time chasing the fish. This looks like a very good place to put out bush hooks to catch catfish and such. I asked Girilla and evidently some local people do put out set lines and bait with meat, cut fish and even soap like we do to catch catfish.

   It was a good day and I'm glad I went. My trip cost me $100 for the boat and paddlers and guide and I spent another $21 or so in tips. That is probably big money for them where the annual wages are less than $400 per year.



 

[florida]

Pine hill

Lol! I'll bet that was a meal you never forgot! Thanks.

wV Sawmiller

Great story! I can't imagine doing something like that. Heck, I can't get my wife to travel to South America much less Africa.  For those of us who don't know how about sone history on how you came to spend so many years there?

[WV Sawmiller]

  I spent most of my working career overseas in some pretty remote areas and started writing journal articles for a former HS classmate who published them in a local hometown paper as long as she worked there. From that I continued writing about the people, customs, culture, working and living conditions, etc. where I worked and on our trips and vacations. Now I have about 800 pages of them from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Central African republic, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ecuador (Galapagos & Amazon jungle), Peru (Up the Amazon), Mongolia, Alaska, Fla everglades, Thailand, Norway, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, et. al. I need to double check and be sure the latest ones are all incorporated into one long tale.

Florida,

   In my case it was mostly job related - these areas were where I found/chose to work after I left the USMC. Working remote areas others others did not want to work meshed well with what I learned in the Corps and paid better and provided more time off than domestic work plus it was areas I always wanted to see.

   In addition to working remote overseas areas our income tax system offers big incentives to workers who remain out of the USA 330 days during a 12 month period so I could either come home on my breaks (sometimes 10-12 weeks per year when working 8 weeks on then 2-3 weeks off) and pay full taxes or vacation somewhere else outside the US borders. I chose to take advantage of these "subsidized" vacations and picked even more remote areas to visit. Often I could combine my R&R travel to get cheap flights to new areas by stopping in or taking short side trips from major airline hubs.

   My wife is a free lance photographer with a spirit of adventure and she, and sometimes my kids, would join me in these locations. She often located and coordinated for in country guides and transportation before our trips. Most of the time we would locate and hire a private guide and we'd go where we wanted, stay as long as we wanted (within time constraints) and change our itinerary on the fly. Becky started bringing a portable picture printer on our trips and we'd give the locals pictures on the spot. This made us even more new friends and got us access to places and things others never saw. I remember on one trip in 2006 we were watching and photographing a couple of migrant herders in Mongolia. A National Geographic photographer was a couple hundred yards away. We asked for the herders permission, took their picture, gave them a copy and was invited to and spent the rest of the day at their home/ger camp sampling horse milk vodka, home made cheese, riding a yak, drinking(okay - tasting) horse milk, and taking and providing more pictures. N. Geo didn't get any of that (although on another trip they did pull us out of dry riverbed in the Samburu region of Kenya one time). Sometimes small children would hide behind their mother's skirts having never seen a white person, especially a white woman. We brought little gifts and candies/treats for them and helped get past their fear.

   The above trip was just a report of an off day while I was working in Guinea. I visited local areas none of my co-workers took the time or were interested in seeing and learning about. I was often invited into the people's homes and to watch them at work. Our home is decorated with the fruits of our trips like baskets, boat paddles, spears, blowgun, crossbow, ropes, camel saddle bags, pygmy backpack with machete, carvings, mortars and pestles, and more other stuff than I have room to write.

   Hope that answers your questions.

[Ox]

I guess I still don't know what you did for your work.  What was your job title?  Who did you work for?  What were you expected to do?

I really liked reading about your adventures and seeing the pictures.

[WV Sawmiller]

Ox,

   I am a Logisitican. That means as many things as you have people hearing the term. I generally built and or ran a camp. In remote areas like Mongolia and Haiti we built the camp from the ground up. In built up areas like Douala Cameroon and Norway we would rent  apartments and villas (Houses) and I'd furnish and maintain them and our office facilities. I coordinated closely with safety and security and maintenance (when they did not work directly for me) to keep the camp/housing safe, secure and properly maintained. I coordinated with or ran the transportation to get people around locally and to and from R&R, medivacs, etc. Sometimes I oversaw the dining facilities. I ensured the back up or primary, in some areas, generators to make sure they kept running and had fuel and we had power. I made sure the trash got dumped and the landscaping was done (sometimes this was a security issue anyway).  Sometimes I'd be the HR rep or fill in for him when he was off site to make sure people turning their timesheets and got paid. I wrote checks for local accounts and sometimes had the petty cash in my account.  I sometimes prepared contracts for security and housekeeping and oversaw those contracts. In one case I oversaw the maintenance of a fleet of security vehicles used for Personal Protection details in Iraq.

   I had experts to do most all the detailed tasks and mainly coordinated the efforts of them to make sure the work got done, the employees and sometimes their families, were safe and comfortable.

    Camp manager was my title in most cases. Sometimes the work was simply in remote areas. Sometimes it was in war zones or very nearly so. I was not the expert but the one making sure the experts had what they needed and did what we need them to do.

   Most of my work was with Fluor/Fluor Daniel out of various headquarters they had around the world. We had clients like Exxon, Rio Tinto, IBM, Ivanhoe Mining, etc. On some projects our client was the US Government like when we built the Embassy in Haiti or built and ran military camps in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Ox]

Thank you for your time on that.  I enjoy reading your detailed writing.  I also envy the working life you've had.  I was only a farmer/farmhand, truck driver (tractor trailer reefer restaurant delivery and fuel oil delivery) and , some time woodcutter, small engine mechanic, forklift factory worker, golf course mechanic/groundskeeper.  It would have been good for me to get out of here and see the world and perhaps I wouldn't be so ornery concerning many people.

[florida]

Well I sure thought you guys would have some more good stories by now! I know it's hard to match WV Sawmiller but we aren't having a competition. I certainly haven't traveled like he has nor had anywhere close to his adventures but I have been to North Korea, even if it was by mistake.

I had been a bad boy and was rude to my sergeant in Hawaii. To make his point stick better he made sure I had an all expenses paid trip to South Korea for 3 months. Imagine my surprise to find that in 1967 Korea was not a vacation paradise! Actually Korea wasn't much of anything but backward.  On the ride into Seoul from the airport I saw people cooking over open fires on the sidewalks.  Even better were the "public toilets" which were everywhere since everyone stopped and peed whenever and wherever the need arose. There was certainly no false modesty in Korea. Keep in mind that Seoul was the size of New York City. Walking down the sidewalk and passing a guy peeing on a lamppost was disconcerting and always left me wondering what to say.

That was bad but not as bad as coming upon a group of women squatting against a building with streams of urine flowing across the sidewalk in front of you.

I was stationed at a small, very small, base about half a mile from Yongsan, the big Army post in Seoul. Camp Coiner  was a collection of Korean War Quonset huts and deteriorating brick buildings  set inside ten foot high brick walls. I was made assistant ID photographer to a guy who was already bored stiff from lack of work,

Either stories of my past insubordination had preceded me or I looked like I was having too much fun. Either way I was handpicked by the First Sergeant for a trip to Panmunjom in the DMZ between North and South Korea to photograph that months Peace Talks. It was a long drive, Korean highways being what they were which was pretty non-existent. We finally arrived at the DMZ where we transferred to a jeep with sandbags covering the floor. The driver reassured us with the information that the North Koreans hardly ever planted mines in the roads anymore. I puckered up pretty tight even though I was pretty sure he was kidding. It was hard to rationalize those sandbags though.

Eventually we arrived at the "Peace Village" which was a collection of plywood buildings that looked more like a group of old, cheap warehouses than anything else. There were some UN and American guards around but mostly not much going on. The particular building where the talks were to be held was long and narrow with rows of windows down each side. A white line ran across the ground and through the center of the building including across a table that extended wall to wall across the width of the room. To the north of the line was North Korean and to the south was South Korea.

Off in the distance I could see North Korean troops goose stepping down a dirt road and a few bored looking guards off in the distance. Walking over to the building I looked through the open windows to see what was inside. An American soldier was arranging papers on an easel and testing microphones. Every now and then he would stop to curse at his North Korean counterpart with the vilest curse words he could muster. 

Eventually I got bored with the show and looked around for something to do to occupy my time until the talks started. I was carrying a Speed Graphic which was a big press camera that we all used. I decided that a picture from the other side would start things off nicely so began to stroll around the north end of the building. I took my time and even stopped to look around before I walked around the end and back toward the white line. Just then I heard someone yelling "Run, run, run you stupid shirt!" I looked up to see an American UN guard apparently yelling at me. Run? Why did he want me to run? My latent dislike of being ordered around reared up and I continued my stroll toward the white line. The guard was becoming more excited and was joined by the soldier in the building who was now leaning out the window yelling as well.

As I got closer to the line the guard reached out, grabbed my arm and jerked me over the line. Now I was really getting angry. The guard yelled, "You just walked into North Korea you idiot! They would have captured you and kept you in a North Korean prison for at least a year!"  Oh. That changed things a bit. The guard continued to berate me for a few minutes before he ran out of steam but by then my knees were weak and I felt pretty stupid.

That was it. I went on to take photos of the talks that day but I made sure to stay far away from the white line. One trip to North Korea was enough for me!

[WV Sawmiller]

Florida,

   My dad lied about his age and went in the Army at 16 (we had a running feud with with another local family who had a member on the draft board so all the Green males got drafted when they turned 18 anyway) and he was in Korea in 1948 while the tensions were rising but before the actual "police action". He said one guy in his unit nearly created an international incident one day on the 38th parallel at a river crossing. The GI  got drunk and staggered across the bridge and tossed a can of GI insecticide (You'd screw the top in and the contents would come hissing out) into the guard house there. The Russian guards thought it was poison gas and left leaving their weapons and everything. The GI picked up the weapons and took them back.

   My Korea experience was 3 days including Christmas 1986 on my way home from a year's tour up at Camp Schwab USMC base in Okinawa. I stopped in Osan for a few days and did some Christmas shopping. The military had temporary mail stations there and you could buy from the shops then come out and immediately mail it home. I bought 3 of the mink blankets and shipped them then later bought a complete set of stuffed Fraggle dolls I brought home for my wife who loved Fraggles. I remember coming out Christmas Eve and seeing and hearing a gosh-awful Salvation Army band composed of Americans and Koreans singing Christmas carols and having a great time. The women were wearing beautiful bright colored traditional gowns gathered tightly under their bosoms and reaching the ground. It was about 20 degrees and cold and felt like Christmas which was a great change after leaving tropical Okinawa where the people did not observe Christmas for the most part.

   A young Korean wanting to practice his English (maybe he was a North Korean spy for all I know) tagged along as my guide/translator. I stopped and ate a nice meal of Bulgogi in a hole in the wall cafe there and offered to feed him. He declined and opted to stop at the KFC on the corner for his treat. I was about to buy a bag of boiled peanuts from vendor on a street corner until my "guide" checked and confirmed they were actually boiled silkworm larvae. The locals were snapping them up but I declined that taste treat.

[florida]

I'm glad your Dad got out before it got ugly. Korea is a beautiful country but good gosh it's cold, at least to a southern boy! We had fuel oil stoves in our quonset huts that our houseboys filled every day.  They kept us very warm while we were inside. The bad part was the latrine and shower was in the middle of the compound so was a long, cold walk after a hot shower. The mess hall food was horrible, the worst I ever had. There was a black market for everything in such a poor country so the cook stole most of the food and sold it for cash. We had freezer burned hot dogs, steamed prunes and mealy potatoes for a typical dinner. The supply sergeant told me that he had to order 10 bed sheets to get one as the others were stolen at every step along the way.  If you went into downtown Seoul the streets were lined with vendors selling any kind of military supply you could want.

Our house boys were paid $1.50 a week and then tipped the same. We had 8 guys in our hooch so the house boys were making $24.00 a week, a fortune in Korea then. They came to work every day in 3 piece suits, white shirts with ties and highly polished shoes then changed into virtual rags to do their days work.

The highlight of my week was a trip to the barber shop for a haircut. While there I'd get a scalp massage, body massage, facial, manicure and hand massage  and finally the haircut. It was better than drinking and left me ready for bed! That all came to another $3.00 with tips.

We had a small EM club on base attached to the wall so the Korean bar girls could come in off the street without entering the base.  Toward the end of the pay period the girls favors were available for $.50 but on payday they were, you guessed it, $3.00! To say that these girls were not the cream of the crop was an understatement, I could never imagine being that hard up but I guess lots of guys closed their eyes.
 
Yongsan Amry base next door was huge and the EM club was in the middle of the base. The bar girls had to be taken to the club by a soldier so when money was running out I'd walk down to the Yongsan gate and escort one of the waiting bar girls to the club for which my reward was a beer on her tab. 2 or 3 walks to and from the gate and I' had had all the beer I wanted or needed.

I was an Army photographer so was on night call once a week. I got rolled out just after midnight Sunday morning to go take pictures of a military wreck. Seoul was a huge city, 8 million people at the time, but going out of the gate in an MP jeep was surreal. There was a 12 o'clock curfew so it was like driving through the Twilight Zone. No cars, no people, no movement anywhere. It was like everyone had left.

Being a photographer I took thousands of photos which I developed and printed once I was back to the big lab in Honolulu. Several years after moving back home I went through an ugly divorce and lost all my photos of Korea in the divorce war.

[WV Sawmiller]

Florida,

   I keep hoping we will say something here that will trigger others to chime in with some of their tales. You already prompted me to dig out my old journals and edit and update them. I'd stopped recording them a few years back and will have to fill in those blocks the best i can. So far I am about 1/3 of the way through 886 pages.

   As to Korea Dad said it was getting real tense over there when he was there. The communist insurgents were stirring up everything. The speaker would get up on a platform in the middle of town and start ranting and raving and the people would get ready to riot and attack the base and such. He said they had a sort of strike breaker fire team with a key player from Georgia they'd put on the hood of a Jeep and drive as deep into the crowd as they could get to the speaker. He said as soon as the Jeep stopped the Georgian stopped the riot.

   Dad said the local dogs knew where every hole under the fence was located and when the Koreans would get after one he'd run straight for the base and under the closest hole for sanctuary. We had a similar situation in Iraq when I ran a small Base camp in the Green Zone. We had a checkpoint in the middle of my camp manned by the Wyoming National Guard and we took good care of them. There was an old yellow dog affectionately names BOHICA by the troops. BOHICA was the biggest thief since Ali Baba's days and every time you saw her she had a shoe or canteen or canteen cover in her mouth. She had a pretty rough life for the most part and was pretty timid most of the time. Sometime a crowd of locals, who all hated her, would get to chasing her with rocks and bottles and such. BOHICA would make a beeline to the guard post, back up to the sandbag bunker with her back directly under the M-60 machinegun and she was the baddest dog in Baghdad at that point.

   The National guard were a lot more relaxed than the regular Army troops from what i saw. They were great guys and we loved them - they were just more relaxed and usually older. I was in USMC and we were much stricter about our gear and everybody in the unit would be dressed exactly the same (I had found the reason for this was so you could do a quick check to immediately determine if anyone was missing anything as anything missing or out of place would be very obvious). The NG troops would have  a Hodge-Podge of hunting knives, K-Bars, Stilettos, throwing knives, etc duct taped to their H-harnesses. One young specialist I saw one day had a straight razor taped on his. I talked to him about it one day told him "Son, if it gets down to needing it you need to kill him not just cut him up. This is war and not a bar fight."

   i was once working a short term assignment at a remote camp near the Iranian border and the dust storms were preventing chopper flights in and out and there were no PSD details running and it was time for my rotation home. As luck had it the Tennessee National Guard who ran the post had an in-country R&R detail going to Balad Air Base and I caught a ride with them. We did our pre-trip briefing and guys asked the Sgt in charge to have their prayer. They all circled and held hands and the the 50 y/o Sgt prayed. One ting I will always remember was in his prayer he said "Lord, we can take care of ourselves but we could sure use a little help if you can sorta help point them out to us." There was an ambush about 30 minutes ahead of us at Bakuba if I remember correctly when we left and we had to turn back till they cleared the route. The NG were upset as they figured they had a lot of firepower and they were ready to duke it out. I always wondered if they were called back because I was along as a passenger.

[florida]

Another good story! I too wish some of the other guys would chime it. I know there have to be hundreds of great stories waiting to be written! As much as you guys post I know you've got some good stuff to contribute.

[gspren]

  I wish I could type faster but since I don't I'll do a brief overall and fill in later. After all the "before graduation" jobs like mowing, pumping gas etc, my career was mostly centered around machine shops. First real factory was Manly Valve as in car valves, 4 years in Navy during Viet Nam, back to Manly, then Borg Warner where for 4 years I went to Penn State college days and full time machinist at night, next 4 years Substitute Teacher days and machinist at night with thoughts of full time teaching. Instead I got a job as a machinist at the Army's Ballistics Research Lab that later merged and became the Army Research Lab where for 26 years I worked up the ladder and retired as Chief, Experimental Fabrication, Weapons & Materials Directorate. That was about as good as it gets for a Machinist, making things that go boom, or get blown up, or any type of weapon the military uses or defends against. During the years with the Army I lived on a small farm (still there) and raised goats, pigs, had a donkey, sold some fire wood, sold some timber etc. That's enough typing tonight but I do have some good adventures to add.

[florida]

gsprn,

Great stuff and so many experiences! Can't wait for more. Is the Army Research lab in PA? is that where your farm was?

Just a hint, like you I am typer at all, hunt and peck still. There's a story there. At age 39 my wife decided to go to college and get a teaching degree. I couldn't type so she suggested a typing class at the VoTec. I didn't do it and here we are, she's 2 years from retirement and I still can't type!

Anyway, to the point. Do your typing offline in Word or whatever word processor you have. It gives you the advantage of taking your time, fixing errors, lets you collect your thoughts better and preserves a written record on your computer.

[gspren]

   ARL (Army Research Lab) was/is at Aberdeen Proving Ground in MD, while our farm is 35 miles north in PA. My first ship was the USS O'Brien DD725 a WW2 destroyer that was damaged in WW2, Korea, and Viet Nam. I was on the last cruise the O'Brien made to Viet Nam in 70-71 where we patrolled the coast and did shooting where directed and while we had no direct hit that cruise we had mortar rounds hit close enough to split the hull which put us in dry dock for a few weeks in Subic Bay Philippines. When our tour in VN was up we detoured to Brisbane, AU and Auckland, NZ on the way back to Long Beach, CA. The ships hull was examined and x-rayed and declared unsalvable  and they moved us into barracks because the ship wasn't considered safe enough to sleep on in port, that's right after we sailed from NZ with some short stops back to CA. My next ship the USS Vulcan AR5 was another old WW2 ship but this was a repair ship based in Norfolk, VA.

[reedco]

         gspren, What you don't know won't hurt you??

[florida]

gspren,

I've been on a jag the last few years reading Navy biographies. You got to be tough to be a sailor! I've been prone to motion sickness all my life so just going onto a docked ship is a challenge for me. I frequently visit the Yorktown, USS Laffey and diesel boat Clamagore. I love them all but can't imagine actually going to sea in one of them. Thank you for your service, not many could do it. I wonder why no one noticed the damage to your ship while it was in the Philippines?  Destroyers look like a rough ride! I know you have some fantastic stories waiting to be told.

[gspren]

  The Laffey and the O'Brien were sister ships but through the years and being refitted some things ended up slightly different. When the O'Brien was repaired in the Philippines they discovered the hull was not thick enough to weld so they plated out to the next frame members. because of the thin hull the sounding and security watch that dropped a brass rod on a rope into various places in the bilge to measure water depth had to replace the brass rod with an aluminum rod. For those that don't know those old Destroyers had zero armor and are affectionately known as "Tin Cans". As many know during Viet Nam period soldiers and sailors were treated bad in the States so we were really surprised when we pulled into Brisbane, Australia.  The good people of Brisbane welcomed us like hometown heroes, we had people buying our drinks, thanking us for coming and even had a parade, unlike our return to Long Beach, CA where only a few family members met the ship.

[florida]

I didn't know that they were sister ships, but that makes it more interesting. I know they hauled the Laffey a few years ago for some body work and paint which if I recall correctly took 2 years and cost $9,000,000.00. All from donations I believe. If it cost that much just to paint I can't imagine what it would have cost to repair the O'Brian.

[scgargoyle]

I've had a pretty ordinary (OK, boring) life. It's the people I've known along the way that make it entertaining. I could easily write a book of short stories about various characters I've known, and I wouldn't have to exaggerate much to make it hilarious.

[WV Sawmiller]

Gargoyle,

    Why don't you let us hear about a few of your more interesting friends and associates.

[red]

Scgargoyle I believe you made plans for years to build a new house . Then you made it happen.

[thecfarm]

My life story would not really be worth the paper to print it.  :D
Grew up in a town with a paper mill just a few miles away. Lots of wood to see driving by the house. Father was born in 1923.He had me at 42,so I got to hear all the old ways of doing things.  ;D But I am living the dream. We came to The Farm often. There was hay to be mowed for my Grandmother's critters. Garden that needed tended,bushes to be cut,firewood to be cut. Always something to do. Was no electricity here until '86. We lived about 10 minutes away. I would talk about putting a house where I am living now. My parents never got to see it. My Father never got to see the sawmill I bought either,but we did look at the kind I bought many times. He would of enjoyed seeing me cut lumber.

[florida]

thecfarm and scgargoyle

I expect most of us have lived what we feel are ordinary, boring lives but I'll bet if you think about it there are moments that stand out. But even then, things don't have to be dramatic or exciting to be interesting.  Even the ordinary things of your life will be interesting to those of us who lived in different places and times. My favorite reading are what I refer to as personal histories. Books about how people grew up, what they did, people that influenced their lives, etc.

This is a true story that just happened day before yesterday. I spend as much time as I can with my 2 local grandchildren, a 6 year old boy and almost 5 year old girl. My grandson and and I were driving along when he asked me if I had any stories. I was a little puzzled and asked what kind of stories he meant. He said, " papa, you know, stories about old times when you were young." You could have knocked me over with a feather.  I asked him why he wanted to know. He said, "You should write them down then Daddy and I can read them someday."  I have no idea where that came from but it convinced me that if a 6 year old understands the value of my life stories all of our stories have value, even if only to our families.

My grandfather was a Marine and was wounded at Bellau Woods in France during WWI. Shot through the chest and left on the battlefield some friends came back and drug him off to a field station where he was patched up and sent to NYC  to hospital where he spent 2 years recovering. What I wouldn't give for his account of what happened and how he felt.

[Don P]

Florida, you mentioned enjoying Navy stories. This is one from a friend;
http://navsource.org/archives/01/pdf/monitor3d.pdf
A more expanded log is here,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02monitor/monitor.html

[sawguy21]

I spent three rather uneventful years in the Canadian military as a reservist until I had surgery, they gave me a medical discharge 4 months after returning to duty. I could have reenlisted and passed the medical but was so pithed with the system I never went back. I came out of high school with no clear idea of what I wanted to do. I decided to get a teaching degree, something I enjoyed doing but after 2 years lost interest. I finished a bachelor's degree but after a couple of years went to vocational school so I get get a decent job.
I took small engine repair which I liked and did well at which led me to my passion for chainsaws and the FF but I really should have researched job prospects first. Work wasn't steady and it never paid well. It did lead me to the helicopter industry but after the last employer went broke I gave up on an unstable industry and overblown egos.
I went back to small engines and finished my career as a sales and tech rep for a national distribution company, our friend Paul_H was one of my customers. ;D  I still do some work for him, his shop is less than ten minutes away

[florida]

Don- Which one did your buddy write? Those are all good stories!

sawguy21- Good story. Your life sounds like so many I hear. We're all searching for that one job we can enjoy until the end comes. Sounds like you amassed some good skills along the way which are still working out for you. My smal engine skills are my ability to change spark plugs!

[florida]

I didn't start this thread to be about me but I'll try another story to see If I can't get more of you to post some.


In early December of 1966 my 3 years of Army life was up and I was free to return to the real world. I came home with a wife and son in tow so a  job was the first order of business. I quickly discovered that my 3 years of photography and lab work would not translate to a high paying job, or any job at all.

I spent the next few weeks in my best suit, my only suit, going from business to business and filling our applications wherever I could. I finally found work at a small loan company  in Summerville, about 25 miles from James Island where we lived. Obviously recognizing my abilities I was hired as an Assistant Manager!  I thought I had done great, the job paid  $100.00 a week plus $25.00 a week from the VA and they would pay me $.04 a mile when I used my car for business. Little did I realize that in reality they were just hiring my car and happened to need a driver. They had learned years before that as long as you give out a fancy title you can pay low wages and abuse people to your heart's content.

My education started quickly. I wasn't allowed to actually make any loans  or answer the phone. The girls at the front counter gave me instructions if the manager wasn't there which made me low man on the totem pole since Bill, the other "Assistant Manager" had seniority on me. My real job was chasing bad loans or delinquent payers of whom there were plenty. I was to either get the full payment or get them to a telephone and have them talk to the manager. That may not sound like much but I rarely collected a payment and telephones were rare and hard to find. This was a very large, very rural area and the people had all the time in the world to play me, which they did.

A typical day had me at work at 8:00 o'clock going over delinquent files and deciding which ones I could call and which ones I had to go see. After lunch I'd hit the trail with a list of maybe 10 delinquents, traveling as far as Moncks Corner, Ridgeland or Boneau  looking for money. Since the only people home at 2:00 were wives I sometimes would stop at a likely looking creek, get my breakdown cane pole out of the trunk and fish for a bit.

Everyone was hard to find. Most of those I chased didn't live on roads with names. Everybody lived on a Rural Route  with their particular house listed by Box number. The mailboxes were old, broken down and in many places the houses were far from the  paved road where  the mailboxes were grouped. The people who lived in these isolated settlements were suspicious of strangers and particularly those wearing cheap coats and ties.  I was a cheap coat and tie guy.

But eventually I always found the right house, even the right people. Now started the battle to get them to a phone since money was usually out of the question. "We don't have no phone" was the common answer. " Is there a neighbor with a phone you could use?" I always hopefully asked. "Naw, 'de don't let nobody use de phon" was the inevitable response. At that point there was nothing to do but load them up and drive 12 miles, one way,  to a public phone or to a sisters house where there used to be a phone but which  now was disconnected. So went my days and usually my nights as an underpaid taxi driver.



Over the course of my brief career chasing loans I was shot at with a 12 gauge, had dogs sicced on me, got knocked backward over a hedge off a porch by a strong uppercut, and scared out of my wits by surly drunks who apparently had put all the money from their loan into cases of Schlitz beer.  One Friday night my only co-worker, Bill, and I had to go to Moncks Corner together to chase some past due payments. Friday was the best  and the worst day for our business. Everyone had their paychecks but many of them were already drunk by the time we could get there.

It was dark by the time we turned down the dirt road into a poor, black neighborhood of scattered houses. We found a lonely,  isolated  house that we thought might be  the right one,  and together went up and knocked on the door. The porch light was dim, the house was old and unpainted with only a dim light showing from inside. After a few more knocks the door opened to reveal a shapely fortyish black woman  decked out in a  tight red dress, red lipstick, stiletto high heels and a smile on her face. She took one look and said, "Oh! The Lord done brought me two white boys!"

Had the porch light been brighter I'm sure she would have noticed me turning even whiter!  Bill and I took turns stuttering at her, no doubt confirming her long held belief that white people talked funny. Apparently Bill was as scared of her as I was. We were prepared to face drunks, irate bums and even the odd gun or two but not a middle aged  oversexed black woman wanting to party!  Before either of us could move she grabbed Bill by the coat sleeve, jerked him inside and told me to "go on down the road and come back later."  Bill was jerking and kicking and making strange whimpering noises like a scared dog. The woman was trying to close the door but Bill was clutching it like grim death and doing his best to get back through it to freedom. She had him by the coat sleeve and kept saying "Come on baby, come on."

He finally jerked away, ran out the door and we both broke and ran to the car like a wildcat was chasing us!. We drove off in a cloud of dust, grateful we had been spared. I don't think we spoke a single word for the next 30 minutes and we never did figure out whether she was as wild for our bodies as she acted or if she had just figured out a way to get rid of us. I know I never went back!


One day several weeks later the manager called me over and told me he had a customer for me to see. Nothing unusual there, that's what I spent my days doing but this was obviously different. He said, "I want you to go see Louis Brown and have him call me." He continued in a serious voice, "Listen to me, here's a map of how to get to his place. He has a juke joint and a firewood business. Pull up in front but do not get out of your car! Just sit there and wait, he'll come out and then you tell him to call me. Then get out of there."

That was slightly foreboding and not run-of-the-mill for sure. Normally he'd give me a list of people to see and I'd be gone for hours. His tone made me a little nervous but off I went. I found the area without much trouble but it was a rabbit warren of dirt roads with only a few houses. On my second or third trip down one road a dog ran out of a yard and right under my left front tire! There was no time for me to react or stop before both tires had squashed it flat. I was horrified but there was nothing I could do and the house looked deserted so I went on. About 10 minutes later and further back in the woods a car pulled up behind me and blew its horn. I stopped while two skinny black guys approached my open windows. The guy that came to my window asked me, "You run over a dog back there?" What could I say? I was scared out of my mind but said "Yes, but it ran out in front of me before I could stop!" They grunted, shook their heads, walked back to their car and drove off while I did my best not to wet my pants.

I sat in the car gulping air like a fish out of water for a few minutes until my pulse got down out of the heart attack zone then drove on to find Louis. I made the next right and a short way down the road a little guy with an ax in his hand stepped out and motioned me to stop. I saw a big pile of wood and remembering that Lewis sold firewood so I went ahead and stopped. Across the dusty street I could see the juke joint and slightly behind to one side was a large, open dark shed. I leaned over to ask the little guy if he was Louis when a shadow filled my window. I turned back to see what it was and saw a huge, coal-black guy with a railroad track scar across one cheek, big yellow teeth  and an ax in his hand leaning in my window. My already weakened heart sank as he spoke. "Pull up in de coal shed." He said in a deep voice.  The coal shed, that dark and foreboding building next to the juke joint?   

I was struck dumb. Almost too scared to speak I could only squeak out a feeble, "What?"  The little guy was still leaning in the passenger window holding his ax so that the blade pointed at me. Time was standing still  as I contemplated my too-short life  and all the good I would do if God would save me from having my head chopped off by these blood thirsty woodsmen.  As my eyes glazed over the little guy spoke, "De man say pull up in the cool shade, it too hot to talk in de sun."

Hahaha! What a great bunch of guys!  I wasn't really scared at all! They turned out to be very pleasant and Louis got in to the office before I did. Of course he didn't have to stop and clean up like I did.

.

[WV Sawmiller]

Florida,

   Your title comment reminded me of back around late 1994 I finished a project in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia where our company built a big university hospital. I shifted over to a company named Birch And Davis out of Silver Spring MD who were contracted to do the next phase of the project to open the hospital. We had an USAF Colonel as a project director, a LtGen (Former Surgeon General of the USAF) writing PDs and procedures to operate the hospital, a Navy Chief who had been a Nurse helping Monte write PDs and such. My boss was a retired USA Colonel with a hospital admin MOS. I was the USMC rep and we had a cardiac surgeon and a couple of other civilians on staff. We only had one vehicle for the team although I had mine from my previous assignment. We hired an Egyptian driver named Faiz as our driver. Faiz only had 4 teeth left in his head and they were rotten so we chipped in and paid to have them pulled and got him a set of false teeth as he was going back to Cairo to marry off his daughter and we wanted him looking good. The day after Faiz got his new choppers his gums were still sore and h decided he could gum through a couple of boiled eggs so he bought a couple off a local vendor or shop and put them, whole, in a cup or water and put it in the microwave with a little water and turned it on. Both the shell and yolk sac were intact. After a few seconds on full power he blew the door to the microwave open and scattered egg and egg fragments all over the break room ceiling and surrounding area. I came in and he explained how he put the eggs in the cup of water and tuned on the machine then "blooey" eggs went everywhere.

   We all wore a coat and tie all the time even though it was 110 degrees and 98% humidity outside so Faiz found him a blue blazer and a tie and dressed like the rest of us.

   Anyway, just before we sent Faiz home for his daughter's wedding we got him business cards listing him as our "Transportation Director" in both Arabic and English. This was technically true since Faiz directed the course of our one company vehicle everywhere it went. I bet Faiz is still handing out those business cards to his friends and associates.

   The Saudis were not paying so we shut down the project. I remember Herb Birch, the CEO, coming over and meeting with the Saudi regime who promised the world then immediately renigged on it after he left. Herb looked like Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams) with a full head of long blond hair and a thick beard. When not in his 3 piece suit meeting with high placed dignitaries he wore jeans, a Chambery shirt and cowboy boots.  I remember at our team meeting someone asked him why we kept working n the backward places and he said "Because that is where the money is".

   That project only lasted 3-4 months for me but they were a great team and I hate the way it ended for the company but that was part of the risks you took.

[florida]

! Great story! Did he manage to keep his teeth? I was sure the punch line was going to be his new false teeth in the microwave but the eggs were better. I read a book recently about a guy who was a paramedic in SA. Really opened my eyes as to what a horrible place it really is. Said none of the SA doctors would treat anybody because they might offend someone higher than them. Not a place I'd want to go.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I guess Faiz still has his teeth.

    I had a scuba partner named Rick from PA. He went over to teach paramedics with the Red Crescent society which is sort of like our Red Cross. His students were likely the ones who would be delivering a lot of babies in Saudi but Rick could not have any pictures with nudity in them so to teach his class about delivering a baby he had to draw a picture on the chalk board and explain from it. He said his students were like a bunch of little girls giggling when he drew his picture.

    Rick said the biggest problem he had was lack of decisiveness. You think about it - a paramedic has to quickly evaluate a limited set of facts then determine and implement a course of action. That is totally opposite of their up-bringing. They wanted all the information and someone else to make the decision. Our attitude is "I'm probably right so let's do it." Their attitude was "I might be wrong so don;t do anything." The eastern and mideast Face concept was huge and that was acceptable to them. They would spend 6 hours looking for someone to blame rather than 10 minutes to fix something. I always figured that was why we were there - as a scapegoat. We did not care what caused a problem, just fix it and don't do it again and move on.

   Rick lived in an apartment in a compound owned by Mr Shaker who also owned all the Pizza Huts and Popeye's fried chickens in Saudi at the time. He had a private pier behind a Pizza Hut on the Red Sea and we had access to dive there. A few months after I left Rick went down on a solo night dive and they never recovered his body.

   You are also right about the officials being afraid to correct someone. Traffic was awful because they were impatient drivers and the kids had more money than sense and would race around town. The police were scared to stop and correct them because it might be some Emir's son and they would be in trouble for stopping them.

   At the stop lights the drivers would sit there with their brakes locked and engines revved up and as soon as the light changed to green everyone would start beeping their horns and they would rush through the light. I don;t know how many times when the devil would get into me and I would pull up behind a stopped car at a red light and beep my horn and watch the guy ahead immediately rush through the red light and nearly crash into on-coming traffic. One time I did that, the lead driver ran up bumper to bumper with the guy who had the green light. Of course he started yelling and the guy had to back up then he got out and went to the car in front of (between us) me and started screaming at him. I thought they were going to fight and I was laughing my butt off as I had caused it. When they did fight they would slap each other or sometimes take off their sandal or Iqal (E-gall -the fan belt part of the table cloth and fan belt on their head) and beat on each other with them. The concept of a closed fist was unknown or considered use of a deadly weapon and not used by them.

   The Iqal as I understand used to be a short rope used as a camel hobble and when removed rolling it up and putting it on their head was a convenient place to carry it. The gutra (Goot tra - Table cloth)  was a very practical head covering and could be pulled around you face to keep the sand out, kept the sun off your neck and was pretty light weight and cool.

[Don P]

I've had family that worked for Aramco for a decade or so over there. It's a unique society. I think Mamma's rules shut me up right there.

Florida, my buddy is also a Rick. I worked on their house for several years, I doubt I'm done  :D. After he retired from the Navy they bought an old farm up here and have become good friends. Being a carpenter I'm sure you've enjoyed the same kinds of meeting folks from different walks of life that I have. I've met people and gone places that this simple carpenter would never have imagined, although I'm pretty easily entertained.

Several months ago I wrote about building a coffin for a friend. We worked in Rick's basement, a number of us worked together on it and reminisced as we set about our task. My friend knew what he was doing when he asked for this final gesture, it brought us all closer together as we honored him.

This past week his wife and another contractor invited us to visit a place where my friend was born and spent a good bit of his life. They had all worked there in various capacities over the years. As we pulled up to the gate the caretaker of the estate came out to greet us and told us to enjoy ourselves and to come visit him when we were done. We drove and visited for hours through one of the most beautiful coves I have ever seen. Tucked in right at the foot of the blue ridge, the land lays well and is very fertile with the towering escarpment of mountains backed up to it. The buildings had been built in the 30's in the style of the CCC work that you see on the parkway above, with timber and stone from the site and surrounding area. Much is now sort of in mothball but well maintained. A large complete dairy operation that had been run by my friends Dad sits idle but beautiful, timberframed with stone silos, all white tile with black grout inside, bronze electrified window screens that have aged to a green patina. My friend had later been caretaker and farm manager until the next generation of that family passed. There were stables, a gristmill, a large 90' tall stone dam that retained a beautiful lake and provided hydro power for what had been a self sufficient zip code, boathouse, trout hatchery, turkey houses, beautiful chestnut homes, pastures, fields, ponds and thousands of acres of woodland. It was stunningly beautiful, I think my jaw was dropped the entire time. When we got back to the caretakers lodgings he opened the door to the old general store and post office that adjoined his quarters and we stepped back to that time, it was fully stocked just as it was in the day. It is a snapshot in time of the extremely wealthy of that day, all just sitting there behind the gate. My small pea is still processing all that I saw. I've grinned, shaken my head, wondered. Life is certainly interesting. 

[Darrel]

I have enjoyed this thread, my story will follow.

[florida]

WV Sawmiller- that's exactly the way the book I read described it! No one wanted to decide anything in case they were wrong. He said emergencies would come in and the doctors would hide in the back offices and would never touch a woman anyway. He said that once their door was closed the men could do anything they wanted to any woman in their house and frequently would kill their Malay maids.

I've seen many YT videos of the rich kids driving fast cars and killing themselves. Seems like no one is in control.

Sorry about your friend. Seems like a night dive would be scary enough with a friend much less without.

[florida]

DonP- interesting as I am a Rick too!

Building the coffin is fantastic. I can't think of a nicer way to spend eternity than in a coffin my friends made for me.

Where he lived sounds about like The Biltmore! I would loved to have worked someplace like that but I think those days are almost over. Too much jealousy these days. I had relatives in western NC who were running a general store when they died in the 1930's. The store was closed and kept closed until some time in the 1960's. I remember my Dad telling me that walking in was like a time warp. Maybe it's the same store.

[florida]

I meant to add this in my response to Don but forgot.
Had a guy from North Florida that worked for me fir 3 or 4 years. His Mom and Dad were in their early eighties and still lightly farmed their 600 acres. Lightening struck,2 huge long leaf pines by the house which they had to have taken down. They took a big piece to a sawmill, had boards sawed out and stacked them in the barn for 4 or 5 years then had them made into 2 coffins. The coffins are there waiting when they're needed.

[Darrel]

My name is Darrel Eugene Carson and this is my story, or at least the portion that I feel is appropriate for this forum.  And for what it may be worth it is quite different than any of the previous stories.

While it is true that I do have some good memories of my childhood, the vast majority of my childhood memories are negative. I was an abused child, physically, emotionally and sexually. And yes, there was even religious abuse thrown in for good measure. Then for icing on the cake, my parents decided that I needed to go to a private boarding school for the last two years of high school. Ok, enough about that part of my life, just know that by time I got out of high school, I was one messed up kid.

The one good thing about the boarding school was that I had the privilege to work a 4 hour shift Monday through Friday at a nearby furniture factory. That was the one place in my life that I actually thrived. I was a quick learner and was soon helping with machine setup even though student employees weren't normally allowed to do anything but off bear and cleanup if there was downtime.  When I graduated, I was offered a full time position as planerman and moulder setup which also included knife grinding.

The factory was in Healdsburg CA and in Santa Rosa, just a few miles to the south there was an ice skating rink that was open to the public on Tuesdays. I liked skating so on Tuesdays that was where you could find me after work. The walls of this establishment, were decorated with Peanuts characters, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all the rest.

So anyway, my normal routine for Tuesday was, get off work, go home and get cleaned up and go to the ice rink, skate for a couple of hours then buy a hamburger at the snack bar and eat it while watching one of the local hockey teams practice. One evening while eating my hamburger an old man, probably a little younger than I am now, walked up with a tray of food and asked if he could join me and of course, I agreed. He sat down and extended his hand saying, "I'm Chuck."  I shook his hand and said that my name was Darrel.  So after that, almost every Tuesday evening, Chuck and I ate Hamburgs and watched hockey practice. We talked about everything I suppose. Although I can't remember a single conversation we had. What I do remember is looking forward to Tuesdays when I'd be able to spend some time with someone that cared and that never tried to use or misuse me.

I had a few friends at work that on many occasions I had asked them to go ice skating with me and finely, probably just to shut me up, they decided to come along. So as we were entering the skating rink, Chuck was coming out and in passing, Chuck said, "Hi Darrel." And I of course returned the greeting with "Hello Chuck.  So we get inside and my friends are looking at me with this shocked expression on their faces and I'm wondering what's with them when Tom asks, "Darrel, since when have you been on a first name basis with Charles Schultz?"  My reply was, Since he introduced himself to me as Chuck.  Before this time I had not realized who my friend Chuck really was. 

Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, cared about Darrel, and that was the first step in getting my life put back together.  He never did anything big or heroic, he just gave me a little of his time on Tuesdays, and I suppose that's heroic enough.  I don't remember the last time I saw Chuck, I don't even remember missing him when the time came that he was no longer in my life. But looking back, I suppose that he realized at some point that the time had come that I no longer needed him and he graciously stepped back and let me do it on my own. I also remember crying the day I learned of his death.

I also remember deciding that I'd befriend kids that were in like circumstances as mine. I remember sharing this with my wife, even before we got married. She bought into it and we have worked with church youth groups and we also took in foster kids and the stories I can tell about making a difference in all these kids lives, I don't think there is an end to it. My son and his wife took in foster kids and adopted two boys and the story continues.

So yes, there were more struggles and obstacles to overcome and yes, more of the story to tell, another time perhaps. But for now, just look and see what a difference you can make if you do nothing more than care.

[WV Sawmiller]

Darrel,

   Thanks for posting and especially your memories of Charles Schultz. Did he secretly pattern one of his Peanut's characters after you? Sounds like a rocky start but I'd consider the current outcome a complete success. Good luck to you are your wife working with kids and such.

Florida,

   You can go to my link the cross over to my wife's site and see underwater pictures she took while diving in the Red Sea.

    I never found night diving to be scary. I'd say half my dives over there were at night and I found some so relaxing I'd almost fall asleep. I have done solo night dives too. Many oppose it but you need to know your limits and not push them. I even remember us doing New year's Eve dives where we would go down just before midnight and come up at the end of the dive in a new/different year. It was novel but not overly exciting. Usually we would do the first dive at hard sunset  with a little light then it would get completely dark there. I did a lot of night spear fishing and even crawled in a cave and shot a 50 lb fish one night. Was not the smartest thing I ever did but by far not the dumbest. We had a fish fry and fed the whole compound off him. At night you could blind fish like gigging frogs and kill fish that were too wary to shoot in the daytime.

   You'd see different critters at night just like on the surface. The biggest advantage was with artificial lights you got the true colors. In daylight the deeper you got the darker and bluer the colors looked. I've shot groupers at 40' I'd swear were blue then when I got to the surface I found they were red. Blue looking coral and such would actually be brilliant red, yellow, green, purples, etc in artificial light. My favorite night creature was a Spanish Dancer a type of worm that would spread out and undulate with a white rim looking like a fancy Spanish flamingo dancer's skirts.

    I had to so see a Syrian dentist and get a root canal and crown over there. While waiting the patient ahead of me came out. Was a lady in black in her Ninja suit complete with full veil and a tall young man in his white thobe. The dentist said she was about 80 years old and man was her grandson. Grandson stayed in to make sure he did not lose control and ravish her with her veil off. The dental assistant was not allowed in the room. It was a strange society to us.

[thecfarm]

Darrel,quite the story. Glad all is well with you now.

[florida]

Darrell,

Thank you. I know that has to be a tough story to tell and took some real effort. I'm sorry you had to go through what you did but your time with Chuck certainly made up for some of it. I've always heard that he was a genuine, kind person with a heart for people. He certainly proved it with you. It sounds like you've made a successful life with a good wife. Good for you and thanks for a great story.

[florida]

WVSawmiller

You're a braver man than I! I did a lot of skin diving while I was stationed in Hawaii but never had a desire to SCUBA, especially at night!  My oldest and family are right now in Bora Bora SCUBA diving and it looks beautiful but I'll keep my head on top thank you.

A Syrian dentist in Saudia Arabia. I suppose it was more of the same no responsibility issue. The author of the book I read said that all men there had fake jobs for which they collected a paycheck but that they never actually went to work. No sense of self worth will destroy a man.

[bucknwfl]

My name is Darrel Eugene Carson and this is my story, or at least the portion that I feel is appropriate for this forum.  And for what it may be worth it is quite different than any of the previous stories.

While it is true that I do have some good memories of my childhood, the vast majority of my childhood memories are negative. I was an abused child, physically, emotionally and sexually. And yes, there was even religious abuse thrown in for good measure. Then for icing on the cake, my parents decided that I needed to go to a private boarding school for the last two years of high school. Ok, enough about that part of my life, just know that by time I got out of high school, I was one messed up kid.

The one good thing about the boarding school was that I had the privilege to work a 4 hour shift Monday through Friday at a nearby furniture factory. That was the one place in my life that I actually thrived. I was a quick learner and was soon helping with machine setup even though student employees weren't normally allowed to do anything but off bear and cleanup if there was downtime.  When I graduated, I was offered a full time position as planerman and moulder setup which also included knife grinding.

The factory was in Healdsburg CA and in Santa Rosa, just a few miles to the south there was an ice skating rink that was open to the public on Tuesdays. I liked skating so on Tuesdays that was where you could find me after work. The walls of this establishment, were decorated with Peanuts characters, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all the rest.

So anyway, my normal routine for Tuesday was, get off work, go home and get cleaned up and go to the ice rink, skate for a couple of hours then buy a hamburger at the snack bar and eat it while watching one of the local hockey teams practice. One evening while eating my hamburger an old man, probably a little younger than I am now, walked up with a tray of food and asked if he could join me and of course, I agreed. He sat down and extended his hand saying, "I'm Chuck."  I shook his hand and said that my name was Darrel.  So after that, almost every Tuesday evening, Chuck and I ate Hamburgs and watched hockey practice. We talked about everything I suppose. Although I can't remember a single conversation we had. What I do remember is looking forward to Tuesdays when I'd be able to spend some time with someone that cared and that never tried to use or misuse me.

I had a few friends at work that on many occasions I had asked them to go ice skating with me and finely, probably just to shut me up, they decided to come along. So as we were entering the skating rink, Chuck was coming out and in passing, Chuck said, "Hi Darrel." And I of course returned the greeting with "Hello Chuck.  So we get inside and my friends are looking at me with this shocked expression on their faces and I'm wondering what's with them when Tom asks, "Darrel, since when have you been on a first name basis with Charles Schultz?"  My reply was, Since he introduced himself to me as Chuck.  Before this time I had not realized who my friend Chuck really was. 

Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, cared about Darrel, and that was the first step in getting my life put back together.  He never did anything big or heroic, he just gave me a little of his time on Tuesdays, and I suppose that's heroic enough.  I don't remember the last time I saw Chuck, I don't even remember missing him when the time came that he was no longer in my life. But looking back, I suppose that he realized at some point that the time had come that I no longer needed him and he graciously stepped back and let me do it on my own. I also remember crying the day I learned of his death.

I also remember deciding that I'd befriend kids that were in like circumstances as mine. I remember sharing this with my wife, even before we got married. She bought into it and we have worked with church youth groups and we also took in foster kids and the stories I can tell about making a difference in all these kids lives, I don't think there is an end to it. My son and his wife took in foster kids and adopted two boys and the story continues.

So yes, there were more struggles and obstacles to overcome and yes, more of the story to tell, another time perhaps. But for now, just look and see what a difference you can make if you do nothing more than care.

This goes to show you never know what someone is going through.  We don't have to be anything great to make a difference in people's lives.  You can just smile and say hello or have some mean commit in passing by and be the hope they need or straw that breaks the camels back  Anyway sometimes we just have to be still and let GOD work.  Darrel thank you for what you do helping the youth.  Help someone today!!!!  It is more fun than sawing wood

Thanks

Buck

[WV Sawmiller]

Buck,

   Very good point. we never know when one kind word may be what someone needs to make it through the day. Likewise and unkind word at the wrong time may just be enough to push them over the brink. I think we have all had days like that both good and bad.

Florida,

   My wife snrokeled with me in Okinawa and loved it. On a visit to Jeddah a pair of Aussies trained her to scuba dive and she liked that even more because she could breathe off her tank and never had to worry about swallowing any seawater.  She was like a kid there and would lay on  the sand and watch some little fish or coral the entire dive while I wanted to go see something bigger and more exciting.

   As to men in Saudi working the people from other countries, in my experience, had a legitimate job, like my dentist. The Saudi's might be collecting a check and never show up but the others I knew did work.

   You mentioned earlier about the maids being abused and those reports were rampant. I remember one case where a Filipina maid killed her abusive mistress in self defense. She was convicted and was scheduled to be executed but the government of the Philippines threatened to pull all their workers out of the country and the Saudis backed down, pardoned and deported her. The strange thing is virtually all the children over there are raised by foreign maids who very often are Christians.

   I remember returning from a visa trip to Bahrain and they stopped the plane for an unscheduled stop in Riyadh and half the plane filled with a bunch of Sri Lankan maids. They seated one between me and my buddy and I remember when they gave out the immigration cards she gave us her card and passport to complete as she was illiterate. We filled it out for her as best we could from the answers we got off her passport and from what she could communicate to us. I always wondered what kind of life she had over there.

   Life was not all bad mind you. I'd go down to the Queen Souq and a bunch of, probably illegal or moonlighting TCNs (Third Country Nationals) such as Indians, Banglas, Pakis, etc. would be out at the parking lots washing cars with a soapy rag, half a bucket of water from some A/C drain and a cheese cloth to polish the glass. I think the going rate to was a little Toyota like mine was 10 riyals or about $2.65, Many times the lots would be fill and the TCNs would be double and triple parking cars. Many times I'd toss my keys to a complete stranger there. No receipts or such. I''d go do my shopping and sight seeing and come back and they would recognize me and pull my car to the front and I never worried about it being stolen.

[bucknwfl]

Mr. Green I always enjoy your experiences and stories

Thanks

Buck