Back in 1975, the USS Tripoli (LPH-10) visited Busan, South Korea. While there, I visited a Roman Catholic priest who was assigned to a local parish. I spent the weekend with him, meeting parishioners and attending Mass with them. After Mass, an elderly lady approached me and handed me a roll of silk.
When I unrolled it, I found this image;
Korean Madonna and Child
This image is hand painted on silk. The flowers in the background are formed into the shape of the country. They are the national flower, Mugunghwa the rose of Sharon. The Madonna and Child are shown if the traditional dress of Korean royalty. It was an expensive gift for the giver, as the priest explained to me that creating those silk paintings was how she made her living.
If you look at it closely, you will see creases that appear to focus on a small hole to the upper, right hand side of the cloth. While in storage, some insect moved in and twisted it up tightly around itself. Those types of things happen on board ships in the South Pacific. The painting is now mounted in a picture frame, hanging next to our front door at home.
[asa book1]1857885252[/asa]Military Brats are one of the main categories of Third Culture Kids. Since we tend to live in what we called “little America”, on the military base, in military house and attending military schools, we don’t get the same level of exposure to the culture and people of the country we are “visiting”.
What we missed most was exposure to the US culture of our time. Today, given modern communications technologies, that may not be much of an issue. However, when I was growing up, everything lagged. We always felt we were about six months behind on what was happening “stateside”, as that was the lag time for the arrival of new movies and records.
At one reunion, a classmate shared this story. At our school, she was a big fish in our little pond. Unfortunately, she returned to the US for her senior year. After going through her freshman, sophomore and junior years in a school with about 80 students, she entered her senior year as one of 1,500 seniors! She became a little fish in a very large lake, became clinically depressed and didn’t recover for over ten years.
Yet, it wasn’t all that bad. We were a small, closely knit group. We were able to participate in many things that others our age would never even consider. I’ll share some of those stories later.
Back in 1964, the economy wasn’t doing too good. As a high school graduate, with a “college prep” background, I couldn’t even get a job in a supermarket. My parents didn’t have enough money to allow me even to attend a state college. Eventually, I gave up job seeking and decided to join the navy.
At one point, while in high school, we had arranged for an appointment to the Coast Guard Academy. My school counselor, working with the naval staff in the Philippines, had gotten a congressional sponsorship. The only thing I needed was a good grade on the SAT. Well, I achieved a 797 out of 800. Three bloody points short of perfect! Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. You see, there was a scheduling problem. Two SAT tests were scheduled in the Philippines. The one at the Subic Bay Naval Station was about one month after the one at Clark Air Force Base. I had already passed when I took the test in Subic.
So, no Coast Guard Academy for me.
I stuffed myself with bananas to bring my weight up to the acceptable minimum and joined the Navy. I actually had to catch a bus from San Diego to Los Angeles to take the physical. Amazingly, the San Diego recruiting station didn’t have large enough facilities.
So, on 23 September 1964, the Bosun swore me in…
The Boatswain swearing in his son
I can’t think of the number of times that I need a place to record a story. My old personal web site is currently dormant and needs rebuilding to make it a decent blog site. So, given that I was working on rebuilding the Boatswain’s old journal, I figured this would be as good a place as any to try and capture some of mine.
Given that I was working on rebuilding the Boatswain's old journal, I figured this would be as good a place as any to try and capture some of my stories.