Corregidor

Being in the Philippines presented me with an opportunity I couldn't pass up, I had to go see 'Fortress Corregidor'. A day trip was being organized from the Oriskany to go tour Corregidor and I hastened to sign-up. About twenty of us queued up at the bus stop one bright morning and boarded a chartered bus. Our bus driver was an affable Filipino that made the first stop -- at his house! He had a new California style stucco house with a tin roof and he proudly introduced us to his wife and children. Meeting his family was nice, but we were rarin' for adventure! Soon we were driving down the Bataan peninsula seeing some of the loveliest scenery on God's great Earth. It was Spring going into summer and the woods and jungle were alive with new growth in many vibrant shades of green and brown. It was early on a Saturday and people were starting to bustle about on week-end business and pleasure. Buses and jeepnies became numerous and we were soon over-whelmed with all of the points-of-interest and historical facts about the Bataan death march related by our driver. Most memorable was seeing the large cross on Mount Samat marking the battle and, finally, the surrender of Major General Edward P. King and his Battling Bastards of Bataan to the Japanese in 1942.

Arriving at Manila Bay, we discovered that our transportation to Corregidor consisted of canoes with the addition to each one of a Briggs and Stratton engine with a small prop. With shrugs we climbed aboard these native boats updated to the twentieth century, after all we were sailors and able to swim. Those delightful little contraptions got us to Corregidor with no problems, although we did have an impressive and close view of the new hydrofoil ferry plying the Manila waters. Disembarking right at the pier serving Bottom-side, we were allowed to venture only a short distance into the Malinta tunnel as it was now considered a hazard site and dangerous. You could still sense the desperation and angst experienced there over thirty years ago(then). My memory has burped, I don't remember whether we rode jeeps or a bus to explore the island. I was agog at our first glimpse of the visible ferocity of the fighting at bottom-side, yes, even those thirty years later. Concrete walls on the barracks three-feet thick, decimated by machine gun fire. Destroyed and abandoned equipment, both American and Japanese -- remember we took it back. As we continued up through middle-side we saw rusting anti-aircraft guns, destroyed cannons, burnt out jeeps, a ten-foot thick concrete roof blown off of an ammo dump and over top of a long gun. We were much sombered realizing how much of the humanity and suffering had been dimmed by those thirty-odd years of mother nature......

We reached top-side and the bright, if hazy, panoramic view of Manila Bay, the Pacific, and the diminishing 'tail' of Corregidor Island. A spiffy new visitors center and memorial were in the process of being completed, reminiscing Veterans were becoming big tourist business. We ate there, of a lunch brought with us, and wondered about a bit before riding back down the same road we had come up on, re-examining the burnt out and blasted buildings, seeing for the first time the damaged trees that had recovered or been moldering back into the jungle. As we got back into our boats at the wharf, it struck me that it was probably the same one MacArthur had departed from. I wondered if it too would end up off-limits to the public, only to be viewed from a distance as most of the Malinta tunnel. It was early dusk as we rode back across Manila Bay in our canoes, three feet off the water and experiencing the increased high tide traffic that was rolling past. There was an ambiance and vitality as we got closer to shore that reminded me of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Honest, Walt did a good job.

We dried out fairly quickly once ashore and boarded our bus back to Subic crusty and tired.

A number of guys dozed off as we headed back up the Bataan Peninsula, but everybody was awake as the cross came into sight.

Festive

When I was about, oh, four years old, I accompanied my family to a family reunion. I don't know who's, but it was a heck of a shin dig. There were 'bout two dozen kids and they pumped us full of food and sugar and sat back, partied, and watched us bounce around the area. I remember sitting on a staircase with eight other little kids, big hunks of chocolate cake studiously disappearing; when a naked lady walked out of the upstairs bathroom, got a towel, and turned and saw 16 solemn little eyes looking at her. She screamed, quite educational.

We had a big old picnic and I got in trouble for telling a lady I didn't want any of her macaroni salad cause it tasted like shit. I had an aversion to macaroni salad for twenty years after that whuppin'.

Or maybe it was linked to the memory of leaving. We were getting in the car, a '56 Cadillac, when a kid I had been playing with, earlier, suddenly took off running with an older person after him. Oh boy, one last game, I was off like a rocket joining in the race, my Dad tried to stop me and I was like a broken field runner.

I caught them on the other side of the house and the older person was viciously beating the shit out of my friend. He had a belt in his hand, but that was just collateral damage, he was beating a little five year old boy like a punching bag. I had a flower pot in my hands and had gone about three steps while thinking furiously. Why was no one stopping this? Click. People had tried to stop me, including my father. What would they do after I invalidated this big older person? I wasn't going to get away with stopping this, and none of those balless pukes had followed me. No posse was coming. I surrendered the battle field and retreated. I walked around the house, still holding a flower pot, to complete silence. I glared fury at every man there, and nobody would meet my gaze. I looked at my father and he dropped his head. I put down the flower pot and climbed in the car. I was emotionally distraught that this could and would be allowed to happen. We rode home in silence, the festival atmosphere destroyed.

I was probably a difficult child. A gimp leg, which modern medicine corrected with casts in my first year. I remember riding home from the Doctor's office after yet another cast change, and my Mother explaining to me why she was crying -- seeing the other children there that were so much worse than me. I finally understood quiet crying, that's what i did as I came around that house and got in the car.

I also liked to sit in the corner of my toy box and make 'my sound' for hours on end, I tell you the spirits liked it. My OCD was actually encouraged, to keep me in a routine and connected. That was no more, I had been face planted in reality, and I quit going out that bridge.

I probably didn't say a dozen words between the reunion and Christmas. I was furious at reality and other beings that would allow such brutalization. I ended up 'tongue-tied' and had trouble with annunciation and elocution up 'til 'bout the fourth grade.

From that day forward I was watched. If I saw any act of bullying or dominance, I would mess somebody up, preferring death from above. I wasn't allowed to play football. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a gimp leg, right. I shoulda found rugby, but i didn't.

To this day, I still deal with repressed anger and can flair into a rage due to injustices that I perceive. It scares me how enjoyable a rumble is once it's started. If someone gets my dander up, they're foolish if they think I'm abackin'.

But don't worry, I take my meds, and sometimes I rock and hum my sound. I am more complacent and reasonable. It's like killing flies, they'll always be there and sooner or later you get tired of it.

We never went back to see those people, again.

Feeding my Grandson

Ah, that reminds me of kindergarten. We were all sitting around a table eating our stale graham crackers and drinking our gaggly milk when the kid directly across from me quietly threw up in his lap. We're talking about 20 four and five year olds, and I was the only one who saw him do this. Then he sits there and looks at ME miserably with sewage all down the front of his shirt.

My stomach lurched. My stomach lurched, again. I refused to throw up. I kept my mouth firmly shut. I refused to throw up. My stomach lurched, yet again, and I was sorta like Mt. St. Helen's. Puke, just like lava and electricity, will follow the path of least resistance. I kept my mouth firmly shut, and two streams of vomit spewed down my front, out of my nostrils.

There was a 60% casualty rate. At least a dozen four and five year olds spontaneously erupted. It was chaos. And the only thing for sure was everybody crying and pointing at me. I smelt sour milk for a month.

There was a dance later. Let's say that I learned many lessons about rejection.

And ejection.

Sigh, I threw up on a Shore Patrol in Olongapo one fine night, too.

My father was black

Ed & Ruth

My Dad was riding down the street on his Indian one day, bout '40 '41. WHAM! He gets nailed in the head with a shoe and it damn near took him off the Bike. He went back and aked Mom what the HELL she did that for. She replied that it was the only way to get him to stop.

Being practical they decided to have two children, a boy in 1945, and a girl in 1948. They lived in domestic bliss, my Dad being an electrician and my mother flakier than a croissant.

Round bout 1953 Dad was driving tanker truck and making good money. One day he was unloading when a coupling, which he had down-checked for safety and been told to use until the replacement came in, broke and sprayed him with sulfuric acid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid

Dad raced to the emergency shower at the steel plant he was delivering at, and several people followed him in fully clothed to aim nozzles at him. His clothes washed off with the water. He rinsed and screamed until the ambulance got there. The eye reflex literally saved his vision. Quick action and emergency equipment curtailed the severity of his burns and the 80% coverage left only a meridian around the back of his torso, head, legs, and upper arms. He was home within two weeks with minimal physical therapy, but he was burned, hurt, and bummed.

He was stuck at home, and Mom bless her heart, nursed him back to health.

I was born in 1954. Great year.

Even if his melanin was scrooched, he had another son.

I was spoiled.

Women are wise.

They make sure you keep one foot on the ground.

Damn it I hate it when I do this.

Mom died 38 years ago.

Dad gave up.

Damn it

Immigration

No, this ain't going where you think. I promise.

Back in the 1930s, when Nazi racism and thuggery was festering and encouraging like-minded cretins, Getting out of Germany, getting out of Europe became all the rage. Especially if you were Jewish, Jehovah Witness, or gay. Visa's were hard to get, and there were a million and one excuses all over the globe for not allowing more immigrants. Yada yada yada.

Flash forward a hundred years, or less, and the song remains the same. We [b]have[/b] to become a haven and sanctuary for Christians as they flee Europe and England over the next decades.

This needs to be a broad based and Church supported movement.

A legend in my own mind

Tis a fine thing I have done. Course, I've been taking my meds, I would say that. When you read my posts here, they are just images from the landscape of my mind and dreams. I'm not dangerous, I have to be careful not to hurt myself. I like using pencils instead of crayons.