My Blog friend Katana remarked in my last post about the California fires that dead plants can generate gases, and then, when the desert heat gets to it, “poof,” up in smoke it goes. I’m not sure anything in nature works exactly like that, but Kat says that all Californians know this. Hmmm. Perhaps its just Southern Californians that know it, since I lived twice in that state, but mostly in Northern California.
Regardless, being an extremely curious fellow, especially when it comes to nature and natural phenomena, I could not let Kat’s assertion go unresearched or unchallenged. The more I thought about what she said, the more doubtful I became. Within minutes I could stand it no longer. I had to scratch this darn itch planted in my brain by this Kat woman. I was compelled to get up and sit back down in front of my buddy, Mr. PC, and vigorously “hit the Net.” I search-engined the heck out of spontaneous combustion and soon, I came to a conclusion.
Even without Dr. Google I know that plants and animals can generate their own heat during decomposition. When I was a kid in Michigan I gloried in making rich humus in our compost heap. I’d mix in grass clippings, kitchen waste, leaves, sawdust, coffee grounds, whatever I could find, as long as it was of plant origin and biodegradable; and then I’d throw in a couple shovelfuls of sand and clay, add water and toss liberally.
Once the decomp started, even on frosty autumn mornings, the heat built up on the inside of that heap of rotting compost was surprisingly warm, even hot. The thing is, I never once saw a decomposing plant—or a whole heap of them for that matter—erupt into flames, no matter how hot out it got. So I have to say Kat, I have my doubts on your claims that rotting plant life in the wild can spontaneously combust.
Nope, there’s only one way in the wild that dead cellulose—which basically is what all plant material is—can burst into flames; and that’s by way of a spark introduced by some outside source. UNLESS! I say that because I WAS able to find that SOME biological materials CAN indeed ignite by themselves. Here’s what Wikipedia lists as SOME natural materials that CAN spontaneously combust:
· Haystacks and unprocessed cotton may self-ignite because of heat produced by bacterial fermentation.
· Grain dust in a hot metal silo can explode violently, destroying the structure.
· Boiled Linseed oil in a partially confined space (such as a pile of oil soaked rags left out in an uncovered container) can evaporate leading to a subtle tremendous buildup of heat and thus ignition. Experiment by Rob Bicevskis
· Tall stacks of rubber artifacts, such as tires and some types of mattresses, can spontaneously combust from heat buildup caused by friction.
· Coal can spontaneously ignite when exposure to oxygen causes it to react and heat up when there is insufficient ventilation for cooling.
· Pistachio nuts are highly flammable when stored in large quantities, and are prone to self-heating and spontaneous combustion.
Okay, so I was unable to find any instances or claims of spontaneous combustion in the wild. Therefore, I must assume from my own experience with rotting plant life, and I have plenty, that such a thing in nature is an extremely rare thing, if it ever happens at all. The haystack example is the closest thing, and of course that is manmade.
For bacteria to have a chance to build up the kind of heat and combustible gasses that would result in ignition there must be both moisture AND dryness—moisture on the inside of a very dense amount of rotting cellulose, along with dry conditions on the outside to overcome the dampening effects of the internal moisture. It’s just not something that would normally happen in nature.
Actually, I did once witness something similar to spontaneous combustion, although it wasn’t by definition "spontaneous:"
In Japan one still, extremely sunny February morning I sat relaxing on my rear porch drinking coffee after a hard night of repairing Air Force cargo aircraft on the Yokota A.B. flightline. We lived in a quadplex and our place was on the end on a corner lot, so we had a huge yard. At that time of the year that vast expanse of grass was brownishly dead, very short, smooth and dry. It was still early enough so that the morning’s dew had not yet evaporated from the ends of each miniscule blade. The temperature was in the mid 50s, so it was pleasantly refreshing out there on my little garden porch.
Strangely enough, I remember the sun being so bright that it actually hurt my eyes to look at the grass, since the millions of dewdrops on it were reflecting the sun’s light like I had never seen before. Even sitting in the shadow of the house I had to shade my squinting eyes, so painfully dazzling the reflection.
Then, I thought my long night was making me see things. First, I saw an unlikely wisp of smoke at the far corner of the yard over by the sidewalk near the street. From that tiny wisp the grass began to turn from light tan to a patch of dark black. Subsequently the black patch began to spread out from near the sidewalk as fast as a man can jog. I didn’t see any flames at all, just that flow of charring grass growing outward like spreading water on a flat surface.
I got up and cautiously walked out to investigate. The charring flow approached me like a liquidless black flood. I could hear it quietly whisper as the tiny dead grass tendrils were consumed in this flashover phenomenon. In less than 10 seconds my entire yard and all my neighbor’s yards were blackened. I looked around me and saw the same thing happening up and down the street. Thousands of square feet of inch-long dead grass, as far as the eye could see, had turned to charcoal in a few minutes, yet there was no smoke and no flames—just this blackness that quietly flowed across the ground.
Of course I figured out fairly quickly what had caused it. The drops of dew had acted as millions of magnifying lenses, and when one would focus the sun’s rays perfectly on a dry piece of grass, “poof,” it would ignite.
The interesting thing to me though, is how the grass burned, without flame and smoke. At that time of the year it was more tinder than grass, which is why it ignited so easily in spite of the cool temperature and the morning wetness. In fact, the dew did two things: it started the flashover AND kept the grass from burning too hotly. It could only get hot enough to ignite, char and move on. Definitely one of the darndest things I’ve ever seen.
But, as I said, it was not spontaneous combustion.
Friday, October 26, 2007
“That’ll teach ‘em!”
I don’t normally write about things that “don’t concern me,” and I try not to speak of things that I know little about, but sometimes I figure I might just as well 
“let it rip” and let someone tell me where I’m going wrong.
The conflagration in Southern California is one of those subjects that don’t necessarily concern me, other than the fact that the people affected are fellow Americans. Also, I’m no expert on the subject of the fires; BUT, some things are just common sense.
Amadeo recently posted on the California fires from the aspect of the wind and how the wind’s considerable energy has been the prime offender in the stoking of these incredibly costly fires and this is mostly true, however….
I commented that these fires might never have started at all, if not for the malicious arsonists that set them. These foul pyromaniacs, these murdering terrorists, should be hunted down and kept along with their brothers-in-terror down in the holding cells of Guantanamo.
What Al Qaeda has not been able to do in 6 years of trying, these homegrown terrorists have managed to accomplish with very little effort at all. And, as long as the conditions continue to allow it, these punks can keep on setting fires with very little chance of ever getting caught.
One of Amadeo’s commenters stated that Nature uses fires to prune her forests and Amadeo agreed, stating that he’d seen exactly that while driving through the thousands of burned over acres in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
Everything both of these fellows say is true, but… Yellowstone, and in fact Wyoming, neither, are anything like Southern California. The “rules of nature” they speak of, totally valid as they are, don’t apply to San Diego County and its millions of residents mixed in with its thousands of acres of undeveloped park and brush land. It’s apples and oranges.
People in California can't simply move their homes out of the way of a fire, and because of that, many—desperate to save their most valued possession, their homes—will end up putting themselves in extreme danger trying to save those homes. Some have already died trying.
Several mindsets must change. Californians are going to have to stop doing stupid things that set themselves up for these continued exposure to fires, mudslides and earthquakes. For now though, lets just talk about wildfires.
There are ways to build homes so that they do not lend themselves to easily catching fire from flying embers or even to be resistant to casual near fires. Thing is, it costs more; so many folks opt not to do it. Perhaps code should be rewritten to make fire resistant homes the law and not an option.
But there’s another set of culprits. I like to call them “conservation purists.” These folks believe that people and nature shall ne’er the twain meet. These persons are almost as bad as the monsters that are setting the fires, because through legislation, they have set the conditions making it possible for the arsonists to be so effective.
Just as Amadeo and his commenter state, forest and brush land must be cleared or “pruned” to keep the really big fires from happening. This is even truer in the heavily populated areas of California where huge swathes of dry brush land are interspersed with equally large tracks of housing located in and around the dry brush land. One of the primary problems is that the “purists” have made it impossible for the land to be made safe from the current kind of conflagration style fires.
There are several ways to make land more “inferno resistant.” Small control fires can be set during windless cool rainier times to get rid of the years of windfalls and brush build up. Fire trails can be bulldozed to allow access to firefighters and to brush clearing crews.
Sometimes, the brush just needs to be cleaned up. As much as “the purists” don’t like the idea of it, still, it’s as simple as that. You go in, gather it up into huge piles with heavy equipment; and during less arid, non-windy times, safely burn it up. However, to the purists, doing such a thing to “pristine land” is anathema.
Southern California is not Wyoming. The people there need to start realizing that they must now manage their brushy wildlife areas, and not wait to let Mother Nature have her final say.
I know this is cynical and probably mean on my part, but I think secretly many of the conservation purists are delighted to see all those homes burn up. “That’ll teach ‘em!” I can hear them cackle while rubbing their hands together gleefully.
“let it rip” and let someone tell me where I’m going wrong.The conflagration in Southern California is one of those subjects that don’t necessarily concern me, other than the fact that the people affected are fellow Americans. Also, I’m no expert on the subject of the fires; BUT, some things are just common sense.
Amadeo recently posted on the California fires from the aspect of the wind and how the wind’s considerable energy has been the prime offender in the stoking of these incredibly costly fires and this is mostly true, however….
I commented that these fires might never have started at all, if not for the malicious arsonists that set them. These foul pyromaniacs, these murdering terrorists, should be hunted down and kept along with their brothers-in-terror down in the holding cells of Guantanamo.
What Al Qaeda has not been able to do in 6 years of trying, these homegrown terrorists have managed to accomplish with very little effort at all. And, as long as the conditions continue to allow it, these punks can keep on setting fires with very little chance of ever getting caught.
One of Amadeo’s commenters stated that Nature uses fires to prune her forests and Amadeo agreed, stating that he’d seen exactly that while driving through the thousands of burned over acres in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
Everything both of these fellows say is true, but… Yellowstone, and in fact Wyoming, neither, are anything like Southern California. The “rules of nature” they speak of, totally valid as they are, don’t apply to San Diego County and its millions of residents mixed in with its thousands of acres of undeveloped park and brush land. It’s apples and oranges.
People in California can't simply move their homes out of the way of a fire, and because of that, many—desperate to save their most valued possession, their homes—will end up putting themselves in extreme danger trying to save those homes. Some have already died trying.
Several mindsets must change. Californians are going to have to stop doing stupid things that set themselves up for these continued exposure to fires, mudslides and earthquakes. For now though, lets just talk about wildfires.
There are ways to build homes so that they do not lend themselves to easily catching fire from flying embers or even to be resistant to casual near fires. Thing is, it costs more; so many folks opt not to do it. Perhaps code should be rewritten to make fire resistant homes the law and not an option.
But there’s another set of culprits. I like to call them “conservation purists.” These folks believe that people and nature shall ne’er the twain meet. These persons are almost as bad as the monsters that are setting the fires, because through legislation, they have set the conditions making it possible for the arsonists to be so effective.
Just as Amadeo and his commenter state, forest and brush land must be cleared or “pruned” to keep the really big fires from happening. This is even truer in the heavily populated areas of California where huge swathes of dry brush land are interspersed with equally large tracks of housing located in and around the dry brush land. One of the primary problems is that the “purists” have made it impossible for the land to be made safe from the current kind of conflagration style fires.
There are several ways to make land more “inferno resistant.” Small control fires can be set during windless cool rainier times to get rid of the years of windfalls and brush build up. Fire trails can be bulldozed to allow access to firefighters and to brush clearing crews.
Sometimes, the brush just needs to be cleaned up. As much as “the purists” don’t like the idea of it, still, it’s as simple as that. You go in, gather it up into huge piles with heavy equipment; and during less arid, non-windy times, safely burn it up. However, to the purists, doing such a thing to “pristine land” is anathema.
Southern California is not Wyoming. The people there need to start realizing that they must now manage their brushy wildlife areas, and not wait to let Mother Nature have her final say.
I know this is cynical and probably mean on my part, but I think secretly many of the conservation purists are delighted to see all those homes burn up. “That’ll teach ‘em!” I can hear them cackle while rubbing their hands together gleefully.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Turkish Barbery
Ed Abbey posted a piece on the 18th of October called “Stories of Iowaville: Jake the Barber.”
“…Jake spun the chair around so that I was facing the mirror, eyed me up and proceeded to cut my hair with a very sharp p
air of shears. I kept an eye on my ears wondering if that would be the last time I saw them whole.”
That excerpt elicited a stinging memory of my own going back to about 1966 when I was just 8 or 9 years old. Our family had recently moved to Turkey, where my dad, a master sergeant in the Air Force, had found a really neat second story flat for us to live in until a place in base housing came open. Much to my boyish bliss, the flat overlooked a canal in Yalova, which back then was just a sleepy Turkish town on the Asian side of the Marmara Sea. From what I’ve seen online, these days, Yalova is anything but sleepy, and probably rates full-blown city status.
For the exploratory little kid that I was, living across the street from a waterway chock full of frogs, newts, snakes, turtles, tadpoles, fish and ducks was a wonderful thing. Sliding down the slightly sloping 6-foot walls made of large smooth stones to the slim mucky banks of the canal; I spent hours crouching among its reeds checking out the multitude of creatures teeming there.
Water life and the wonders of nature being one thing, my experience with Turkish humanity in Yalova was a mixed bag at best. I found out that the adults were okay, but I soon learned that the boys around my age were a community to be very wary of.
Before finding out about the menace of Turkish kids, the very first week I was in country I went for a ramble up the canal. In a patch of woods the locals used for grazing goats and sheep I found the perfect stick. Sounds weird right? Finding a perfect stick? Well, it WAS perfect. Straight and true, about 6 feet long, it had a heavy knob on one end, and still had all of its bark. I decided it was a wonderful stick and that it must be mine. I took it home and carved rings in the bark over its entire length, making it even more wonderful and quite visually appealing.
When I had it just the way I wanted it I proudly carried that stick like a shepherd does his staff, high in my right hand letting the bottom end spear the ground with every other step. I experimented with it. I figured out how to use it to vault over small creeks and large puddles by taking a few running steps, planting it in the middle of the water and then pushing against it to achieve an extra few feet in the air. That stick and I were inseparable.
One day, I was further from home than I had ever wandered before. I still wonder that my parents allowed me to do that. I spent hours unsupervised, by myself, exploring my surroundings, always pushing further and further away from home. I’m glad they gave me that kind of leeway, but thinking back as a parent I don’t think I would have given myself nearly that much latitude. Still, I’m glad they did.
But, during this particular “walk about,” as the Aussies call it, a group of 6 or 7 Turkish lads
about my age and older suddenly appeared. They surrounded me and began aggressively talking among themselves and to me in Turkish. I felt like a trapped rat. I tried to appear fearless and self-assured, but it wasn’t working. I was scared and I’m sure they could tell.
One of the bigger boys walked up to me and looked at my stick. He reached out for it and I snatched it back. Then another boy made a grab for it, but I jerked it away from him too. I didn’t know if they just wanted to examine it or what, but I suspected that once they had it that I’d never get it back.
Suddenly, three of them grappled at once for the slender length of wonder wood. I yelled, “NO! It’s MINE!” and held on to it for dear life. I lost my footing when a larger fellow grabbed it with all his might and yanked it hard and me off my feet. Even on the ground though, I continued to hang doggedly on with all my strength. I wrapped both my arms around it hugging it tightly to my prostrate body. I was being pulled bodily through the dirt and grass as two of the boys at the same time continued their quest to savagely wrest my walking stick from what had become my death grip on it.
At last, a deeply loud adult male voice interrupted the hooting and hollering of the Turkish kids, which caused them to let go of me. Slowly, I stood up still clutching my precious stick. Brushing off my clothes I sniffled and tried not to cry, and felt pretty good when I realized that I wouldn’t.
I looked with great relief and gratitude at the older Turkish man who seemed to appear from nowhere. He was grizzled with short gray hair and two days worth of gray stubble on his darkly worn face with, of course, a big gray moustache under a large aquiline nose and sad baggy eyes. He wore equally baggy old-fashioned clothes common to the older generation of Turks at the time, topped off with a soft flat cap, the kind with the small brim in front.
I couldn’t understand my rescuer but he really laid into that pack of bullies. He gestured at me like a teacher might point at a map in geography class and he went on like that for a good minute or two. The boys began to skulk away and he gave them one last dressing down as they disappeared around a grove of trees even as several looked sullenly back at me over their shoulders.
The good Samaritan Turkish man spoke a few encouraging words directly to me, at least I think they were, then slapped me on the back and with a shooing gesture bade me to head back the way I had come. I thanked him in some of the only Turkish I yet knew, “teşekkür ederim effendi!”
He beamed at me and waved me on, almost clucking as he did so. I think he wanted me to get away so that the boys wouldn’t be able to circle back and finish their “work.”
After that, I never really trusted any Turkish boys thinking that perhaps they had to first grow up into adult size before they could be safely approached. I decided it was better to stay away from them, especially if they were in groups. When they were in ones and twos they were fine, but in clusters they seemed to develop a mob mentality. Subconsciously, after that, I think I developed an affinity for grownup Turks, associating them all with that guy who had come to my rescue. Soon, that affinity, imagined or not, would come into play when I received my first haircut in-country from one.
Not long after being mobbed and rescued over my self-made walking stick, a friend of my Dad’s who was also in the Air Force, I believe his name was Mr. Curtis, recommended a local Turkish barbershop that he always visited. The shop wasn’t far from Mr. Curtis’ house, which wasn’t far from our place. In fact, he said the barbershop was walking distance, just across a nearby bridge that spanned the canal down the way from us.
So off we went for a trim. The three of us walked languidly from our flat, first turning right along the canal toward the bridge that we would have to cross about 100 yards up the street. I hopped up on top of the 3-foot-wide canal wall while my father and his buddy chatted and walked a few feet below me.
I greatly enjoyed our little walk. I can’t remember if it was spring or summer, but a lot of rain had fallen over the weeks and the result of all that precipitation was life, and lots of it. I think all 9-year-old boys must instinctively be naturalists. I know I certainly was, because I was drawn to nature and nature is drawn to water. So, naturally, guess where I was drawn to? You get one guess as long as it’s “to water!”
The shallow drainage ditches along most of the streets were f
ull of runoff, and everywhere deep puddles, more like small ponds, were profusely alive with wriggling life, both above and immersed in the water. Insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, you name it, it was there, but the most conspicuous creatures of all were the hundreds of toads.
I was thrilled to see every tiny pool and ditch abound with large toads, dark grayish green on top and lighter on the bottom; and all of them absolutely absorbed in breeding. Many were lifeless females, mated to death by over-amorous males. These deceased mommy toads floated and bloated in the still water, their long rear legs outstretched in death, their blanched bodies decomposing and snarled up in long tangles of their own ropy strings of toad eggs. I suppose such an image could be considered poetically ironic to some.
Along with the hundreds of adult amphibians preoccupied with the various phases of the toad reproductive process, seemingly millions of tadpoles in various stages of development also held my rapt attention at every turn. I had never seen anything like this toad and tadpole extravaganza. I was like a curious young pup on its first walk in the great outdoors, my attention being turned this way-and-that, all the while being pulled away from each new enthralling sight by the ambling adults just ahead of me.
Alas, we arrived at the barbershop. It had two or three chairs and at least a couple of different barbers. My dad was in a different chair off to my left while I was in the last chair on the right. Mr. Curtis didn’t get a haircut and just sat and continued a lively laughing conversation with my father as he had his ears figuratively shortened while I was about to have mine done literally. From the time I climbed up into my chair I was pretty much ignored by them, just as most adults generally disregard little kids.
Down at my end of the shop the Turkish fellow cutting my hair seemed like a pleasant enough guy. He didn’t speak much English, and in spite of my youth he treated me with the same flair that all barbers over there treat their customers. Soon, he had a pair of scissors clicking away as he snipped and snapped them continuously around my head.
Before I go into what happened next, I’ll tell you about my right ear. It was deformed—at least it was back then. You see, on the top backside of it a 1/8th inch point of cartilage stuck out, kind of giving my ear a little horn. I was used to it, but I’m sure it was quite unsightly.
Anyway, I had never worried about my ears, or parts of them, being cut off by a reckless barber before, but perhaps I should have. Because next thing I knew, right after a snip and then a final fleshy snap of his click-clacking scissors I felt a sharp searing pain at the top of my right misshapen ear.
I could see my face and that of the barber in the mirror to my front. As if looking at someone else, I saw my eyes widen in shock. I could also see that the barber was silently horrified and panicked at what he had just done. Quickly, he grabbed some cotton from his barber stuff and tried to staunch the wound.
Oddly detached and yet fascinated by what had happened to me, I watched rivulets of blood begin to flow down the side of my face and neck despite the furtive efforts of the barber come surgeon, or should I say butcher? All the while he worked on repairing his bloody handiwork he continually drew air over his teeth, making a hissing sound without ever once actually uttering a word. I sensed he was embarrassed and that he felt utterly horrible, so I decided to keep my terrible pain to myself and just suck it up. I felt bad for the guy.
Still staring into the mirror I realized that I could no longer actually really see anything because huge salty tears had involuntarily formed in my eyes and clouded my vision. I felt them gather and drain continuously down both cheeks, but with my arms trapped beneath the sheet I could do nothing about wiping them away. Eventually, the barber noticed them and wiped them away for me too, just as he did the blood. When he saw the flow of silent tears his remorseful intake of air over and through his teeth redoubled, as if the noise he made was a form of apology. I accepted it as such and just as wordlessly forgave him.
The surreal thing is that my father and Mr. Curtis continued to chat away together across the room, seemingly in their own universe as far as I was concerned. They were completely oblivious to the bit of drama happening between me and my barber just a few feet away. I remained mutely stoic in my agony never saying a word, never whimpering or even wincing.
If that Turk had ever entertained the idea that Americans are soft and spoiled I think my 9-year-old display of silent self-possession dispelled him of that notion. After a few minutes of tightly squeezing my wounded ear he managed to stop the blood from flowing. He continued to carefully cut my hair after placing some salve and a small Band-Aid over the top of the raw sliced edge.
I tried to hide the injury from my father and Mr. Curtis, and managed to do exactly that, but eventually Mr. Curtis noticed the Band-Aid and figured it out. I’m not sure if my dad paid for that haircut or not, but that wasn’t my business to worry about anyway. My parents tell me now that Mr. Curtis went back to the barber and gave him holy hell. I do know that I don’t ever remember going back there for another trim. Regardless, I owe him, because he managed to snip off that unsightly plug of cartilage that I probably would have eventually tried to carve off on my own anyway.
air of shears. I kept an eye on my ears wondering if that would be the last time I saw them whole.”That excerpt elicited a stinging memory of my own going back to about 1966 when I was just 8 or 9 years old. Our family had recently moved to Turkey, where my dad, a master sergeant in the Air Force, had found a really neat second story flat for us to live in until a place in base housing came open. Much to my boyish bliss, the flat overlooked a canal in Yalova, which back then was just a sleepy Turkish town on the Asian side of the Marmara Sea. From what I’ve seen online, these days, Yalova is anything but sleepy, and probably rates full-blown city status.
For the exploratory little kid that I was, living across the street from a waterway chock full of frogs, newts, snakes, turtles, tadpoles, fish and ducks was a wonderful thing. Sliding down the slightly sloping 6-foot walls made of large smooth stones to the slim mucky banks of the canal; I spent hours crouching among its reeds checking out the multitude of creatures teeming there.
Water life and the wonders of nature being one thing, my experience with Turkish humanity in Yalova was a mixed bag at best. I found out that the adults were okay, but I soon learned that the boys around my age were a community to be very wary of.
Before finding out about the menace of Turkish kids, the very first week I was in country I went for a ramble up the canal. In a patch of woods the locals used for grazing goats and sheep I found the perfect stick. Sounds weird right? Finding a perfect stick? Well, it WAS perfect. Straight and true, about 6 feet long, it had a heavy knob on one end, and still had all of its bark. I decided it was a wonderful stick and that it must be mine. I took it home and carved rings in the bark over its entire length, making it even more wonderful and quite visually appealing.
When I had it just the way I wanted it I proudly carried that stick like a shepherd does his staff, high in my right hand letting the bottom end spear the ground with every other step. I experimented with it. I figured out how to use it to vault over small creeks and large puddles by taking a few running steps, planting it in the middle of the water and then pushing against it to achieve an extra few feet in the air. That stick and I were inseparable.
One day, I was further from home than I had ever wandered before. I still wonder that my parents allowed me to do that. I spent hours unsupervised, by myself, exploring my surroundings, always pushing further and further away from home. I’m glad they gave me that kind of leeway, but thinking back as a parent I don’t think I would have given myself nearly that much latitude. Still, I’m glad they did.
But, during this particular “walk about,” as the Aussies call it, a group of 6 or 7 Turkish lads
about my age and older suddenly appeared. They surrounded me and began aggressively talking among themselves and to me in Turkish. I felt like a trapped rat. I tried to appear fearless and self-assured, but it wasn’t working. I was scared and I’m sure they could tell.One of the bigger boys walked up to me and looked at my stick. He reached out for it and I snatched it back. Then another boy made a grab for it, but I jerked it away from him too. I didn’t know if they just wanted to examine it or what, but I suspected that once they had it that I’d never get it back.
Suddenly, three of them grappled at once for the slender length of wonder wood. I yelled, “NO! It’s MINE!” and held on to it for dear life. I lost my footing when a larger fellow grabbed it with all his might and yanked it hard and me off my feet. Even on the ground though, I continued to hang doggedly on with all my strength. I wrapped both my arms around it hugging it tightly to my prostrate body. I was being pulled bodily through the dirt and grass as two of the boys at the same time continued their quest to savagely wrest my walking stick from what had become my death grip on it.
At last, a deeply loud adult male voice interrupted the hooting and hollering of the Turkish kids, which caused them to let go of me. Slowly, I stood up still clutching my precious stick. Brushing off my clothes I sniffled and tried not to cry, and felt pretty good when I realized that I wouldn’t.
I looked with great relief and gratitude at the older Turkish man who seemed to appear from nowhere. He was grizzled with short gray hair and two days worth of gray stubble on his darkly worn face with, of course, a big gray moustache under a large aquiline nose and sad baggy eyes. He wore equally baggy old-fashioned clothes common to the older generation of Turks at the time, topped off with a soft flat cap, the kind with the small brim in front.
I couldn’t understand my rescuer but he really laid into that pack of bullies. He gestured at me like a teacher might point at a map in geography class and he went on like that for a good minute or two. The boys began to skulk away and he gave them one last dressing down as they disappeared around a grove of trees even as several looked sullenly back at me over their shoulders.
The good Samaritan Turkish man spoke a few encouraging words directly to me, at least I think they were, then slapped me on the back and with a shooing gesture bade me to head back the way I had come. I thanked him in some of the only Turkish I yet knew, “teşekkür ederim effendi!”
He beamed at me and waved me on, almost clucking as he did so. I think he wanted me to get away so that the boys wouldn’t be able to circle back and finish their “work.”
After that, I never really trusted any Turkish boys thinking that perhaps they had to first grow up into adult size before they could be safely approached. I decided it was better to stay away from them, especially if they were in groups. When they were in ones and twos they were fine, but in clusters they seemed to develop a mob mentality. Subconsciously, after that, I think I developed an affinity for grownup Turks, associating them all with that guy who had come to my rescue. Soon, that affinity, imagined or not, would come into play when I received my first haircut in-country from one.
Not long after being mobbed and rescued over my self-made walking stick, a friend of my Dad’s who was also in the Air Force, I believe his name was Mr. Curtis, recommended a local Turkish barbershop that he always visited. The shop wasn’t far from Mr. Curtis’ house, which wasn’t far from our place. In fact, he said the barbershop was walking distance, just across a nearby bridge that spanned the canal down the way from us.
So off we went for a trim. The three of us walked languidly from our flat, first turning right along the canal toward the bridge that we would have to cross about 100 yards up the street. I hopped up on top of the 3-foot-wide canal wall while my father and his buddy chatted and walked a few feet below me.
I greatly enjoyed our little walk. I can’t remember if it was spring or summer, but a lot of rain had fallen over the weeks and the result of all that precipitation was life, and lots of it. I think all 9-year-old boys must instinctively be naturalists. I know I certainly was, because I was drawn to nature and nature is drawn to water. So, naturally, guess where I was drawn to? You get one guess as long as it’s “to water!”
The shallow drainage ditches along most of the streets were f
ull of runoff, and everywhere deep puddles, more like small ponds, were profusely alive with wriggling life, both above and immersed in the water. Insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, you name it, it was there, but the most conspicuous creatures of all were the hundreds of toads.I was thrilled to see every tiny pool and ditch abound with large toads, dark grayish green on top and lighter on the bottom; and all of them absolutely absorbed in breeding. Many were lifeless females, mated to death by over-amorous males. These deceased mommy toads floated and bloated in the still water, their long rear legs outstretched in death, their blanched bodies decomposing and snarled up in long tangles of their own ropy strings of toad eggs. I suppose such an image could be considered poetically ironic to some.
Along with the hundreds of adult amphibians preoccupied with the various phases of the toad reproductive process, seemingly millions of tadpoles in various stages of development also held my rapt attention at every turn. I had never seen anything like this toad and tadpole extravaganza. I was like a curious young pup on its first walk in the great outdoors, my attention being turned this way-and-that, all the while being pulled away from each new enthralling sight by the ambling adults just ahead of me.
Alas, we arrived at the barbershop. It had two or three chairs and at least a couple of different barbers. My dad was in a different chair off to my left while I was in the last chair on the right. Mr. Curtis didn’t get a haircut and just sat and continued a lively laughing conversation with my father as he had his ears figuratively shortened while I was about to have mine done literally. From the time I climbed up into my chair I was pretty much ignored by them, just as most adults generally disregard little kids.
Down at my end of the shop the Turkish fellow cutting my hair seemed like a pleasant enough guy. He didn’t speak much English, and in spite of my youth he treated me with the same flair that all barbers over there treat their customers. Soon, he had a pair of scissors clicking away as he snipped and snapped them continuously around my head.
Before I go into what happened next, I’ll tell you about my right ear. It was deformed—at least it was back then. You see, on the top backside of it a 1/8th inch point of cartilage stuck out, kind of giving my ear a little horn. I was used to it, but I’m sure it was quite unsightly.
Anyway, I had never worried about my ears, or parts of them, being cut off by a reckless barber before, but perhaps I should have. Because next thing I knew, right after a snip and then a final fleshy snap of his click-clacking scissors I felt a sharp searing pain at the top of my right misshapen ear.
I could see my face and that of the barber in the mirror to my front. As if looking at someone else, I saw my eyes widen in shock. I could also see that the barber was silently horrified and panicked at what he had just done. Quickly, he grabbed some cotton from his barber stuff and tried to staunch the wound.
Oddly detached and yet fascinated by what had happened to me, I watched rivulets of blood begin to flow down the side of my face and neck despite the furtive efforts of the barber come surgeon, or should I say butcher? All the while he worked on repairing his bloody handiwork he continually drew air over his teeth, making a hissing sound without ever once actually uttering a word. I sensed he was embarrassed and that he felt utterly horrible, so I decided to keep my terrible pain to myself and just suck it up. I felt bad for the guy.
Still staring into the mirror I realized that I could no longer actually really see anything because huge salty tears had involuntarily formed in my eyes and clouded my vision. I felt them gather and drain continuously down both cheeks, but with my arms trapped beneath the sheet I could do nothing about wiping them away. Eventually, the barber noticed them and wiped them away for me too, just as he did the blood. When he saw the flow of silent tears his remorseful intake of air over and through his teeth redoubled, as if the noise he made was a form of apology. I accepted it as such and just as wordlessly forgave him.
The surreal thing is that my father and Mr. Curtis continued to chat away together across the room, seemingly in their own universe as far as I was concerned. They were completely oblivious to the bit of drama happening between me and my barber just a few feet away. I remained mutely stoic in my agony never saying a word, never whimpering or even wincing.
If that Turk had ever entertained the idea that Americans are soft and spoiled I think my 9-year-old display of silent self-possession dispelled him of that notion. After a few minutes of tightly squeezing my wounded ear he managed to stop the blood from flowing. He continued to carefully cut my hair after placing some salve and a small Band-Aid over the top of the raw sliced edge.
I tried to hide the injury from my father and Mr. Curtis, and managed to do exactly that, but eventually Mr. Curtis noticed the Band-Aid and figured it out. I’m not sure if my dad paid for that haircut or not, but that wasn’t my business to worry about anyway. My parents tell me now that Mr. Curtis went back to the barber and gave him holy hell. I do know that I don’t ever remember going back there for another trim. Regardless, I owe him, because he managed to snip off that unsightly plug of cartilage that I probably would have eventually tried to carve off on my own anyway.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Scooter Stop; just when you think you KNOW people...
Over the years, I’ve spoken a lot of disparaging words about the local gendarmes, mostly speaking to my bitterness towards their apparent dislike and resentment for us foreigners. But, sometimes I run into one or two that seem okay. I must emphasize, “seem,” because you just never know.
Late yesterday afternoon I was on my Chinese-made scooter chugging home up the back road towards my subdivision. I was just about to the gate when I saw a bevy of my favorite boys in blue situated on both sides of the street prominently carrying shotguns and assault rifles.
Immediately, I slowed down knowing that I was doubly in their sights; first, I was a foreigner and therefore an excellent shakedown candidate, and second, I was riding a cycle and cycles seem to be their preferred victim when it comes to checking for proper documentation.
Sure enough, when I was within 100 feet, one of the Philippine National Policemen put his hand up and waved me over with as much severe authority as he could muster. By that I mean glaring at me as if he was already convinced that I was a reprehensible criminal fit only for shooting on sight.
I’ve learned to suppress any sense of irritation at this continuous harassment, and that’s exactly what it is—a form of persecution. They rarely pull over cars, especially expensive cars with dark mirrored windows. No, they mostly go after cycles and scooters because they can easily see the operators. In other words, they don’t mess with people who might have “connections” and power. Those kinds of people don’t put up with the harassment, and with every bit of haughtiness that comes so easily to folks with power in these parts, they just throw it right back at the police who stopped them.
A large part of my irritation is that the same cops pull me over all the time. After all these years, I know that they know me, and they know I’m good to go. I always am, yet stop me they always do. I don’t know, maybe they just “like” me, or perhaps they just enjoy employing their power over me.
Years ago—only hours after the first time I was stopped—a different set of police pulled me over yet again. At the time, I hadn’t quite come to grips with how routine this process was going to be. In fact, if I had 5 bucks for every time I’ve been pulled over by either the PNP or LTO agents, I’d have a lot of 5-dollar bills for sure—dozens of them.
Anyway, that was then and I was irked, and unfortunately for me, I allowed my annoyance to come blazing through with a marked sullenness. Big mistake. The policemen counteracted my overt display of grouchiness with their own unconcealed exhibition of antagonistic power. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve acting surly, but I soon learned it was counterproductive.
From then on I’ve been the most respectful “yes sir, no sir saying” SOB possible. And yesterday afternoon, as soon as I knew I was visible and saw the officer’s wave down, I nodded my head exaggeratedly to acknowledge his authority and that I was indeed ready and willing to be pulled over. To complete my obsequious posture I put the biggest smile I could possibly fake onto my face, which for me looks like a smirky toothy grin. Nevertheless, I did my best to look completely agreeable.
“Good evening Sir!” I intoned cheerily, as if I could think of nothing better than to be stopped by this man.
He seemed a bit taken aback by my joyfulness and was immediately disarmed. Now fully into my “part” I asked him with total sincerity how he was doing that evening. In no time we were both into the “act,” with him asking questions and me answering his every question in sentences all ending in “sir.”
He took a quick look at my license plate and remarked that since it had a 2007 sticker he’d only need to see my drivers’ license. As he examined it he asked what country I was from and then what service branch I had “resigned from.”
“I was a marine for 5 years and then did 22 more with the Air Force,” I told him.
He asked me if I knew a fellow, giving me his name, since that guy had also been in the marines and was his brother-in-law by the way. I told him I didn’t recognize the name, but I wasn’t all that well connected with the other retired marines.
Soon, we were talking as equals. As he released me to move on, he introduced himself as a sergeant from the police post just up the street and told me that I should stop by anytime. In fact, he invited me to come out to the firing range and he would get approval for me to fire with them when they practiced out there.
“Are you serious!” I asked incredulous. “That would be great. I’ll probably take you up on that Sir.”
We ended our tête-à-tête with him telling me, “Sir, it was a pleasure meeting you. I hope you will come by the post and visit us whenever you have the time.”
I hate that. Just when you think you know people, one of them is nice to you and ruins it.
Late yesterday afternoon I was on my Chinese-made scooter chugging home up the back road towards my subdivision. I was just about to the gate when I saw a bevy of my favorite boys in blue situated on both sides of the street prominently carrying shotguns and assault rifles.
Immediately, I slowed down knowing that I was doubly in their sights; first, I was a foreigner and therefore an excellent shakedown candidate, and second, I was riding a cycle and cycles seem to be their preferred victim when it comes to checking for proper documentation.
Sure enough, when I was within 100 feet, one of the Philippine National Policemen put his hand up and waved me over with as much severe authority as he could muster. By that I mean glaring at me as if he was already convinced that I was a reprehensible criminal fit only for shooting on sight.
I’ve learned to suppress any sense of irritation at this continuous harassment, and that’s exactly what it is—a form of persecution. They rarely pull over cars, especially expensive cars with dark mirrored windows. No, they mostly go after cycles and scooters because they can easily see the operators. In other words, they don’t mess with people who might have “connections” and power. Those kinds of people don’t put up with the harassment, and with every bit of haughtiness that comes so easily to folks with power in these parts, they just throw it right back at the police who stopped them.
A large part of my irritation is that the same cops pull me over all the time. After all these years, I know that they know me, and they know I’m good to go. I always am, yet stop me they always do. I don’t know, maybe they just “like” me, or perhaps they just enjoy employing their power over me.
Years ago—only hours after the first time I was stopped—a different set of police pulled me over yet again. At the time, I hadn’t quite come to grips with how routine this process was going to be. In fact, if I had 5 bucks for every time I’ve been pulled over by either the PNP or LTO agents, I’d have a lot of 5-dollar bills for sure—dozens of them.
Anyway, that was then and I was irked, and unfortunately for me, I allowed my annoyance to come blazing through with a marked sullenness. Big mistake. The policemen counteracted my overt display of grouchiness with their own unconcealed exhibition of antagonistic power. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve acting surly, but I soon learned it was counterproductive.
From then on I’ve been the most respectful “yes sir, no sir saying” SOB possible. And yesterday afternoon, as soon as I knew I was visible and saw the officer’s wave down, I nodded my head exaggeratedly to acknowledge his authority and that I was indeed ready and willing to be pulled over. To complete my obsequious posture I put the biggest smile I could possibly fake onto my face, which for me looks like a smirky toothy grin. Nevertheless, I did my best to look completely agreeable.
“Good evening Sir!” I intoned cheerily, as if I could think of nothing better than to be stopped by this man.
He seemed a bit taken aback by my joyfulness and was immediately disarmed. Now fully into my “part” I asked him with total sincerity how he was doing that evening. In no time we were both into the “act,” with him asking questions and me answering his every question in sentences all ending in “sir.”
He took a quick look at my license plate and remarked that since it had a 2007 sticker he’d only need to see my drivers’ license. As he examined it he asked what country I was from and then what service branch I had “resigned from.”
“I was a marine for 5 years and then did 22 more with the Air Force,” I told him.
He asked me if I knew a fellow, giving me his name, since that guy had also been in the marines and was his brother-in-law by the way. I told him I didn’t recognize the name, but I wasn’t all that well connected with the other retired marines.
Soon, we were talking as equals. As he released me to move on, he introduced himself as a sergeant from the police post just up the street and told me that I should stop by anytime. In fact, he invited me to come out to the firing range and he would get approval for me to fire with them when they practiced out there.
“Are you serious!” I asked incredulous. “That would be great. I’ll probably take you up on that Sir.”
We ended our tête-à-tête with him telling me, “Sir, it was a pleasure meeting you. I hope you will come by the post and visit us whenever you have the time.”
I hate that. Just when you think you know people, one of them is nice to you and ruins it.
Monday, October 22, 2007
My "Phil-ward Flight" End of story
As I revealed in the previous installment, as soon as we learned that our gigantic metal flying tube—due to be our cramped home for another 10 or so hours—had lost an engine, the mood of the passengers around me changed palpably. Even though the pilot assured us that a fully loaded 747 can easily fly on three engines not everyone was completely confident in his assertion.
I leaned over to John and told him, “Well, he’s right; we can fly just fine with one engine out, but if we lose another one for some reason, we won’t be looking at trying to get back to Detroit. We’ll be looking for the nearest airport that can land a jumbo jet.”
“Oh yeah? Why do you say that? Do you think we might lose another engine?” He asked.
“Knock wood man. But whatever problem caused the number three to go tits up might not be isolated to that one engine. If we lose another one, our situation will go from bad to very bad in a heartbeat. It could be worse though…”
“What do you mean?” he asked worriedly.
“When I was a toddler coming back from Japan in 1959 our Constellation lost an engine just like this 747, only that one was on fire. Lucky for us we were close enough to Hawaii to make it back to the ground before the wing exploded. My parents told me that they weren’t much comforted by the fighter planes sent up to escort us in, but they were very happy to see the fire trucks waiting for us on the ground. Flying is so much safer these days than back then; there’s just no comparison.”
I noticed that people were now looking at each other nervously with every bump and new mechanical sound, where as before the captain’s announcement no one had paid any mind at all to all the same jolts and noises.
There was a definite morale shift. We had already covered a significant chunk of distance toward our destination and now we were going to have to cover the same distance just to get us back to where we had started from. And the question on everyone’s mind was: “Now what?”
John, ever patient and filled with acceptance, or maybe just a little snockered, simply leaned back and closed his eyes. I marveled at his serenity even as I cursed him when, as he fell asleep, he allowed his arms to spill out once more into my space. "Damn it."
I’ve never been like that. My little mind was already mulling over all the possibilities. Like: How long would it take to fix the broke engine’s oil quantity system? Even if it was a quick repair, chances are they’d have to tow the airplane to a hardstand where the repaired engine could be run through its myriad checkouts. All that takes time. It would take another 2.5 hours to get us back to Detroit before they could even begin to work on it. The crew was finished. They’d have to be replaced before we could take off again no matter what. Could they find a new crew that quickly? The best scenario would be a replacement aircraft, but what were the chances of a spare 747 just sitting around Detroit? Not likely, I thought.
And so my mind chewed up and spat out each possibility as John just napped and didn’t worry about any of it—the big bodied bastard. I envied him.
The pilot spoke to us again. He explained that as we approached Detroit that “we” would have to dump most of the fuel to get the plane down to a safe landing weight. I knew he was talking about spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation gas into the air, and I marveled at the knowledge of it. I thought of the expense, it would cost Northwest tens of thousands of dollars to do such a thing. And then there is the environment—jet fuel is a toxic chemical soup of cancer causing agents and all manner of other nasties, and here we were spraying it in the air like a giant mosquito clouder.
It struck me that the pilot used the collective “we” when telling us that we were dumping the jet fuel. Perhaps it was his way of spreading the blame among us 400 plus passengers for having to do such a monstrously foul thing? How dare he!
I shrugged. Perhaps the pilot was correct. I broke out my book on President Lincoln and resigned myself to being part of an operation that was at that very moment releasing a huge misty fog bank of potent carcinogens into the Canadian North. And yet, I tried not to feel guilty that I felt even worse over the hours that I would be inconvenienced waiting to board a replacement flight. I realized that I was a horribly selfish person—one of millions. With people like “us” in the world, no wonder it sucks.
The hours we spent going in the wrong direction passed a heck of a lot slower than they did going the other way—funny how that works. I think one of Einstein’s theories covers it. Eventually though, we made our approach into Detroit and finally, one good thing came out of our situation. With one engine wasting space on its wing we had direct access to the runway. We landed with a straight in direct approach. Thank God for small favors.
A few minutes before our quickie landing, a very harried stewardess, or flight attendant as I hear they prefer to be called, made one more pass down my aisle to collect trash from all her little “piggies.” I asked her what she thought our prospects would be. I was delighted when she offered the possibility of a spare bird.
“Oh yeah? You think so? I didn’t think these airplanes stayed on the ground long enough to be a spare.” I remarked.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “These airplanes are almost NEVER on the ground. They fly more than they sit.”
“I was involved with aircraft maintenance for a long time with the Air Force and its more amazing to me that the airlines don’t have more problems than they do with keeping these things flying.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” she assented.
I continued, “Looks like Northwest lost any chance of a profit on this trip, don’t ya think? They have to pay you flight attendants and the aircrew for a flight that didn’t go anywhere, and then there’s the fact that we just used up tens of thousands of dollars on the aviation gas. Bummer, huh?”
“Yep,” she concurred, “and I know you all are upset about this, but believe me, we are just as upset. This is hard on us too.”
I didn’t respond to that, since I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of sympathy for her or for any of the aircrew at that moment. I smiled and let it go.
After the “stew” continued her non-merry way up the aisle, the pilot made one last announcement. According to him, the best of all possibilities was in fact in the works—a spare jumbo waited conveniently on the tarmac for us. We would be back on the ground sometime around 9:30 p.m. with the hope of being back up and on the way to Nagoya by 11.
I did a quick calculation. We originally took off at 4. That meant we would be getting into Manila at least 7 hours later than planned. I had prepaid a driver service to pick me up in Manila at 11, but that was all a bust now. I needed someway to contact him and let him know not to show up until the next morning. Now how in the heck was I going to do that?
Our 3-engine landing was completely normal yet people were visibly worried during the approach. I found it amusing, especially when as the wheels hit with a thump and as an extended noisy shudder gripped the aircraft, applause began to ripple toward us from the front of the plane. I looked at John and grinned. Instead of clapping I made a quiet raspberry with my mouth, stuck my index finger in the air twirling it and gave it the old, “Whoopdeedoo!” Sorry, but I just wasn’t impressed.
As soon as John and I found ourselves back in the Detroit terminal we each had our own private missions to accomplish. I didn’t realize that John had his own “must do” until I looked over at the sturdy young fellow and saw a clenched look on his face. I recognized it immediately.
“You need a smoke, don’t you?” I accused him laughing. I found his obvious apprehension funny; because it was the first time I’d seen anything like it from him since I’d met him. “Aha! I found your weakness John! Now I know!”
He grinned and replied, “Yeah, I got really drunk before I got on the flight, but now it’s worn off and I need a cigarette, bad…”
“Ahhh… All you addicts are all the same!” I teased him. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to find an Internet café and try to get a message to my driver in the Philippines. I’ll see you soon. Good luck finding a smoking area…You crack baby!” I said waving.
It turns out I was extremely fortunate. I was soon to find out that airline terminals the world over tend to close up shop at 10 p.m. and Detroit is no exception. I pulled my wheeled bag up to a computer and a girl, the attendant/waitress, asked me if I wanted something cold to eat, since the kitchen was already closed. I told her I just needed to use a computer and she said I had just 15 minutes before they closed and that would cost me $5.25.
There was no Yahoo IM loaded on the computer, so I decided the best thing I could do was to send an email to several people in Angeles City and hope that at least one of them would open it in the next few hours and call my driver, Roger, and tell him of my delayed arrival. I had just enough time to send it and to check for anything important in my inbox. For that money I was determined to use up every minute.
It worked. Of the four people I asked, three of them called Roger. Sometimes I guess, things just work out.
John’s “mission” took a good while longer than my little task. Nonetheless, by 11 he joined me near our continuation gate looking a whole lot more relaxed. I asked him how it went.
“Well, I found a bar with a smoking area.”
“Oh I see, so you took care of two birds with one stone. Good going John!” He laughed.
I decided to ride him a little on his nasty little habit: “You really need to find a way to quit one of these days buddy. For the last four years I’ve been helping a lot of old vets with their disability claims and I’ve seen closeup what two or three decades of smoking will do to the human body. I know you already know this man, but it ain’t pretty. It ages your skin, yellows your teeth and fingernails, makes your hair fall out, gives you bad breath, and eventually, it takes away your ability to breathe, period! If you’re lucky it’ll just be a slow horrible way to die; if you’re not so lucky, it will take you down quick with a heart attack or cancer.”
“Yeah, I know…” He said almost sullenly, not looking at me, with that “I’ve heard it all before” look.
I chuckled, “Too bad men don’t get pregnant. That’s how most women give up smoking these days.” This time he laughed, probably trying to imagine himself in his third trimester.
We didn’t take off for the second time at 11 as promised, but we did go at midnight. So, we ended up being a full 8 hours behind schedule. Nevertheless, we landed in Manila only 7 hours late having made up the hour by leaving sooner from Nagoya.
We got into Nagoya later than I’d ever been there before—I think it was after 2 in the morning. There were no stores, bars, or coffee shops open—nothing to do but wait impatiently. With the Japanese men being inveterate smokers though, John had no problem finding a place to indulge his aching need for nicotine. But without any alcohol to “wash it down” with, he was soon sitting next to me once again at the far end of our waiting area.
“John, I don’t think you know what you’re in for when you arrive at your friend’s home in Rizal. Do you know if they are very rich, or just so-so on the economic scale?”
“I don’t think they are all that rich. Why?”
I snorted and sniggered, “Dude, you’re single, and the word is gonna get out in your pal's neighborhood. There’s going to be a veritable PARADE of available females from miles around, all with the express purpose of getting a look at you and trying to get you to get a look at them. I wish I could see it. You’re either gonna love it or you’re gonna hate it.”
“Oh really?” he seemed delighted. I realized then that he wasn't going "to hate it."
“That’s why I asked if your buddy’s family is rich, because the very rich folk there look down their noses at people like you and me. On the other hand, the rest of the population, which is most of it, look at bagging an American son-in-law the same as winning the lottery. Can I ask you something John?”
“Okay.”
“Are you interested in meeting a girl for a possible serious relationship or are you just going there to meet girls for fun? The reason I ask is that the Philippines is a very conservative country. You’re going to find some of the sweetest, most beautiful girls in the world there, but most of them want nothing more than to meet the love of their life and settle down with an armful of babies. Then again, if you want to meet some “pok pok” girls and just "fling fling" during your whole trip, then you can easily do that at Boracay. My point is, don’t confuse the Boracay girls with the dozens of girls you’re going to meet in Rizal.”
He smiled, continuing to be delighted at BOTH prospects.
“I think I might very easily be ready to meet a girl and start a family,” he admitted shyly.
I chuckled, “Dude, there will be a lot of very happy young ladies to learn of that!”
In Manila, I felt beat and groggy standing in the long line at the immigration booths. It took a half hour for my turn to come and I saw that the immigration lady behind the glass looked tired too. I asked her if she had waited long for us. She frowned and said yes. I apologized for her long night and was rewarded with a pretty smile and a final stamp on my passport.
I wished John good luck on his three-week vacation and bade him farewell after pointing out the taxi kiosks.
After a wave through at customs I wheeled my two small checked bags down the sweeping curved ramp to the “pick up” area and searched in vain for my driver. If only I had a cell phone. 'From now on, I will have one,' I promised myself.
A uniformed young lady working in an information booth asked me if she could help me. I told her I needed to send a text or call my driver. At first she showed me how I could buy a phone card out of a vending machine to use in one of the phones lining the wall next to her booth. I didn’t have the correct local currency and finally she just asked me what my driver’s number is. Using her own cell phone she called him for me. I tried to give her a hundred pesos for her trouble and she wouldn’t take it. I was touched at her small bit of compassionate generosity thinking to myself that she had just made me fall in love with the country all over again.
By mid-morning I was back at my house in Angeles City. My Phil-ward journey and my overall USA trip back home was over.
I leaned over to John and told him, “Well, he’s right; we can fly just fine with one engine out, but if we lose another one for some reason, we won’t be looking at trying to get back to Detroit. We’ll be looking for the nearest airport that can land a jumbo jet.”
“Oh yeah? Why do you say that? Do you think we might lose another engine?” He asked.
“Knock wood man. But whatever problem caused the number three to go tits up might not be isolated to that one engine. If we lose another one, our situation will go from bad to very bad in a heartbeat. It could be worse though…”
“What do you mean?” he asked worriedly.
“When I was a toddler coming back from Japan in 1959 our Constellation lost an engine just like this 747, only that one was on fire. Lucky for us we were close enough to Hawaii to make it back to the ground before the wing exploded. My parents told me that they weren’t much comforted by the fighter planes sent up to escort us in, but they were very happy to see the fire trucks waiting for us on the ground. Flying is so much safer these days than back then; there’s just no comparison.”
I noticed that people were now looking at each other nervously with every bump and new mechanical sound, where as before the captain’s announcement no one had paid any mind at all to all the same jolts and noises.
There was a definite morale shift. We had already covered a significant chunk of distance toward our destination and now we were going to have to cover the same distance just to get us back to where we had started from. And the question on everyone’s mind was: “Now what?”
John, ever patient and filled with acceptance, or maybe just a little snockered, simply leaned back and closed his eyes. I marveled at his serenity even as I cursed him when, as he fell asleep, he allowed his arms to spill out once more into my space. "Damn it."
I’ve never been like that. My little mind was already mulling over all the possibilities. Like: How long would it take to fix the broke engine’s oil quantity system? Even if it was a quick repair, chances are they’d have to tow the airplane to a hardstand where the repaired engine could be run through its myriad checkouts. All that takes time. It would take another 2.5 hours to get us back to Detroit before they could even begin to work on it. The crew was finished. They’d have to be replaced before we could take off again no matter what. Could they find a new crew that quickly? The best scenario would be a replacement aircraft, but what were the chances of a spare 747 just sitting around Detroit? Not likely, I thought.
And so my mind chewed up and spat out each possibility as John just napped and didn’t worry about any of it—the big bodied bastard. I envied him.
The pilot spoke to us again. He explained that as we approached Detroit that “we” would have to dump most of the fuel to get the plane down to a safe landing weight. I knew he was talking about spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation gas into the air, and I marveled at the knowledge of it. I thought of the expense, it would cost Northwest tens of thousands of dollars to do such a thing. And then there is the environment—jet fuel is a toxic chemical soup of cancer causing agents and all manner of other nasties, and here we were spraying it in the air like a giant mosquito clouder.
It struck me that the pilot used the collective “we” when telling us that we were dumping the jet fuel. Perhaps it was his way of spreading the blame among us 400 plus passengers for having to do such a monstrously foul thing? How dare he!
I shrugged. Perhaps the pilot was correct. I broke out my book on President Lincoln and resigned myself to being part of an operation that was at that very moment releasing a huge misty fog bank of potent carcinogens into the Canadian North. And yet, I tried not to feel guilty that I felt even worse over the hours that I would be inconvenienced waiting to board a replacement flight. I realized that I was a horribly selfish person—one of millions. With people like “us” in the world, no wonder it sucks.
The hours we spent going in the wrong direction passed a heck of a lot slower than they did going the other way—funny how that works. I think one of Einstein’s theories covers it. Eventually though, we made our approach into Detroit and finally, one good thing came out of our situation. With one engine wasting space on its wing we had direct access to the runway. We landed with a straight in direct approach. Thank God for small favors.
A few minutes before our quickie landing, a very harried stewardess, or flight attendant as I hear they prefer to be called, made one more pass down my aisle to collect trash from all her little “piggies.” I asked her what she thought our prospects would be. I was delighted when she offered the possibility of a spare bird.
“Oh yeah? You think so? I didn’t think these airplanes stayed on the ground long enough to be a spare.” I remarked.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “These airplanes are almost NEVER on the ground. They fly more than they sit.”
“I was involved with aircraft maintenance for a long time with the Air Force and its more amazing to me that the airlines don’t have more problems than they do with keeping these things flying.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” she assented.
I continued, “Looks like Northwest lost any chance of a profit on this trip, don’t ya think? They have to pay you flight attendants and the aircrew for a flight that didn’t go anywhere, and then there’s the fact that we just used up tens of thousands of dollars on the aviation gas. Bummer, huh?”
“Yep,” she concurred, “and I know you all are upset about this, but believe me, we are just as upset. This is hard on us too.”
I didn’t respond to that, since I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of sympathy for her or for any of the aircrew at that moment. I smiled and let it go.
After the “stew” continued her non-merry way up the aisle, the pilot made one last announcement. According to him, the best of all possibilities was in fact in the works—a spare jumbo waited conveniently on the tarmac for us. We would be back on the ground sometime around 9:30 p.m. with the hope of being back up and on the way to Nagoya by 11.
I did a quick calculation. We originally took off at 4. That meant we would be getting into Manila at least 7 hours later than planned. I had prepaid a driver service to pick me up in Manila at 11, but that was all a bust now. I needed someway to contact him and let him know not to show up until the next morning. Now how in the heck was I going to do that?
Our 3-engine landing was completely normal yet people were visibly worried during the approach. I found it amusing, especially when as the wheels hit with a thump and as an extended noisy shudder gripped the aircraft, applause began to ripple toward us from the front of the plane. I looked at John and grinned. Instead of clapping I made a quiet raspberry with my mouth, stuck my index finger in the air twirling it and gave it the old, “Whoopdeedoo!” Sorry, but I just wasn’t impressed.
As soon as John and I found ourselves back in the Detroit terminal we each had our own private missions to accomplish. I didn’t realize that John had his own “must do” until I looked over at the sturdy young fellow and saw a clenched look on his face. I recognized it immediately.
“You need a smoke, don’t you?” I accused him laughing. I found his obvious apprehension funny; because it was the first time I’d seen anything like it from him since I’d met him. “Aha! I found your weakness John! Now I know!”
He grinned and replied, “Yeah, I got really drunk before I got on the flight, but now it’s worn off and I need a cigarette, bad…”
“Ahhh… All you addicts are all the same!” I teased him. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to find an Internet café and try to get a message to my driver in the Philippines. I’ll see you soon. Good luck finding a smoking area…You crack baby!” I said waving.
It turns out I was extremely fortunate. I was soon to find out that airline terminals the world over tend to close up shop at 10 p.m. and Detroit is no exception. I pulled my wheeled bag up to a computer and a girl, the attendant/waitress, asked me if I wanted something cold to eat, since the kitchen was already closed. I told her I just needed to use a computer and she said I had just 15 minutes before they closed and that would cost me $5.25.
There was no Yahoo IM loaded on the computer, so I decided the best thing I could do was to send an email to several people in Angeles City and hope that at least one of them would open it in the next few hours and call my driver, Roger, and tell him of my delayed arrival. I had just enough time to send it and to check for anything important in my inbox. For that money I was determined to use up every minute.
It worked. Of the four people I asked, three of them called Roger. Sometimes I guess, things just work out.
John’s “mission” took a good while longer than my little task. Nonetheless, by 11 he joined me near our continuation gate looking a whole lot more relaxed. I asked him how it went.
“Well, I found a bar with a smoking area.”
“Oh I see, so you took care of two birds with one stone. Good going John!” He laughed.
I decided to ride him a little on his nasty little habit: “You really need to find a way to quit one of these days buddy. For the last four years I’ve been helping a lot of old vets with their disability claims and I’ve seen closeup what two or three decades of smoking will do to the human body. I know you already know this man, but it ain’t pretty. It ages your skin, yellows your teeth and fingernails, makes your hair fall out, gives you bad breath, and eventually, it takes away your ability to breathe, period! If you’re lucky it’ll just be a slow horrible way to die; if you’re not so lucky, it will take you down quick with a heart attack or cancer.”
“Yeah, I know…” He said almost sullenly, not looking at me, with that “I’ve heard it all before” look.
I chuckled, “Too bad men don’t get pregnant. That’s how most women give up smoking these days.” This time he laughed, probably trying to imagine himself in his third trimester.
We didn’t take off for the second time at 11 as promised, but we did go at midnight. So, we ended up being a full 8 hours behind schedule. Nevertheless, we landed in Manila only 7 hours late having made up the hour by leaving sooner from Nagoya.
We got into Nagoya later than I’d ever been there before—I think it was after 2 in the morning. There were no stores, bars, or coffee shops open—nothing to do but wait impatiently. With the Japanese men being inveterate smokers though, John had no problem finding a place to indulge his aching need for nicotine. But without any alcohol to “wash it down” with, he was soon sitting next to me once again at the far end of our waiting area.
“John, I don’t think you know what you’re in for when you arrive at your friend’s home in Rizal. Do you know if they are very rich, or just so-so on the economic scale?”
“I don’t think they are all that rich. Why?”
I snorted and sniggered, “Dude, you’re single, and the word is gonna get out in your pal's neighborhood. There’s going to be a veritable PARADE of available females from miles around, all with the express purpose of getting a look at you and trying to get you to get a look at them. I wish I could see it. You’re either gonna love it or you’re gonna hate it.”
“Oh really?” he seemed delighted. I realized then that he wasn't going "to hate it."
“That’s why I asked if your buddy’s family is rich, because the very rich folk there look down their noses at people like you and me. On the other hand, the rest of the population, which is most of it, look at bagging an American son-in-law the same as winning the lottery. Can I ask you something John?”
“Okay.”
“Are you interested in meeting a girl for a possible serious relationship or are you just going there to meet girls for fun? The reason I ask is that the Philippines is a very conservative country. You’re going to find some of the sweetest, most beautiful girls in the world there, but most of them want nothing more than to meet the love of their life and settle down with an armful of babies. Then again, if you want to meet some “pok pok” girls and just "fling fling" during your whole trip, then you can easily do that at Boracay. My point is, don’t confuse the Boracay girls with the dozens of girls you’re going to meet in Rizal.”
He smiled, continuing to be delighted at BOTH prospects.
“I think I might very easily be ready to meet a girl and start a family,” he admitted shyly.
I chuckled, “Dude, there will be a lot of very happy young ladies to learn of that!”
In Manila, I felt beat and groggy standing in the long line at the immigration booths. It took a half hour for my turn to come and I saw that the immigration lady behind the glass looked tired too. I asked her if she had waited long for us. She frowned and said yes. I apologized for her long night and was rewarded with a pretty smile and a final stamp on my passport.
I wished John good luck on his three-week vacation and bade him farewell after pointing out the taxi kiosks.
After a wave through at customs I wheeled my two small checked bags down the sweeping curved ramp to the “pick up” area and searched in vain for my driver. If only I had a cell phone. 'From now on, I will have one,' I promised myself.
A uniformed young lady working in an information booth asked me if she could help me. I told her I needed to send a text or call my driver. At first she showed me how I could buy a phone card out of a vending machine to use in one of the phones lining the wall next to her booth. I didn’t have the correct local currency and finally she just asked me what my driver’s number is. Using her own cell phone she called him for me. I tried to give her a hundred pesos for her trouble and she wouldn’t take it. I was touched at her small bit of compassionate generosity thinking to myself that she had just made me fall in love with the country all over again.
By mid-morning I was back at my house in Angeles City. My Phil-ward journey and my overall USA trip back home was over.
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