1941-1956 GROWING UP IN
SHERWOOD, ARKANSAS
1956-1959 SOUTHWEST MIAMI HIGH SCHOOL
MIAMI, FL
1959-1960 RYAN RADIO & TV
CORAL GABLES, FL
1960-1961 UNVERSITY OF FLORIDA
GAINESVILLE, FL
1961-1965 UNITED STATES NAVY
GREAT LAKES/WAUGEGAN, IL
MEMPHIS, TN
PAUTUXENT RIVER, MD
ROOSEVELT ROADS, PUERTO RICO
NORFOLK, VA
1965-1967 INTERSTATE ELECTRONICS
ANAHEIM, CA
NEWPORT NEWS/HAMPTON, VA
GROTON/MYSTIC, CT
1967-1969 INFOTRONICS
HOUSTON/BELLAIRE, TX
NEWARK, DE
ROCKVILLE, MD/WASHINGTON, DC
1969-1969 DELTRONICS
RAMAPO, NY
1969-1970 NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING
NEWPORT NEWS, VA
1969-1970 COULTER ELECTRONICS
HIALEAH, FL
1970-1971 THE EXPRESSWAY (TOURING BAND)
MIAMI, FL
DAYTONA BEACH, FL
NEWBURGH, NY
LAKE GENEVA, WI
INDIANAPOLIS, IN
BOSTON, MA
1971-1972 BAY HILL MOTOR INN
BUZZARDS BAY/CAPE COD, MA
1972-1972 THE GOODTIMERS (COUNTRY BAND)
PANAMA CITY, FL
1972-1974 U-TOTEM CONVIENENCE STORES
HOUSTON, TX
1974-1974 LUMS RESTAURANTS
MIAMI, FL
1974- 1986 ALL-RITE TV REPAIR
CORAL GABLES, FL
MIAMI SPRINGS, FL
1986-1994 PARKER ELECTRONICS
FT LAUDERDALE, FL
1994-1994 SEH ELECTRONICS
N. MIAMI, FL
1994-1995 THORGUARD LIGHTNING DETECTORS
MEDLEY, FL
1995-1996 THE INCREDIBLE UNIVERSE
MIAMI, FL
1996-2002 LIFE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
MIAMI, FL
2002-2008 MEDEQUIP BIOMEDICAL
DORAL, FL
2008 RETIRE TO MURFREESBORO,TENNESSEE
2009 US CENSUS BUREAU (TEMPORARY)
UNDER THE BRIDGES OF M'BORO
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
A Mexican Quickie
Having been bitten by the travel bug, beginning with our trip last year, in 1987, Crystal, Lyz and I had planned a trip to the Yucatan, in Mexico. This had been planned before my 2 business trips to the Far East took place. So, on July 24 we flew from Miami to Merida, Mexico on an Aero Mexico Boeing 727. We arrived around 4:30 that afternoon, The rain was coming down so hard when we approached the terminal. we had to sit on the plane for 45 minutes, waiting for it to let up.To leave the aircraft, you had to walk down stairs to the tarmac,since the airport had none of the ramps that were driven up to the front door. This meant trying to stay dry under an umbrella while dashing to the terminal. When the rain slacked up a bit we ran from the plane, in the rain, and everyone got soaked to some degree. Our luggage was sitting out in the rain under sheets of plastic in the area of the aircraft. In about an hour we were finally reunited with our suitcases and formed into lines to go through the customs inspections. Of course the gentleman in front of us had a gun in his suitcase, which caused a mild panic among the airport workers, which then caused Spanish to be filling the air from 100 different directions and as many volumes levels.The guy was still in line trying to explain the gun, instead of them taking him to a secure area for questioning. Eventually we were shifted to another line and finally processed out into the night. We went to the taxi stand and were placed into an automobile of undetermined age and origin for the trip in to Merida. As I sat in the front seat before takeoff, I noticed that the wipers were not working, even though the rain was still coming down at monsoon force. I also noticed that directly ahead, the windshield was cracked in a large circular circle, as if the previous passenger has tried to exit the auto through the windshield. The driver finished placing our luggage into the trunk, took his position behind the wheel, and we began our trip. Of course, there were no seat belts in the car to calm us down a little. As the driver drove towards town, he would mostly stick his head out of the window to sure we were still on the pavement, and when his face became to wet, he would bring his head in, wipe his face with a towel, wipe the windshield in front of him, proceed on this way for a while, then pop his head outside and repeat the process. After 30 minutes of this, we finally saw the Holiday Inn sign ahead and a collective sigh of relief was heard.
Back in its day, Merida was called the Paris of Mexico, for its wide boulevards and palatial homes and estates. Its money was made from the hemp and sisal business, of which every sailing ship used in their ropes and lines. The Holiday Inn was at one end of the largest of the beautiful avenues in town. At the other end was the main 'plaza' of the town. Even though it was a Holiday Inn, it was one of the 5 star places in Merida. The night we arrived, we checked in, went to the room to freshen up a little, then went to the main restauranr for dinner. The meal was excellent, with the Caesar Salad being made the correct way right at the table.
We went down for breakfast the next morning, and found 2 buffet lines, one American and one Mexican, plus the usual omelet and waffle stations. The Mexican side had many interest items, so I picked my meal from that line. After eating, we took a taxi, with good glass in it, down town to the main Plaza. Around the square were the Governors Palace, the main church in town, the art museum, and many little shops. While we were walking, we were approached by a young guy who 'latched 'on to us and told us he would be our guide for a few dollars. Of course he slowly guided us over to the local native market, where his family had a stall selling clothing, particularly, 'guayaberas', sometimes called Mexican Wedding Shirts. They are quite popular throughout the Caribbean area, and due to the fact that they cool, comfortable, and dressy, they are worn by businessmen in place of a suit and tie during hot weather. In Miami, they are popular with the Cubans, so, since I didn't have one, I bought a nice one for just a few dollars, after the required haggling. Since the market was on the way back to the hotel, we decided to walk back up the ' Paseo de Montejo', the main drag. When we arrived back at the hotel, we visited the on-site tour office and booked a few trips
At 7 PM, a taxi picked us up and delivered us to a club for dinner and a show.The first part of the evening began in an undergrounds grotto, with a stream flowing through it. A group of Mayan actors and dancer re-enacted a Mayan sacrifice. Except for the part where they cut someone open and rip out the still beating heart, it was very authentic. We then returned upstairs to the restaurant area where we were served a very good Mexican feast. Finally, we were treated to a floor show with native dancing and singing. All in all, an excellent night.
After a bean and burrito breakfast the next morning, we were picked up, along with another couple, for a tour of the ruins of Chichen Itza.. What a ride that was- 60 mile in 60 minutes, including a stop at a real Mayan village. The ruins were magnificent. Our driver turned out to be the tour guide, so we got a grade A tour of the place. It seemed to me the place was built based on the Mayan mathematics, numbers were involved everywhere. Lyz and I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, where I discovered that the Mayans of that period had very small feet. The steps going to the top were quite narrow and if it had not been for a chain running from the top to the bottom, I might still be up there, or on U-Tube as I tumbled to the bottom.
It was a very good quick trip. I especially liked sitting at the pool bar, or the inside lounge, listening to the Mariachi bands.and drinking fine, smooth Tequila. I highly recommend a trip to Merida as an alternative to the commercialism of Cancun and Cozumel.
Back in its day, Merida was called the Paris of Mexico, for its wide boulevards and palatial homes and estates. Its money was made from the hemp and sisal business, of which every sailing ship used in their ropes and lines. The Holiday Inn was at one end of the largest of the beautiful avenues in town. At the other end was the main 'plaza' of the town. Even though it was a Holiday Inn, it was one of the 5 star places in Merida. The night we arrived, we checked in, went to the room to freshen up a little, then went to the main restauranr for dinner. The meal was excellent, with the Caesar Salad being made the correct way right at the table.
We went down for breakfast the next morning, and found 2 buffet lines, one American and one Mexican, plus the usual omelet and waffle stations. The Mexican side had many interest items, so I picked my meal from that line. After eating, we took a taxi, with good glass in it, down town to the main Plaza. Around the square were the Governors Palace, the main church in town, the art museum, and many little shops. While we were walking, we were approached by a young guy who 'latched 'on to us and told us he would be our guide for a few dollars. Of course he slowly guided us over to the local native market, where his family had a stall selling clothing, particularly, 'guayaberas', sometimes called Mexican Wedding Shirts. They are quite popular throughout the Caribbean area, and due to the fact that they cool, comfortable, and dressy, they are worn by businessmen in place of a suit and tie during hot weather. In Miami, they are popular with the Cubans, so, since I didn't have one, I bought a nice one for just a few dollars, after the required haggling. Since the market was on the way back to the hotel, we decided to walk back up the ' Paseo de Montejo', the main drag. When we arrived back at the hotel, we visited the on-site tour office and booked a few trips
At 7 PM, a taxi picked us up and delivered us to a club for dinner and a show.The first part of the evening began in an undergrounds grotto, with a stream flowing through it. A group of Mayan actors and dancer re-enacted a Mayan sacrifice. Except for the part where they cut someone open and rip out the still beating heart, it was very authentic. We then returned upstairs to the restaurant area where we were served a very good Mexican feast. Finally, we were treated to a floor show with native dancing and singing. All in all, an excellent night.
After a bean and burrito breakfast the next morning, we were picked up, along with another couple, for a tour of the ruins of Chichen Itza.. What a ride that was- 60 mile in 60 minutes, including a stop at a real Mayan village. The ruins were magnificent. Our driver turned out to be the tour guide, so we got a grade A tour of the place. It seemed to me the place was built based on the Mayan mathematics, numbers were involved everywhere. Lyz and I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, where I discovered that the Mayans of that period had very small feet. The steps going to the top were quite narrow and if it had not been for a chain running from the top to the bottom, I might still be up there, or on U-Tube as I tumbled to the bottom.
It was a very good quick trip. I especially liked sitting at the pool bar, or the inside lounge, listening to the Mariachi bands.and drinking fine, smooth Tequila. I highly recommend a trip to Merida as an alternative to the commercialism of Cancun and Cozumel.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Chinese Adventure- Part 2.1
It seemed to me that women had very little status on the face of life in Hong Kong. It might have been different behind the closed doors of their home,but on the surface I noticed several things. Each morning when we hit the streets to go to Longreen, if it was early, we found an army of little old ladies with pushcarts, brooms and dust pans patiently sweeping and cleaning the major streets in Kowloon. I have to assume that the same was happening across the bay on Hong Kong Island. I never saw any little old men doing this. An incident had occurred on one of our many subway trips a few days earlier. Lowell considers himself to be a son of the South and a true gentleman, which, him being from Texas, may be true. It was during the afternoon rush hour, that we boarded the subway at the Longreens stop. That stop was the next to last stop at the north end of the line, so we had no problem finding a seat, heading south. As we proceeded south, making a stop every 5 minutes or so, the cars quickly filled up, enough to mean there was standing room only. About half way to our stop , a middle aged Chinese lady with several packages in her arms boarded the train. As it so happened, she stopped right in front of Lowell and was holding on to one of the grab bars overhead. Lowell stood and offered his seat to the lady. She understood no English and didn't understand what he was doing. Chinese men do not do that.As he gestured for her to sit down, she was shaking her head no, and motioning him to resume his seat; the interplay, serious as it was, began to attract the attention of the other passengers in the area, who seemed to be amused at what was taking place. After a minute or two of this pantomime show, a young Chinese gentleman in a nice suit, slid into the seat and began to read a newspaper. The lady was made so uncomfortable by Lowell's actions, she got off at the next stop, which might not have been the one she wanted. Lowell had to stand for the rest of our trip, and was still not sure what had happened until I explained the caste system involving men and women in public places. We had no problems after that staying in our seats on the subway, if we were fortunate enough to get one.
That Friday night we went back to the Temple Street Market. There must have been 20,000 people there that night. It was hot and muggy and strange odors drifted in the air, at times. As we learned later, this market is a major attraction for tourists to visit when in Hong Kong. Bargaining is the name of the game here. The vendors usually have someone available to speak English if you indicate that you might be serious about making a purchase. Amid all of the junk, are some good values worth checking out, like pearls and jade and leather goods from the mainland. Lowell and I were in search of food tonight. We visited several of the food stalls found at each intersection of Temple Street. Seafood is the big draw here. You will see every kind of shrimp, prawn, clam, oyster, crab, lobster, and things that look like large centipedes with their legs waving in the breeze. Each intersection had at least one table specializing in snails, at least 25 varieties on the table. Since we had samples the snails on another occasion, tonight we got a big plate of steamed prawns and found a table.We waved the beer boy over, to bring us two big bottles of San Miguel and we sat back to watch the people parade and eat shrimp. It was an excellent way to go native for a while.
All over this market, in every hotel, and in hundreds of little shops are the famous Hong Kong tailors. They will beg, grovel, threaten and use what ever tactic they think will work in order to get you to let them make you a suit. The prices are very reasonable and the work is seemingly done over night. In fact, as we looked from our room window at the Ritz, across the street was a large building where every night, we could see 40 or 50 men sewing away all night, to make the suits I guess. I'm sure that scene was repeated in a hundred other buildings all over the city. I hated suits and ties, and always had, so the last thing I was going to do was spend money on one.
Saturday, we worked at Longreen until 4 PM, then returned to the hotel to get ready for feast night with Celius. We walked down Nathan Road to the Star Ferry terminal, bought our .10 cent first class tickets and rode across the bay to meet Celius. He informed us when we were picked up, that we would be dining with some of the biggies of Longreen and 2 of his relatives, about 10 people in all. As we drove to Aberdeen harbor, I began to recognize some of the things we were passing. When we went through the tunnel. I was sure I was back at the scene of my 'snipe' hunt for the oscilloscope. When I saw the street sign for Yip Fat Street, I told Celius I was very familiar with this area, and explained how and why I had been here. He thought it was Funny Too.
Shortly, we arrived at the harbor and were amazed to see 5 or 6 huge barges anchored out in the bay, with neon lights announcing that they were floating restaurants. They were at least 3 stories tall, and lit up like Christmas trees, with what seemed to be thousands of lights on each one. We boarded a motor launch and were ferried to the largest one, the famous Jumbo's. When we arrived, it was like stepping into another world. It appeared that we were guests of honor, walking into an emperors palace. We were seated at a large circular table, with a big lazy susan in the middle of it. Since it felt like we were emperors, at the front of the room was a throne, where a guy would put you in to an emperors robe and crown and take your picture. The Chinese at our table thought it would be 'fun' to see me do that, so, not one to let the opportunity to be Emperor of China pass me by, I went up and ruled for a few minutes. The pictures are great. Lowell decided to follow me, since it was rather painless. Ken had his beer, so he declined. I don't think he was Emperor material anyhow.
All of the other Chinese meals had been mere rehearsals for this one. We were fed many dishes that were placed on the lazy susan, with our hosts telling us what each one was. Each place setting had many little bowls and dishes holding sauces and appetizers. As the susan spun and the dishes passed by, we were slowly beginning to fill up. But then Celius announced that the highlight of the dinner, a Peking Duck, was on it's way from the kitchen. A Peking Duck is ordered several days in advance of the meal. The duck has been force fed for a few weeks to prepare it for preparation. Two days before the meal, it is killed, and hung so that all body fat drains away. The fat is collected and made into a special sauce. As the duck is slow roasted, it is basted in this special sauce. It is a great honor to be served a Peking Duck by your hosts. We were honored, At least Lowell and I were.The wait staff made a big production of this duck.The head chef comes to the table and spends about 15 minutes, very carefully carving the duck. On one platter, he carefully sliced off the skin and arranged it on the dish. On another platter, he placed the duck pieces he had carved. Each person was given a small dish with some little pancakes and sliced up scallion on it. With a flourish, the head chef placed the platter with the duck skin in the middle of the lazy susan, and departed with the platter of duck parts for the kitchen. The purpose of the duck is to give up it's skin. The rest of it goes into the stock pot in the kitchen. This was not what we had expected, so we watched our Chinese friends to see how this part was to be handled. They would take a piece of skin, place it on the little pancake with some scallion, roll it up then dip it in the special sauce provided. So that is what we did, and it was delicious. But it sure seemed to be a lot of time and trouble for a piece of duck skin. Maybe we missed something.
As Celius dropped us back at our hotel, he said he would meet us in the morning for breakfast at the New World Center. Personally, I was hoping to see the Seven Dragons march right thru the hotel on their way to the bay. ( See Part 2.0) Since our time to depart Hong Kong was drawing near, he drove us through the tunnel for a Celius tour of Hong Kong Island. We visited the top of Victoria Peak, where the view covered the entire bay and way back up in to the New Territories. The port of Hong Kong is one of the busiest in the world, so the ship traffic on the bay approached the rush hour traffic on the roads. ( Little Known Fact- There are more Rolls-Royce's, per capita, in Hong Kong than any other city on Earth). He dropped us off at one of the fanciest malls in Hong Kong. We found a place in the food court that had beer and sat down for lunch. On an earlier outing, Tobias had asked if there was anything special in Hong Kong that I would like to see. I jokingly replied, How about a Chinese fire drill? It went over his head, so nothing more was said. If I'm Lying, I'm Dying, as we sat in this mall having a beer and a sandwich, before our eyes, the fire department rushed in for a fire drill! About 15 firemen in bright yellow fire gear were running everywhere. The escalator wasn't working and this did not fit into their plans to get to the next floor. It couldn't have been anymore like what I had expected than if I had wrote them a script. Confusion reigned supreme! It was wonderful. I could leave with a happy heart. I had seen it all.
Monday morning, I feel like I'm coming down with something, so I stay at the hotel and rest all of Monday. Tuesday I feel really awful. Must be the Hong Kong flu, so when Ken and Lowell go back to the Oxygen plant, I stay at the hotel. I think about going back to the China Resources Store for some snake bile wine, or something else that might help me recover. But I find a drug store that sells Contact. I'm not sure that Contact is any better than ground up monkey paws, but I'm more familiar with it.
That evening, Lowell and Ken return from the Oxygen plant with good news. They had tuned up the 75 HP unit and it was performing to every ones satisfaction. Derek Mo had accompanied them back to the city, and a big dinner celebration , paid for by Mr Mo, was in order. My medicine had kicked in enough for me to go with them. Mr Mo knows a place in the 'hood that he wants to take us. so away we go. The restaurant is on the second floor as usual. We are seated at a table with a big hole in the middle of it. They light a burner in the hole and bring a big pot of some kind of liquid in it, and place it over the fire in the hole. So now, we have a big gurgling cauldron of something, bubbling away in front of us. How Cool, I thought. We are brought plates, bowls, chop sticks, and we each get a little wire basket on the end of a stick. It seems that we will be placing our food in the wire basket and cooking it in the bubbling broth, which turns out to be chicken broth. How much better for a guy with a cold can it get? Ken asks about beer, and it seems that it is not served, but we can bring our own. Mr Mo volunteers to go get some beer, since he is familiar with the area. Mr Mo is not a beer drinker so he does not know that beer is best served cold. So when he brings Ken back a six pack of warm beer, Ken does not complain too much. Lowell and I are happy with the tea. When the pot begins to come to a rolling boil, the waiter brings the starters. Eventually we indulge in shrimp, lobster, clams, fish, Kobe beef, scallops, and a large platter of veggies' to dunk into the broth. You took whatever combination sounded right, put it into your basket and put it in to the broth until it was cooked to your
liking. Eventually this chicken broth assumed the taste of all of the things you had cooked in it, and became quite tasty in it's own right. Mr Mo went out for some more warm beer, which we all consumed. along with the broth. It was one of those night that just seems to fall together in all of the right places with all of the right people. Even Ken fit in that night.
When Mr Mo left to go back home near Junk Bay, Ken took Lowell and I to a new place he had found. I was coasting, still under the influence of warm beer and massive amounts of chicken broth. This place had good cold beer, and a dart board over in the corner. Now it was Lowell's turn to be an expert. A little Chinese girl was tossing darts and seemingly not doing so well. Lowell , being the dart expert. went over to show her the finer points of dart playing. One thing led to another, and before you know it, she had convinced him to bet a little moolah on the game. In his warm beer fog, and her being so helpless, he agreed. The Texas gentleman was losing his Texas ass to that little girl, when I decided to go back to the hotel, leaving him and Ken on their own. I don't think I ever heard the true results of that night.
The next day, I was no better, and no worse. Ken and Lowell were going to Longreens to wrap things up. I was truly not needed for this process. I had made the Chinese laugh enough. I called United and found space on the afternoon flight, all the way back to Miami. I packed up and was at the airport for the 1 PM flight with time to spare. Twenty-six hours later, I was back in Miami, recovering in my own bed. It was a very good trip and the Chinese are a very interesting people. I'm sure they found me just as interesting.
That Friday night we went back to the Temple Street Market. There must have been 20,000 people there that night. It was hot and muggy and strange odors drifted in the air, at times. As we learned later, this market is a major attraction for tourists to visit when in Hong Kong. Bargaining is the name of the game here. The vendors usually have someone available to speak English if you indicate that you might be serious about making a purchase. Amid all of the junk, are some good values worth checking out, like pearls and jade and leather goods from the mainland. Lowell and I were in search of food tonight. We visited several of the food stalls found at each intersection of Temple Street. Seafood is the big draw here. You will see every kind of shrimp, prawn, clam, oyster, crab, lobster, and things that look like large centipedes with their legs waving in the breeze. Each intersection had at least one table specializing in snails, at least 25 varieties on the table. Since we had samples the snails on another occasion, tonight we got a big plate of steamed prawns and found a table.We waved the beer boy over, to bring us two big bottles of San Miguel and we sat back to watch the people parade and eat shrimp. It was an excellent way to go native for a while.
All over this market, in every hotel, and in hundreds of little shops are the famous Hong Kong tailors. They will beg, grovel, threaten and use what ever tactic they think will work in order to get you to let them make you a suit. The prices are very reasonable and the work is seemingly done over night. In fact, as we looked from our room window at the Ritz, across the street was a large building where every night, we could see 40 or 50 men sewing away all night, to make the suits I guess. I'm sure that scene was repeated in a hundred other buildings all over the city. I hated suits and ties, and always had, so the last thing I was going to do was spend money on one.
Saturday, we worked at Longreen until 4 PM, then returned to the hotel to get ready for feast night with Celius. We walked down Nathan Road to the Star Ferry terminal, bought our .10 cent first class tickets and rode across the bay to meet Celius. He informed us when we were picked up, that we would be dining with some of the biggies of Longreen and 2 of his relatives, about 10 people in all. As we drove to Aberdeen harbor, I began to recognize some of the things we were passing. When we went through the tunnel. I was sure I was back at the scene of my 'snipe' hunt for the oscilloscope. When I saw the street sign for Yip Fat Street, I told Celius I was very familiar with this area, and explained how and why I had been here. He thought it was Funny Too.
Shortly, we arrived at the harbor and were amazed to see 5 or 6 huge barges anchored out in the bay, with neon lights announcing that they were floating restaurants. They were at least 3 stories tall, and lit up like Christmas trees, with what seemed to be thousands of lights on each one. We boarded a motor launch and were ferried to the largest one, the famous Jumbo's. When we arrived, it was like stepping into another world. It appeared that we were guests of honor, walking into an emperors palace. We were seated at a large circular table, with a big lazy susan in the middle of it. Since it felt like we were emperors, at the front of the room was a throne, where a guy would put you in to an emperors robe and crown and take your picture. The Chinese at our table thought it would be 'fun' to see me do that, so, not one to let the opportunity to be Emperor of China pass me by, I went up and ruled for a few minutes. The pictures are great. Lowell decided to follow me, since it was rather painless. Ken had his beer, so he declined. I don't think he was Emperor material anyhow.
All of the other Chinese meals had been mere rehearsals for this one. We were fed many dishes that were placed on the lazy susan, with our hosts telling us what each one was. Each place setting had many little bowls and dishes holding sauces and appetizers. As the susan spun and the dishes passed by, we were slowly beginning to fill up. But then Celius announced that the highlight of the dinner, a Peking Duck, was on it's way from the kitchen. A Peking Duck is ordered several days in advance of the meal. The duck has been force fed for a few weeks to prepare it for preparation. Two days before the meal, it is killed, and hung so that all body fat drains away. The fat is collected and made into a special sauce. As the duck is slow roasted, it is basted in this special sauce. It is a great honor to be served a Peking Duck by your hosts. We were honored, At least Lowell and I were.The wait staff made a big production of this duck.The head chef comes to the table and spends about 15 minutes, very carefully carving the duck. On one platter, he carefully sliced off the skin and arranged it on the dish. On another platter, he placed the duck pieces he had carved. Each person was given a small dish with some little pancakes and sliced up scallion on it. With a flourish, the head chef placed the platter with the duck skin in the middle of the lazy susan, and departed with the platter of duck parts for the kitchen. The purpose of the duck is to give up it's skin. The rest of it goes into the stock pot in the kitchen. This was not what we had expected, so we watched our Chinese friends to see how this part was to be handled. They would take a piece of skin, place it on the little pancake with some scallion, roll it up then dip it in the special sauce provided. So that is what we did, and it was delicious. But it sure seemed to be a lot of time and trouble for a piece of duck skin. Maybe we missed something.
As Celius dropped us back at our hotel, he said he would meet us in the morning for breakfast at the New World Center. Personally, I was hoping to see the Seven Dragons march right thru the hotel on their way to the bay. ( See Part 2.0) Since our time to depart Hong Kong was drawing near, he drove us through the tunnel for a Celius tour of Hong Kong Island. We visited the top of Victoria Peak, where the view covered the entire bay and way back up in to the New Territories. The port of Hong Kong is one of the busiest in the world, so the ship traffic on the bay approached the rush hour traffic on the roads. ( Little Known Fact- There are more Rolls-Royce's, per capita, in Hong Kong than any other city on Earth). He dropped us off at one of the fanciest malls in Hong Kong. We found a place in the food court that had beer and sat down for lunch. On an earlier outing, Tobias had asked if there was anything special in Hong Kong that I would like to see. I jokingly replied, How about a Chinese fire drill? It went over his head, so nothing more was said. If I'm Lying, I'm Dying, as we sat in this mall having a beer and a sandwich, before our eyes, the fire department rushed in for a fire drill! About 15 firemen in bright yellow fire gear were running everywhere. The escalator wasn't working and this did not fit into their plans to get to the next floor. It couldn't have been anymore like what I had expected than if I had wrote them a script. Confusion reigned supreme! It was wonderful. I could leave with a happy heart. I had seen it all.
Monday morning, I feel like I'm coming down with something, so I stay at the hotel and rest all of Monday. Tuesday I feel really awful. Must be the Hong Kong flu, so when Ken and Lowell go back to the Oxygen plant, I stay at the hotel. I think about going back to the China Resources Store for some snake bile wine, or something else that might help me recover. But I find a drug store that sells Contact. I'm not sure that Contact is any better than ground up monkey paws, but I'm more familiar with it.
That evening, Lowell and Ken return from the Oxygen plant with good news. They had tuned up the 75 HP unit and it was performing to every ones satisfaction. Derek Mo had accompanied them back to the city, and a big dinner celebration , paid for by Mr Mo, was in order. My medicine had kicked in enough for me to go with them. Mr Mo knows a place in the 'hood that he wants to take us. so away we go. The restaurant is on the second floor as usual. We are seated at a table with a big hole in the middle of it. They light a burner in the hole and bring a big pot of some kind of liquid in it, and place it over the fire in the hole. So now, we have a big gurgling cauldron of something, bubbling away in front of us. How Cool, I thought. We are brought plates, bowls, chop sticks, and we each get a little wire basket on the end of a stick. It seems that we will be placing our food in the wire basket and cooking it in the bubbling broth, which turns out to be chicken broth. How much better for a guy with a cold can it get? Ken asks about beer, and it seems that it is not served, but we can bring our own. Mr Mo volunteers to go get some beer, since he is familiar with the area. Mr Mo is not a beer drinker so he does not know that beer is best served cold. So when he brings Ken back a six pack of warm beer, Ken does not complain too much. Lowell and I are happy with the tea. When the pot begins to come to a rolling boil, the waiter brings the starters. Eventually we indulge in shrimp, lobster, clams, fish, Kobe beef, scallops, and a large platter of veggies' to dunk into the broth. You took whatever combination sounded right, put it into your basket and put it in to the broth until it was cooked to your
liking. Eventually this chicken broth assumed the taste of all of the things you had cooked in it, and became quite tasty in it's own right. Mr Mo went out for some more warm beer, which we all consumed. along with the broth. It was one of those night that just seems to fall together in all of the right places with all of the right people. Even Ken fit in that night.
When Mr Mo left to go back home near Junk Bay, Ken took Lowell and I to a new place he had found. I was coasting, still under the influence of warm beer and massive amounts of chicken broth. This place had good cold beer, and a dart board over in the corner. Now it was Lowell's turn to be an expert. A little Chinese girl was tossing darts and seemingly not doing so well. Lowell , being the dart expert. went over to show her the finer points of dart playing. One thing led to another, and before you know it, she had convinced him to bet a little moolah on the game. In his warm beer fog, and her being so helpless, he agreed. The Texas gentleman was losing his Texas ass to that little girl, when I decided to go back to the hotel, leaving him and Ken on their own. I don't think I ever heard the true results of that night.
The next day, I was no better, and no worse. Ken and Lowell were going to Longreens to wrap things up. I was truly not needed for this process. I had made the Chinese laugh enough. I called United and found space on the afternoon flight, all the way back to Miami. I packed up and was at the airport for the 1 PM flight with time to spare. Twenty-six hours later, I was back in Miami, recovering in my own bed. It was a very good trip and the Chinese are a very interesting people. I'm sure they found me just as interesting.
Chinese Adventure- Part 2.0
Wednesday, June 3, 1987
For the past 2 weeks we have been working very long days, 7 days a week trying to get the equipment working properly, so that we are ready for the show in Hong Kong. We've brought in some outside help to help with the assembly of the smaller Motor Controllers, and those seem to be functioning properly. I've been testing them under all types of conditions and they seem to work fine. It's the larger ones, capable of controlling up to a 100HP motor that are not doing well. Lowell and Ken are so close to having it work. We have to leave tomorrow if we want to make the show dates. The night of the 3rd, I've done as much as I can, and I'm exhausted, so around midnight, I drive the hour back to Miami to get some rest, not knowing if the trip is on or off. At 4AM, Lowell calls and says we're going, so be at the airport at 5am. I've been packed for a few days in anticipation of this moment, so away I go.
When I arrive at Miami International, Lowell and Ken pull up to the United check-in in a taxi. They have several foot lockers and suitcases that I am told have all of the controllers in them. The units still don't work correctly, but we have enough functioning stuff to have a successful display at the industrial show. The flight leaves Miami at 7AM, and as soon as we are at cruising altitude, Kens begins to drink Manhattans. When he has consumed all of those that are on the aircraft, he begins on the Jack Daniels. It's about 4 hours from Miami to San Francisco, so we arrive a little after 8 AM, their time. The flight to Hong Kong does not depart until 1 PM, so we have time to kill. Ken is proud of the fact that he almost single-handedly drank a 727 airplane dry. As he starts down the tunnel leading inside the airport, an attendant notices his rather erratic walk and asks him if he needs a wheelchair. Ken had a brother who lived in SF, so he was going to meet him in a bar somewhere. It is quite a hike from the domestic flight terminal to the overseas departure area, so Lowell and I went to our gate and tried to nap a little. At a little after noon, they began boarding the plane. We were flying in Business Class, thanks to Dr Parker, so we had a good view of all the people boarding the plane. It was beginning to get down to the wire, and still no Ken. We were thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we left without him. But at the last minute, he staggered aboard and found his seat right behind us.
Lowell and I had already decided that we would sit together and room together, and leave Ken on his own as much as we could. Ken informed us he was going to try to drink a 747 dry, but shortly after takeoff, he went to sleep. His snoring was louder than the engine roar, and managed to keep most of the folks in business class awake the entire 14 hour trip to Hong Kong. So, when we arrived in Hong Kong, Lowell and I had had no meaningful sleep for several days, but Ken was rested. We were met at the airport by the same Chinese crew who had met us on the first trip. After we finally located everything that we had brought with us, except Lowell's personal suitcase, we loaded up the van and headed for the New Territories and Longreen's office. First we were taken to the Ritz Hotel to check in. This hotel was mainly for Japanese businessmen, and was located further up Nathan Road than we had explored before on the last trip. This would turn out to be a good thing for me, for it was closer to the real Chinese areas that I wanted to check out. When we got to the Longreen office, we took several controllers and adjusted them to Hong Kong voltages, in order that they could be shown at the show the next day. When we arrived back at the Ritz at 2 AM, Ken wondered if there were any bars still open in the neighborhood. The staff informed him 'no', but on entering his room, he found that all rooms were equipped with a fully stocked mini-bar. We assumed he would empty it that night.
We were up at 6:30 AM the next morning, to a rainy Hong Kong Friday. I'll tell you, the International Date Line sure does screw with your head. We had just left on Wednesday, what happened to Thursday? The restaurant in the hotel turned out to be a fine place to eat, at any meal. Soon, we were picked up and driven back to Longreens office, where we picked up some working units. Then we went through the tunnel to Hong Kong Island, and to the China Resources Building, where the industrial show was being held. We set up the equipment in the Longreen display area, then were taken downstairs where a welcoming reception was taking place. There were lots of lovely young Chinese girls in traditional dress, serving fruit drinks, to Ken's dismay, no alcoholic beverages, and a large Chinese buffet was available to sample Chinese food.
When we went back upstairs to get ready for the crowds, the plan was that Lowell would stay at the show to demonstrate the Parker equipment, and that Ken and I would take the subway back to the Longreen office to work on the non-functioning controllers. Having mastered the subway on the last trip, I got us back with no fuss at all. After we had been working for a couple of hours, Ken wanted to take a break. The building where Longreen's office was located was in a huge building. Below the floor we were located, the 3rd level, there were also department stores and restaurants along with other offices. The ground level was a large bus station. As you exited the elevators, you found yourself at the entrance to the 'Galaxy' restaurant. I had become familiar with it from the last trip. We had lunch there- I had food and Ken had a few beers. I found out over time, he didn't eat solid food that much. Eventually we went back upstairs and completed as much as we could with the test equipment we had. At 4:30, we 'tubed' back to the hotel to meet Lowell. I explained the subway procedures to Ken, so he could survive if we ever got separated, which was entirely possible due to the way the masses boarded and departed the trains. Mob Scene bests describes it.
When we hooked up with Lowell, he and I decided to explore the part of town we were in, something we didn't get time to do on the first trip. Ken declined to join us, and says he has some exploring of his own to do. Of course, that meant finding the nearest bar. Lowell and I walked towards the bay and found we were about a mile from the Hyatt where we had stayed before. Back at the hotel, we found that the restaurant served very good Escargot and Steak, at a very reasonable price. After eating, we turned in for some much needed sleep.
In the morning, we had breakfast and went to the show on the Island. Our units were performing very well and had drawn a lot of curious onlookers. Consumer interest for our controllers was even more that that shown to our competitors in the next booth. Ken and I again were to go back to Longreens office and worked on a 75 HP unit that was to be installed at the Hong Kong Oxygen plant after the show was over. There was a fairly large problem. In order to demo the show units properly, and in order test and adjust the equipment back at the office, an oscilloscope was needed in both places, and Longreen only had one. Ken and I went back to the office where we try to explain what we needed. However, everyone who speaks any English is back at the show, except for one very non-technical junior secretary. We finally determine that there is no o'scope at Longreens. Suzy Wong manages to track down Tobias at the show. He tells me he has located what we need at a place back on Hong Kong Island, and he will tell the secretary to write down where it is, and says he can spare no one from the show, and would I mind going to get it. Of course not, I told him. We are dead in the water without it. I put Suzy back on the phone and she writes everything down.
She gives me a piece of paper written in Chinese and says go there and the equipment will be waiting, if I get there before 2PM. I inform her that I can't read Chinese, and she informs me that she can't write in English, so, if I take the subway back to the Island and get off at the Star Ferry terminal stop, and if I show this piece of paper to a taxi driver at the taxi stand there, he will read it and take me to the place where the o'scope is waiting. Away I go again. As I examine the paper I have been given, the only thing I can make out is #6. That could be a floor number or a street address, I don't know. My fate is in the hands of a soon to be hired taxi driver.I find the taxi stand, que up waiting my turn, then hand the paper to the driver of the car I've been pointed to. Most taxi drivers in Hong Kong speak no English and I got one of the better ones. It was quite a show. I point at the paper, point to my self and make a driving motion with my hands. I think it was the 'Me go there- You Take-ee' that did the trick. We drove for quite a while, through places and neighborhoods I know I'd never been to before. Eventually, he pulled up along side a large building in a rough looking industrial area. He gave me back my piece of paper, took my money, and motioned me out and towards the entrance of the building. Since we needed the o'scope, I got out. He drove away. I was the only person of any race in view. I was dressed in a suit and tie, the uniform for the show. I went to the door and discovered that the building was a six sided building and that there were 6 entrances. For the next hour or so, after a gentleman at the rag shop informed me that the '6' did indeed indicate the 6th floor, I visited all 6th floors from all 6 entrances. I was politely not understood at any of the places I discovered. I saw things I had never seen before, like the toy factory, where several hundred old ladies stopped assembling toys to stare at the white dude, I would hand the note to anyone who looked in charge and retrieve it when they read it, shaking their heard in a negative fashion. I began to wonder if I had been taken for a ride, in more ways than one. Next I went in to a Styrofoam plant, where the foreman spoke enough English to confirm that there were truly 6 sixth floors in the building, and he thought that there might be an electronics firm on 6th floor number 5. The directory listed in English, Universal Electronics, LTD. Finally, I would find what I needed and be able to head back. However, the electronics firm had gone out of business and I was in another toy factory. I swore, when I got home, I was going to invest big time in Hong Kong toys. I visited an injection moulding plant and a place where I had no idea what was going on. After all of the 6th floors had been visited, I gave up and went outside to find a taxi so I could go back and report my failure. Then it dawned on me- I don't know where I'm at, and I can't tell them where I want to go. Must I stop every cab until I find one I can communicate with? Then, as I looked around me, I thought, that might not be a problem. There was absolutely no traffic on the streets in the area I was in. Which way should I walk in order to find a travelled road? I strained my ears to hear any sound that might indicate a busy road. Off to my left, I thought I heard a horn blow, so that's the direction I headed in. After about a mile of walking in my show suit and tie, in the heat and humidity of a Hong Kong summer, I truly did hear the sounds of traffic. Now, assuming I could find a taxi, how could I tell him where to take me? Shazzam! I had an ID badge form the show, written in English and Chinese, on a lanyard hanging around my neck! Problem solved! Eventually I managed to flag down a taxi, and show him my badge, to which he gave a nod and headed towards the show site, I hoped. Soon I began to recognize a few locations, and when we pulled up to the entrance I let out a sigh of relief. Although I had failed on the quest for the o'scope, I had found my way back to familiar territory.
When I get upstairs to the Longreen booth, I tell my tale of futile hunting for the test equipment and of the places I've been that day. I show the piece of paper to Tobias and explain that Yip Fat Street #6 has no equipment at all, only toy factories and such. Tobias calls the other Chinese guys over and shows them the paper, which leads them to all have a good laugh at something, maybe me. It doesn't bother me, since I had a good adventure, and I like adventures, even the unsuccessful ones.
Regardless of the travel I did, we still need an oscilloscope in order to proceed on with life. Tobias sends Mr. Tin with me to try again.Whereas I had just travelled 50 miles or so, we take the subway 2 stops, get off, and go up to the street. There is a little man standing there with an oscilloscope at his feet. He says something to Mr Tin, and Mr Tin says, he wants to know where you have been? So I showed him my note and HE had a good laugh.
Mr Tin headed back to the show, and I caught the tube back to Longreens, where Ken was waiting on me and the o'scope in order to get back to work. I just hoped he hadn't been waiting at the Galaxy Restaurant all this time. But he had, so we went upstairs and accomplished what we could with the few hours left in the day. We went back to the Ritz to meet Lowell and Tobias for dinner. Tobias was taking us to one of his favorite places, called the Treasure. Now Ken is an expert- on just about everything according to him. He is a master of electronics, knows Hong Kong like the back of his hand, even though he's never been here before, a master chopstickist, everything. When we arrive at the restaurant and are seated, we tell Tobias to order for the table, for in a real Chinese restaurant there are no ala-carte menus. Every meal seems to me to be a feast, served in a very orderly and timely fashion. We have Shark Fin soup again, along with fish, vegetables and all sorts of little known and unknown dishes,. Then the main course is served- an entire duck, that has been cut into serving pieces, then reassembled. We all take a piece of duck with our chopsticks, some faster that others (me). Ken selects his choice and puts it on his plate. Tobias asks Ken, as Ken prepares to eat his duck. " Mr Tucker, are you sure that is the piece of duck you want?" Ken answers," I eat duck at home all of the time and this is one of my favorite pieces." Tobias then says, "In China, we don't normally eat the head" So the all knowing Ken Tucker sucks on the head for a while, then gets a normal piece.
After Tobias drops us off back at the Ritz, Ken wants us to go see the new bars he has discovered in the neighborhood. He seems to have made a name for himself in the short time we have been in Hong Kong. He is greeted by name, and the bartender immediately begins to prepare a 'Slurpee' for Ken. He has already trained them in the art of making his drink.We visit 2 or 3 places and find the same routine in all of them. Lowell and I go back to the hotel for some rest and leave Ken with his new friends. Tomorrow would be Saturday and the show would be concluding, so we wanted to give it our best on the last day.
At 2 PM, Saturday, Tobias, being very happy with the way our products were received at the show, told us that we could leave and would resume work on Monday. Wow! a day and a half off. What to do what to do. Lowell and Ken said they were going to take a hovercraft to the Portuguese colony of Macau, about an hour away, and do some gambling at the casinos there. I decided to stay in Hong Kong and do some serious exploring. Once a year in June, Hong Kong is the host to the largest Dragon Boat festival in the Far East. A Dragon Boat is a type of wooden canoe, painted in spectacular festive colours. It is 30-40 ft long and manned by up to 16 rowers. They are raced over a measured course, fastest boat winning the honours. This year there were about 30 nations represented, USA included. They were holding the races on the Kowloon side of the bay, so it was easy to get a good vantage spot down by the Star Ferry terminal.. Eventually, the Hong Kong home team beat out the team from Thailand for the top spot. As I walked along a back street on my way back to the hotel, I happened to turn into a pub, 'Ned Kelly's Last Stand', where I found the Australian Dragon Boat team celebrating. Through out my travels, I have discovered that Australians celebrate anything, but mostly just life. They are a great group to be around anywhere, anytime. As they celebrated just competing in the races, they took me in as one of their own. What a great time that was!
When I did get back to the hotel, I found Lowell there. It seems that they had missed the hovercraft to Macau, and didn't want to wait for the next one. Ken was out on a 'Slurpee' quest. Lowell and I had another steak and escargot dinner, and this time added wine to the menu. This raised the cost to $10 each. We then walked down Nathan Road where about half way to the bay, we found a large department store, China Products. It was owned by the Mainland Chinese government, and stocked with a large variety of products. We called it the "Chinese Sears". The entire ground level was taken up by the folk medicine department. You could find anything from powdered reindeer antler, ground up bear privates and snake bile wine to cure what ailed you. The walls were covered with cabinets full of little drawers, and there were 50 or so pharmacists to assist you. We were feeling OK so we didn't partake of any of the exotic cures.
As we walked back up Nathan Road, we were caught up in a group of people who told us we needed to see the Temple Street Market, which was where they were headed. It seems that every night, Temple Street is closed to traffic except for the occasional cross street, and it is lined on both side and down the middle with the most amazing array of consumer goods I'd ever seen. There are thousands of booths selling any and everything you could possibly imagine. At just about every cross street intersection, there are food stalls selling things like chicken feet and seafood that I had no idea what it was. They had 55gallon drums with the tops removed, a large fire burning inside the barrel, and a huge wok sitting on the top of the barrel. They would stir fry what ever you pointed to from the array of hundreds of creatures moving around on top of the table behind them. In the center of the intersection would be 10-20 tables with chairs for the paying customers to use while they ate the food. There were also beer vendors that had large bottles of various brands of beer to accompany your food. On several of the vendor tables were nothing but snails, hundreds of snails. Lowell and I have always been partial to escargot since we were indoctrinated by an old boss we had when we worked in Delaware. We studied the table and decided to try 2 different varieties that looked promising and tasty. We pointed, indicated we wanted enough for the 2 of us, and watched the show. The old man scooped up a can full of the first and a can of the second and dumped them in the wok. As he stirred them around, he poured in what we hoped was something like garlic butter. We never found out what it was, but it was delicious. We took our snails to a table, indicated to the beer boy that we'd like 2 San Miguel beers, and proceeded to have one of the best meals of the trip.
I went back to the Temple Street Market just about every night that we were in H.K.. Usually I went alone, but never had any concern for my safety. There were too many people having a good time, and I was larger than most of them. One night I determined to walk to the end of the market. After a mile or more, I found it was still just as busy, but had evolved into mostly a Chinese thing, catering to mostly Chinese. There were a lot of fortune tellers, and I Ching interpreters, but not speaking Chinese, I couldn't find what my future had in store. Back at the other end, or the beginning of the market, there were T-shirts, designer clothing and hand bags, fake of course, and the ever present fake watch dealers. They would be sitting at what I would call a TV dinner tray type of table, with a laminated sheet describing all of the Rolexs', Cartiers', and the other expensive watches available. You would sit down, he would describe in English what he had that night, and when you gave him your $25 dollars, he would wave over a small Chinese boy, and whisper to him. Away the kid would run, and in 5 minutes or so, the kid would hand you a case. After you looked inside and confirmed that it was what you had ordered and that it was running, the dealer would nod, and move on to the next person. I bought a Presidential Rolex, with fake diamonds and the rest. I decided after wearing it a few times in Miami, that it was not wise to do so. I would hate to be killed for a fake Rolex. And after the bad guy found out it was fake, he'd probably come back and kill your family. Just not worth it.
Monday morning arrive and finds us all relaxed and ready to get back to work. The trade show is over and now it is time to take our equipment into the field and demonstrate it in a variety of applications. We spend Monday at the Longreen office preparing the two 25 HP and one 75 HP units for the road tomorrow. As we are leaving to go back to the hotel, the bottom falls off of one of my shoes. In the Nam Fung Center, where Longreen's office is located, there is a big China Resources store. Lowell and I go to it to see if they have a shoe dept, which they do. We get lucky and find a salesman who speaks a little English. The selection of shoes is quite large so I figure finding new shoes will be easy. I point to some styles that appeal to me and the salesman goes into the rear. He come back with the news that they are not available in my size. So, I picked some more styles. Again, it's the same story- not in my size. Finally we play the reverse game. He measures my big old American foot, and returns with the only 2 styles that he does have in my size. I liked one of them, and it was an all leather shoe for $15 dollars. He had it in black and brown, so I bought one pair of each. Most of the items in this store were made in Mainland China, and the quality was very good, and the prices were reasonable. We shopped in this store a lot.
Wearing my new Chinese shoes, we went back to the hotel. Ken headed for parts unknown and Lowell and I decided to try a restaurant we had seen a few blocks down the street. It was the Tivoli, a Chinese- Italian place. It even had a little Chinese guy in the window tossing pizza dough in the air and making pizzas. It was a little strange to find most of the menu describing French dishes. Lowell had King Prawns, that must have been a good 14 inches long, while I had the Veal Marsala, an excellent choice as it turned out. We promised to return and try the Italian side of the menu, since we were getting overloaded on Chinese food.
After a good Ritz breakfast, we took the subway back to Longreen. We loaded all of the controllers and test equipment needed into the van that Longreen used. Tobias, Mt Tin and Mr Lueng were in charge of getting us to the sites and documenting the results, while Lowell, Ken and myself were responsible for hooking up and running our machines. As you move around in Hong Kong, you find that most Chinese that deal with the public have adopted Anglo first names. the reason being, I believe, is that there is no way you could ever pronounce their Chinese names. We never did learn to call Mr Tin or Mt Lueng anything other than those names. People from the Mainland seemed much more formal than the folks from Hong Kong. We never even figured out if they liked us or just put up with us.
Our first stop today is at the Ngai Luen mold factory, mold being a metal form made to inject plastics in to form plastic products. We are greeted by two brothers who speak no English. We hook one of the 25 HP units to a shaver machine. This is a machine that shaves precise layers of metal off of a block in order to make a mold from it. The test goes well and everyone seems satisfied.
Next is a large toy factory where we attempt to hook a controller to an injection moulding machine. After 3 hours of total Chinese confusion, it is determined that we do not have the appropriate cables to interface with the machine. So we go back to the hotel, and since it is 1 AM, we call it a night.
We spend all day Wed at Longreen tuning up the big 75 HP unit for it's big test on Thursday at the Hong Kong Oxygen plant. It will be good to see Mr Mo again.
We get up at 5:30 for the big day. We go to Longreen and load the van with everything needed for this test. The plant is located in Junk Bay, about 60 miles east of Hong Kong. Mr Derek Mo greets us upon arrival, and shows us to the pump room where the controller will be installed. It is underground and reminds me of my days on submarines. There are four 75 HP motors driving pumps that draw in seawater 24 hours a day, which is converted to the various products they make here. We were shown which motor they wanted us to hook up to, so we shut off power to that motor and proceeded to hook up our controller. The pump had not been running when we arrived, and we assumed that when we turned on our machine. the pump would run up to speed. When we applied power, the pump tried to start, but was immediately shut down by our controlled. After much heated discussion, where the Chinese blamed us, and we blamed their power source, it was determined that they would leave us alone for an hour or so, in order for us to see if we could discover the cause of the shutdown. After much trouble-shooting and testing, we determined that their power panel had a phase reversal on 2 of the 3 legs of the power source. This only showed up when our controller was hooked up, for it was designed to shut down when detecting any abnormal condition. We corrected the problem and prepared to start the pump again. At this point all of the Chinese in the room became agitated and nervous. It seemed that several weeks before, one of our competitors had hooked their unit up to another pump and when he started the system, his unit and the motor blew up with much smoke and flame. So when Lowell pressed the 'start' button, the Chinese collectively jumped back about a foot. Our machine was designed with a 'soft start' function, which meant that the motor started slowly, under load, then worked its way to full speed. This is exactly what our controller did, as the Chinese looked on in disbelief. After letting it run for an hour or so, and having spent most of the day correcting their problem, we shut down our machine, promising to return to set it up for long term testing.
Friday found us at Longreen all day preparing a 25 HP unit that Tobias was going to demonstrate on Monday at a university at Canton, up in the Mainland. Celius Lam was in the office that day, so he took us to a nearby restaurant for lunch. By this time we were figuring out that what we had considered a feast, was just an ordinary meal to the Chinese. Every time we were taken to lunch or dinner, every place we went was packed with people eating, no matter what time of the day or night. I had come to the conclusion that the people in Hong Kong lived to either eat or shop. And judging by the volume of people on the subway or walking the streets, if they ate at one end of town, they shopped at the other end. This particular restaurant had 3 floors, full of people eating. Nearly everything you eat, is fresh, mostly trucked in daily from the Mainland. In all of my travels around Hong Kong, I never saw what we would call a supermarket. If you want fish, you go to the fish market, the same for produce, fruit, meat. Each had its own market.. Sometimes on the subway, you might see someone with a tied up chicken, purchased at one place, now riding home for dinner. At this lunch with Celius, he invited us to one of the famous floating restaurants in Aberdeen, called Jumbo's. He would pick us up at the Star Ferry terminal on the Island side, tomorrow night at 6 PM. Of course, we'd be there.
That evening, Lowell and I decided to try the Chinese-Italian place again. It was Friday, and that must be pizza night in H.K. The little guy in the window was tossing his dough constantly. Every table seemed to have 5 or 6 Chinese folks eating pizza. Lowell tried a pizza and I had spaghetti and meatballs. It was the strangest Italian food I'd ever had. The pizza was OK, according to Lowell, but my spaghetti was like a weird version of Chow Mein noodles, and the best way to describe the meatballs would be unseasoned, undercooked pork. So much for Italian food in Hong Kong.
After dinner we headed back to the Temple Street Market. As we walked along, we discussed several aspects of Chinese culture we had observed. Every building and shop had a little shrine in front of it. The shrine usually consisted of a place to burn incense and a mirror. The Chinese are firm believers in the spirit world, thus incense is offered to the various spirits. The mirrors are used to control and direct the Fung Shui energy that's everpresent. If a neighbour in your vicinity is aiming their bad energy at you, you direct your mirror to beam it away to what is hopefully a harmless direction. Also, no building is built without consulting a necromancer (spiritual priest). He consults his instruments and consults with the spirits, and they tell him how to place the building in order to receive the best Fung Shui. When the New World Center was built on the bay in Kowloon, a necromancer insisted that huge windows be installed in the center, front and rear, so that the Kowloon, (Seven Dragons), would have free access from the hills to the bay. And that's just the way it was constructed.
For the past 2 weeks we have been working very long days, 7 days a week trying to get the equipment working properly, so that we are ready for the show in Hong Kong. We've brought in some outside help to help with the assembly of the smaller Motor Controllers, and those seem to be functioning properly. I've been testing them under all types of conditions and they seem to work fine. It's the larger ones, capable of controlling up to a 100HP motor that are not doing well. Lowell and Ken are so close to having it work. We have to leave tomorrow if we want to make the show dates. The night of the 3rd, I've done as much as I can, and I'm exhausted, so around midnight, I drive the hour back to Miami to get some rest, not knowing if the trip is on or off. At 4AM, Lowell calls and says we're going, so be at the airport at 5am. I've been packed for a few days in anticipation of this moment, so away I go.
When I arrive at Miami International, Lowell and Ken pull up to the United check-in in a taxi. They have several foot lockers and suitcases that I am told have all of the controllers in them. The units still don't work correctly, but we have enough functioning stuff to have a successful display at the industrial show. The flight leaves Miami at 7AM, and as soon as we are at cruising altitude, Kens begins to drink Manhattans. When he has consumed all of those that are on the aircraft, he begins on the Jack Daniels. It's about 4 hours from Miami to San Francisco, so we arrive a little after 8 AM, their time. The flight to Hong Kong does not depart until 1 PM, so we have time to kill. Ken is proud of the fact that he almost single-handedly drank a 727 airplane dry. As he starts down the tunnel leading inside the airport, an attendant notices his rather erratic walk and asks him if he needs a wheelchair. Ken had a brother who lived in SF, so he was going to meet him in a bar somewhere. It is quite a hike from the domestic flight terminal to the overseas departure area, so Lowell and I went to our gate and tried to nap a little. At a little after noon, they began boarding the plane. We were flying in Business Class, thanks to Dr Parker, so we had a good view of all the people boarding the plane. It was beginning to get down to the wire, and still no Ken. We were thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we left without him. But at the last minute, he staggered aboard and found his seat right behind us.
Lowell and I had already decided that we would sit together and room together, and leave Ken on his own as much as we could. Ken informed us he was going to try to drink a 747 dry, but shortly after takeoff, he went to sleep. His snoring was louder than the engine roar, and managed to keep most of the folks in business class awake the entire 14 hour trip to Hong Kong. So, when we arrived in Hong Kong, Lowell and I had had no meaningful sleep for several days, but Ken was rested. We were met at the airport by the same Chinese crew who had met us on the first trip. After we finally located everything that we had brought with us, except Lowell's personal suitcase, we loaded up the van and headed for the New Territories and Longreen's office. First we were taken to the Ritz Hotel to check in. This hotel was mainly for Japanese businessmen, and was located further up Nathan Road than we had explored before on the last trip. This would turn out to be a good thing for me, for it was closer to the real Chinese areas that I wanted to check out. When we got to the Longreen office, we took several controllers and adjusted them to Hong Kong voltages, in order that they could be shown at the show the next day. When we arrived back at the Ritz at 2 AM, Ken wondered if there were any bars still open in the neighborhood. The staff informed him 'no', but on entering his room, he found that all rooms were equipped with a fully stocked mini-bar. We assumed he would empty it that night.
We were up at 6:30 AM the next morning, to a rainy Hong Kong Friday. I'll tell you, the International Date Line sure does screw with your head. We had just left on Wednesday, what happened to Thursday? The restaurant in the hotel turned out to be a fine place to eat, at any meal. Soon, we were picked up and driven back to Longreens office, where we picked up some working units. Then we went through the tunnel to Hong Kong Island, and to the China Resources Building, where the industrial show was being held. We set up the equipment in the Longreen display area, then were taken downstairs where a welcoming reception was taking place. There were lots of lovely young Chinese girls in traditional dress, serving fruit drinks, to Ken's dismay, no alcoholic beverages, and a large Chinese buffet was available to sample Chinese food.
When we went back upstairs to get ready for the crowds, the plan was that Lowell would stay at the show to demonstrate the Parker equipment, and that Ken and I would take the subway back to the Longreen office to work on the non-functioning controllers. Having mastered the subway on the last trip, I got us back with no fuss at all. After we had been working for a couple of hours, Ken wanted to take a break. The building where Longreen's office was located was in a huge building. Below the floor we were located, the 3rd level, there were also department stores and restaurants along with other offices. The ground level was a large bus station. As you exited the elevators, you found yourself at the entrance to the 'Galaxy' restaurant. I had become familiar with it from the last trip. We had lunch there- I had food and Ken had a few beers. I found out over time, he didn't eat solid food that much. Eventually we went back upstairs and completed as much as we could with the test equipment we had. At 4:30, we 'tubed' back to the hotel to meet Lowell. I explained the subway procedures to Ken, so he could survive if we ever got separated, which was entirely possible due to the way the masses boarded and departed the trains. Mob Scene bests describes it.
When we hooked up with Lowell, he and I decided to explore the part of town we were in, something we didn't get time to do on the first trip. Ken declined to join us, and says he has some exploring of his own to do. Of course, that meant finding the nearest bar. Lowell and I walked towards the bay and found we were about a mile from the Hyatt where we had stayed before. Back at the hotel, we found that the restaurant served very good Escargot and Steak, at a very reasonable price. After eating, we turned in for some much needed sleep.
In the morning, we had breakfast and went to the show on the Island. Our units were performing very well and had drawn a lot of curious onlookers. Consumer interest for our controllers was even more that that shown to our competitors in the next booth. Ken and I again were to go back to Longreens office and worked on a 75 HP unit that was to be installed at the Hong Kong Oxygen plant after the show was over. There was a fairly large problem. In order to demo the show units properly, and in order test and adjust the equipment back at the office, an oscilloscope was needed in both places, and Longreen only had one. Ken and I went back to the office where we try to explain what we needed. However, everyone who speaks any English is back at the show, except for one very non-technical junior secretary. We finally determine that there is no o'scope at Longreens. Suzy Wong manages to track down Tobias at the show. He tells me he has located what we need at a place back on Hong Kong Island, and he will tell the secretary to write down where it is, and says he can spare no one from the show, and would I mind going to get it. Of course not, I told him. We are dead in the water without it. I put Suzy back on the phone and she writes everything down.
She gives me a piece of paper written in Chinese and says go there and the equipment will be waiting, if I get there before 2PM. I inform her that I can't read Chinese, and she informs me that she can't write in English, so, if I take the subway back to the Island and get off at the Star Ferry terminal stop, and if I show this piece of paper to a taxi driver at the taxi stand there, he will read it and take me to the place where the o'scope is waiting. Away I go again. As I examine the paper I have been given, the only thing I can make out is #6. That could be a floor number or a street address, I don't know. My fate is in the hands of a soon to be hired taxi driver.I find the taxi stand, que up waiting my turn, then hand the paper to the driver of the car I've been pointed to. Most taxi drivers in Hong Kong speak no English and I got one of the better ones. It was quite a show. I point at the paper, point to my self and make a driving motion with my hands. I think it was the 'Me go there- You Take-ee' that did the trick. We drove for quite a while, through places and neighborhoods I know I'd never been to before. Eventually, he pulled up along side a large building in a rough looking industrial area. He gave me back my piece of paper, took my money, and motioned me out and towards the entrance of the building. Since we needed the o'scope, I got out. He drove away. I was the only person of any race in view. I was dressed in a suit and tie, the uniform for the show. I went to the door and discovered that the building was a six sided building and that there were 6 entrances. For the next hour or so, after a gentleman at the rag shop informed me that the '6' did indeed indicate the 6th floor, I visited all 6th floors from all 6 entrances. I was politely not understood at any of the places I discovered. I saw things I had never seen before, like the toy factory, where several hundred old ladies stopped assembling toys to stare at the white dude, I would hand the note to anyone who looked in charge and retrieve it when they read it, shaking their heard in a negative fashion. I began to wonder if I had been taken for a ride, in more ways than one. Next I went in to a Styrofoam plant, where the foreman spoke enough English to confirm that there were truly 6 sixth floors in the building, and he thought that there might be an electronics firm on 6th floor number 5. The directory listed in English, Universal Electronics, LTD. Finally, I would find what I needed and be able to head back. However, the electronics firm had gone out of business and I was in another toy factory. I swore, when I got home, I was going to invest big time in Hong Kong toys. I visited an injection moulding plant and a place where I had no idea what was going on. After all of the 6th floors had been visited, I gave up and went outside to find a taxi so I could go back and report my failure. Then it dawned on me- I don't know where I'm at, and I can't tell them where I want to go. Must I stop every cab until I find one I can communicate with? Then, as I looked around me, I thought, that might not be a problem. There was absolutely no traffic on the streets in the area I was in. Which way should I walk in order to find a travelled road? I strained my ears to hear any sound that might indicate a busy road. Off to my left, I thought I heard a horn blow, so that's the direction I headed in. After about a mile of walking in my show suit and tie, in the heat and humidity of a Hong Kong summer, I truly did hear the sounds of traffic. Now, assuming I could find a taxi, how could I tell him where to take me? Shazzam! I had an ID badge form the show, written in English and Chinese, on a lanyard hanging around my neck! Problem solved! Eventually I managed to flag down a taxi, and show him my badge, to which he gave a nod and headed towards the show site, I hoped. Soon I began to recognize a few locations, and when we pulled up to the entrance I let out a sigh of relief. Although I had failed on the quest for the o'scope, I had found my way back to familiar territory.
When I get upstairs to the Longreen booth, I tell my tale of futile hunting for the test equipment and of the places I've been that day. I show the piece of paper to Tobias and explain that Yip Fat Street #6 has no equipment at all, only toy factories and such. Tobias calls the other Chinese guys over and shows them the paper, which leads them to all have a good laugh at something, maybe me. It doesn't bother me, since I had a good adventure, and I like adventures, even the unsuccessful ones.
Regardless of the travel I did, we still need an oscilloscope in order to proceed on with life. Tobias sends Mr. Tin with me to try again.Whereas I had just travelled 50 miles or so, we take the subway 2 stops, get off, and go up to the street. There is a little man standing there with an oscilloscope at his feet. He says something to Mr Tin, and Mr Tin says, he wants to know where you have been? So I showed him my note and HE had a good laugh.
Mr Tin headed back to the show, and I caught the tube back to Longreens, where Ken was waiting on me and the o'scope in order to get back to work. I just hoped he hadn't been waiting at the Galaxy Restaurant all this time. But he had, so we went upstairs and accomplished what we could with the few hours left in the day. We went back to the Ritz to meet Lowell and Tobias for dinner. Tobias was taking us to one of his favorite places, called the Treasure. Now Ken is an expert- on just about everything according to him. He is a master of electronics, knows Hong Kong like the back of his hand, even though he's never been here before, a master chopstickist, everything. When we arrive at the restaurant and are seated, we tell Tobias to order for the table, for in a real Chinese restaurant there are no ala-carte menus. Every meal seems to me to be a feast, served in a very orderly and timely fashion. We have Shark Fin soup again, along with fish, vegetables and all sorts of little known and unknown dishes,. Then the main course is served- an entire duck, that has been cut into serving pieces, then reassembled. We all take a piece of duck with our chopsticks, some faster that others (me). Ken selects his choice and puts it on his plate. Tobias asks Ken, as Ken prepares to eat his duck. " Mr Tucker, are you sure that is the piece of duck you want?" Ken answers," I eat duck at home all of the time and this is one of my favorite pieces." Tobias then says, "In China, we don't normally eat the head" So the all knowing Ken Tucker sucks on the head for a while, then gets a normal piece.
After Tobias drops us off back at the Ritz, Ken wants us to go see the new bars he has discovered in the neighborhood. He seems to have made a name for himself in the short time we have been in Hong Kong. He is greeted by name, and the bartender immediately begins to prepare a 'Slurpee' for Ken. He has already trained them in the art of making his drink.We visit 2 or 3 places and find the same routine in all of them. Lowell and I go back to the hotel for some rest and leave Ken with his new friends. Tomorrow would be Saturday and the show would be concluding, so we wanted to give it our best on the last day.
At 2 PM, Saturday, Tobias, being very happy with the way our products were received at the show, told us that we could leave and would resume work on Monday. Wow! a day and a half off. What to do what to do. Lowell and Ken said they were going to take a hovercraft to the Portuguese colony of Macau, about an hour away, and do some gambling at the casinos there. I decided to stay in Hong Kong and do some serious exploring. Once a year in June, Hong Kong is the host to the largest Dragon Boat festival in the Far East. A Dragon Boat is a type of wooden canoe, painted in spectacular festive colours. It is 30-40 ft long and manned by up to 16 rowers. They are raced over a measured course, fastest boat winning the honours. This year there were about 30 nations represented, USA included. They were holding the races on the Kowloon side of the bay, so it was easy to get a good vantage spot down by the Star Ferry terminal.. Eventually, the Hong Kong home team beat out the team from Thailand for the top spot. As I walked along a back street on my way back to the hotel, I happened to turn into a pub, 'Ned Kelly's Last Stand', where I found the Australian Dragon Boat team celebrating. Through out my travels, I have discovered that Australians celebrate anything, but mostly just life. They are a great group to be around anywhere, anytime. As they celebrated just competing in the races, they took me in as one of their own. What a great time that was!
When I did get back to the hotel, I found Lowell there. It seems that they had missed the hovercraft to Macau, and didn't want to wait for the next one. Ken was out on a 'Slurpee' quest. Lowell and I had another steak and escargot dinner, and this time added wine to the menu. This raised the cost to $10 each. We then walked down Nathan Road where about half way to the bay, we found a large department store, China Products. It was owned by the Mainland Chinese government, and stocked with a large variety of products. We called it the "Chinese Sears". The entire ground level was taken up by the folk medicine department. You could find anything from powdered reindeer antler, ground up bear privates and snake bile wine to cure what ailed you. The walls were covered with cabinets full of little drawers, and there were 50 or so pharmacists to assist you. We were feeling OK so we didn't partake of any of the exotic cures.
As we walked back up Nathan Road, we were caught up in a group of people who told us we needed to see the Temple Street Market, which was where they were headed. It seems that every night, Temple Street is closed to traffic except for the occasional cross street, and it is lined on both side and down the middle with the most amazing array of consumer goods I'd ever seen. There are thousands of booths selling any and everything you could possibly imagine. At just about every cross street intersection, there are food stalls selling things like chicken feet and seafood that I had no idea what it was. They had 55gallon drums with the tops removed, a large fire burning inside the barrel, and a huge wok sitting on the top of the barrel. They would stir fry what ever you pointed to from the array of hundreds of creatures moving around on top of the table behind them. In the center of the intersection would be 10-20 tables with chairs for the paying customers to use while they ate the food. There were also beer vendors that had large bottles of various brands of beer to accompany your food. On several of the vendor tables were nothing but snails, hundreds of snails. Lowell and I have always been partial to escargot since we were indoctrinated by an old boss we had when we worked in Delaware. We studied the table and decided to try 2 different varieties that looked promising and tasty. We pointed, indicated we wanted enough for the 2 of us, and watched the show. The old man scooped up a can full of the first and a can of the second and dumped them in the wok. As he stirred them around, he poured in what we hoped was something like garlic butter. We never found out what it was, but it was delicious. We took our snails to a table, indicated to the beer boy that we'd like 2 San Miguel beers, and proceeded to have one of the best meals of the trip.
I went back to the Temple Street Market just about every night that we were in H.K.. Usually I went alone, but never had any concern for my safety. There were too many people having a good time, and I was larger than most of them. One night I determined to walk to the end of the market. After a mile or more, I found it was still just as busy, but had evolved into mostly a Chinese thing, catering to mostly Chinese. There were a lot of fortune tellers, and I Ching interpreters, but not speaking Chinese, I couldn't find what my future had in store. Back at the other end, or the beginning of the market, there were T-shirts, designer clothing and hand bags, fake of course, and the ever present fake watch dealers. They would be sitting at what I would call a TV dinner tray type of table, with a laminated sheet describing all of the Rolexs', Cartiers', and the other expensive watches available. You would sit down, he would describe in English what he had that night, and when you gave him your $25 dollars, he would wave over a small Chinese boy, and whisper to him. Away the kid would run, and in 5 minutes or so, the kid would hand you a case. After you looked inside and confirmed that it was what you had ordered and that it was running, the dealer would nod, and move on to the next person. I bought a Presidential Rolex, with fake diamonds and the rest. I decided after wearing it a few times in Miami, that it was not wise to do so. I would hate to be killed for a fake Rolex. And after the bad guy found out it was fake, he'd probably come back and kill your family. Just not worth it.
Monday morning arrive and finds us all relaxed and ready to get back to work. The trade show is over and now it is time to take our equipment into the field and demonstrate it in a variety of applications. We spend Monday at the Longreen office preparing the two 25 HP and one 75 HP units for the road tomorrow. As we are leaving to go back to the hotel, the bottom falls off of one of my shoes. In the Nam Fung Center, where Longreen's office is located, there is a big China Resources store. Lowell and I go to it to see if they have a shoe dept, which they do. We get lucky and find a salesman who speaks a little English. The selection of shoes is quite large so I figure finding new shoes will be easy. I point to some styles that appeal to me and the salesman goes into the rear. He come back with the news that they are not available in my size. So, I picked some more styles. Again, it's the same story- not in my size. Finally we play the reverse game. He measures my big old American foot, and returns with the only 2 styles that he does have in my size. I liked one of them, and it was an all leather shoe for $15 dollars. He had it in black and brown, so I bought one pair of each. Most of the items in this store were made in Mainland China, and the quality was very good, and the prices were reasonable. We shopped in this store a lot.
Wearing my new Chinese shoes, we went back to the hotel. Ken headed for parts unknown and Lowell and I decided to try a restaurant we had seen a few blocks down the street. It was the Tivoli, a Chinese- Italian place. It even had a little Chinese guy in the window tossing pizza dough in the air and making pizzas. It was a little strange to find most of the menu describing French dishes. Lowell had King Prawns, that must have been a good 14 inches long, while I had the Veal Marsala, an excellent choice as it turned out. We promised to return and try the Italian side of the menu, since we were getting overloaded on Chinese food.
After a good Ritz breakfast, we took the subway back to Longreen. We loaded all of the controllers and test equipment needed into the van that Longreen used. Tobias, Mt Tin and Mr Lueng were in charge of getting us to the sites and documenting the results, while Lowell, Ken and myself were responsible for hooking up and running our machines. As you move around in Hong Kong, you find that most Chinese that deal with the public have adopted Anglo first names. the reason being, I believe, is that there is no way you could ever pronounce their Chinese names. We never did learn to call Mr Tin or Mt Lueng anything other than those names. People from the Mainland seemed much more formal than the folks from Hong Kong. We never even figured out if they liked us or just put up with us.
Our first stop today is at the Ngai Luen mold factory, mold being a metal form made to inject plastics in to form plastic products. We are greeted by two brothers who speak no English. We hook one of the 25 HP units to a shaver machine. This is a machine that shaves precise layers of metal off of a block in order to make a mold from it. The test goes well and everyone seems satisfied.
Next is a large toy factory where we attempt to hook a controller to an injection moulding machine. After 3 hours of total Chinese confusion, it is determined that we do not have the appropriate cables to interface with the machine. So we go back to the hotel, and since it is 1 AM, we call it a night.
We spend all day Wed at Longreen tuning up the big 75 HP unit for it's big test on Thursday at the Hong Kong Oxygen plant. It will be good to see Mr Mo again.
We get up at 5:30 for the big day. We go to Longreen and load the van with everything needed for this test. The plant is located in Junk Bay, about 60 miles east of Hong Kong. Mr Derek Mo greets us upon arrival, and shows us to the pump room where the controller will be installed. It is underground and reminds me of my days on submarines. There are four 75 HP motors driving pumps that draw in seawater 24 hours a day, which is converted to the various products they make here. We were shown which motor they wanted us to hook up to, so we shut off power to that motor and proceeded to hook up our controller. The pump had not been running when we arrived, and we assumed that when we turned on our machine. the pump would run up to speed. When we applied power, the pump tried to start, but was immediately shut down by our controlled. After much heated discussion, where the Chinese blamed us, and we blamed their power source, it was determined that they would leave us alone for an hour or so, in order for us to see if we could discover the cause of the shutdown. After much trouble-shooting and testing, we determined that their power panel had a phase reversal on 2 of the 3 legs of the power source. This only showed up when our controller was hooked up, for it was designed to shut down when detecting any abnormal condition. We corrected the problem and prepared to start the pump again. At this point all of the Chinese in the room became agitated and nervous. It seemed that several weeks before, one of our competitors had hooked their unit up to another pump and when he started the system, his unit and the motor blew up with much smoke and flame. So when Lowell pressed the 'start' button, the Chinese collectively jumped back about a foot. Our machine was designed with a 'soft start' function, which meant that the motor started slowly, under load, then worked its way to full speed. This is exactly what our controller did, as the Chinese looked on in disbelief. After letting it run for an hour or so, and having spent most of the day correcting their problem, we shut down our machine, promising to return to set it up for long term testing.
Friday found us at Longreen all day preparing a 25 HP unit that Tobias was going to demonstrate on Monday at a university at Canton, up in the Mainland. Celius Lam was in the office that day, so he took us to a nearby restaurant for lunch. By this time we were figuring out that what we had considered a feast, was just an ordinary meal to the Chinese. Every time we were taken to lunch or dinner, every place we went was packed with people eating, no matter what time of the day or night. I had come to the conclusion that the people in Hong Kong lived to either eat or shop. And judging by the volume of people on the subway or walking the streets, if they ate at one end of town, they shopped at the other end. This particular restaurant had 3 floors, full of people eating. Nearly everything you eat, is fresh, mostly trucked in daily from the Mainland. In all of my travels around Hong Kong, I never saw what we would call a supermarket. If you want fish, you go to the fish market, the same for produce, fruit, meat. Each had its own market.. Sometimes on the subway, you might see someone with a tied up chicken, purchased at one place, now riding home for dinner. At this lunch with Celius, he invited us to one of the famous floating restaurants in Aberdeen, called Jumbo's. He would pick us up at the Star Ferry terminal on the Island side, tomorrow night at 6 PM. Of course, we'd be there.
That evening, Lowell and I decided to try the Chinese-Italian place again. It was Friday, and that must be pizza night in H.K. The little guy in the window was tossing his dough constantly. Every table seemed to have 5 or 6 Chinese folks eating pizza. Lowell tried a pizza and I had spaghetti and meatballs. It was the strangest Italian food I'd ever had. The pizza was OK, according to Lowell, but my spaghetti was like a weird version of Chow Mein noodles, and the best way to describe the meatballs would be unseasoned, undercooked pork. So much for Italian food in Hong Kong.
After dinner we headed back to the Temple Street Market. As we walked along, we discussed several aspects of Chinese culture we had observed. Every building and shop had a little shrine in front of it. The shrine usually consisted of a place to burn incense and a mirror. The Chinese are firm believers in the spirit world, thus incense is offered to the various spirits. The mirrors are used to control and direct the Fung Shui energy that's everpresent. If a neighbour in your vicinity is aiming their bad energy at you, you direct your mirror to beam it away to what is hopefully a harmless direction. Also, no building is built without consulting a necromancer (spiritual priest). He consults his instruments and consults with the spirits, and they tell him how to place the building in order to receive the best Fung Shui. When the New World Center was built on the bay in Kowloon, a necromancer insisted that huge windows be installed in the center, front and rear, so that the Kowloon, (Seven Dragons), would have free access from the hills to the bay. And that's just the way it was constructed.
Monday, August 16, 2010
First Hong Kong Adventure
Spring 1987
When I went to work for Parker Electronics, the main focus was developing an electronic device that would protect an induction motor from low voltage, high voltage and fluctuations in the incoming power. This was not a problem in developed countries with dependable sources of electricity, but in third world countries, power problems were of major concern. It could destroy a refrigerator, shut down an assembly line, or fry a $10,000 motor. The people at Parker Electronics had been in touch with representatives of companies in Hong Kong and in Mainland China about developing and manufacturing motor control systems to deal with these problems. Over the course of several years Parker had come up with some proto-types ready to be tested in the field.
I was hired for the Parker Electronics job by Lowell C Hahn. I first met Lowell in 1965. After I was discharged from the US Navy, I took a job in Newport News Va, involving work on Polaris-type Nuclear Submarines. I was sent to Anaheim, Ca for 6 weeks of training. After the training, I was sent back to Virginia to begin work with Interstate Electronics at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Our job was to set up a test system and interface with all of the other vendors involved with installing the Fire Control Systems on new construction submarines. We had a large system of our own set up in the middle level missle deck, where we technicians could monitor and record all of the various functions involved in launching a Polaris missle from underwater. As I sat at the control console one night, we worked 3 shifts, a guy introduced himself as Lowell Hahn. As we conversed, the question of where the only population of wild camels was located came up. As we both knew the answer was Australia, a long friendship was born. Thus the job at Parker.
After several months of intensive work aat Parker, the Chinese have asked us to come to Hong Kong and demonstrate several types of units that we have built.So, at 6 AM on the 29th of March, Lowell and I boarded a United flight from Miami to San Francisco and then on to Hong Kong. Total travel time,26 hours.We will arrive in Hong Kong atl 8 PM Monday night due to the International Date Line.
We arrive on schedule and are met at the air port by several Chinese gentlemen from Longreen Intenational, the company we will be dealing with.The plan for the evening is that we will check in at the Hyatt Regency on Nathan Street in the heart of Kowloon, then drive north to the New Territories to set up the equipment we have brought. Due to the insane traffic in Hong Kong, it is a 45 minute drive from the Hyatt, that will take us only 20 minutes when we discover the subway.We are driven back to the Hyatt around 11:30, where we check out the lounge. It is a very nice place with a Chinese guy playing keyboards and electronic drums, and a young Chinese girl singing all of the local hits of Willie Nelson and Kenny Rodgers.
We have two main Chinese contacts with Longgreen: Tobias Chang, and Celius Lam. We are to meet Tobias in the lobby this morning. We are told he will find us, which is good, since we have never met him. He located the 2 tall Americans with ease.We have breakfast at the Hyatt, then Tobias say's he will show us how to deal with the Hong Kong subway system and get to Longreen via the 'tube'.The subway system in Hong Kong consists of two lines- one north and south, from Hong Kong Island across the bay up to the New Territories, and an East-West line that runs on Hong Kong Island. It carries about 2 million folks a day, and most of them are on it at any given time, I think. It only costs .50 cents to go anywhere and is a lot faster cheaper, and safer that taxies. I find subways to be the most efficient way to travel in any town I've ever been in. The basics are all the same no matter where you are, the only difference is the language that they say 'mind the gap' in.I became an expert on getting any where in Hong Kong, Lowell a little less so. We arrive at Longreen 20 minutes after departing the Hyatt area, and spent all day and some of the night for the next 2 days adapting our 75 HP Controlles to the variations of Hong Kong power.
In the New Territories, which aren't much newer that the rest of Hong Kong, and just a name for an area of Greater Hong Kong, about 50% of the shops and restaurants are located one level above the street, due to the volume of traffic created by the bicycles, autos, buses, trains, taxi's and pedestrians. You can walk for what seems to be miles without ever going down to the street level. The only other place I've seen like this was Winnipeg, Canada, where all of the stores down town are connected by enclosed walkways, but this is due to the winter weather.
Tobias took us to a Chinese restaurant that first night at Longreens. It was above ground of course, and packed with hundreds of Chinese diners, and 2 Americans. Tobias ordered for the table, and for the next hour we ate- some things we recognized, and others we didn't, but we tried everything, at least once. We had Shark Fin soup for the first time of several differnt dinners we were taken to. It was bland, like a watered down noodle soup, except the noodles were cartilage from the fin. Lowell adapted to the chopsticks quickly, and I was behind on that art for a while. But we didn't starve.
Working for Tobias were two technicians, Mr. Tin and Mr. Leung. Mr. Tin was a hardliner from the mainland that had no use for us or our products at the beginning. Mr. Lueng was the younger of the two, and even managed a smile every now and then. The plan for the next two days, was that Tobias and his crew, Lowell and myself, would visit different factories and hook our controllers up to various types of heavy machine to see how the equipment performed. Tobias would be documenting everything, Lowell would be doing the hookups with the help of the 2 Chinese gents, and I be in my usual role as 'Igor', go-fer as needed. We visited a paper mill, a recycling plant, and a toy factory. The toy factory occupied an entire city block and was 6 floors high, making toys 24 hours a day for the rest of the world. We made 2 trips to the Hong Kong Oxygen plant in Junk Bay, where we met Mr. Derek Mo. We had a lunch in Junk Bay that was as Chinese as you could get. They rolled a small aquarium up to your table so you could pick the exact fish you wanted for lunch. I had major chopstick problems that day, so they took pity on me and brought me a spoon. After that I always carried some plastic utensils on me.
On our final day of testing, we sucessfully installed one of our Controllers on a 90 HP motor at the Oxygen plant. This seemed to impress everyone, even Mr Tin. Little did we know at the time, but that test had bought us a second trip back to Hong Kong. That evening, Mr. Celius Lam, the local manager of Longreen, was going to take Lowell and I to a fancy restaurant for dinner. It was a revolving place high above the city on Hong Kong Island. As the restaurant slowly revolved, you saw the entire area in all of it's neon glory. Along with Celius was a gentleman named Mike. This was about the time that the Mink Teddybear craze was beginning in the States. It seemed that Mike had all of the rights for all of the Mink Bears coming from China to the US. One had to assume he was going to make a lot of money soon.
After dinner, Celius dropped us back at the Hyatt. Since it was still eary, and Lowell and I had been so busy working that we had not had time to do much shopping or sightseeing, we explored the area around the hotel. We found enough shops that we could get our quota of tourist crap, plus some really good bargins, like pearls, and opals, hand paintings, silk garments, and beautiful little cork carvings.
Our flight needed us to be at the airport at 11 AM, so we got up early and went exploring again. The 7-11 around the corner provided coffee and muffins. Ther was a mist in the air and a fog on the bay. The little old ladies were sweeping the streets clean, as they did every morning. We found ourselves at the Star Ferry Pier. It crosses the bay every 10 minutes and cost a dime for first class. We hopped aboard and departed for the 15 minutes ride to Hong Kong Island. Since it was so early, none of the shops were open, so we just walked around taking in the world of early morning life in Hong Kong. At one point, we found ourselves on a pier jutting out into the bay, occupied by about 25 old Chinese gentlemen doing Tai Chi as the sun rose above the waters in the East. On this note, we went back to the ferry, and crossed the bay, with the early morning traffic of junks, barges, water taxis, and freighters, begining to come to life.
The flight home was uneventful, just long.We had accomplished our goal of getting the Chinese more interested in our products. In fact, there was a big Pan-Asian Industrial show in Hong Kong in June, and we had been invited to display our products at the Longreen booth. Next trip, I would try to have more free time to explore.
When I went to work for Parker Electronics, the main focus was developing an electronic device that would protect an induction motor from low voltage, high voltage and fluctuations in the incoming power. This was not a problem in developed countries with dependable sources of electricity, but in third world countries, power problems were of major concern. It could destroy a refrigerator, shut down an assembly line, or fry a $10,000 motor. The people at Parker Electronics had been in touch with representatives of companies in Hong Kong and in Mainland China about developing and manufacturing motor control systems to deal with these problems. Over the course of several years Parker had come up with some proto-types ready to be tested in the field.
I was hired for the Parker Electronics job by Lowell C Hahn. I first met Lowell in 1965. After I was discharged from the US Navy, I took a job in Newport News Va, involving work on Polaris-type Nuclear Submarines. I was sent to Anaheim, Ca for 6 weeks of training. After the training, I was sent back to Virginia to begin work with Interstate Electronics at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Our job was to set up a test system and interface with all of the other vendors involved with installing the Fire Control Systems on new construction submarines. We had a large system of our own set up in the middle level missle deck, where we technicians could monitor and record all of the various functions involved in launching a Polaris missle from underwater. As I sat at the control console one night, we worked 3 shifts, a guy introduced himself as Lowell Hahn. As we conversed, the question of where the only population of wild camels was located came up. As we both knew the answer was Australia, a long friendship was born. Thus the job at Parker.
After several months of intensive work aat Parker, the Chinese have asked us to come to Hong Kong and demonstrate several types of units that we have built.So, at 6 AM on the 29th of March, Lowell and I boarded a United flight from Miami to San Francisco and then on to Hong Kong. Total travel time,26 hours.We will arrive in Hong Kong atl 8 PM Monday night due to the International Date Line.
We arrive on schedule and are met at the air port by several Chinese gentlemen from Longreen Intenational, the company we will be dealing with.The plan for the evening is that we will check in at the Hyatt Regency on Nathan Street in the heart of Kowloon, then drive north to the New Territories to set up the equipment we have brought. Due to the insane traffic in Hong Kong, it is a 45 minute drive from the Hyatt, that will take us only 20 minutes when we discover the subway.We are driven back to the Hyatt around 11:30, where we check out the lounge. It is a very nice place with a Chinese guy playing keyboards and electronic drums, and a young Chinese girl singing all of the local hits of Willie Nelson and Kenny Rodgers.
We have two main Chinese contacts with Longgreen: Tobias Chang, and Celius Lam. We are to meet Tobias in the lobby this morning. We are told he will find us, which is good, since we have never met him. He located the 2 tall Americans with ease.We have breakfast at the Hyatt, then Tobias say's he will show us how to deal with the Hong Kong subway system and get to Longreen via the 'tube'.The subway system in Hong Kong consists of two lines- one north and south, from Hong Kong Island across the bay up to the New Territories, and an East-West line that runs on Hong Kong Island. It carries about 2 million folks a day, and most of them are on it at any given time, I think. It only costs .50 cents to go anywhere and is a lot faster cheaper, and safer that taxies. I find subways to be the most efficient way to travel in any town I've ever been in. The basics are all the same no matter where you are, the only difference is the language that they say 'mind the gap' in.I became an expert on getting any where in Hong Kong, Lowell a little less so. We arrive at Longreen 20 minutes after departing the Hyatt area, and spent all day and some of the night for the next 2 days adapting our 75 HP Controlles to the variations of Hong Kong power.
In the New Territories, which aren't much newer that the rest of Hong Kong, and just a name for an area of Greater Hong Kong, about 50% of the shops and restaurants are located one level above the street, due to the volume of traffic created by the bicycles, autos, buses, trains, taxi's and pedestrians. You can walk for what seems to be miles without ever going down to the street level. The only other place I've seen like this was Winnipeg, Canada, where all of the stores down town are connected by enclosed walkways, but this is due to the winter weather.
Tobias took us to a Chinese restaurant that first night at Longreens. It was above ground of course, and packed with hundreds of Chinese diners, and 2 Americans. Tobias ordered for the table, and for the next hour we ate- some things we recognized, and others we didn't, but we tried everything, at least once. We had Shark Fin soup for the first time of several differnt dinners we were taken to. It was bland, like a watered down noodle soup, except the noodles were cartilage from the fin. Lowell adapted to the chopsticks quickly, and I was behind on that art for a while. But we didn't starve.
Working for Tobias were two technicians, Mr. Tin and Mr. Leung. Mr. Tin was a hardliner from the mainland that had no use for us or our products at the beginning. Mr. Lueng was the younger of the two, and even managed a smile every now and then. The plan for the next two days, was that Tobias and his crew, Lowell and myself, would visit different factories and hook our controllers up to various types of heavy machine to see how the equipment performed. Tobias would be documenting everything, Lowell would be doing the hookups with the help of the 2 Chinese gents, and I be in my usual role as 'Igor', go-fer as needed. We visited a paper mill, a recycling plant, and a toy factory. The toy factory occupied an entire city block and was 6 floors high, making toys 24 hours a day for the rest of the world. We made 2 trips to the Hong Kong Oxygen plant in Junk Bay, where we met Mr. Derek Mo. We had a lunch in Junk Bay that was as Chinese as you could get. They rolled a small aquarium up to your table so you could pick the exact fish you wanted for lunch. I had major chopstick problems that day, so they took pity on me and brought me a spoon. After that I always carried some plastic utensils on me.
On our final day of testing, we sucessfully installed one of our Controllers on a 90 HP motor at the Oxygen plant. This seemed to impress everyone, even Mr Tin. Little did we know at the time, but that test had bought us a second trip back to Hong Kong. That evening, Mr. Celius Lam, the local manager of Longreen, was going to take Lowell and I to a fancy restaurant for dinner. It was a revolving place high above the city on Hong Kong Island. As the restaurant slowly revolved, you saw the entire area in all of it's neon glory. Along with Celius was a gentleman named Mike. This was about the time that the Mink Teddybear craze was beginning in the States. It seemed that Mike had all of the rights for all of the Mink Bears coming from China to the US. One had to assume he was going to make a lot of money soon.
After dinner, Celius dropped us back at the Hyatt. Since it was still eary, and Lowell and I had been so busy working that we had not had time to do much shopping or sightseeing, we explored the area around the hotel. We found enough shops that we could get our quota of tourist crap, plus some really good bargins, like pearls, and opals, hand paintings, silk garments, and beautiful little cork carvings.
Our flight needed us to be at the airport at 11 AM, so we got up early and went exploring again. The 7-11 around the corner provided coffee and muffins. Ther was a mist in the air and a fog on the bay. The little old ladies were sweeping the streets clean, as they did every morning. We found ourselves at the Star Ferry Pier. It crosses the bay every 10 minutes and cost a dime for first class. We hopped aboard and departed for the 15 minutes ride to Hong Kong Island. Since it was so early, none of the shops were open, so we just walked around taking in the world of early morning life in Hong Kong. At one point, we found ourselves on a pier jutting out into the bay, occupied by about 25 old Chinese gentlemen doing Tai Chi as the sun rose above the waters in the East. On this note, we went back to the ferry, and crossed the bay, with the early morning traffic of junks, barges, water taxis, and freighters, begining to come to life.
The flight home was uneventful, just long.We had accomplished our goal of getting the Chinese more interested in our products. In fact, there was a big Pan-Asian Industrial show in Hong Kong in June, and we had been invited to display our products at the Longreen booth. Next trip, I would try to have more free time to explore.
The Ballad of Ossie Brown
The 2 Islands that make up Bimini are located about 60 mile east of Ft Lauderdale. If the weather is good almost any sea-worthy boat can cross the Gulf Stream to Alicetown, North Island, in about 2 hours or so. Crystal's dad took their family over quite often when she was young . I started going over every now and then during the 70's. It's a very small place, and after several trips, you tend to know most of the characters in town. In the middle of the island was a huge Banyan (Ficus) tree in the front courtyard of the Compleat Angler. This was a hotel with 10 or 15 rooms plus a little museum dedicated to Ernest Hemingway, who had frequented Bimini in search of big game fish. The museum had a lot of pictures and fishing equipment of Mr. Hemingway. Out front, under the big tree, was an open air bar. This is where you couldn't help but become acquainted with Ossie Brown, the owner. The Brown Family were long pioneers on the island. Ossie's father had brought electricity to the island and one of his brothers had been electrocuted right after that. The Brown family history is fascinating and can be explored on the web. The murder of Ossie Brown was all-consuming news on the small island for a long time. Having shared drinks several time with Ossie, these words tell the tale from what I remember. SC 2009
IT WAS ON A LITTLE ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF DE SEA
IT WAS DERE OCCURRED A GREAT MYSTERY
THEM WHAT DID IT WAS NEVER FOUND
THEM THAT MURDERED MR OSSIE BROWN
IN BIMINI TOWN, 13 YEARS AGO
THE ANGLER WAS A FAVORITE PLACE TO GO
UNDERNEATH THE TREE IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN
SITTING AT THE BAR WAS MR. OSSIE BROWN
HE GREETED EVERYBODY WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE
ALL THE TOURISTS AND THE LOCALS LIKED TO VISIT HIS PLACE
IT WAS AGREED BY EVERYONE IN ALICE TOWN
THERE WAS NO FINER MAN THAN MR 0SSIE BROWN
HE MANAGE THE PLACE BOTH NIGHT AND DAY
AND WHEN IT GOT DARK THE BAND WOULD PLAY
THE PEOPLE WOULD DANCE TO THE ISLAND SOUND
AND SINGING WITH THE BAND WAS MR. 0SSIE BROWN
IT WAS SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE, WHEN HIS DADDY DID SAY
WE NEED A PLACE WHERE THE PEOPLE CAN STAY
WHEN THEY COME TO THE ISLAND FROM THE USA
TO REMEMBER MR HEMINGWAY, ESPECIALLY MR HEMINGWAY
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO WAS THE PEOPLE THAT CUT YOU DOWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO PUT YOU UNDER DE GROUND
NOW, OSSIE HAD A BROTHER NAME OF JULIAN BROWN
THEY SAID HE WAS THE FASTEST MAN IN TOWN
HE RUN TO WORK, HE RUN TO HOME
IN 1960, HE RUN TO ROME
ALL OVER THE ISLANDS EVERY BOY HAD A DREAM
TO WIN THEMSELVES A PLACE ON THE OLYMPIC TEAM
S0 JULIAN WORKED HARD, HE RAN REAL FAST
AND HIS DREAM WAS FINALLY IN HIS GRASP
WELL, HE WENT TO ROME, BUT HE DIDN'T COMPETE
HE DIDN'T GET TO WIN OR EVEN GET BEAT
BUT ALL IN ALL IT WAS JUST AS WELL
FOR THE WINNER WAS PETER SNELL
HE HAD A LOT OF STORIES WHEN HE GOT BACK HOME
ABOUT THE PEOPLE HE MET ON HIS ADVENTURE IN ROME
IN TIME IT ALL FADED AND TO STAY AFLOAT
HE BOUGHT HIMSELF A LOBSTER BOAT
NOW, A LOBSTER MAN CAN DO OK
IF HE WORKS REAL HARD EACH AND EVERY DAY
REMEMBER JULIAN WAS A RUNNER DOWN IN HIS SOUL
AND WORKING EVERY DAY SOON TOOK ITS TOLL
THE BOAT WAS TOO SLOW AND THE BUGS WERE TOO FAST
JULIAN KNEW THIS LIFE JUST WOULDN'T LAST
S0 HE TRADER IN HIS SKIFF FOR A CIGARETTE
AND STEERED IT WHERE THE SUN DOES SET
WELL HE DROVE THAT BOAT UP AND DOWN THE STREAM
FOR SEVERAL YEARS HE WAS CHASIN HIS DREAM
AND MAKING LOTS OF MONEY ANYWAY THAT HE COULD
HE NEVER QUITE UNDERSTOOD
THAT CATCHING AND SELLING THE LOBSTER BUGS
WAS A WHOLE LOT SAFER THAN RUNNING DE DRUGS
OR SMUGGLING THEM PEOPLE TO THE USA
SOME DAY YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA PAY
WELL, THEY BUSTED MR JULIAN FOR RUNNING COCAINE
AND HAULING DEM CUBANS TO THE REFUGEE PLANE
SEVEN YEARS AT EGLIN, AN AIR FORCE BASE
HE'S RUNNING AT A SLOWER PACE
HE DID HIS TIME, GOT OUT AND LOOKED AROUND
DECIDED TO GO BACK TO ALICE TOWN
HIS BROTHERS WERE THERE , MR OSSIE AND SPENCE
TIME TO HOP BACK OVER THE FENCE
A FEW YEARS LATER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
SOMEONE WAS KILLED IN A TERRIBLE FIGHT
NO ONE HEARD THE AWFUL SOUNDS
THAT MARKED THE END OF OSSIE BROWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO WAS THE PEOPLE THAT CUT YOU DOWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO PUT YOU UNDER THE GROUND
HE WAS BEAT AROUND THE HEAD WITH A BIG LEAD PIPE
OH, THE PEOPLE SAY IT WAS A TERRIBLE SIGHT
ONE QUESTION WAS ASKED WHEN HE WAS FOUND
DID THE BAD GUYS KILL THE WRONG MR BROWN
YOU SEE, BIMINI ISLAND IS ONLY SEVEN MILE LONG
AND ITS NOT AS WIDE AS A VERSE OF THIS SONG
IF YOU STAND IN THE MIDDLE THEN YOU CAN SEE
FROM SEA TO THE SHINING SEA
NOT THAT MANY PEOPLE CALL THE ISLAND HOME
NOT THAT MANY PEOPLE ARE INCLINED TO ROAM
ON AN ISLAND THAT SMALL AS YOU MIGHT GUESS
EVERYBODY KNOWS EVERY ONE'S BUSINESS
WHO, OH, WHO WOULD KILL OSSIE BROWN
WHY WOULD SOMEONE COME TO OUR LITTLE TOWN
TO CAUSE US THIS COMMOTION, TO CAUSE THIS FUSS
HMM, MAYBE IT WAS ONE OF US
IF IT WAS A STRANGER, HOW DID HE FLEE
DID HE ESCAPE BY BOAT ON THE MIDNIGHT SEA
DID HE FLY AWAY ON THE CHALKS AIRLINE
OR IS HE HERE JUST KILLING TIME
ITS BEEN MANY A YEAR SINCE THIS SAD AFFAIR
AND STILL THE BLAME HAS BEEN PLACED NOWHERE
SURELY CLUES WERE FOUND, SURELY WORDS WERE HEARD
BUT NOBODY SAYS A WORD
NOT MANY MONTHS AGO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
A FIRE WAS SPOTTED BURNING, BURNING VERY BRIGHT
IT WAS THE ANGLER BURNING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOWN
THEY COULDN'T SAVE IT, IT BURNT DOWN TO THE GROUND
WHEN THE FIRE WAS EXTINGUISHED, WITH THE RISING OF THE SUN
PEOPLE STARTED ASKING, ARE WE MISSING ANYONE
IN THE ASHES IS A BODY THAT WE HAVE JUST NOW FOUND
DEAR GOD, IT MUST BE JULIAN BROWN
AFTER OSSIE BROWN WAS MURDERED, JULIAN BOUGHT THE PLACE
TO KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY, THAT SEEMS TO BE THE CASE
HE TRIED HIS BEST TO SAVE IT, WHEN THE FIRE BEGAN TO RAGE
NOW HIS RUNNING DAYS ARE OVER, THE BROWNS HAVE LEFT THE STAGE
IT WAS ON A LITTLE ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF DE SEA
IT WAS DERE OCCURRED A GREAT MYSTERY
THEM WHAT DID IT WAS NEVER FOUND
THEM THAT MURDERED MR OSSIE BROWN
IN BIMINI TOWN, 13 YEARS AGO
THE ANGLER WAS A FAVORITE PLACE TO GO
UNDERNEATH THE TREE IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN
SITTING AT THE BAR WAS MR. OSSIE BROWN
HE GREETED EVERYBODY WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE
ALL THE TOURISTS AND THE LOCALS LIKED TO VISIT HIS PLACE
IT WAS AGREED BY EVERYONE IN ALICE TOWN
THERE WAS NO FINER MAN THAN MR 0SSIE BROWN
HE MANAGE THE PLACE BOTH NIGHT AND DAY
AND WHEN IT GOT DARK THE BAND WOULD PLAY
THE PEOPLE WOULD DANCE TO THE ISLAND SOUND
AND SINGING WITH THE BAND WAS MR. 0SSIE BROWN
IT WAS SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE, WHEN HIS DADDY DID SAY
WE NEED A PLACE WHERE THE PEOPLE CAN STAY
WHEN THEY COME TO THE ISLAND FROM THE USA
TO REMEMBER MR HEMINGWAY, ESPECIALLY MR HEMINGWAY
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO WAS THE PEOPLE THAT CUT YOU DOWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO PUT YOU UNDER DE GROUND
NOW, OSSIE HAD A BROTHER NAME OF JULIAN BROWN
THEY SAID HE WAS THE FASTEST MAN IN TOWN
HE RUN TO WORK, HE RUN TO HOME
IN 1960, HE RUN TO ROME
ALL OVER THE ISLANDS EVERY BOY HAD A DREAM
TO WIN THEMSELVES A PLACE ON THE OLYMPIC TEAM
S0 JULIAN WORKED HARD, HE RAN REAL FAST
AND HIS DREAM WAS FINALLY IN HIS GRASP
WELL, HE WENT TO ROME, BUT HE DIDN'T COMPETE
HE DIDN'T GET TO WIN OR EVEN GET BEAT
BUT ALL IN ALL IT WAS JUST AS WELL
FOR THE WINNER WAS PETER SNELL
HE HAD A LOT OF STORIES WHEN HE GOT BACK HOME
ABOUT THE PEOPLE HE MET ON HIS ADVENTURE IN ROME
IN TIME IT ALL FADED AND TO STAY AFLOAT
HE BOUGHT HIMSELF A LOBSTER BOAT
NOW, A LOBSTER MAN CAN DO OK
IF HE WORKS REAL HARD EACH AND EVERY DAY
REMEMBER JULIAN WAS A RUNNER DOWN IN HIS SOUL
AND WORKING EVERY DAY SOON TOOK ITS TOLL
THE BOAT WAS TOO SLOW AND THE BUGS WERE TOO FAST
JULIAN KNEW THIS LIFE JUST WOULDN'T LAST
S0 HE TRADER IN HIS SKIFF FOR A CIGARETTE
AND STEERED IT WHERE THE SUN DOES SET
WELL HE DROVE THAT BOAT UP AND DOWN THE STREAM
FOR SEVERAL YEARS HE WAS CHASIN HIS DREAM
AND MAKING LOTS OF MONEY ANYWAY THAT HE COULD
HE NEVER QUITE UNDERSTOOD
THAT CATCHING AND SELLING THE LOBSTER BUGS
WAS A WHOLE LOT SAFER THAN RUNNING DE DRUGS
OR SMUGGLING THEM PEOPLE TO THE USA
SOME DAY YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA PAY
WELL, THEY BUSTED MR JULIAN FOR RUNNING COCAINE
AND HAULING DEM CUBANS TO THE REFUGEE PLANE
SEVEN YEARS AT EGLIN, AN AIR FORCE BASE
HE'S RUNNING AT A SLOWER PACE
HE DID HIS TIME, GOT OUT AND LOOKED AROUND
DECIDED TO GO BACK TO ALICE TOWN
HIS BROTHERS WERE THERE , MR OSSIE AND SPENCE
TIME TO HOP BACK OVER THE FENCE
A FEW YEARS LATER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
SOMEONE WAS KILLED IN A TERRIBLE FIGHT
NO ONE HEARD THE AWFUL SOUNDS
THAT MARKED THE END OF OSSIE BROWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO WAS THE PEOPLE THAT CUT YOU DOWN
OSSIE BROWN, OSSIE BROWN
WHO PUT YOU UNDER THE GROUND
HE WAS BEAT AROUND THE HEAD WITH A BIG LEAD PIPE
OH, THE PEOPLE SAY IT WAS A TERRIBLE SIGHT
ONE QUESTION WAS ASKED WHEN HE WAS FOUND
DID THE BAD GUYS KILL THE WRONG MR BROWN
YOU SEE, BIMINI ISLAND IS ONLY SEVEN MILE LONG
AND ITS NOT AS WIDE AS A VERSE OF THIS SONG
IF YOU STAND IN THE MIDDLE THEN YOU CAN SEE
FROM SEA TO THE SHINING SEA
NOT THAT MANY PEOPLE CALL THE ISLAND HOME
NOT THAT MANY PEOPLE ARE INCLINED TO ROAM
ON AN ISLAND THAT SMALL AS YOU MIGHT GUESS
EVERYBODY KNOWS EVERY ONE'S BUSINESS
WHO, OH, WHO WOULD KILL OSSIE BROWN
WHY WOULD SOMEONE COME TO OUR LITTLE TOWN
TO CAUSE US THIS COMMOTION, TO CAUSE THIS FUSS
HMM, MAYBE IT WAS ONE OF US
IF IT WAS A STRANGER, HOW DID HE FLEE
DID HE ESCAPE BY BOAT ON THE MIDNIGHT SEA
DID HE FLY AWAY ON THE CHALKS AIRLINE
OR IS HE HERE JUST KILLING TIME
ITS BEEN MANY A YEAR SINCE THIS SAD AFFAIR
AND STILL THE BLAME HAS BEEN PLACED NOWHERE
SURELY CLUES WERE FOUND, SURELY WORDS WERE HEARD
BUT NOBODY SAYS A WORD
NOT MANY MONTHS AGO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
A FIRE WAS SPOTTED BURNING, BURNING VERY BRIGHT
IT WAS THE ANGLER BURNING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOWN
THEY COULDN'T SAVE IT, IT BURNT DOWN TO THE GROUND
WHEN THE FIRE WAS EXTINGUISHED, WITH THE RISING OF THE SUN
PEOPLE STARTED ASKING, ARE WE MISSING ANYONE
IN THE ASHES IS A BODY THAT WE HAVE JUST NOW FOUND
DEAR GOD, IT MUST BE JULIAN BROWN
AFTER OSSIE BROWN WAS MURDERED, JULIAN BOUGHT THE PLACE
TO KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY, THAT SEEMS TO BE THE CASE
HE TRIED HIS BEST TO SAVE IT, WHEN THE FIRE BEGAN TO RAGE
NOW HIS RUNNING DAYS ARE OVER, THE BROWNS HAVE LEFT THE STAGE
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Beginning of the Win- Pt 2
.London August 1986
SATURDAY MORNING, WE WALKED DOWN TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND TOOK A TOUR OF THE PLACE. A LOT OF FAMOUS PEOPLE RESIDE HERE,TOO MANY TO LIST. ONE THING WE NOTICED AS WE WALKED AROUND READING THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE BURIED IN THE FLOOR AND IN THE WALLS AND IN THE CRYPTS, ARE THE TOURISTS FROM JAPAN OR CHINA GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY TO AVOID STEPPING ON A BURIAL SITE. IT WAS A HARD THING TO DO OWING TO THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE UNDER THE FLOOR. FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY, WE WALKED ALONG THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. THEN ACROSS THE STREET TO THE INEVITABLE T-SHIRT SHOPS. WE LOADED UP ON SOUVENIRS AND GIFTS, WHICH WE TOOK BACK TO THE HOTEL ROOM.THEN WE WALKED OVER TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE AND THROUGH GREEN PARK TO THE FRAMES-RICKARD PICK UP POINT.FOR THE AFTERNOON TOUR. SINCE WE WERE EARLY WE BOUGHT LUNCH AT A HOT DOG STAND. WE BOTH PUT ON THE MUSTARD THICK,ONLY TO DISCOVER IT WAS ALMOST AS HOT AS CHINESE MUSTARD.AFTER A FEW TEARS AND WIPING MUSTARD OFF WITH THE NAPKINS THE HOT DOG WAS QUITE GOOD.
THE BUS ARRIVED AND WE FOUND THE ONLY SEATS LEFT WERE IN THE VERY REAR. SO WE SHARED THE BENCH SEAT WITH A COUPLE OF FELLOW AMERICAN LADIES. WE WERE GOING TO SEE LEEDS CASTLE,ABOUT 50 MILES SOUTHEAST OF LONDON.
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
UP AT 6:30 FOR THE DAYS TOUR. OUT OF THE HOTEL AT 7:45 TO RETURN TO THE FRAMES PICK UP POINT FOR A COACH TOUR OF STONEHENGE AND BATH. BY NOW CRYSTAL AND I ARE PROFESSIONAL WALKERS. THE BUS WAS ON TIME SO WE BOARD AND HEAD WEST, PAST HARRODS,THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM AND HEATHROW AIRPORT. IN THE DISTANCE WE CAN SEE WINDSOR CASTLE. AFTER A 1HR RIDE WE ARRIVE AT STONEHENGE. IT IS IMPRESSIVE. IT IS ALSO FENCED IN TO KEEP GRAFFITI OFF THE ROCKS.WE WALK AROUND IT FOR A WHILE THEN OFF TO THE GIFT SHOP WHERE THEY ALSO SELL COFFEE. THEN BACK ON THE BUS FOR THE RIDE TO BATH. THE TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRYSIDE IS NICE. WE ARRIVE IN BATH AROUND LUNCH TIME SO AS PART OF THE TOUR THEY FEED US.
THEN WE GET A GUIDED TOUR OF THE 2000 YR OLD ROMAN BATHS. THEN THEY LET US LOOSE ON OUR OWN. WE WALK AROUND AND SHOP OF COURSE. THE PUBS ARE CLOSED ON SUNDAY UNTIL 7 PM SO IT IS A DRY DAY FOR ALL. BATH IS LIKE A VERY OLD KEY WEST. WE FOUND A LOT OF GOOD PLACES TO SHOP. SOME OF THE BUILDINGS STILL HAD BOMB DAMAGE FROM WWII. CRYSTAL DISCOVERED ENGLISH ICE CREAM IN BATH. I BOUGHT A REX HARRISON HAT FROM WALES. AFTER A NICE DAY IN BATH, WE BOARDED THE BUS FOR THE TRIP BACK TO LONDON. WE SAW THE TOWN OF BRISTOL FROM A DISTANCE. AS WE PASSED HEATHROW AIRPORT WE SAW THE CONCORDE SUPERSONIC AIRCRAFT LAND.
WE LEFT THE BUS AT THE HYDE PARK CORNER NEAR THE HARD ROCK CAFE. THE LINE TO GET IN WAS TOO LONG SO WE WALKED DOWN PICCADILLY ST. PAST ARTIST AND STREET VENDORS TO GREEN PARK. THROUGH IT,PAST BUCKINGHAM PALACE,UP BUCKINGHAM GATE STREET TO CAXTON ST. AND THE ST. ERMINS. EVEN WHEN THE PUBS ARE CLOSED, IF YOU TRAVEL WITH ME YOU NEVER SUFFER. WHILE RESTING IN THE ROOM WITH SOME HAIG AND CHEESE AND CRACKERS.IT OCCUR ED TO ME THAT THE BRITISH ARE A ROOM TEMPERATURE CULTURE. MOST OF THE FOOD IN THE PUBS IS COLD, THE BEER THE SAME AS THE AMBIENT TEMP. ICE IS NOT A NORMAL THING TO WANT. BUT IT'S ALL GOOD. WE CALLED TINA AND ED TO CHECK ON THE HOME FRONT AND ALL WAS O.K. THEN WE WALKED TO VICTORIA STATION TO A LITTLE FRENCH RESTAURANT WE HAD SEEN AND HAD AN EXCELLENT MEAL.
WELL, IT'S OUR LAST DAY IN LONDON,SO WE ARE UP EARLY TO TAKE THE UNDERGROUND TO MADAM TUSAUDS WAX MUSEUM AND BEAT THE LINES. IT IS A VERY INTERESTING PLACE. THE EXHIBITS ARE EXTREMELY LIFE LIKE. IN FACT THERE ARE SOME REAL PEOPLE STATIONED AROUND ON THE BENCHES WERE YOU CAN SIT AND REST THAT SUDDENLY COME TO LIFE AND GIVE YOU A START. WE SAW A NEW EXHIBIT OF THE MARRIAGE OF ANDREW AND FERGIE AND THE REST OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. THE DUNGEON IS DARK AND FULL OF FOLKS LIKE JACK THE RIPPER. FROM THE WAX MUSEUM WE WALKED TO THE LONDON ZOO,-BEING PROFESSIONAL WALKERS. IT'S NOT VERY BIG, BUT NICE. FROM THE ZOO WE CAUGHT A DOUBLE DECKER BUS TO A UNDERGROUND STATION. BEFORE GOING UNDERGROUND, WE HAD LUNCH AT A PLACE CALLED GARFINKLES. THE WE TUBED UNDER THE RIVER TO TRY TO VISIT THE 'LONDON DUNGEON',A TOURIST ATTRACTION. ALAS,THE LINES WERE TOO LONG AND IT WAS BEGINNING TO RAIN,SO BACK ACROSS THE RIVER. HERE WAS THE FIRST TIME WE NEEDED OUR PLASTIC RAIN COATS. SO WE PUT THEM ON AND HAD A LEISURELY BUT DAMP STROLL THROUGH ST. JAMES PARK ON OUR WAY BACK TO THE HOTEL. WE SPENT THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON PACKING FOR THE TRIP HOME, WHICH SINCE WE HAD ABOUT TWICE AS MUCH STUFF TO TAKE BACK AS WE CAME WITH,WAS NO EASY TASK. SINCE IT WAS RAINING QUITE HARD,WE DECIDED TO SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY IN THE HOTEL. WE FOUND A NICE LITTLE PUB OFF OF THE LOBBY AND A BIG DINING HALL NEXT TO IT. WE CHECKED IT OUT AND FIGURED WE HAVE DINNER THERE SO WE MADE RESERVATIONS. AS WE WATCHED THE PEOPLE GOING IN TO DINE WE SAW ONE OF US WAS DRESSED A LITTLE TOO CASUAL, SO CRYSTAL WENT BACK TO THE ROOM TO CHANGE FROM HER SNEAKERS. WE HAD A TYPICAL ENGLISH MEAL AT A LEISURELY PACE THEN CALLED IT A DAY.
THE NEXT MORNING WE CHECKED OUT, TOOK A TAXI TO VICTORIA STATION AND CAUGHT THE TRAIN TO GATWICK AIRPORT. AFTER CHECKING IN AT THE AIRLINES WE VISITED THE DUTY FREE SHOP FOR OUR LAST MINUTE PURCHASES. THEN WE HAD A 10 HR. FLIGHT BACK TO MIAMI WERE TINA AND ED MET US. WE WENT HOME AND RESTED FOR A FEW DAYS, THEN BACK TO WORK. OUR FIRST BIG INTERNATIONAL TRIP WAS A GREAT SUCESS.
SATURDAY MORNING, WE WALKED DOWN TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND TOOK A TOUR OF THE PLACE. A LOT OF FAMOUS PEOPLE RESIDE HERE,TOO MANY TO LIST. ONE THING WE NOTICED AS WE WALKED AROUND READING THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE BURIED IN THE FLOOR AND IN THE WALLS AND IN THE CRYPTS, ARE THE TOURISTS FROM JAPAN OR CHINA GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY TO AVOID STEPPING ON A BURIAL SITE. IT WAS A HARD THING TO DO OWING TO THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE UNDER THE FLOOR. FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY, WE WALKED ALONG THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. THEN ACROSS THE STREET TO THE INEVITABLE T-SHIRT SHOPS. WE LOADED UP ON SOUVENIRS AND GIFTS, WHICH WE TOOK BACK TO THE HOTEL ROOM.THEN WE WALKED OVER TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE AND THROUGH GREEN PARK TO THE FRAMES-RICKARD PICK UP POINT.FOR THE AFTERNOON TOUR. SINCE WE WERE EARLY WE BOUGHT LUNCH AT A HOT DOG STAND. WE BOTH PUT ON THE MUSTARD THICK,ONLY TO DISCOVER IT WAS ALMOST AS HOT AS CHINESE MUSTARD.AFTER A FEW TEARS AND WIPING MUSTARD OFF WITH THE NAPKINS THE HOT DOG WAS QUITE GOOD.
THE BUS ARRIVED AND WE FOUND THE ONLY SEATS LEFT WERE IN THE VERY REAR. SO WE SHARED THE BENCH SEAT WITH A COUPLE OF FELLOW AMERICAN LADIES. WE WERE GOING TO SEE LEEDS CASTLE,ABOUT 50 MILES SOUTHEAST OF LONDON.
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
UP AT 6:30 FOR THE DAYS TOUR. OUT OF THE HOTEL AT 7:45 TO RETURN TO THE FRAMES PICK UP POINT FOR A COACH TOUR OF STONEHENGE AND BATH. BY NOW CRYSTAL AND I ARE PROFESSIONAL WALKERS. THE BUS WAS ON TIME SO WE BOARD AND HEAD WEST, PAST HARRODS,THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM AND HEATHROW AIRPORT. IN THE DISTANCE WE CAN SEE WINDSOR CASTLE. AFTER A 1HR RIDE WE ARRIVE AT STONEHENGE. IT IS IMPRESSIVE. IT IS ALSO FENCED IN TO KEEP GRAFFITI OFF THE ROCKS.WE WALK AROUND IT FOR A WHILE THEN OFF TO THE GIFT SHOP WHERE THEY ALSO SELL COFFEE. THEN BACK ON THE BUS FOR THE RIDE TO BATH. THE TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRYSIDE IS NICE. WE ARRIVE IN BATH AROUND LUNCH TIME SO AS PART OF THE TOUR THEY FEED US.
THEN WE GET A GUIDED TOUR OF THE 2000 YR OLD ROMAN BATHS. THEN THEY LET US LOOSE ON OUR OWN. WE WALK AROUND AND SHOP OF COURSE. THE PUBS ARE CLOSED ON SUNDAY UNTIL 7 PM SO IT IS A DRY DAY FOR ALL. BATH IS LIKE A VERY OLD KEY WEST. WE FOUND A LOT OF GOOD PLACES TO SHOP. SOME OF THE BUILDINGS STILL HAD BOMB DAMAGE FROM WWII. CRYSTAL DISCOVERED ENGLISH ICE CREAM IN BATH. I BOUGHT A REX HARRISON HAT FROM WALES. AFTER A NICE DAY IN BATH, WE BOARDED THE BUS FOR THE TRIP BACK TO LONDON. WE SAW THE TOWN OF BRISTOL FROM A DISTANCE. AS WE PASSED HEATHROW AIRPORT WE SAW THE CONCORDE SUPERSONIC AIRCRAFT LAND.
WE LEFT THE BUS AT THE HYDE PARK CORNER NEAR THE HARD ROCK CAFE. THE LINE TO GET IN WAS TOO LONG SO WE WALKED DOWN PICCADILLY ST. PAST ARTIST AND STREET VENDORS TO GREEN PARK. THROUGH IT,PAST BUCKINGHAM PALACE,UP BUCKINGHAM GATE STREET TO CAXTON ST. AND THE ST. ERMINS. EVEN WHEN THE PUBS ARE CLOSED, IF YOU TRAVEL WITH ME YOU NEVER SUFFER. WHILE RESTING IN THE ROOM WITH SOME HAIG AND CHEESE AND CRACKERS.IT OCCUR ED TO ME THAT THE BRITISH ARE A ROOM TEMPERATURE CULTURE. MOST OF THE FOOD IN THE PUBS IS COLD, THE BEER THE SAME AS THE AMBIENT TEMP. ICE IS NOT A NORMAL THING TO WANT. BUT IT'S ALL GOOD. WE CALLED TINA AND ED TO CHECK ON THE HOME FRONT AND ALL WAS O.K. THEN WE WALKED TO VICTORIA STATION TO A LITTLE FRENCH RESTAURANT WE HAD SEEN AND HAD AN EXCELLENT MEAL.
WELL, IT'S OUR LAST DAY IN LONDON,SO WE ARE UP EARLY TO TAKE THE UNDERGROUND TO MADAM TUSAUDS WAX MUSEUM AND BEAT THE LINES. IT IS A VERY INTERESTING PLACE. THE EXHIBITS ARE EXTREMELY LIFE LIKE. IN FACT THERE ARE SOME REAL PEOPLE STATIONED AROUND ON THE BENCHES WERE YOU CAN SIT AND REST THAT SUDDENLY COME TO LIFE AND GIVE YOU A START. WE SAW A NEW EXHIBIT OF THE MARRIAGE OF ANDREW AND FERGIE AND THE REST OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. THE DUNGEON IS DARK AND FULL OF FOLKS LIKE JACK THE RIPPER. FROM THE WAX MUSEUM WE WALKED TO THE LONDON ZOO,-BEING PROFESSIONAL WALKERS. IT'S NOT VERY BIG, BUT NICE. FROM THE ZOO WE CAUGHT A DOUBLE DECKER BUS TO A UNDERGROUND STATION. BEFORE GOING UNDERGROUND, WE HAD LUNCH AT A PLACE CALLED GARFINKLES. THE WE TUBED UNDER THE RIVER TO TRY TO VISIT THE 'LONDON DUNGEON',A TOURIST ATTRACTION. ALAS,THE LINES WERE TOO LONG AND IT WAS BEGINNING TO RAIN,SO BACK ACROSS THE RIVER. HERE WAS THE FIRST TIME WE NEEDED OUR PLASTIC RAIN COATS. SO WE PUT THEM ON AND HAD A LEISURELY BUT DAMP STROLL THROUGH ST. JAMES PARK ON OUR WAY BACK TO THE HOTEL. WE SPENT THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON PACKING FOR THE TRIP HOME, WHICH SINCE WE HAD ABOUT TWICE AS MUCH STUFF TO TAKE BACK AS WE CAME WITH,WAS NO EASY TASK. SINCE IT WAS RAINING QUITE HARD,WE DECIDED TO SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY IN THE HOTEL. WE FOUND A NICE LITTLE PUB OFF OF THE LOBBY AND A BIG DINING HALL NEXT TO IT. WE CHECKED IT OUT AND FIGURED WE HAVE DINNER THERE SO WE MADE RESERVATIONS. AS WE WATCHED THE PEOPLE GOING IN TO DINE WE SAW ONE OF US WAS DRESSED A LITTLE TOO CASUAL, SO CRYSTAL WENT BACK TO THE ROOM TO CHANGE FROM HER SNEAKERS. WE HAD A TYPICAL ENGLISH MEAL AT A LEISURELY PACE THEN CALLED IT A DAY.
THE NEXT MORNING WE CHECKED OUT, TOOK A TAXI TO VICTORIA STATION AND CAUGHT THE TRAIN TO GATWICK AIRPORT. AFTER CHECKING IN AT THE AIRLINES WE VISITED THE DUTY FREE SHOP FOR OUR LAST MINUTE PURCHASES. THEN WE HAD A 10 HR. FLIGHT BACK TO MIAMI WERE TINA AND ED MET US. WE WENT HOME AND RESTED FOR A FEW DAYS, THEN BACK TO WORK. OUR FIRST BIG INTERNATIONAL TRIP WAS A GREAT SUCESS.
Katrina Dances Thru The 'Hood
AUGUST 25, 2005
For the past few days, we have been watching a tropical wave come towards So Florida. Yesterday late, it developed into a Category 1 hurricane, named Katrina. Today, it is forecast to come ashore between Ft Lauderdale and Boca Raton, with winds barely over 75 MPH, but with a lot of rain.
The morning of the 25th was beautiful to behold. Sunny with a light breeze gave no hint of what was to come. Since the projected landfall was 75 miles north of us, Medequip, where I work, determined it would be a normal work day. I had 2 appointments that afternoon, the first would be to get my feet measured for my annual pair of free shoes (diabetic style), and then visit Dr Dirk, the dentist, for a deep cleaning. When I got to the foot place, it was all shuttered up. Hmmm, what do they know that I don't?
Dr Dirk was able to see me 1 hour early, so I headed there. It was beginning to rain and get windy. When I left Dr. Dirks, it was raining very hard and a lot breezier. I got home and went out in the rain to close the shutters on the front of the house. At this point in time, the storm was going along the track just as predicted.
I checked the weather again, all was OK. Then at 9 PM, the electricity went out. No problem, I'll open the bedroom windows and go to bed. The breeze was cool coming in and the rain was not too heavy, so I went to sleep. About 3 AM, it began to get nasty out. The wind was blowing quite hard, and the rain was coming in the windows. So I closed the windows and went back to sleep. But all through the rest of the night, my sleep was interrupted by heavy rain and wind and strange noises from the outside.
I got up about 5:30 to check the weather on my battery operated TV. It seems that when Katrina came ashore, instead of turning north, she turned south. So what I had heard during the night were the noises caused by a Category 1 hurricane. The eye had passed just a little to the north of me, but I was getting the full wind and rain that occurs in the southwest quadrant of a storm. When it was light enough to see, I went out to see what had been damaged. I lost most of a Pink Tab tree, and the Travelers Palm was in sad shape. My banana grove was just about destroyed. The roof was missing several tiles. Across the street, Angel and Susie had a big palm tree lying across their driveway, where Angel normally would park his car. But he put it in a neighbors drive way and it didn't get damaged.
The whole of Mansions Cove, where I lived, had a lot of trees down. The Lakes of the Meadows had streets flooded and many trees down also. The storm dropped 15 to 20 inches of rain on South Dade, so many areas were under water. The shops in Homestead along Krome Ave had 1 ft of water inside. 1.4 million people were without power. Most had no phone service either. I was included on both counts. Plus, cell phone service was very iffy.
Friday I fired up my new generator long enough to keep the freezers and refig cold. I grilled a steak for dinner. I had plenty of ice, so I was able to keep hydrated. Most of the day was spent with my machete, trimming branches and hedges for the community trash pile. I helped my neighbor move his palm by hooking it up to my 4WD and moving it to a better position.
On Friday night, I slept in the front bedroom, since it provided the best ventilation. About 2 AM, I awoke to the sound of the power coming back on. Oh Joy! I cranked the AC to cold and went back to my own bed to sleep as late as I could. I still had no phone service, but that would come back on Sunday at 10 AM.
Today is the 29"h, and South Florida is slowly getting back to normal. However, once Katrina reached the Gulf of Mexico, it grew into a Category 5 hurricane and headed for New Orleans. Again, at the last minute, she turned away from the projected path and spared New Orleans the brunt of her force. Biloxi and
Gulfport, Mississippi are the victims today. She is slowly moving inland to the northeast and will visit my family in Nashville, and my buddy Sam, in Pittsburg. I think my friend, Bob Lakey, just north of Memphis is feeling a little right now.
Katrina was the first real hurricane to affect me since Andrew in 1992, almost occurring on the same dates. But this one was a pussy cat, here in So. Florida, compared to Andrew. But it taught several lessons- don't assume it will track the projected track and get gas for the generator as soon as the season starts. You may need it.
For the past few days, we have been watching a tropical wave come towards So Florida. Yesterday late, it developed into a Category 1 hurricane, named Katrina. Today, it is forecast to come ashore between Ft Lauderdale and Boca Raton, with winds barely over 75 MPH, but with a lot of rain.
The morning of the 25th was beautiful to behold. Sunny with a light breeze gave no hint of what was to come. Since the projected landfall was 75 miles north of us, Medequip, where I work, determined it would be a normal work day. I had 2 appointments that afternoon, the first would be to get my feet measured for my annual pair of free shoes (diabetic style), and then visit Dr Dirk, the dentist, for a deep cleaning. When I got to the foot place, it was all shuttered up. Hmmm, what do they know that I don't?
Dr Dirk was able to see me 1 hour early, so I headed there. It was beginning to rain and get windy. When I left Dr. Dirks, it was raining very hard and a lot breezier. I got home and went out in the rain to close the shutters on the front of the house. At this point in time, the storm was going along the track just as predicted.
I checked the weather again, all was OK. Then at 9 PM, the electricity went out. No problem, I'll open the bedroom windows and go to bed. The breeze was cool coming in and the rain was not too heavy, so I went to sleep. About 3 AM, it began to get nasty out. The wind was blowing quite hard, and the rain was coming in the windows. So I closed the windows and went back to sleep. But all through the rest of the night, my sleep was interrupted by heavy rain and wind and strange noises from the outside.
I got up about 5:30 to check the weather on my battery operated TV. It seems that when Katrina came ashore, instead of turning north, she turned south. So what I had heard during the night were the noises caused by a Category 1 hurricane. The eye had passed just a little to the north of me, but I was getting the full wind and rain that occurs in the southwest quadrant of a storm. When it was light enough to see, I went out to see what had been damaged. I lost most of a Pink Tab tree, and the Travelers Palm was in sad shape. My banana grove was just about destroyed. The roof was missing several tiles. Across the street, Angel and Susie had a big palm tree lying across their driveway, where Angel normally would park his car. But he put it in a neighbors drive way and it didn't get damaged.
The whole of Mansions Cove, where I lived, had a lot of trees down. The Lakes of the Meadows had streets flooded and many trees down also. The storm dropped 15 to 20 inches of rain on South Dade, so many areas were under water. The shops in Homestead along Krome Ave had 1 ft of water inside. 1.4 million people were without power. Most had no phone service either. I was included on both counts. Plus, cell phone service was very iffy.
Friday I fired up my new generator long enough to keep the freezers and refig cold. I grilled a steak for dinner. I had plenty of ice, so I was able to keep hydrated. Most of the day was spent with my machete, trimming branches and hedges for the community trash pile. I helped my neighbor move his palm by hooking it up to my 4WD and moving it to a better position.
On Friday night, I slept in the front bedroom, since it provided the best ventilation. About 2 AM, I awoke to the sound of the power coming back on. Oh Joy! I cranked the AC to cold and went back to my own bed to sleep as late as I could. I still had no phone service, but that would come back on Sunday at 10 AM.
Today is the 29"h, and South Florida is slowly getting back to normal. However, once Katrina reached the Gulf of Mexico, it grew into a Category 5 hurricane and headed for New Orleans. Again, at the last minute, she turned away from the projected path and spared New Orleans the brunt of her force. Biloxi and
Gulfport, Mississippi are the victims today. She is slowly moving inland to the northeast and will visit my family in Nashville, and my buddy Sam, in Pittsburg. I think my friend, Bob Lakey, just north of Memphis is feeling a little right now.
Katrina was the first real hurricane to affect me since Andrew in 1992, almost occurring on the same dates. But this one was a pussy cat, here in So. Florida, compared to Andrew. But it taught several lessons- don't assume it will track the projected track and get gas for the generator as soon as the season starts. You may need it.
For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll
In the year of our Lord, 2006, it came to past that the daughter of my sister Vicki, my niece Amanda, to be referred to as 'Mandy', and Tom, to be referred to as 'Tom', would get married in Key West, Florida. During my last visit to Tennessee, where they all lived, I had volunteered to do the video taping of the ceremony. So, when I received a call that the nuptials would be taking place near the end of March, over the weekend of the 25th, I began to assemble my equipment. This particular time of the year was right in the middle of 'Spring Break', which meant that Key West would have an abundance of college students, which further meant that accommodations would be at a premium. I made a few calls and found a room at the Lime Tree Inn.This was just a few blocks from where the wedding would take place.
The wedding would be taking place at the Hemingway House, one of the many places that Ernest Hemingway called home at one time in his life. It was located 8 or so Key West blocks up Whitehead St, from the action around Mallory Square. The house was built in 1871, and Hemingway moved in around 1931. While he was away as a war correspondent, covering the Spanish Civil War, his wife Pauline finished the swimming pool in1938, that they had started a few years earlier. It was and still is the largest pool in Key West. The wedding would take place around the pool.
The Northcutt family had arrived in Miami and Tom and Mandy would be spending the night at my house on the 23rd of March. I took them to a place called 'The Grotto' over on Coral Way for dinner and a drink or two. Mandy had something called an 'Angry Pirate', that was still causing distress the next morning.
The check-in time at the Lime Tree was 3 PM, so I timed my departure accordingly. I loaded up my stuff and left Miami around 11 AM. The traffic was heavy all the way down the Overseas Highway, south to Key West. I arrived and checked in to the Lime Tree right at 3 PM. I called my sister on my cell phone to see where they were.They had planned on leaving Homestead and Wayne's World at 9:30 AM, which should have put them in Key West several hours before me. After a late start, they were just approaching the 7 Mile Bridge, which is 47 mile north of Key West. That meant it would be a while before they arrived.
Having some time to kill, and being very familiar with Key West, having visited many times since my 1st visit in 1960, I knew that Bogart's Irish Pub was just around the corner on Duval St. I also knew they had Guinness. So away I went. Despite the fact that Spring Break was in full swing, Bogart's was not crowded. I guessed that the youngsters were down in the Sloppy Joe's- Capt. Tony's area getting wasted. I found a window seat where I could watch for the Northcutt Convoy to proceed down Duval St. After a couple of hours and four pints of the good stuff, I decided they must have come in the back way, so I went back to the Lime Tree. Shortly after I returned, my sister called and said they were eating in, and they would see me tomorrow. Since I was staying at one end of Duval Street, and they were at the other, a little over a mile away, I would find a place nearby for dinner. Just down the street was Duffy's Steak & Seafood House. The meal was so-so, but filling. I went back to the room, broke open a bottle of Ballentine's 12 year old Scotch and sat by the pool for a while. As the sun went down, so did I.
I woke up at 5:30 AM, and decided to go video the sunrise. Everything in Key West focuses on the sunset, so I thought the sunrise would make a good background for the opening titles of the wedding video. Since parking in Key West is at a premium, even in the parking lot of the motel, I was hoping that my space would still be there if I was back in an hour. It was. It seems a cold front was passing over the island, so the sunrise was obscured by massive clouds. The wind was blowing, the temperature was falling, and road construction prevented me from getting to the beach. So, I returned to the room to regroup. The Lime Tree provided a Continental breakfast every morning, so while waiting for this to happen, I sat by the pool and rechecked all of my video equipment.When the breakfast appeared, I had some coffee and a muffin. I was going to walk around Key West while it was quiet, down past the light house to Mallory Square and back, in order to video as many landmarks and bars as I could before the town woke up. I would put this at the end of the wedding part as a travelogue feature. I also needed to visit Kino's Sandal Shop to pick up some sandal requests from the folks back in Miami. So around 8:30, I began walking.
The streets were fairly empty, as I had suspected. By the time I had taped my way to Mallory Square and over toward the Pier House, it was 10:30. Real time is not usually valid in Key West, as I passed Sloppy Joe's, I found it to be open and serving the early risers, eye-opener's as needed. Well, my eyes had been open for 5 hours, and a beer sounded pretty good. A local brew, Key West Ale, hit the spot and fueled me for the walk back to the Lime Tree. It was time took don the wedding attire need for a proper Key West wedding. So I put on my Hawaiian shirt. My shorts and sandals were good to go.
I had packed all of my video stuff in to a Plano rolling work case. I had 2 tripods strapped to the top. I hit the street pulling the Plano behind me and headed for the Hemingway House, five blocks away.I arrived at half past noon, introduced myself to the ticket sellers, and was waved on in. I was first to arrive, it seemed, but Linda, the Notary who worked for the House and would be performing the wedding services, introduced herself and showed me the area to be used. I walked around and found what I thought would be the optimum location for the camera I would set up and just let run. I would take the other camera and walk around getting shots from various angles.
Finally, people began to arrive. Most I didn't know. Bobby and Vicki arrived, but no one knew where the bride was. By 1:30, everyone was accounted for and the ceremony began. I felt it went well. I moved around to capture as much of the ceremony and attendees as possible. After the ceremony, champagne and Key Lime Pie were served. Folks began to leave. I saw my sister Vicki and her husband, Bobby hop on their bicycles and ride back towards the Galleon, where they were staying and where a semi-reception was being held. After taking my stuff back to the Lime Tree, I hiked down to the Galleon for drinks and snacks. I met up with some of my other relatives and eventually ended up at Mallory Square to watch the daily Sunset festivities. As I went back to the Lime Tree, I passed Bogart's and went in to have a fish and chips dinner with Guinness of course.
I woke up early again, so as soon as the office opened, I checked out and went back to Miami. Now, all I had to do was make a movie.
The wedding would be taking place at the Hemingway House, one of the many places that Ernest Hemingway called home at one time in his life. It was located 8 or so Key West blocks up Whitehead St, from the action around Mallory Square. The house was built in 1871, and Hemingway moved in around 1931. While he was away as a war correspondent, covering the Spanish Civil War, his wife Pauline finished the swimming pool in1938, that they had started a few years earlier. It was and still is the largest pool in Key West. The wedding would take place around the pool.
The Northcutt family had arrived in Miami and Tom and Mandy would be spending the night at my house on the 23rd of March. I took them to a place called 'The Grotto' over on Coral Way for dinner and a drink or two. Mandy had something called an 'Angry Pirate', that was still causing distress the next morning.
The check-in time at the Lime Tree was 3 PM, so I timed my departure accordingly. I loaded up my stuff and left Miami around 11 AM. The traffic was heavy all the way down the Overseas Highway, south to Key West. I arrived and checked in to the Lime Tree right at 3 PM. I called my sister on my cell phone to see where they were.They had planned on leaving Homestead and Wayne's World at 9:30 AM, which should have put them in Key West several hours before me. After a late start, they were just approaching the 7 Mile Bridge, which is 47 mile north of Key West. That meant it would be a while before they arrived.
Having some time to kill, and being very familiar with Key West, having visited many times since my 1st visit in 1960, I knew that Bogart's Irish Pub was just around the corner on Duval St. I also knew they had Guinness. So away I went. Despite the fact that Spring Break was in full swing, Bogart's was not crowded. I guessed that the youngsters were down in the Sloppy Joe's- Capt. Tony's area getting wasted. I found a window seat where I could watch for the Northcutt Convoy to proceed down Duval St. After a couple of hours and four pints of the good stuff, I decided they must have come in the back way, so I went back to the Lime Tree. Shortly after I returned, my sister called and said they were eating in, and they would see me tomorrow. Since I was staying at one end of Duval Street, and they were at the other, a little over a mile away, I would find a place nearby for dinner. Just down the street was Duffy's Steak & Seafood House. The meal was so-so, but filling. I went back to the room, broke open a bottle of Ballentine's 12 year old Scotch and sat by the pool for a while. As the sun went down, so did I.
I woke up at 5:30 AM, and decided to go video the sunrise. Everything in Key West focuses on the sunset, so I thought the sunrise would make a good background for the opening titles of the wedding video. Since parking in Key West is at a premium, even in the parking lot of the motel, I was hoping that my space would still be there if I was back in an hour. It was. It seems a cold front was passing over the island, so the sunrise was obscured by massive clouds. The wind was blowing, the temperature was falling, and road construction prevented me from getting to the beach. So, I returned to the room to regroup. The Lime Tree provided a Continental breakfast every morning, so while waiting for this to happen, I sat by the pool and rechecked all of my video equipment.When the breakfast appeared, I had some coffee and a muffin. I was going to walk around Key West while it was quiet, down past the light house to Mallory Square and back, in order to video as many landmarks and bars as I could before the town woke up. I would put this at the end of the wedding part as a travelogue feature. I also needed to visit Kino's Sandal Shop to pick up some sandal requests from the folks back in Miami. So around 8:30, I began walking.
The streets were fairly empty, as I had suspected. By the time I had taped my way to Mallory Square and over toward the Pier House, it was 10:30. Real time is not usually valid in Key West, as I passed Sloppy Joe's, I found it to be open and serving the early risers, eye-opener's as needed. Well, my eyes had been open for 5 hours, and a beer sounded pretty good. A local brew, Key West Ale, hit the spot and fueled me for the walk back to the Lime Tree. It was time took don the wedding attire need for a proper Key West wedding. So I put on my Hawaiian shirt. My shorts and sandals were good to go.
I had packed all of my video stuff in to a Plano rolling work case. I had 2 tripods strapped to the top. I hit the street pulling the Plano behind me and headed for the Hemingway House, five blocks away.I arrived at half past noon, introduced myself to the ticket sellers, and was waved on in. I was first to arrive, it seemed, but Linda, the Notary who worked for the House and would be performing the wedding services, introduced herself and showed me the area to be used. I walked around and found what I thought would be the optimum location for the camera I would set up and just let run. I would take the other camera and walk around getting shots from various angles.
Finally, people began to arrive. Most I didn't know. Bobby and Vicki arrived, but no one knew where the bride was. By 1:30, everyone was accounted for and the ceremony began. I felt it went well. I moved around to capture as much of the ceremony and attendees as possible. After the ceremony, champagne and Key Lime Pie were served. Folks began to leave. I saw my sister Vicki and her husband, Bobby hop on their bicycles and ride back towards the Galleon, where they were staying and where a semi-reception was being held. After taking my stuff back to the Lime Tree, I hiked down to the Galleon for drinks and snacks. I met up with some of my other relatives and eventually ended up at Mallory Square to watch the daily Sunset festivities. As I went back to the Lime Tree, I passed Bogart's and went in to have a fish and chips dinner with Guinness of course.
I woke up early again, so as soon as the office opened, I checked out and went back to Miami. Now, all I had to do was make a movie.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Me & Bill & Nancy
It was the fall of 1971. I had been playing guitar in an ever changing band in Panama City, Fl. The drummer and I were the constants,but the rest of the personnel changed, depending upon the whim of the bar owner. One week we were country, the next, rock'n'roll. The only thing we knew for sure was that when the summer ended, so did we.
I was in a family arrangement with a girl, her 2 kids, her mom, and her alcoholic step dad, Jim. We lived in a one bedroom apartment, which was not a problem while I was working all night playing, and mom and dad worked during the day. But when my job ended, we would need a bigger place. Jim was captain on a tourist boat that ran from Panama City Beach all around the bay, stopping at an island for a lunch on the beach. On busy days when I had off, I would help him out as 1st mate. All in all, it was not a bad life. But we knew it was going to end soon.
Out of the blue, the owners of the boat wanted to know if Jim could cruise the boat to Houston and run tours from downtown Houston, down the ship channel, to the park where the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas were located. In order to make a decision, Jim wanted to go to Houston to meet with the parties that would be involved at the restaurant where the boat would be docked and the tours would depart from. I had been to Houston in 1966 for a job training school. and knew the town a little, so I volunteered to drive him over on a day trip. We drove over and met with the parties involved at a very nice restaurant on the water. A tentative agreement was worked out, which Jim was happy with, so we headed back to Panama City. On the way, he said he would need help to run the boat, and since my situation would be over soon, would I like to be 1st mate? Sure, why not. I had been around boats all of my life and had been in the Navy, so helping on a 65 ft tour boat shouldn't be a problem. All I had to do was work the lines coming and going and sell beer and sandwiches to the tourists, and do all of the tour guide talk.It sounded like fun to me.
The band was to be dissolved the week after Labor Day, when the summer tourists began to disappear from the Red Neck Riviera, Panama City. We had 3 weeks to prepare to leave for Texas. This was not a problem, since everything we owned would fit in the 2 cars.
One week before departure, Jim got into too much Vodka and sunk the boat.
After all of the crying and cussing was over, we decided to go to Houston anyways. It was the only place I knew of to start over. My first wife was in Miami, so I didn't want to go south. Girlfriend and the little kids thought it would be too cold to go North with the winter coming on, so West it was. We had no money to speak of, but I had a credit card I hadn't used in a long time, so maybe it would get us started. Jim had 4 or 6 flats on the way over, but we made it. I got us a big room at a cheap motel, and we started looking for a place to stay and jobs.We found a 2 bedroom apartment on the west side of Houston we could manage. Jim found a job in construction, and I answered an ad for a trainee position at the convenience store chain- U-Totem.
I went to the Main office and applied, took the tests, and passed a lie-detector test. I was sent to a 'training store' where I did well enough to be assigned as night manager at one of the slower stores. As a few months passed I worked my way up through the ranks until I was worthy of a day manager position. At last, they were going to let me manager a 'busy' store. In order to do this, I had to go to another store to pick up the keys so I could open my new store the next morning. I had to go to one of the busiest stores in town. It was a 24 hour store that had the only outdoor beer garden in the chain. This was due to the location- just down the street from the Houston Post newspaper. The paper boys liked to eat and drink beer out back at all hours of the legal period where beer was allowed to be sold. I was told to stop by, ask for Bill, and get the keys for my new store.
I guess it was about 8 PM when I went into the store. The store, in addition to being near the newspaper, was just across the street from a very large apartment complex. The place was quite busy. I'm not exactly sure how it went down, but it was something like this. I approached the man behind the counter, who had a line of people waiting to check out, and asked to see Bill. The man informed me that he was Bill and what could he do for me. I'm here to pick up the keys to Store xx, I said. I'll get them for you in a minute, he said. So I went to the back of the store to look around. Minutes passed and still no keys. I knew he was busy, but I had things to do, so I reminded him again. Finally he reached under the counter, took a ring of keys and threw them in my direction, saying, Here's your damn keys. Now I'd like to think that since he didn't really know me, he wasn't throwing them at my head, but if I hadn't caught them, that's where there would have made contact. I put the keys in my pocket, said thanks very much and left, thinking that was that, and I didn't have to deal with Bill anymore.
In a month or so, the district manager stopped by and told me- Sid, you're doing a great job here, but you're not making any money. An opening has just came up at a 24 hour store and we'd like you to consider being the night manager there. It's in a great location and the guy that's going to be the day manager really knows how to run a store. Where's it at, I asked? Over by the Post. What's the guy's name? Bill. Crap, I'm not sure I can work with him. He's a little, umm, impulsive .But the money is good. Does he know who he'll be getting? Yeah, I think so. Well, I can sure use the money, so OK.
And that was how I met Bill. In a short time we began to get along. We covered for each other at the store. We did things together when we could get common time off. By this time, girl friend, and family had departed for Virginia, where Jim had been offered work. Now that I was making more money, I moved from the dump to a very nice apartment in the center of my work and other activites. I was sending money back to Florida to pay off the credit card that had saved us when we first arrived. I was informed by #1 wife that the divorce was final and I was a free man. She also said I had sent enough money and that I owed no more. So I began to put some away for a change.
Somewhere along the line, Bill and I had become really good friends. He showed me the little tricks that make a store profitable, and I introduced him to pot. Life was good. We worked long hours, and partied when we got a chance. In fact, the store was doing so good, and my reputation had risen thanks to Bill's lessons, I was offered a day manager position at one of the other busy stores. It was next to the largest singles apartment complex in Houston. It offered me the chance to have a night life for the first time in a long time. It was a 24 hour store, but the night manager was happy working nights, so it worked out well. Along about this time, Bill started dating a girl that also worked for U-Totem, named Nancy. She fit right in to the life style that Bill and I were trying to lead. We began all hanging out together. I would have a date when I could find one, but with the hours we worked, a normal person had a problem fitting in. There were times when we would borrow Nancy's car to go to a basketball game, or out to Gilly's, or other places. But after we brought it back one time filled with Taco Bell wrappers, from when we had a bad case of the munchies, she became more selective about lending it to us. We were running mostly with people from the Post or U-Totem. It was a good life. Bill and Nancy married, I moved back to Florida in 1974. The bonds of frienship we forged over those few years are as strong today as they ever were.We see each other at least once a year and try for more. We no longer indulge in some the vices of our youth, but beer, and BBQ, and Texas are forever. AMEN.
I was in a family arrangement with a girl, her 2 kids, her mom, and her alcoholic step dad, Jim. We lived in a one bedroom apartment, which was not a problem while I was working all night playing, and mom and dad worked during the day. But when my job ended, we would need a bigger place. Jim was captain on a tourist boat that ran from Panama City Beach all around the bay, stopping at an island for a lunch on the beach. On busy days when I had off, I would help him out as 1st mate. All in all, it was not a bad life. But we knew it was going to end soon.
Out of the blue, the owners of the boat wanted to know if Jim could cruise the boat to Houston and run tours from downtown Houston, down the ship channel, to the park where the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas were located. In order to make a decision, Jim wanted to go to Houston to meet with the parties that would be involved at the restaurant where the boat would be docked and the tours would depart from. I had been to Houston in 1966 for a job training school. and knew the town a little, so I volunteered to drive him over on a day trip. We drove over and met with the parties involved at a very nice restaurant on the water. A tentative agreement was worked out, which Jim was happy with, so we headed back to Panama City. On the way, he said he would need help to run the boat, and since my situation would be over soon, would I like to be 1st mate? Sure, why not. I had been around boats all of my life and had been in the Navy, so helping on a 65 ft tour boat shouldn't be a problem. All I had to do was work the lines coming and going and sell beer and sandwiches to the tourists, and do all of the tour guide talk.It sounded like fun to me.
The band was to be dissolved the week after Labor Day, when the summer tourists began to disappear from the Red Neck Riviera, Panama City. We had 3 weeks to prepare to leave for Texas. This was not a problem, since everything we owned would fit in the 2 cars.
One week before departure, Jim got into too much Vodka and sunk the boat.
After all of the crying and cussing was over, we decided to go to Houston anyways. It was the only place I knew of to start over. My first wife was in Miami, so I didn't want to go south. Girlfriend and the little kids thought it would be too cold to go North with the winter coming on, so West it was. We had no money to speak of, but I had a credit card I hadn't used in a long time, so maybe it would get us started. Jim had 4 or 6 flats on the way over, but we made it. I got us a big room at a cheap motel, and we started looking for a place to stay and jobs.We found a 2 bedroom apartment on the west side of Houston we could manage. Jim found a job in construction, and I answered an ad for a trainee position at the convenience store chain- U-Totem.
I went to the Main office and applied, took the tests, and passed a lie-detector test. I was sent to a 'training store' where I did well enough to be assigned as night manager at one of the slower stores. As a few months passed I worked my way up through the ranks until I was worthy of a day manager position. At last, they were going to let me manager a 'busy' store. In order to do this, I had to go to another store to pick up the keys so I could open my new store the next morning. I had to go to one of the busiest stores in town. It was a 24 hour store that had the only outdoor beer garden in the chain. This was due to the location- just down the street from the Houston Post newspaper. The paper boys liked to eat and drink beer out back at all hours of the legal period where beer was allowed to be sold. I was told to stop by, ask for Bill, and get the keys for my new store.
I guess it was about 8 PM when I went into the store. The store, in addition to being near the newspaper, was just across the street from a very large apartment complex. The place was quite busy. I'm not exactly sure how it went down, but it was something like this. I approached the man behind the counter, who had a line of people waiting to check out, and asked to see Bill. The man informed me that he was Bill and what could he do for me. I'm here to pick up the keys to Store xx, I said. I'll get them for you in a minute, he said. So I went to the back of the store to look around. Minutes passed and still no keys. I knew he was busy, but I had things to do, so I reminded him again. Finally he reached under the counter, took a ring of keys and threw them in my direction, saying, Here's your damn keys. Now I'd like to think that since he didn't really know me, he wasn't throwing them at my head, but if I hadn't caught them, that's where there would have made contact. I put the keys in my pocket, said thanks very much and left, thinking that was that, and I didn't have to deal with Bill anymore.
In a month or so, the district manager stopped by and told me- Sid, you're doing a great job here, but you're not making any money. An opening has just came up at a 24 hour store and we'd like you to consider being the night manager there. It's in a great location and the guy that's going to be the day manager really knows how to run a store. Where's it at, I asked? Over by the Post. What's the guy's name? Bill. Crap, I'm not sure I can work with him. He's a little, umm, impulsive .But the money is good. Does he know who he'll be getting? Yeah, I think so. Well, I can sure use the money, so OK.
And that was how I met Bill. In a short time we began to get along. We covered for each other at the store. We did things together when we could get common time off. By this time, girl friend, and family had departed for Virginia, where Jim had been offered work. Now that I was making more money, I moved from the dump to a very nice apartment in the center of my work and other activites. I was sending money back to Florida to pay off the credit card that had saved us when we first arrived. I was informed by #1 wife that the divorce was final and I was a free man. She also said I had sent enough money and that I owed no more. So I began to put some away for a change.
Somewhere along the line, Bill and I had become really good friends. He showed me the little tricks that make a store profitable, and I introduced him to pot. Life was good. We worked long hours, and partied when we got a chance. In fact, the store was doing so good, and my reputation had risen thanks to Bill's lessons, I was offered a day manager position at one of the other busy stores. It was next to the largest singles apartment complex in Houston. It offered me the chance to have a night life for the first time in a long time. It was a 24 hour store, but the night manager was happy working nights, so it worked out well. Along about this time, Bill started dating a girl that also worked for U-Totem, named Nancy. She fit right in to the life style that Bill and I were trying to lead. We began all hanging out together. I would have a date when I could find one, but with the hours we worked, a normal person had a problem fitting in. There were times when we would borrow Nancy's car to go to a basketball game, or out to Gilly's, or other places. But after we brought it back one time filled with Taco Bell wrappers, from when we had a bad case of the munchies, she became more selective about lending it to us. We were running mostly with people from the Post or U-Totem. It was a good life. Bill and Nancy married, I moved back to Florida in 1974. The bonds of frienship we forged over those few years are as strong today as they ever were.We see each other at least once a year and try for more. We no longer indulge in some the vices of our youth, but beer, and BBQ, and Texas are forever. AMEN.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)