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By the Chef at Worldwide Recipes
As told to the Chef at Worldwide Recipes
Chapter 7: A Tale of Two Lassies
[Note from the Chef: I have used the actual names of the young ladies in this account because they have no fear of embarrassment resulting from their actions. In order to preserve the dignity of the one genuine imbecile in this story, I shall remain nameless.]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... especially if you were a 12-year-old boy trying to figure out the mysterious workings of the adolescent female mind. In 1965 I had an enormous crush on not one, but two lovely young classmates, which in itself must raise serious questions regarding the workings of the adolescent male mind, but that's another subject for another time. To further complicate matters, Shannon Adams and Cathy Zephyr were best friends, and I doubt that I ever saw one without the other. This made seeing either of them doubly pleasurable, but made singling either one out as the target of my affection somewhat problematic. Lions and wolves use cunning and strategy to separate their intended prey from the herd, but they hunt in groups and I had no group of pre-pubescent, hormone riddled teenage boys to assist me. If being the lonely hunter weren't challenge enough, subsequent developments would also confirm that I was capable of neither cunning nor strategy.
After wrestling with my dilemma for several months, I arrived upon what seemed at the time to be the only reasonable approach. Employing the time-honored method of communication still favored by the socially inept younger members of society, I decided to write them each a long note. I still remember sitting hunched at my desk for hours, composing what I considered to be a perfectly organized, grammatically sophisticated, orthographically flawless declaration of my love for Shannon. Then, reasoning that my chances of winning the affection of one of these girls were exactly doubled, I wrote a nearly identical note to Cathy. I did have the good sense to implore each of them not to share the contents of the note with the other, trusting they could keep this one small secret from their best friend. In retrospect, this is where my plan seems to have originally jumped its track.
The next morning at school I managed to deliver each note to its intended recipient with a hand that I am sure must have been trembling, and waited nervously to see which of these lovelies would declare their undying love for me. As it turned out I didn't have to wait long; even before the lunch bell rang I was confronted in the hall by both of my inamoratas, and the looks on their faces told me that my repetitive but heartfelt sentiments had not had their intended effect.
Needless to say, they had compared the notes and I was shown to be the bumbling dolt that, until then, they had only suspected me to be. Much to my chagrin, all I had accomplished was to provide incontrovertible evidence to this fact. To make matters even worse, I had not only delivered this evidence in written form, immutable, irrevocable, and undeniable, but I had delivered it in duplicate as well.
It requires no great leap of insight to understand that I never did manage to forge a romantic alliance with either of these innocent young ladies, but I did learn a couple of valuable lessons from this humiliating experience: I learned that women cannot be trusted to keep a secret from their best friend; and I learned that I am a complete and total moron when it comes to relationships involving the fairer sex. The former lesson is one that I have never forgotten; the latter is one that I seem to forget at every opportunity.
Chapter 8: Back in the USSA (with apologies to the Beatles)
In October of 1968, shortly after my fifteenth birthday, my family moved back to the United States, and this time we settled in the affluent community of Rye, New York. The five years in Uruguay had been kind to my parents' finances, owing in large part to rampant inflation during our stay there; my father's income had remained more or less constant while everything around us was getting cheaper and cheaper. By the time we left, the house my parents had rented five years earlier was costing somewhere in the neighborhood of 47 cents a month, and my parents had saved and invested the balance, so when we arrived in the US they went on a spending spree. This extravagance included a whole bunch of new furniture, a new house on Long Island Sound to keep all the new furniture out of the rain, new cars, and a 19-foot sailboat named "Aunt Rhodie."
I entered the 10th grade at Rye High School (yes, I actually graduated from a school called "Rye High"), and began the life of a typical American high school student. I made friends slowly, being somewhat of an odd duck having lived in South America, speaking foreign languages, and talking about food all the time, but my new friends seemed oblivious to these things after a while, and friendships grew. I later realized that American teenagers are basically oblivious to everything at this age, but this is something I was not aware of at the time.
As was the case with so many teenagers during those years and ever since, my brother Bert had taken up the guitar. I resisted learning the guitar based on my then-current philosophy of "if everyone is doing it, then I want to do something different." As a result, I taught myself to play the tenor banjo, mandolin, ukulele, and several other stringed instruments to varying degrees of incompetence. Before long we had quite an impressive repertoire of songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Grateful Dead, and the Band to draw from, and entertaining our friends, our parents, and our parents' friends became a regular feature of our lives. We actually became pretty good after a while, thanks to Bert's excellent voice and musicianship. I never did learn to play a song without watching his hand to see what chord I was supposed to be playing, but we had fun.
I have already mentioned a few early interests that have followed me through life: travel, food, and the study of foreign languages, and during my senior year in high school I discovered another. It was my father's custom to ask my brother and me what was going on at school. In addition to the details of our academic lives, he was also curious as to high school sporting events, dances, and the like. He was chagrined at our complete lack of information on these subjects (obviously unaware of the oblivious nature of American teenagers), and this got me thinking; I wondered why the school didn't publish a weekly newsletter, and what could be done to remedy this obvious oversight.
The following day at school I mentioned this to a friend whose mother, unbeknownst to me, happened to sit on the school's board of directors. He told his mother about my idea, and before I knew it I was sitting in the board meeting proposing a weekly newsletter. I had prepared a short presentation detailing the type of information to be contained in the newsletter, how to go about collecting and preparing the information, printing it on the school's mimeograph machine, and distributing it to home rooms on Monday mornings. My proposal was greeted with immediate approval, and they asked me who was going to head this project. For some reason, all eyes turned to me.
Thus was born the Student Information Service at Rye High School, and I became a publisher for the first time. I spent several weekends editing, typing, collating, stapling, and bundling newsletters for delivery, until I learned the art of delegation. Before long I had a large cadre of volunteers, most of them younger girls who obviously appreciated the power of the press and those who control it. The Student Information Service continued for many years after my graduation, and my interest in publishing obviously continues to this day.
Chapter 9: Freshman Daze
In September of 1971, less than one month after my 18th birthday, I went off to college. Thanks to a mediocre academic record, outstanding SAT scores, and a guidance counselor who introduced me to college recruiters as "my right hand man," I was accepted to the George Washington University, a pricey private school in Washington, D.C. The campus is located in the northwest quadrant of Washington, just blocks away from the White House, the Washington Monument, and the Smithsonian Institution. It was an exciting place for an 18-year-old to be in 1971.
In accordance with the credo of the times, and very conscious of my duties as a fledgling member of the university community, I took the whole "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" thing very seriously. Looking back on it, I am grateful that the mantra wasn't "sex, drugs, rock and roll, and self-immolation" because, if it had been, I'm quite sure I would have felt compelled to set myself on fire at least once every day. Fortunately, with the sex, the drugs, and the rock and roll each taking about fifty percent of my time, I had no time left for self-immolation. It turns out I had no time left for schoolwork, either.
In my first semester, during which period I had fooled myself into thinking that I was a future physician and was therefore following the pre-med course of study, I enrolled in the normal course load of five courses. I dropped one course in the first couple of weeks and went on to score a C, two D's, and an F in the remaining four, leaving me with the unenviable but cosmically round number of exactly 1 for a grade point average. The university administration wasn't as appreciative of this accident of arithmetic as I was and decided to relegate me to an academic purgatory known as Secret Double Permanent Probation, which was their not-so-subtle way of warning me that if I didn't shape up they would cancel my student deferment and toss me to the local draft board - remember, this was in 1971 and the Vietnam war was in full swing. This level of academic discipline was so severe that I never met the requirements to be removed from Secret Double Permanent Probation, in spite of making the Dean's List in my senior year, and I was still on Secret Double Permanent Probation when I finally graduated four years later. Secret Double Permanent Probation is not to be taken lightly.
My first roommate was a charming fellow from Shaker Heights, Ohio named Howard Jacobs. Howard was a hard-working, conscientious pre-med student who took his college studies much more seriously than I did, and in him I had an affable and easy-going friend with whom to share living quarters. In me, Howard had the world's worst roommate. In my own defense, I will state that this was due more to the sex, drugs, and rock and roll than to any fault of mine.
I managed to find myself a girlfriend during the first few weeks of school, and so the sex angle was covered with the only drawback being that Howard would frequently find himself locked out of our room. To be honest, I'm sure this bothered him more than me. The "drugs" part was the easiest part. George Carlin said it best when his father asked him if there was a drug problem at his school and he said, "No, you can get anything you want." And the rock and roll was covered thanks to the portable record player I had brought along and the excellent collection of LP records that Howard had brought along. Lucky me.
Apparently Howard didn't consider himself so fortunate, so during the break between semesters he managed to find himself a private room where he could pursue his studies without the distractions provided by my misguided personal priorities. When I returned to campus after the holidays I found that I had a new roommate named Charlie James, and I was delighted to learn that Charlie and I had almost identical misguided personal priorities. Charlie brought along with him a friend named Nathan, and although Nathan wasn't a student, he lived in our closet for the remainder of the school year. Whenever anyone asked me who he was, I would say, "He's the guy who lives in my closet," and that would generally satisfy the curiosity of my fellow college students.
Sadly, I have lost touch with all these folks, and haven't seen or heard from Charlie or Nathan since I left the Washington area in 1975. I haven't been in touch with Howard since then either, but I hear about him through a mutual friend I talk to on a semi-once- in-a-while basis. I was happy to learn that Howard's dedication and hard work paid off as he completed his medical schooling at the world-renowned George Washington University School of Medicine and is currently a pediatrician with a successful practice in the Cleveland area. Lucky Howard.
Chapter 10: Living in a War Zone
At about the same time I went off to college, in what was disturbingly reminiscent of the old joke about the kid whose parents move and don't leave a forwarding address, my parents and brother were preparing to move South Vietnam. The Vietnam war was still going full force and this prospect didn't excite us very much, but once again IBM had made my father an offer he couldn't refuse.
So, shortly after I moved to Washington to begin a lackluster college career, my parents moved to Saigon and enrolled my brother in the American high school in Singapore. For the first time in the history of our family we were separated, and this was extremely difficult for all of us. Having moved so many times, and having been forced into new and foreign situations together for so many years, I believe we had become closer than most families. All of a sudden we found ourselves living in three different countries, separated by thousands of miles, and we all dealt with the separation as best we knew how. My brother and I both demonstrated our lack of satisfaction with the current situation by flunking out of school. Well, we didn't exactly flunk out, but we came as close as humanly possible, and our parents decided it was time for us to regroup for a while, and perhaps for my brother and me to mature a little. For the latter, they couldn't have chosen a better location than a war zone.
As you might imagine, virtually all the westerners in Saigon were young American GIs wearing Army fatigues, and with our bell-bottomed blue jeans, long hair, and brightly colored shirts (remember, this was 1972), my brother and I sort of stood out. In fact, we stood out so much that the young ladies who worked in the bars used to try to forcibly drag us into their places of "business" whenever we accompanied our mother on one of her frequent shopping trips. This led to more than one tug of war between my mother and the enthusiastic young ladies on the sidewalks of Saigon, each pulling one of our arms, and my mother developed phenomenal upper body strength as a result of all these skirmishes. My brother and I also developed exceptionally long arms.
Even though we befriended several GIs and visiting American college students, Bert and I were alone together most of the time, giving us a chance to practice our music and expand our repertoire. Boredom and the gentle persuasion of our mother caused us to volunteer to entertain at orphanages and Army hospitals, and this would become one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. We played for American GIs, most of whom were no older than we were, in intensive care and drug rehabilitation units, all victims of the same war in different ways.
We also entertained some of the most tragic victims of the war: the young orphans that populated countless orphanages in Saigon. Most of these children were bi-racial, the offspring of American GIs and Vietnamese mothers, and as such, outcasts in Vietnamese society. They lived a bleak existence, and their futures were bleaker still. We usually ended our set with "The Boxer" by Paul Simon. You remember it; it's the one with the long chorus of "Lai la lai, lai la lai lai lai la lai, lai la lai" at the end. We liked to finish with this number because the kids could sing along with the chorus, and it always left them wanting more.
We enjoyed playing at orphanages, and always went away with the feeling that, although we hadn't done anything to change the world, we had at least made some small, unfortunate children a little happier for a few minutes. Then several weeks later we made a second visit to one of the orphanages and were greeted by 30 or 40 youngsters running across the orphanage grounds towards us, all singing "lai la lai" at the top of their lungs. That's when we realized that maybe we had given them a little more than we thought, and in return they gave us far more than we could have hoped for.
Chapter 11: The Chef Answers Only to the Ambassador
During the eight months my brother an I were in Saigon with our parents (who had decided that we should both suspend our unspectacular academic careers for a semester), we also volunteered to go on tour with the U.S. Army Special Services, the same folks who used to put together the Bob Hope tours. We auditioned and were "hired" immediately, but we were told that in order to qualify for a Special Services tour, we would have to have some Army personnel in our band. We welcomed the opportunity to add some drums and another guitar to our duo, so we began holding auditions. In a couple of days we had added two GIs to the band: a corporal named Ralph on guitar and a private named Ben on drums, and after a few days of rehearsal we were ready to take our show on the road.
We also learned that in order to board military aircraft as civilians, we would need a "GS rating." The only rating that would qualify us to fly free of charge was "GS-15," which frankly meant nothing to us, but we signed the paperwork, had our pictures taken, and were issued identification proclaiming us to be "GS-15," whatever that was. Later we learned from our military and government friends that GS-15 is an extremely high civilian rank, and that of all the Americans in Vietnam, only the ambassador had a higher GS rating; even the head of the CIA in Vietnam was "only" a GS-14. Here I was, a long-haired, banjo-playing, 19-year-old temporary college dropout, and I was the second highest ranking American civilian in the whole darned country! I would say that this sort of thing could only happen in America had it not happened in Vietnam.
Our first gig was at the U.S. Army's rest and recreation base in Vung Tau. This was the place where deserving officers and enlisted men were rewarded with a vacation by the Army, and as such, was also a mecca for all the gorgeous young Vietnamese women hoping to hitch a ride out of their war-torn country as the bride of an American soldier. Naturally, we made the best of the situation. Ralph and Ben were particularly enthusiastic because this was much better duty than their desk jobs in Saigon, and certainly more desirable than being shot at by people trying to kill them. Once again, brother Bert and I seemed to attract more than our fair share of attention from the lovely young ladies, not only because of our non-government-issue appearance, but also because we were the closest thing to rock stars that tiny Vung Tau had ever seen. At the end of our scheduled 3-day stint all four of us immediately volunteered for another tour of duty, and then another, so that we managed to wrangle a full week in paradise out of our willing government hosts before they put us on a helicopter and sent us back to Saigon.
Our next engagement was a three-day stop at the officer's club in Da Nang, which was less than satisfactory for a variety of reasons. The first of these was that we were scheduled to play exclusively for officers, and not for enlisted men who would not only appreciate our music more, but who were, according to our adolescent view of the world, more deserving of entertainment. Our protests were heeded, and we were scheduled to play in the enlisted men's club as well.
The other thing that was just a wee bit troubling about Da Nang was that it was only about 14 miles from the demilitarized zone. Those of us who remember the Vietnam war will recall that the DMZ was a narrow strip of land separating North and South Vietnam, and this was a little closer to the actual war than any of us really wanted to be. For example, shortly after we arrived we decided to leave the Army base and go into the town of Da Nang. We were stopped by the sentry at the gate who told us that we weren't allowed to leave the base. Corporal Ralph began to literally jump up and down, waving his arms and proclaiming that Bert and I were GS-15s and as such we could go anywhere we wanted. The guard inspected our identification, and with a look of disbelief on his face, announced that we could go into town if we liked, but he would have to issue us sidearms. After a conference that lasted approximately three seconds and consisted more of wide-eyed expressions than actual spoken words, we agreed unanimously that we didn't want to go anywhere a pistol might be needed. We returned to the billet we had been assigned to practice our routine and drink a few beers instead.
The next morning we learned that the airfield adjacent to the base had been shelled by the enemy during the night, and wearing facial expressions reminiscent of our aborted journey into town, we also learned that this happened almost every night. Assurances that the airfield was rarely shelled during the day did little to boost our morale. Our little band played in the officer's and enlisted men's clubs according to plan, and three days later all four of us were happy to be on a plane returning to Saigon, even though the pilot has told us to watch out for the ring-shaped smoke trail that was the trademark of the Russian ground-to-air missiles that were so popular in this part of the country. Every eye was aimed out a window for the duration of the flight.
Upon our return we discussed the sanity of risking our lives for the sake of playing guitars, drums, and banjo, and even Ralph and Ben agreed that their miserable jobs behind desks were preferable to musical martyrdom, so we disbanded. Bert and I went back to the orphanages and hospitals and were much happier - and safer - for it.
To be continued... maybe.
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