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| 新宿御苑 |
I'm not in Vermont anymore.
After another hop (Tokyo to Naha, on Okinawa) and a bus ride to the MAC Terminal at Kadena Air Base and I'm at my first real duty assignment. Where I wait for a few hours before the Security Policeman (SP) at the terminal calls my shop and threatens to arrest the shift supervisor if he didn't "get his ass to the MAC Terminal and pick up your airman right effing now!"
My first interaction with an Air Force SP was rather positive. (They would not all be so positive over the next twenty-four years.)
The next day I'm out and about on the base, walking around to get my bearings, amazed that I'm in short sleeves, in February. Now most of the other folks out and about are wearing their field jackets. The civilians are also wearing winter coats. In my head I'm thinking, "WTF, it's gotta be 55 degrees out here, what's up with these people? It ain't that cold!"
Bear in mind that I had gone from a snowy cold Denver, Colorado, to a frigid snowy Vermont, then halfway around the world to a kinda-semi-tropical island in the Pacific in less than a day. So to me it was warm. Fast forward a year later and I too am wearing a field jacket in 50-degree weather. Perspective, it makes a difference.
Fast forward seven years, I'm no longer a single Airman, I'm a married Staff Sergeant with one kid. We're driving up I-91 from Bradley Field to the ancestral casa and I'm amazed that all the road signs are in English. Nearly seven years of all the signs being in either Japanese or Korean, sometimes with English on them, and I'm back home, amazed (again) at how different my world is.
Truth be told, after that long stretch in Asia, I'm once again a stranger in a strange land.
All of my days are
Only glimpses of a hazy
Future, beyond thought
* With apologies to Robert Heinlein, yes, I read the book, yes, I liked the book.
I can relate to the perspective about temperature. Back in the late eighties or early nineties my company sent me to the Orlando area to visit a customer's plant in mid December. Since I was a smoker I was distressed to learn that I was booked into a nonsmoking room since that was all that was available. Being one who usually follows the rules I did not smoke in the room, however after my morning shower the next day I was jonesing pretty badly for my nicotine fix. I went out onto the balcony in slacks and tee shirt to have my first smoke of the day. The weather was fairly pleasant at 55F with a slight drizzle after coming from Western PA where it was 15F and heavy snow. It was puzzling to see all the people walking around outside with hats and coats and gloves. To me that was nuts. A few even gave me looks like I was the crazy one. As you say, perspective............
ReplyDeleteYup, it all depends.
DeleteSome 45 years ago I was on my first deployment to the Med in the Good Ship Independence. I had already experienced a winter yard period with no heat and iffy hot water and work ups.
ReplyDeleteLess than eight years later, I had completed four deployments, two to the Med and Nor Lant and two West Pac and Indian Ocean. Married, first child and divorced.
Time flies...
DeleteYup, went from Michigan to North Dakota, just couldn't understand the lack of trees. Even around the farmsteads. Amazing. Spent many of my off weekends in Yellowstone,for the fishing. Nice times.
ReplyDeleteMy sole trip to North Dakota (Minot AFB) was in the late spring of 1989, early June to be precise, at the same time as the incidents in Tienanmen Square. I was amazed by the lack of trees, the general flatness of the region, and how late the sun stayed up at night. Didn't see that last bit again until Germany, which is at a higher latitude than most people realize.
DeleteThere 65/66 assigned to the field fms. Worked mids for age. As their troubleshooter. No truck, just a spare tractor with no heat. Plenty of blue fingers and noses.
DeleteMan, that must have been "fun," didn't know you were an old SAC guy. Cool.
DeleteHey AFSarge;
ReplyDeleteWhen I returned to the world in 1991 after spending 5 years in Germany then the Gulf, I was in culture shock, the first thing I thought was "where all the American cars come from?" The next thing was all the fast food restaurants, LOL It was on my bucket list to make it to the far East, if I had stayed in the service, I would have done a hitch or 2 in Korea. My game plan was to avoid CONUS service as much as possible because my MOS is specific or "Real World Driven". And unless I got assigned to Meade, I would be doing "make work". Oh well, wasn't planning on the Soviet Union going belly up. I still plan on going over there and see everything one day.
I get that, I spent 14 years overseas, only 10 in the States.
DeleteGoing cold turkey from good German beer and the lovely schnitzel in my area of Germany was tough. But the many micro breweries helped, also my wife does a pretty nice schnitzel, now if I only had a good recipe for Zigeunerschnitzel!
They have this arcane and eldritch thing called... der weltweit vernetzte Computerinformationsdienst that you could always fall back onto, after sacrificing some fish, a fingertip and your sanity...
DeleteNope. Most of those recipes suck. DAMHIK
DeleteBeing raised in the high Rockies, heat + humidity bothers me. Always thankful my service was in Germany. The open Bahnhof platform, January in Bremerhaven, was a tad brisk even for a Colorado lad.
ReplyDeleteLoves me some Front Range Colorado weather.
DeleteOne thing I noticed after being assigned to the Far East for two tours and frequent TDYs there from the rest of my assignments was that while I never learned to actually read the road signs, I soon was able to recognize the road signs that I needed to get where I was going. What started out being just squiggles soon became recognizable shapes. Human adaptability I guess. The Kadena Officer's Wives Club published a handbook with directions to most of the local attractions. They frequently read something like "Go out Gate 2, Turn right at Godzilla, follow that road until you see the yellow VW on the roof top, turn right again, proceed to the bridge, Destination is on the left." Worked like a champ. Godzilla was a large model on top of a building a la' the movie. The VW was the rear end of a Bug fastened to the store front. It was entertaining.
ReplyDeleteAs to weather. After being born in New Mexico, moved to Kadena at 3, Leavenworth at 7, then Hawaii at 9, Little Juvat was pretty acclimated to warm weather. Had to forbid him to wear a parka to school one day in Hawaii when the temperature got down to 60. Dropped him off at the off base school, and all his Hawaiian classmates were dressed in snow suits, complete with parkas with the hoods up and zipped tight. I was in my short sleeve Class C's. All a matter of perspective.
Nice Haiku, BTW.
I can actually read Korean, don't know what it says most of the time, but hey, I know the alphabet. 😁
DeleteThere are some Japanese words I recognize but as for the rest, nope. 😥
Weather, it's a thing. When my cousin finished USAF Basic in November he came home to go hunting with us. There was a foot of snow on the ground that year, poor guy was used to Texas November, lost his ability to handle Vermont November. So the various climate changes we deal with in life (other than the made up ones in Greta's addled noggin) are best dealt with gradually. Though going from cold to warm is pretty easy.
Glad you noticed the 俳句. 😉
Ha. Cold weather. It's really interesting watching all the yankees come down here and expecting it to be sun and fun and warm, and all suddenly run to the nearest box store when it gets down to the 40's.
ReplyDeleteBecause, here in North Central Florida (yes, they actually call it that) we are basically in a giant oak swamp, so we get much the same humidity and wind as, well, the Moors of Scotland. And when it's a breezy 45 degrees with humidity around 90% and the winds a-blowin around 15mph, that chill will cut to the bone. Any colder and, well, there's a reason there are no more orange groves up to the Flo-Go border, like there was in the early 70's.
And they get laughed at by the fat guy in shorts and a t-shirt and sandals.
Yes. I am a jerk. Darned proud of it, in fact.
(though, honestly, anything lower than 40 is beginning to hurt my hands and feet. getting old sucks.)
Try living in Minnesnowda sometime........ hit 46F this 0630 outside my backdoor......
DeleteBeans -
DeleteDefinition of a Yankee:
1) To a Southerner, a Yankee is someone from the North
2) To someone from the North, a Yankee is someone from New England
3) To someone from New England, a Yankee is someone from Vermont
4) To someone from Vermont, a Yankee is someone who likes apple pie
Old Vermont saying...
Yankees don't leave the homeland. If they do, they're no longer Yankees.
Nylon12 - Two seasons in Minnesota, winter and July 4th. Amirite?
DeleteIn midwinter, Minnesota and eastern ND are usually as cold or colder than Thule Greenland...then there are times in summer with a climate similar to Papua New Guinea...there was one summer when a fellow student from British Guiana was complaining about the heat and humidity...
DeleteThe north tends to both extremes doesn't it?
DeleteRoger that Sarge.
ReplyDelete😂
DeleteForestall was homeported in Norfolk when I was on her, and I quickly learned that the best way to deal with the summertime heat and humidity of coastal Virginia was to visit the Med for six or seven months with five thousand of my closest friends.
ReplyDeleteI recall that it snowed enough once in Norfolk to cause a major traffic shut down. Or as we would have said in Philly, "A light dusting." Speaking of snow, we replaced our elderly snow thrower with a new one two years ago, and as expected, little to no snow after that.
Perhaps the weather gods hold back snow if enough people buy snow throwers.
Nice post for reminiscing.
I was in Norfolk for the commissioning of USS Nitze (DDG 94). Started the day (05 March 2005) with a cold rain, then it got warm (and kept raining), then we got to go aboard for a tour. When we came out it was raining. We headed back north in the wee hours of the 6th, slowly, as everything was covered in a heavy frost.
DeleteGotta love the weird weather at times (as long as I'm not out in it).
My first few days in Germany were pretty magical. I spent two or three days in Frankfurt at the holding depot called the good light coMy first few days in Germany were pretty magical. I spent two or three days in Frankfurt at the holding depot called the Gutleut Kaserne, and once I got an assignment down by Kaiserslautern - called K town by the GIs-I had my first real day in Germany. It was a charming little town that the war had passed by just outside Rammstein airbase. Having had German in school I thought I would be in my element. I could not understand a word they were saying “please speak slower“ became my normal greeting.
ReplyDeleteFunny what we remember in life that’s just seemed as routine. Those days in the army are now one of the highlights of my life I think. You never know what will be cherished in the future as you are going through it
We knew all about K-Town, the Germans I worked with called it that as well.
DeleteIt was nice being in NATO, far, far from the US Army and the "official" USAF.
Scrappy spell checker.
ReplyDeleteCrappy not scrappy.
Gutleut Kaserne.
Now I spell it right and then the damn spellchecker “corrects” it
Hahaha!
DeleteI usually turn spell check off, it doesn't know as many words as me...
Grew up in Northern Illinois, about 60 miles SW of Chicongo. Moved to Southern Kalifornia when I was 31, and was amazed when people bundled up because 50*F = COLD in SoCal.
ReplyDeleteMoved here to Northern Colorado two years ago, and our first winter was "Some Adjustment Required", especially for my poor little wife who grew up in SoCal.
She'd never owned a pair of cold-weather gloves, a "good winter jacket", cold-weather boots, or a snow brush/scraper.
And now we know that when it's 20* or less, even bright and sunny, we just stay home.
20 or less is good stay at home weather.
DeleteI grok coming home to America. One of the high value experiences impossible to describe to those who never have.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is indescribable in many ways.
Delete