Typhoon, Seoul, Pleurisy and Warm Saki

'It's not the years, it's the mileage.', Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones.

On that basis my next birthday should make me at least 115 years old.

September 10,1945 puts me on a merchant ship in a convoy going from Okinawa to Korea when Typhoon Ida hit. My stomach was not built for being on a lurching ship and every time that fucking ship slammed into the wild ass ocean my stomach went with it. Puking didn't happen happen but at the time I was hoping to have a relief vomit.

The Captain, God bless his gay soul (He had made a pass at me and the other two GI's stationed aboard the ship.) broke away from the convoy and found a cove out of the typhoon. So while the storm raged away from the cove my two buddies and I spent 4-5 days swimming off the side of the ship.

It was one hell of a long way down from the deck to the water and we didn't have the balls to dive so we jumped. The water was colder than a whore's heart but when you're 20 years old you're too stupid to care.We used a Jacobs ladder to get back to the deck. That was even more stupid.

Climbing a Jacobs ladder, attached to a gently rolling ship, put you in danger of getting slammed against the side of the fucking ship and breaking a few bones.

Seoul was a world unto itself. By comparison hot, dusty Fort Sill and Lawton, Oklahoma were garden spots.There must have been concrete roads but I don't remember any. Our barracks had been Japanese officer's quarters. No showers but small, circular, copper bath tubs that we had to fill by hand with water.

After we set up our so called radio command post there wasn't anything to do but sit around. No incoming messages, no outgoing messages. By then I was a Sergeant and knew that I was overpaid. Should have, as they said in the army 'backed up to the pay table'.

Going into Seoul sounded terrific until I tried it. Getting laid sounded even better until you saw the hookers who just looked like shit.Getting smashed on saki was the big deal but one time was enough for me, forever. Heated saki is not for sissies or any social drinkers.

So the first alternative was for me to get pleurisy which is some kind of a fucking experience, even at 20.
Going to the 'radio shack' in a jeep that seemed to find every fucking pot hole in the dirt road. The ride an exercise in sharp, stabbing pain with every hole.

Shooting craps in the latrine was our major distraction. For some weird reason we were not allowed to shoot craps in the barrack's sleeping quarters. We didn't care.The officers thought we were disgusting shooting craps in a latrine. But again, we didn't care.

A favorite cousin of mine Seymour, tracked me down. Great fun. Seymour was an officer assigned to the Military Police and had hair raising stories of how the GI's treated Korean women and ordinary Koreans who were found wearing three pieces of GI clothes. Two was the limit, three meant that the American GI would beat the shit out of the Korean.

Other very memorable memories include seeing women on their knees washing clothes in the ditch along the side of the road. And who could forget seeing the women with a baby on their backs, one in the belly and one in their arms while carrying something on their heads. The husbands walked about five paces ahead of the wives carrying nothing but their superiority.

That was my first exposure to 'male superiority'.

Jewish homes, in my day, were matriarchal. The man made a living, the wife ran the house.My Mom, whose name was Ida, was no slave.

My Pop was, basically, pussy whipped. And he seemed, in retrospect, to enjoy it.

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