OCEAN VOYAGE

TUMBLEWEED TALES

ONE OF A COLLECTION OF BLOGS, PERSONAL STORIES, COMMENTARIES, BOOK REVIEWS, MEMORIES, AND OTHER STUFF FROM THE PEN OF LEE WEAVER

AN OCEAN VOYAGE

TO THE ORIENT

Back in the glory days (18 years old), there was a nationwide educational and travel group seeking folks my age to come in and sign up for potential free trips.  A friend of mine two years older had signed up and got an extended stay in San Antonio.  So, I dutifully signed up and went back to school to wait for a call.  Nothing happened for a couple years, so I transferred up to Texas Tech University and was studying Petroleum Engineering.  My grades were terrible that semester (my first time away from the discipline of home), so in June 1953 I went out to Carlsbad, New Mexico to work in the oil fields.  Being farther from San Angelo, naturally, I got a call to come back there for some additional qualifying.  I took a couple days off, drove to San Angelo, passed the next set of qualifying okay, drove back to Carlsbad.  Since my grades had been unacceptable, and thinking my trip might be called at any time, rather than re-enrolling at Tech for the Fall semester I just stayed on my job in the oil patch.

Well, it took a little longer than expected, but the next call informed me that I could pick up my ticket in San Angelo on December 18 (1953).  I went to the bus station early that morning and found that 15 or 16 other winners were scheduled for the same first leg of the trip.   After a long night in which the bus stopped at every hamlet between San Angelo and El Paso, we arrived at the border city like five A. M.  We disembarked at a training facility and finally got some food.  After checking to see if everyone made it, we were taken to a clothing shop, and every one fitted out with new clothes (at first it seemed rather strange that grown young men would have to wear school uniforms but that was the norm).

Our first schooling would take place at a sprawling complex, where the living quarters were six-man cabins with upper and lower bunk beds.  This being mid-winter and those cabins not being insulated, we had some really cold sleeping.

I never was able to figure out how I was chosen but I missed some parts of the schooling – I was appointed to clerk for the drill sergeant.  As an assistant, I didn’t really have any leadership responsibility, it was more record keeping.  We had two six-week teaching sessions, then a short break as we were assigned to long-term classes.  I was assigned to a nine-month electronics course.  We did not have classes on Saturday and Sunday; Carlsbad was only about three hours’ drive so that became our “take-a-break” place on weekends.  Since I had a car on campus I was running a profitable shuttle service.  It also helped that I had lived in Carlsbad for several months and knew the territory.   The big entertainment was the Eddy County Barn Dance on Saturday nights.  (Carlsbad is in Eddy County, NM.)  The event occasionally featured some of the bigger names in country music, along with some up-and-coming artists and some over-the-hill.  Regardless of the music it was a good place to meet girls! 

After I finished electronics school, I had a break at Christmas 1954, then continued my travels.  The day after Christmas, I left San Angelo to fly to Seattle/Tacoma.  I embarked in early January 1955 on a large ship capable of carrying approximately four thousand (4,000) passengers with a crew of 500.  It took about fourteen (14) days to sail to Yokohama, Japan, bypassing Hawaii.  Most of the passengers preferred board games; being a voracious reader, I read every book on the ship the first week, then slept the rest of the trip.  Many of the passengers debarked at Yokohama; I continued for a three-day cruise to Inchon, Korea.  While I was living in Korea the next year I made a couple vacation trips to Japan, seeing more of Tokyo, and visiting a resort at Mount Fujiyama.  It was Spring, Fujiyama was snow-capped, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and the countryside was beautiful!  

By the way: the “cruise ship” was actually a Navy transport; and those school uniforms on all the young men: every one of them had a patch over the breast pocket denoting “U S ARMY!”  Uncle Sam treated me to an all-expenses paid cruise and eleven months in the Orient!

© Lee Weaver

2023

HEMINGWAY LAND

TUMBLEWEED TALES

ONE OF A COLLECTION OF BLOGS, PERSONAL STORIES, COMMENTARIES, BOOK REVIEWS AND OTHER STUFF FROM THE PEN OF LEE WEAVER

CUBA!! HAVANA!!!  The mere names stir my enthusiasm!  Undergird those names with the Battleship Maine; San Juan Hill; Teddy Roosevelt; the Bay of Pigs; the Cuban missile crisis; revolution!!!  How much excitement can one experience?

It has been said many times: the greater regrets are those of things NOT done – rather than actual happenings or events. One of my greater regrets is that I never got all the travel events pulled out of my bucket list.  Uncle Sam drafted me in the Army and provided transportation to visit Korea and Japan.  Much later I got to visit England and Ireland; France, Belgium, and the Netherlands; Germany and Austria; The Slovak Republic; then still later Israel and Colombia; each and all exciting in their own way; but Cuba stands high on my wish list! 

The closest I’ve been to the Caribbean is high in the sky, flying over from Miami, Florida to Bogota, Colombia, the islands hardly more than specks from 35,000 feet overhead.  Among those islands are names that stir the imagination: US Virgin Islands, St Croix, Martinique; and not least among the great is Cuba – in my mind, the land of Hemingway, the land of intrigue!  Intrigue in the sinking of the Maine, in the introduction of Russian missiles. But more to the present considerations – the land of Hemingway. 

Despite what some would describe as a life debauched, Ernest Hemingway was a writer of acclaim. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”  Hemingway was a storyteller, and to the continuing good fortune of present and future generations, he committed his stories to paper.  Hemingway is one of the great names among authors of American literature.  Even so, sometimes his short stories fail to show his creative writing, even displaying his darker side.  In this writer’s estimation, “The Indian Camp” was clearly a failure to give credit to Hemingway’s great storytelling; it’s as if his novels and short stories are written by two different authors.  (Caveat: I’ve read more of his novels than his short stories. Notwithstanding “The Indian Camp” Ernest Hemingway was a great author.)

Ernest Hemingway’s life had ups and downs like a yoyo.  When he was up, he was turning out novels that earned a spot in great American literature and earned a fortune for the author.  When he was down, he was in a hospital being given electro-shock treatments.  He was thought to have experienced hemochromatosis, an iron metabolism deficiency which has side effects including fatigue and depression.  Depression was a frequent presence in Hemingway’s life.  One considers whether the condition may be hereditary: Ernest’s father, two siblings, and a granddaughter all took their own lives.  (After Ernest’s death at his place in Idaho, his wife tried to characterize it as an accident while cleaning a gun, but it is commonly understood to have been suicide.)   

Welp, this started out to be all about Cuba! but somehow Hemingway got involved.  Considering his long ties to the island, the fact that he lived there twenty years, and the fact he is almost revered there, it just naturally turned that way.  Even so, in perusing through the book stacks at a local library I came across books by Chanel Cleeton.  Originally from Florida, Ms. Cleeton grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the Cuban Revolution.   Her books that I’ve enjoyed reading are When We Left Cuba, Next Year in Havana, The Last Train to Key West, and The Cuban Heiress.

The family history stirred her interest in politics and history, and she pursued a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the American International University in London, followed by a master’s degree in global politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ms. Cleeton also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law.  (I’m sure many lawyers have written textbooks and legal tomes, but how many have been successful at writing entertaining novels, as have Cleeton and Grisham?) Visitors to Cuba will enjoy unforgettable, unrivaled experiences: exotic foods, rhythmic music, colonial architecture, Caribbean culture and history.

Regardless of your desire (or lack thereof) to visit Cuba, Chanel Cleeton’s novels are engrossing, hard to put down.

© Lee Weaver

November 2023

FAITH OR FATE

FAITH OR FATE?  ALMOST A CONVERT TO CATHOLICISM

When I started college at the local junior college my best friend was David B________. Because of the Texas September 1st rule, he was a year behind me in high school, although there was only a four-month difference in our ages.  Since I graduated at age 16, it was an easy decision to delay college for a year while I “matured” and decided on a major; thus, David and I started college at the same time.  

We were both majoring in engineering, so we were in a lot of classes together, which led to a lot of togetherness. That included being at each other’s family home frequently.  David and my dad often jibed each other about Republican vs Democrat (my Dad was an old-time Democrat, not to be confused with today’s socialist progressives.)  David’s Dad gave us investment advice – basically, never invest more than you can afford to lose!  In our late teen lives that meant NO investing!

David’s family were Catholic – there were eight children – I think five boys and three girls.  David was the third youngest; there was another boy Charley two years younger and a girl three years younger than that.  Being the youngest child, the girl Esther Claire was nicknamed “Poopsie,” an anglicized version of French “poupe’e” or “doll.”  At that time David and I were eighteen, and Poopsie was thirteen; in other words, a “kid sister.”   The whole family were very friendly and accepting of me, and though being raised Baptist I from time to time would go with their family to Catholic church. (Sitting or standing beside me, David would give me signals when to stand or sit or kneel.)  David and I did almost everything together – double-dating, hanging out with the other guys, or just hanging around his home.  I was always quite comfortable with or around his family, and they were with me.

So, little sister was 13 while I was 18; five years is not an acceptable margin at those ages.  BUT!!! Jump ahead four years! I had gone off to college for a couple years and was in the army two more years.  I was discharged in early December 1955 and returned to San Angelo.  David had got ahead of me at Texas Tech, and as I was planning to reenter as a Junior for the Spring term in January 1956, David was a senior, about to graduate in June, so we were planning to get an apartment together in Lubbock for that semester.

In the meantime, while I was away with Uncle Sam, David’s family had moved from San Angelo to Corpus Christi. After Christmas, David invited me to come down to Corpus and spend the New Year’s weekend of 1955-56 with his family.  The Knights of Columbus (a Catholic social/fraternal entity) was planning a New Year’s Eve social and dance, and the entire B_______ family (plus me) attended.  Most of the older boys in the family were married.  David, younger brother Charley, Poopsie, and I were the singles in the family group.  I don’t remember who David and Charley danced with (perhaps younger sister?) but I danced a whole lot with Poopsie.  She was the smoothest dance partner I had ever danced with (in school proms etc.)!

After the party, we returned to their home, and as we were walking from the car to the house, Poopsie came up beside me and planted a hearty kiss on my cheek, saying “You deserve that!!” but then slipped away.

I don’t know whether I left my brain in Korea, or naivete or plain stupidity took away perception and good sense, but I realized in later years, that on that New Year’s weekend, I totally missed the fact that 13-year-old “kid sister” was now a 17-year-old, lovely young woman!! And five years is not so much of a difference between 17 and 22!

FAITH OR FATE?  Did I fail to put my faith in circumstances; or was it our fate that a match was not intended?  The only thing I can say in retrospect is that I had a great appreciation for that family and would have been pleased to be a part of it! And if I had, likely I would have converted to Catholicism.  I didn’t – I remained in Southern Baptist churches from thence to now; I was ordained a Baptist Deacon in 1964, and in 1989 was elected to the board of trustees of a major Baptist Seminary. While on the Board I served the Seminary as Chair of the Board.       

That apparently was my fate – the road not taken!

Quite sometime later, (late 1990s or early 2000s) my wife and I would go to Lubbock occasionally to visit her uncle, and that gave me the opportunity to visit with David.  After my wife died in 2010, I no longer was going to Lubbock. Much more recently I found that David had passed away in February 2017.  In his obituary, I discovered that Esther Claire (“Poopsie”) was married to Fred P_____ and that they lived in Florida. Mr. P______ passed away in April 2020. 

 Checking Facebook recently, I found that Esther Claire at this age looks just like I remember her mother (also named Esther) from sixty-five years ago.

© Lee Weaver

August 19, 2023