Letter from Seoul 32

I’m glad to finally hear from you.  I can well imagine what you and R. are experiencing with the transition to another city.

In much younger days, a lifetime ago it seems, I bought an old two-story farmhouse (vintage 1927), from the old maid daughter of the original owners. At one time the family wheat farm literally covered the west-side of Ponca City (current population 30,000), and stretched for miles in every direction.

Anyone who stayed in Oklahoma during the double hell of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s (think of Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) was either tough as steel, or dumb as fuck.

The Nonamaker family with their west-side wheat farm were tough folks.  The same goes for my ex-wife’s family, the Abercrombies and the Elstons out west near the Oklahoma panhandle. I don’t know how you get blood out of a turnup, but those families who did not join the mass exodus of 70,000 “Okies” to the fertile San Joaquin Valley in Central California stayed and discovered new expressions of self-reliance.

My ex-wife’s grandmother described the daily ritual in the 1930s of hanging up wet white sheets over the outside windows and doorways to keep the dust out of the house, as much as possible. In those years, the wooden fence posts nearly disappeared beneath the onslaught of dust.

The John Deere tractor, hailed as a wonder of the Industrial Revolution for allowing farmers to cultivate land at a rate unimaginable compared to a plow and a mule, was a ticking time bomb of destruction. The soil on the Southern Plains of America, from Kansas-to-the Mexican border, is quite fragile and once it was overturned by the tractor in the early 20th century, it blew away.

Native Americans were genuine caretakers of the land, and did nothing to change what nature provided.

There is really nothing to recommend about Oklahoma and, with this in mind, the U.S. government used the area as a dumping ground for Native Americans. President Andrew Jackson, the last of the presidents to be born as a British citizen, never met a Native American he didn’t want to kill. He is responsible for the hideous forced removal of Native Americans from the American southeast – notably the Five Civilized tribes from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas – known as The Trail of Tears during the 1840s.

Donald Trump is not the first American president to forcibly remove people from their homes and communities because ... they were not of the Caucasian Persuasion.

Regardless of where Native Americans resided before being forced to live in the Oklahoma Territory, they all had the same respect for the land.

 My ex-wife’s father, born in 1928, came of age during Oklahoma’s double hell. There was nothing that man could not do. My father-in-law was part of the Occupation Forces in Japan at the very end of WWII. This experience allowed him to attend college on the G.I. bill, gain a degree as an engineer and work most of his life for the Conoco oil company in Ponca City.

When I married his daughter in 1982, my father-in-law made $30-an-hour.  As for me, about $7.50 an hour. He had already built his own home, built a lot of his furniture and could repair his car and pickup truck, and most major appliances.

 When I bought the old Nonamaker farm house in 1993, the old maid daughter had sold off the farmland and her parent’s house was surrounded by conventional residential neighborhoods, churches and the town’s only middle school.  The house still had the original heating system, small upright gas stoves in most rooms, the original plaster walls and a cistern off the enclosed back porch to collect rainwater.

For the next four years, “we” worked to “rehab” the old farmhouse.  To say “we” speaks to me, my ex-wife and her father.  My father-in-law was the professor, and I was the student.

During this period, I took time to reconnect with my father, the Old Gringo, in the old Aztec village where he lived out his life after “heading south” at age 38.

About a year before I left for Bahrain and the next phase of my life, a tornado touched down in Oklahoma. This happens every May like clockwork. There’s no specific calendar date, and there’s little time for fair warnings. It’s usually a perfectly warm, sunny day; one that inspires optimism ... until the temperature suddenly plummets and the sky rapidly darkens, first with a purple hue and then darkness with the sounds of tree limbs snapping like toothpicks and the wind velocity accelerating by the minute. It’s a sick feeling.

The tornado did some nominal damage to the peak of many residential roofs. Insurance claims were settled quickly, and roofing crews – usually hard working Mexican immigrants, were ready to “get after it.” New shingles are expensive, but the real cost is the labor.

My father-in-law scoffed at all that. He bought new shingles with the insurance money, and was soon re-roofing the damaged part of his house.  Some of his immediate neighbors struck up deals with him, and he re-roofed their houses, as well.

At the time he was 73-years-old, my age now.

I hope you and Roberto enjoy your new residency for years to come.

     *     *     *

At the risk of too much information, I look forward to waking up next to a 75-year-old woman in the next few days. This is not some Last Hurrah for two senior citizens, as “the heyday in the blood is tame” (Hamlet, Act III, scene iv).  I met Sookyung when she was 62-years-old, and she is still as beautiful as ever.

I’m very glad to hear from you after a lengthy absence. I can never discount the fact that my currency may have fallen and I’m regarded as a character bereft of a joie de vivre, as if bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet.

This is never my intent. 

This past Saturday I was at Gwanghwamun Square for the weekly Pro-President Yoon rally.

While the Trump Crime Family seems anxious for the American Empire to receive the Last Rites, so that the three Americans who own more wealth than the bottom 170 million can really loot and gut the system, and officially confer wage-slave status on the majority of citizens ... Korea is also at a serious crossroads.

So, I have my issues with stress regarding the fate of my country. And it’s the same for Sookyung and her circle of family and friends regarding the fate of Korea.

To reach the platform of the Gwanghwamun subway station for the trip home, it’s best to be patient and wait for the street-level elevator.

An older couple got on the elevator before it was too late and the doors closed. As they were also of the Caucasian Persuasion, I immediately channeled the attitude of Donald Sutherland’s Hawkeye Pierce in Altman’s MASH, and said: “Something tells me you’re not Korean. 

The wife, with amusement, said: “We are Canadian.”

“I am very glad to meet you,” I said, and with sincerity.

As we left the elevator, we lingered for a good 10-minutes (perhaps longer) before going through the turnstile and heading for the subway platform.

 In short, this couple is from Toronto. The husband is 88-years-old, and the wife is 85. They were absolutely marvelous. This is not their first time to Seoul, but it’s been 18-years since their last visit.

Of course, it was impossible to avoid some basic topics ... like:

- How is it possible that enough Americans voted for Trump?

- How much longer before he’s thrown out of office?

We didn’t bother exchanging names, yet the couple stressed that:

a) most Canadians know Americans are better people than their politicians; 

b) Canada is already benefiting from the upheaval in America with more U.S. residents moving north – to include doctors and academics, especially with Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump.

 “I’ve already been to Vancouver to check it out as a Plan B. I think my country is headed for a civil war.”

“Most Canadians avoid living in Vancouver because it rains all the time. You should consider Toronto.”

How inspiring to still be kicking around and traveling in the mid-to-late 80s.

 This is my idea of a life worth living.