Frogtails, Faces you remember
TravelI love to travel and have been inspired to write my own stories by the adventures of Patrick Martino. Here is an interesting E-mail written by Jim Heikkinen… while serving in Iraq.. He also answered some of my questions about Iraq. Jim and I have worked together for years. Last year he was was called up in the U.S. Army Reserves and spent time in the Middle East He has graciously given me permission to share his note with you by publishing it on this web site. I’ve approached him about writing more of his adventures. Stephanie Blair is another co-worker who also loves to travel and has agreed to share her stories and photos with us. Here is a mini photo essay of Stephanie in Egypt. You have heard the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. The same might be said about people. If you took a drive out my way and ran into me and my neighbors, it would be understandable if you thought none of us had been much out of the county. We probably don't look like we have. One neighbor is a retired dairy farmer, another works at the university. We each have built our own humble homes and drive modest vehicles. Underneath the country exteriors are some pretty amazing stories. I had known the dairy farmer for over ten years before he ever mentioned that he had been in the service. Pressing him a little I found out that he was part of the occupying forces in Japan after World War II and spent a year overseas. It turns out he has loads of very interesting stories that he is willing to share if you would but ask him. Driving by and maybe buying a bale of hay from him, the topic probably wouldn’t come up. The other neighbor spent a year in Africa while in the Peace Corps. He is currently married to a Chinese woman and has been to Beijing, China to meet her parents. Within a mile of where I live are two school teachers. One is a retired Air Force Colonel and former test pilot and astronaut . I asked him one time how many countries he had been in and he didn't know. He suggested maybe thirty or forty. The other teacher was the daughter of an ambassador or something. She has spent most of her early years in one country or other outside the U.S. I played cards for fifteen years with another old fellow that lived down the road about three miles. He spoke freely of his days as a bomber in World War II and then his many years as a pilot for SAC. He had also mentioned being a pilot for the likes of Rocky Marciano after he retired from the Air Force. One item that he never mentioned, and I only learned about at his funeral, was that he had been the tour pilot for the Mamas and the Pappas in the 60’s. I would have loved hearing some of his memories of those days. All that said, below is an outline of my own adventures and here is a table of places I’ve spent time in. My own adventuresLast update: 2004.12.20. Added a photo from Europe and the Hoover Dam. The 00’s2004Jeanie and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Hawaii. I had to go to Washington D.C. for work and stopped off to visit my sister in Frederick, Maryland. Cincinnati is still on my frequent visit list. Steve and Mary Ellen moved to Boston so we went up over the 4th of July weekend to visit. Nick started school in Morehead, Kentucky so we went to the pre-college, moved him in and intend to visit for family weekend this fall. 2003This must have been the water year. Several of us got together and went white water rafting. Later in the year we took a seven night cruise in the Western Caribbean out of Miami Florida. 2001I attended a conference in Seattle, Washington and spent a couple of extra days and headed up through Vancouver and on up to Whistler, British Columbia. The Vancouver gas light district in interesting even if a bit touristy. There were far more bicycles at all hours of the day and night than I have ever seen in a large city. It was pretty neat. There is also a much larger Oriental population that I would have imagined. Whistler is a pretty cool ski town in the summer. They rent bicycles and lift you up the mountains and you get to ride down on the bike. I didn't have time to try that but it sure looked like fun. Once I saw this place, I understood why Vancouver would have bicycle fever. By the way, the drive between Vancouver and Whistler is along the Pacific coast and is just beautiful. The 90’sWe spent several vacations going to Disney World in Orlando. On one, we started by going out to St. Louis, down through Arkansas, on to New Orleans, and over the gulf coast to Tampa and then to Disney. My boys were old enough at the time to enjoy seeing where Jeanie and I spent our honeymoon. I don't know if they have any memories of it by now. We also made the journey south through West Virginia, North Carolina, and into South Carolina to Myrtle Beach. I spent a couple of months working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a contractor in the early 90’s. I’d drive up Sunday night and drive home Friday after work. It was a 60 hour week (12 hours a day) but I still seemed to have time to get out and enjoy the city a little. I worked on the 23rd floor of the US Steel building right down town. Work sent me to San Francisco for a class and I took a couple of extra days to visit my friends in Los Angeles. Three weeks later, work sent me to San Francisco for another class. This time I took a couple of extra days and drove north along the Pacific coast. The redwood trees are spectacular in Northern California. Oregon had sand dunes in places (I didn’t expect that) and I was struck by how friendly the people were. The drive was lovely of course, the ocean on the left and mountains on the right. It is a rugged and sometimes lonely coast but beautiful. I stopped every so often at a McDonalds to buy coffee. In one, a lady charged me a quarter. I looked up at the price list trying to find why it was on special that day (it was normally running about 59 cents at others I had stopped in) and asked the late why the deal. She colored up and said that she had given me the senior discount. I’ll grant that I hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, my hair was going gray, and I probably looked pretty rough… but I was only 48 at the time. I made it as far as Washington and then headed inland and drove down the center of Oregon. It reminded me a lot of where I live Ohio. Gentle rolling hills and lots of farmland. I was also surprised at the number of hardwood trees. I had imagined that everything would be pine. My work took me to the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC one time. To Des Moines, Iowa on another occasion, and to Boston. In Boston, I recall being on the 40th floor in a conference room giving a presentation to bankers and lawyers. They were talking for a moment and I gazed out the huge window overlooking Boston harbor and just felt very fortunate to have been able to see and do so much. I could not have imagined it all as a kid or even a young man. I've also made several trips to Washington, D.C. for work and Frederick, Maryland to visit my sister. The 80’sI moved my young family to St. Louis for a better job. I had to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin once for a week and took my family with me. That set the stage for later business/pleasure trips. We lived in St. Louis for nearly three years and most vacations were spent back in Athens visiting family and looking for work locally. The job finally materialized and we came back into the vortex, Athens. I took my family to a conference in Montreal, Canada once and stopped off at Niagra Falls on the way. We came back down through Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania. We took a family vacation and drove to New Orleans and on down to Florida with my sister-in-law Kate. She was young and had not had much experience on the road so it was enjoyable to see the world through her eyes.
I took several one week classes in Boston and New York City and come to feel right at home in either of those two cities. When in Boston, I always seem to take the old red line up to Cambridge. The proximity of Harvard and MIT make for some interesting restaurants and there always seem to be street performers that are worth watching. The area around Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston is also fun. I always seemed to make it to the top of the World Trade center when in town. I recall the top of one had a bar that some colleagues and I watched as the sun went down and the lights came on in the city. It was beautiful of course and I recall watching the planes coming in to La Guardia much lower than we were. The other tower had an observation deck on the top floor and even a roof that you could go out on if it wasn't too windy. A class in Los Angeles was a great opportunity for me. Mike and Jwei-Hsing lived there so we stayed with them for a week and then we took another week and just explored the region. Our hosts took us to one of their favorite places, a little town named Solvang. We also went to Tijuana, Mexico for a couple of hours with them. That was my first time in Mexico and my boys were struck by the poverty. We took a couple of days and headed out to Los Vegas, Lake Meade, and the Grand Canyon. My old friend Steve that I had spent a summer with out West decided to marry a lady from Scotland. Jeanie and I hopped on a plane a flew to London, drove up the M-1 to Glasgow and was there for his wedding. After the wedding we took a day and drove to the castle in Edinborough with his brother Alan. Jeanie and I then headed back for London and saw the sites: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and the changing of the guard. Another couple of business trips took me to Atlanta, Georgia for a week, Chicago, Illinois, our plants in Canada, Illinois, and Alabama. I had a supervisor who lived and worked in Pittsfield, Massachussets. He used to visit now and then and didn't think much of asking me to jump on the company jet and attend a staff meeting and then fly home again that night. The company jet flew with two pilots and I recall on one flight being the only passenger. Another time I flew into La Guardia in New York and being met by a stretch limo. The driver took drove me a good hour or so out of town to my meeting. I couldn’t imagine what that cost. By this point in life, I’ve long lost track of how many individual airplane flights I’ve taken and probably don't remember every particular trip that I’ve taken. My family and I went to look for rocks one time. We headed for Richmond, Virginia and didn’t find what we were looking for and I decided to head for the granite quaries of Vermont. We drove through Washington D.C. and ended up seeing some of the sights there. Further up the road we stopped in New York City and I was able to take my entire family to the observation deck on the roof of the World Trade Center. We continued going North and finally made it into Vermont where we found a wonderful source of granite. The stone itself would have been affordable but the expense of shipping it back to Ohio was beyond our means. We ended up building our basement out of local limestone. Once in Vermont, we headed for Burlington and crossed the lake on a ferry at sunset. Another Kodak moment. Unfortunately, the other side of the lake is pretty sparse and not many gas stations. We were on empty and by the time I realized it and it was dark when we ran out of gas. My family and I spent the night in the car and when daylight came I hitch hiked to a gas station leaving my family in the car. It all turned out well but you can imagine the discomfort everyone felt at this. The 70’sBill, a high school friend of mine, and I went to Chicago, Illinois shortly after I got out of the service to visit with his sister. He also had his private pilots license so we flew down to Morehead College in Kentucky from Cincinnati in a Cessna 150 to visit his brother. I started college in Athens, Ohio and during Thanksgiving break went with my boss and his family to Detroit, Michigan. This was my first time in a vehicle since starting school. Detroit was dead on Thanksgiving Day so I walked over into Windsor, Canada and found it to be just another day. How odd it seemed to me. That was my first step outside of the country and it all seemed surreal at the time. Heck with the holiday, different money, postage stamps, flags, and liters of petrol. It was fun to just walk around and notice the differences. After walking Athens over by foot, I eventually bought a car and began the study of every lonely road I could find. One holiday, I had a friend, Bob, who just wanted to get out of Athens. I had a couple of days off, plenty of money and the memory of the mountains of Colorado. I wanted to go skiing but he wanted the warm weather so we decided to just head South and see how far we could go. We drove to St. Petersburg and then flew over to Freeport in Bahamas. Everything that could go wrong, did. We lost our luggage on the way over, our plane was delayed on the way back due to a tropical storm, we also lost our luggage on the way back, the car blew a rod in Georgia on the way home… Even with everything that went wrong, I look back on it with fond memories. It was 80 degrees on New Years Day by 10:00 a.m. I saw the clearest water and most beautiful white sand I had ever seen. The ocean went on for as far as I could see. The plane ride back was in a small plane and we had a full moon over the tail wing. It was spectacular! One day I got a wild hair and just started driving. I ended up in Charleston, South Carolina and then headed North along the coast going through North Carolina, Deleware, New Jersey, and then back home. One summer, Steve and I decided to head for the West. We just got some clothes together and left without a clear destination in mind. We ended up going through the badlands of South Dakota and spent a night on an Indian reservation. Don't ever try that, it wasn't so good. We then went into Wyoming and spent some time in Yellowstone and a night up in Montana. Then we drove South through the Tetons and after breakfast with a wonderful view I decided that I just had to climb that mountain. It was another all day attempt without any preparation at all that ended in failure to reach the summit. A mountain is really much larger than you would imagine. The views that you have on a mountain just can't be imagined or purchased. I would attempt it again without hesitation even all these years later. From the Tetons, we drove into Idaho and down to Salt Lake City, Utah. We stopped at Carson City Nevada, and then blew nearly all of our money in Reno. We had about $16 between us and so we headed for San Francisco to await our fate. Some kids were playing football in the field where we camped out and they wanted us to play. We were playing poker with puffed rice and eating our winnings thinking that if either of us got out to tell the story that it would be the better poker player. The kids thought we were nuts and so they started stealing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at lunch to feed us, in return for us playing football with them. That kept up for about a week until my check for the GI bill arrived. I wanted to head North but my friend had to visit see where he was stationed in the Navy down near Los Angeles. The smog was horrific so we headed back through Barstow and on to the Grand Canyon. We drove up through four corners and I got to step into New Mexico. We continued up to Colorado and spent a few weeks working in Denver. We gave serious thought to going to Alaska to work on the pipeline or going back to Aspen to work in a bar or restaurant during the ski season but ended up back in Athens when the leaves started changing. A great thing happened to me one summer. I got a roommate named Vinh. He was born in North Vietnam. I learned a great deal about another culture by living with him for a year. I've been sensitive to other cultures every since. He had a girlfriend who was black. One night she came over expecting him to take her to dinner but he forgot or somehow managed to miss the date. I was headed out for supper anyway so we just went together. I knew everyone that worked at the restaurant and could not believe the service we received. Walking down the street with her I saw people that I knew looking at me in shock and disbelief. It was really sad actually as she was a very nice person. No one should be treated like that. During Christmas break my Vietnamese friend and I decided to visit his brother in New Orleans. On the way down, we stopped in a restaurant somewhere down South and they would not wait on us. I didn't understand until my friend pointed out that he was Oriental and that they just were not going to wait on us. I was stunned. We spent three happy weeks in New Orleans and I ended up having my brother (home on leave from the Army) fly down on the day after Christmas. Once I started working with computers, I also started getting vacations. My first was through Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut and on to Boston, Massachussets. The people there were attractive enough but they seemed a bit cold to me so I drove on going through a bit of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and up into Montreal, Canada. I studied French in high school and spent several months in Louisiana so the culture wasn't completely foreign to me. In fact, I liked it.
In 1979 I was married and we spent our honeymoon in New Orleans for a week. It was great fun for both of us and Jeanie’s first plane ride. We boarded in Columbus and were sealed in on the runway for two hours. Chicago was down to one runway due to heavy snow and then closed completely when a plane slid off the runway. They cleaned up that mess and then let us go. Of course our connecting flight to New Orleans was long gone and the airport in Chicago was a madhouse. Somehow we found a way South that night and ended up in New Orleans right when everyone was closing up. I sweet talked a rental guy into opening back up and renting us a car and then we went looking for a hotel. Can you imagine just taking off without any reservations? It was always a way of life for me. Jeanie and I enjoyed the artists that hang out around Jackson Square and the French Quarter. The 60’sAt age nine and a half, my family moved to a farm out in the country. My whole world changed immensely. New neighbors, new classmates, and loads of new places to explore. We had a couple of horses and an old tractor that I used to get around on when I wasn't on foot (still my favorite mode of transportation at the time). We moved again, this time to the city. There were a few wooded areas but now there were also sewer systems to explore. By age 13 I had walked from Norwood, Ohio to Ault Park and back… alone. My family went to a family reunion in Indiana (barely crossed the Ohio border). Later, my family went on a small vacation to Flint, Michigan to visit former neighbors. That was a real eye opener for me. At age 13, we moved again into the suburbs and we had a huge woods for a back yard. I was back in my element and knew every inch of those woods before long. My family took another small vacation to visit my Aunt Winnie in Virginia. We saw Washington D.C. and we drove through West Virginia and Maryland. In high school we had a wonderful band and a terrific football program. My sophomore year, the football team played a team up in Cleveland and was permitted to take time away from school to attend. The band wasn't allowed to miss school. I was in the band. Our band moderator was incensed enough to charter an old DC3 and fly us up after school so we could make the half time show. It poured down rain and everyone was miserable… but, I had taken my first flight. We left after the game arrived in Cincinnati during the wee hours of the night but beat the football team back by a day. No one else in my family had ever been in the air before that. Before turning 16 (and getting my drivers license) I would still ride the bike further than most. One day I took off from North College Hill and ended up in Kentucky. That was about 20 miles one way through some rough neighborhoods. I was pretty late getting back and my parents were not too happy. I’d also been brought home at one or two in the morning by the local police for just walking around town. You can imagine the reception my parents gave me. My brother and I used to get up early just to watch the sun rise on occasion. The drivers license opened up a new mode of transportation. I spent a lot of time just driving and expanding my known boundaries. Being lost is an uncomfortable feeling particularly when you don't have much money or gas. I've had angles watch over me in those early driving years. My senior year, our band entered a competition in St. Petersburg, Florida. We boarded that old DC3 again and flew down at night. St. Petersburg has a view of water like I had never seen before. It was far bigger than the Ohio River or any of the lakes near Cincinnati. Florida was different than anything I had seen before. Palm trees, the water, the sun, and the lifestyle were all different than what I’d known in Cincinnati.
Eight months later, I was transferred to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. I attempted to get a passenger train (long before Amtrak) to get me there but the trains at the time just were not interested in passenger traffic. I got tired of the run-a-round and just went out of the station, hoped in a cab, and headed for the airport. When I landed in Kansas City, Missouri, I was afraid that I had went to the wrong state. The airline ticket cost far more than I imagined and so I was broke and a good 30 miles from Ft. Leavenworth. A traveller's aid station gave me a couple of bucks and that was sufficient to get me on a couple of buses to make my way to the town of Ft. Leavenworth. I thought that was it so I spent my remaining funds on a skimpy meal. I was dead broke again and found that I was a couple of miles still to the post. I needed another quarter to hop still another bus or I could try and walk with all my earthly belongings to who knows where the post was. I found a barber shop that was willing to buy some postage stamps I had in my wallet for a quarter so I could catch the bus. It was a relief to finally sign in and have someone tell me where the mess hall was. I spent thirteen months in there and we spent a lot of time on the bus. Our territory was Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri. Going on the road for a week or so playing several parades and concerts every day, you soon lose track of exactly where you are. There were times that I lost track of what state I was in. So what did we do when we had time off? I used to fly or drive back and forth to Cincinnati quite often. Military standby from Kansas City to Cincinnati was $19.95. I recall giving them a $20 and the airline giving me a ride home or back to the base. I could drive it for around five or six bucks. Gas in Missouri went for 19.9 at the time. What did we do in our time off? Funny you should ask. One of the people I was stationed with grew up in Hawaii. He spent every weekend taking off in a different direction and driving for as far as he could. He just couldn't imagine so much land. I made a couple of small trips. One was to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Army band had to play once up in Minneapolis, Minnesota and we were permitted to drive private vehicles for this one. Just before getting out of the service, I spent a little over a week in Colorado driving through snow covered mountains! They were glorious! I absolutely fell in love with them. The first one I saw I immediately attempted to climb and spent the entire day at it without any preparation whatsoever. The 50’s
Your adventuresWhy bother?Read The Significance of the Martian Frontier by Robert Zubrin again. You really do need to get out and experience this world. In the words of E.L. Magoon: “Existence was given us for action, rather than indolent and aimless contemplation; our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel. They greatly mistake who suppose that God cares for no other pursuit than devotion.“ Or… you can sit and watch re-runs on TV. If you do get out and experience or see something interesting, drop me a line and tell me about it. I obviously enjoy reading about others adventures and am sometimes moved to act by them. Give me permission to publish and I’ll let everyone enjoy it and maybe your tale will inspire others. |
