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From: George Grandstaff
Date: 2/11/2004
Time: 12:26:01 PM
Remote Name: 65.130.96.255
Jim In case it gets buried in the other message replys of years past I'm putting this reply here since I have not been to this web site in quite a while and just found your reply. Thanks for sharing the lobster thermodore story and giving that year a sense of reality by your confirmation of something shared. Based in Cantho I traveled alone nearly every day throughout the delta and helped at times in 3rd corps and once to a site in Dalat as well repairing Radio TTY Equipment. I met lots of people in scores of places but have never made a connection until your reply. I recall the Vietnamese police station at the end of our street in Cantho about two blocks from where I lived and the market behind it, the large piles of garbage that would accumulate in that street and the romantic aroma of those, combined with the mostly covered French drains in the sidewalks and the heat and humidity of the city is still vivid in my mind. I always tell people when they look at pictures of the orient and in particular the towns and markets they can't experience or imagine the true ambience of the place without the fragrance. Did you ever go for a hair cut down town? I remember not to far from the Blue Bird Club on the main street going toward the airport from the theater on the left there was a barber shop that would cut your hair and a girl gave you a little shoulder massage. I remember the old ladies squatted by the curbs roasting and selling the small green bananas while chewing red beetle nut and smiling at you, showing their blacked teeth. There was a divided avenue on the way to Eakin Compound that had a vendor's cart set up in the middle of it, and early in the morning there would be lots of Vietnamese buying a drink in a tall glass that had a little coffee a lot of milk and a bunch of sugar. I also remember occasional cock fights going on there in the grass and I do have a picture of one of the fights. Do you recall the sound of an ocean liner horn on the Mekong River and then some one telling you it was Puff the Magic Dragon? That was my intro to Puffs light and sound show the first time in Cantho when I was taken to the roof of our hotel and watched arching streams of hot lava pour from the sky followed by the time delayed fog horn sound. Oh yes! I was impressed and have pictures of the night sky lit with flares and the tracer stream. I was new and still not jaded by the coming sights and sounds and emotions. George