Shanghai Shop

The most wonderful people you often meet by chance.  You aren't looking, and they're just there.

I guess sixty plus years is a long time to recall details of  a casual meeting. But, when I think about the several minutes I spent in that modest shanghai shop, I'm so glad that I can recall it so well.   What the gentleman did in 1945 still seems like last week.

Shanghai was at last no longer several million cowering victims of Imperial Nipponese  conquest. Street intersections were no longer monitored by Japan's soldiers. Now turbaned Indian Sikhs, hired mostly because they were giants who could see over everybody.

Bit by bit, shops were reopening  to masses daring now  to look into them.  What money there was could be circulated openly. As I passed by people, a few actually smiled.

Bored with looking down from the deck of my stop-over railing at the filthy Huang Pu River,  tired of my temporary bunk neighbors as they were of me, and having an entire day to spend my boredom, I went ashore.  At least I could exercise a little.  Downtown Shanghai beat listening to other bored navy guys repeating how bored they were.  By evening mess, I'd at least be tired and maybe hungry.

       

Wandering among the scurrying crowd, every one of them tightly focused on something ten inches beyond their noses,  I found it best to at least pretend to be shopping. If I seemed to be looking into a window, at least people quit brushing into me.

 

Without anything in mind, I paused before a pleasingly arranged curio shop window.  It looked better cared for than others.  It wasn't just  there: it was pleasanter, cleaner, its wares thoughtfully arranged.  Going in seemed natural.

Inside, was jammed with what else?  Curios.  Yet, somehow, it didn't look  so crowded.

My ignorance of curios was (is)  abysmal; but what I could understand was far above the stock junk of nearly every other layout I'd seen over the several days I'd spent in Shanghai. Also, taking time here beat more aimless meandering.

 

Little more than a month had passed since “The Bomb,” had leveled Hiroshima. It was a marvel that this shop could this fine a display in such a little time. The proprietor had to have carefully and cleverly secreted his curios from the Japanese for years, and even then had to have been very lucky.

The sound of a throat cleared turned me toward the back of the shop.  My host was a person you automatically call ' “gentleman.”  His suit was no longer fresh, having little worn spots at the lapels some re-stitching, wonderfully done, but impossible to completely disguise. His shoes were brightly shined, but showing little cracks betraying their age.

I asked, “Do you speak English?''  Foreigners often indicate that they do, and promptly reveal that they don't really. They'll happily fake their way through mutual frustration.  Bargaining with our pet, Tiki, worked better.

Some admit, with embarrassment, that they know “a little.”  That means  lots of hand waving.

This gentleman shook his head slowly, sadly.  He could, he indicated, read a very little English. I relaxed. We would understand each other, slowly, yes, but we would come out the other end okay, both of us.

I decided to take my time.  I liked the place. And, when I pantomimed would he mind if I touched things, he nodded, smiling, touching a few things himself, then stepping back.

One piece jumped at me.  I'd passed it several times without stopping; but, after awhile paused in front of it.  It was a teak boat, a mandarin's pleasure river craft with poles, long, bent rudder, and extra levels for a crew to propel it without troubling the mandarin.

Turning to the gentleman, I pointed at the boat.  He picked his way among doo-dads, lifted it down, and presented it to me.

Close up, this was a masterpiece.  My superb ignorance of this kind of art didn't keep me from recognizing the skill and patience required to form such a beautiful miniature. And I did know a little bit about teak.  I'd grown up with it all around me, because of so many missionary relatives who'd spent their careers in China, India, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines.

It also wasn't too big for me to tote it the many months before a leave and the many thousands of miles back home.  I nodded, handing it back to the gentleman.

“How much?” I asked.  He didn't have to know any English to understand my question – with my palms up and eyebrows raised.

He said something.  It might have been, “Blessings on Japan,” though probably not.  Words wouldn't get us very far.  I'd show him some money.

I dug into my Navy jacket, pulling out a wallet.  Fishing in it, I found some ones, a ten, and a twenty.  These I displayed. The gentleman considered the several bills.  At last he pointed to the ten.

I separated out the ten, but also showed him the twenty again. He smiled, slowly shaking his head.  At least that motion is universal.

He took the boat to a desk where he placed it on a large piece of wrapping paper.  Then he went back to the shelves.  He bent, rummaged, and came up with a paper bag.  He returned, placing it alongside the boat.  He found a bit of twine somewhere, tied the stuff together, presented it to me, and said something with a sweet smile.  He did not have a business card.

Back at the ship, in my quarters, I opened my prize...and got a surprise.

My Chinese gentleman had added almost a dozen pieces of tiny furniture, mats, and trappings to the boat.

Maybe there are not all that many “Shanghai gentlemen” everywhere; but there are some, and I've sure had the good fortune to have met some of them. (In 1950, I asked an auctioneer I knew what value he would place on my boat.  He said he would open the bidding at $200. That's nice to know; but it would take a ton more than that to pry it loose from me today.

Tokyo Rose

None of the G.I.s I knew in the Pacific in WWII were angry with Tokyo Rose.  She was too entertaining.  She recited  lots of nonsense, but we were pretty sure that her trash talk was essentially for her own people, who probably wanted to believe most of it.  We certainly didn't have to. When she was telling us that an aircraft carrier floating a hundred yards off our stern was being sunk, we didn't have to ask CINCPAC if “Rosie” was mistaken.

           

The thing was that, for all of her silliness, her radio program was the easiest to receive, and  she played all the best contemporary LP's.

           

Broadcasts from the States was usually like listening through a fish tank, wavering, and often interrupted by bad weather.  Ships could have relayed stuff, but that would have been an invitation to Japanese subs.  Rosie was reliable, and tuning in was secure.

Australia wasn't all that great to tune into, and they played "Aussie" stuff.

           

Rosie had to have been working from a monster station.  Bad weather and sunspots never spoiled reception.

           

One of our favorite pastimes was hearing her recite ships “sunk” by the Japanese fleet, and then seeing who would be first to identify those ships.     

Once Rosie named a C.V.E. we were alongside getting some supplies from. But she must have been an elitist, as she didn't mention our ship, just the big one. 

Security in war time is important, of course, but its effectiveness was at best moot.  When my brother-in-law's B-17 was shot down by the Germans in Rumania, the plane's crew were taken to an interrogation officer who pointed to each crewman and, in acceptable English, identified each by name, rank, home town, and prewar job. 

           

In the Pacific,  we always had a pretty good idea where the Japanese were, how many, how well equipped, and if they were readying any action.  We just couldn’t tell people at home that we knew. Which meant that Rosie's real effect was on her own country.

           

Once I wrote a long letter.  I dressed it up with cartoons of airplanes in the margins, palm trees, and wings on a steam boat. A month or so later, a response arrived.  My letter had been censored ... sort of. A censor had very neatly razor bladed out each drawing.  But, he, or she, had also left every clipped sketch inside the envelope. 

Some people at home actually knew things about my ship and schedule that I didn't.  I did not know when my first leave would begin until the day my leave papers arrived on board.  I only learned the name of my home bound ship by reading the bow on it as my exec and I were being motored to it.  Yet I was met at the pier in San Francisco, and my uncle in Berkeley had a reception waiting for me.  Maybe Tokyo Rose knew it, too -- but she didn't like to tell good news.

  

We loved her LP's.  Wouldn't you tune in Rosie when she was playing “Begin the Beguine,”  “Contrasts,” and “Don't Get Around Much Anymore”?  Oh, I forgot.  You weren't born then.

Semana Santa

Americans don't really know how to watch parades.  We cheer marching bands and stand a little straighter when military units snap by.  We cheer when long legged girls in shiny black boots come by tossing batons in the air.  But we don't really know how to have fun at parades the way folks in other countries do.

In Seville, Semana Santa (Holy Week) isn't a parade: it's six parade days, each lasting all day. Floats weave through the wandering streets.  People collect at float storage doors, cheer as each enters the street, run alongside, go ahead to meet them approaching various “singing” stations, and do their watching in family groups with lots of food and cerveza.

At designated places along a route, an assigned person sings to a tearful Mary (Mary's tears are dazzling pearls).  The crowd listens silently during the solo, then nods approvingly.

Floats are deliberately not motorized.  Carrier teams are unionized, toting by strict rules of rests and distances.  Every so many blocks, the float pauses for a respite, during which friends, relatives, and whomever, leave the curb, lift the float drape, and offer soft drinks and/or cerveza.  Folding chairs are shared among families and elderly strangers.

This week boom boxes are taboo.

              

As important as the floats are, they actually rank a few points behind the main goal of Holy Week – picnicking, family picnicking.  If one spots a friend across the street, one walks across through the parade.  Children enjoy darting around the floats.  Nobody minds, not even the float carriers.  There is very little police oversight. I saw two over the whole week.

              

Mary is the feature of several floats.  Each is extravagantly adorned with jewels, especially pearls.  A single float can match the cost of any Pasadena Rose Parade float. 

              

At designated places along the route, a man sings to Mary.  His lyrics describe how awful the Jews were and what terrible things should be done to them. (Apparently, the Inquisition isn't quite over yet).

The parade winds through the city in a leisurely fashion, with no single “launch” spot. And no single assigned route. One can get a program layout with approximate point passing times.  One can see the procession several times from different vantages, by using the map.  You can know a given float's designated route.

Semana Santa is another opportunity for Spaniards to deck out their young daughters in the classic tradition of “Flamenco.” ('Flamenco' translates “Flemish,” which, of course, it is not).  

Typically, they are done up in lots of black and some bright red. Mantillas and fans are a must.  Many wobble along in four inch heels as they beam at everyone. There is lots of whirling and hip flinging to make the multiple skirts radiate. And no outfit is complete without the shiny black spikes.  It is apparently a rule that all little girls be heavily rouged.

When I photographed two of these girls, my conversation with their mother led to my being invited to dinner.  I arrived to find that the mother's sister's family had also been included, as well as four neighbors.  It was a wild evening among sixteen people, not one of whom spoke any English.  They were most patient, laughed at my bloopers, and showed their tolerance by pressing more liquid on me as I struggled.

One morning in a business section of Seville, I photographed four boys, roughly aged twelve, who had created their own "float."  It had been done with colored paper, wire, marking pens, and table decoration streamers.  They had a small guitar (every living Spaniard has at least one guitar), a popcorn can drum, and trinkets probably accumulated from neighbors' trash.

 

One wag at this “mall” brought a beer to the float, holding it under the drape for the imaginary carriers to slake thirst.  Another man stopped the boys so he could sing the “praise to Mary” bit. Bystanders paused until the song was completed.

The boys' little "float" and reception by the mall goers, made its own statement. Pasadena's Tournament of Roses parade is awesome, but the Spanish know a lot more about thoroughly enjoying life.

Bridal Veil

Bridalveil Creek Camp, in the Forest Service's own words, is one of Yosemite's best kept secrets.  Being open just three months each year keeps it relatively little used and on few people's agendas. This is the great good fortune for the lucky ones who venture to the site. 

Bridalveil Fall

My own recommendation is that one should plan to arrive in the a.m. and remain until at least the following noon.  Bring along your 18-55 zoom and a 250 telephoto, too.

El Capitan

Why?  A very short walk north brings one to the Bridalveil Fall overlook.  From there you are facing Yosemite Falls and El Capitan across the valley. Below is the Merced River winding past Curry Village. 

Half Dome

Northward, you see the entire Yosemite valley past Half Dome to Tuolumne Meadows in the hazy distance.  The Fire Fall is nearby on your right. Vernal and Nevada Falls decorate the farther right. It is the view that locked John Muir's heart.  Nothing on Earth can cap it.

The camp itself, at least when I was lucky enough to be there, was definitely primitive.  There was a water faucet, a campfire circle, and, um, uh, and a couple of small signs.  Oh, yes, there was a trash can with a lid.  The lid was chained to the can, and the can was chained to a stake anchored in concrete. That should have been enough to warn visitors about the caveat: Protect your food.

I noticed that the few other campers had lashed bags of what looked like food to overhanging branches that were at least eight feet above open ground.  Deer, I thought. 

I should have done a bit more thinking. 

              

I took my sandwiches out of my plastic cooler, tied it to a bag, which I tied to a clothesline, which I flung over a very high branch.  Deer can't leap twelve feet, I thought.

              

Merced River

After spending the entire day along the rim, clicking at the fairy story falls, shooting across the valley, turning to photograph into deep woods up stream, catching the wondrous shifting of cloud formations, trying to snap birds, chipmunks, jays, and wishing I had a recorder, while missing two meals, I finally realized that it was dark.  I needed to eat.

              

A family was spending the early evening at the campfire. They invited me to share thier marshmallows.  I told them what I'd been doing, and they decided to remain until the next afternoon.

I crawled into my sleeping bag around nine, promptly sleeping deeply.  Sometime in the night I became conscious of a clanking. There was no moon, but the clear, starry sky allowed me to make out moving shadows beyond the campfire circle.   A bear was pulling a trash can over.

He was clawing at the secured lid. In moments he had it off.  He promptly stuck his head deep inside. Then his head reappeared.  Apparently, he was too late. The Forest Service had already cleaned out the can. 

              

The bear clawed at the can now resting on its side. He stuck his head inside again.  Shortly, he backed out again. He glared at the can some more, his head swaying.  He turned to walk away, but suddenly whirled and gave the can a resounding whack.  The can bounced the foot or two to the end of its chain tether, clanging loudly. The bear glared still.

              

A second time the bear walked off a few paces, then spun once more, and whacked the can so hard it bounced crazily, losing much of its earlier roundness.  Apparently finally satisfied that he had taught the Forest Service and the can a lesson, he lumbered away.

              

In the morning, I was awakened by some rather colorful language. A male voice was unhappy.  Peering out from my bag, I saw my marshmallow host standing by a branch dangling from a tree.  A piece of string and the remains of a plastic bag rested at the end of the broken branch.

                

A deer must have leaped higher than the man thought he could.  It didn't take rocket science to see that the eight feet was not enough.

              

Mr. “Marshmallow's” wife peered out from their tent.  “Honey,” she said.

              

“I don't want to hear it,” he snapped.

Now Hear This

I had gone to the U.C. Berkeley administration office to apply for part time work. The woman at the desk handed me a questionnaire that inquired into every breath I'd taken from the Battle of Hastings (1066) to Darfur in 2016. The woman smiled as I eventually handed her the compendium. She held it over a basket already high with previous applications, few of which, I assumed, were for the Chancellor's post. 

As she was about to let go, she paused, looking more closely at a part of my application. She looked up at me, and said, “You've done counseling?”

I know, when applying for any position, one is supposed to reply with “I'm working toward a doctorate in regenerative psychology,” or at least “I've mapped the South Pole twice.” Something dramatic like that. But as I turned toward the
office exit, I told the truth.

“Just Y.M.C.A. summer camps and 'Y' club leader stuff.”  I'd never thought of those times before as anything but volunteer fun.

Instead of dropping my packet into the basket, she put it by her phone. She made a call, spoke to someone, and, after a few words, gave me an address.

The next morning between classes I was accepted as a something-or-other (that I never quite figured out) at the California School for the Deaf. I was about to spend two semesters discovering a world I'd barely knew existed.

After a short interview, I had a room about half a mile from the campus, three meals a day, enough income to wash my clothes, buy books, and attend a couple of proms. I could even take the “Big Red” electric car to San Francisco once in awhile. My parents liked that.

Two other fellows shared my quarters and tasks. Both were pleasant and interesting. Neither was a sociology or psychology major. They came from “The East,” meaning one was from Nebraska, the other from Chicago. (Later, he explained that his home was really Elmhurst; but hardly anybody knew anything about Elmhurst, or any of the rest of Illinois, either). Both were bewildered that a human being would select English literature as a major, particularly when they found that I had to learn some Middle English, which only barely resembles modern speech. I'd gotten used to that by then, and they didn't push it.

Working with the deaf students was fun and more than enlightening. I soon realized that I actually had had some valuable experience that contributed to working reasonably well with these young people. I was more comfortable with the deaf students than my roommates were. As ignorant as I was, the secretary had had good reason to yank my name back from oblivion.

Our duties were routine and typical, mostly being available for keeping order during recesses and physical education classes. As the students began to feel comfortable with me, they included me rather naturally in their activities. They took special smug pleasure in making me learn the rules of the games THEIR way. Also, I became their de facto umpire. That was because the staff -- half of them also hard of hearing -- were generally much stricter than I. They were really nice people, both the men and women, but negotiating was not built in to their protocols. When a child's complaint came to them, they made instant, irrevocable decisions. With me, it always took a while to find out what the squabble or complaint was really about By the time I began to filter through their Kabuki dances, the heat had already expended itself, and my decisions were less threatening or frustrating.

It wasn't my genius: Often, it was my ignorance of ASL. Sometimes, the student problem devolved into a lesson in what their gestures meant. I suspect that that their anger was often burned out by their violently waving a visual language that was 85% Greek to me. What I did know was that they usually left no longer frantically doing all those crazy things with their fingers.

My name, I eventually learned, was drawing the right forefinger across the left side of the chin. When I asked a teacher why that motion, she said, “Oh, the violin.” But, of course! I mean, I should have figured that out: Singer =violin. You knew that, too, didn't you?

The school had a remarkable program, especially in socializing the students. For example, there were monthly dances -- with recordings. Apparently, most people, however limited in hearing, do get the deep bass tones. Introductory notes would be flashed in sync with the record intro by a hearing person, and the dancers would pick up the beats from there.

There wasn't much “Jitterbug,” and most of them somewhat dragged their feet. But it worked. Few students elected to miss the dances, and the girls saved their best and most decorated sweaters for those nights. When one of the directors learned that I knew most of the steps, she had us put on a show for the students. It helped with my approval rating, too, I expect. Afterward, the director had me teach other staff folk. 

The adult staff had a real problem with something that wouldn't have entered my mind -- noise.

Evenings, after “lights out,” some of the teen students would rap on exposed pipes, heaters, and almost any fixed metal device. Pipes were the favorite because striking them echoed throughout the building. We college three, lodged in the basement, could hear all of it. We could tell when some boy had hammered something then leaped into bed to pretend sleep. We also always knew when a boy, or group of them, had been caught. The next day, the girls would be giggling and pointing.

Sometimes I wonder how that place is functioning now. Electrical science, understanding of the brain, social psychology, and the knowledge of language have advanced so far from those days..
But, I bet teen boys still beat on pipes.

Note: The original California School for the Deaf building where I worked was condemned, and there are now at least two campuses: one in Fremont, California, and another in Riverside. Actually, the structure I bunked in was coming apart then.

The Missing Door

People who sign on to creative enterprises really are unlike the rest of us. I mean, what kind of brain builds a box with a button on top that has exactly one function:  When you press the button, the lid opens, a hand curls out, and it presses the button, turning itself off?

An acquaintance worked at a think tank.  Not the kind you usually expect, where a crew is hired to study political problems and offer solutions and subterfuges, but a real think tank. This company took on technical computer related asks.  Tricky problems like how do you thread a nut around a bolt that is inside a container with no access?  This fellow explained it to me.  It looked like it could work.  I just don’t know if his company actually had that problem, or if he was pulling my leg.  Because he and his coworkers routinely pulled practical jokes on each other.

One fellow quit answering his office phone because each time he lifted the receiver, a Souza march blared in the hall.

One of their members was called to D.C. to report to a committee on a space related project.  It took him away from Pasadena for about a week.  While he was gone, a painting crew repainted the plant’s halls.

Soooooooooooo, his “buddies” arranged for his office door to be papered over, and the painters to paint that, too.  When he returned from DC, his co workers had no idea where his office had been moved to.

Another fellow, driving toward home from the office, found that his horn tooted through every left turn.

And, when my acquaintance retired, he refused to go anywhere near the plant.  Anyone who wanted to see him had to go to his home.

The mechanical hand? When the inventor figured out how much it cost him to make it, almost everyone in the plant bought one.

Ship to Okinawa

My return-to-duty orders, after a leave, named a ship to get to without suggesting where it might be.  After considerable leg work, I learned that it was somewhere in the China Seas, sort of, which was at least better than “the Western Hemisphere,” or “yonder.”

I grabbed the first available Navy vessel that was crossing the International Dateline.  It happened to be a converted cruise ship with every contemporary appointment. It moved at a steady 35 knots but quietly and smoothly, its huge engines barely audible.  After my service aboard a ship that labored at speeds exceeding ten knots, and got from here to there by beating waves aside, this was pretty cushy.  It was aimed toward Okinawa, much closer to the China Seas than San Diego.

Having spent almost all of my Navy career aboard a vessel that echoed every wavelet, invited  the softest breeze to sprinkle foam over onto even the ensign, slithering drunkenly in dead calms,  and looked as if it had been assembled by a kid working on Legos, this smooth flowing 700 foot, streamlined bit of snobbery was practically shore duty. 

The Pacific, however, covers nearly half the Earth.  Wind blowing across it has plenty of room and time to develop green hills (make that “mountains”), lifting and tilting even this beauty halfway to heaven. As we entered the higher latitudes, even this luxury liner performed like a gymnast on a pommel horse.  I was almost on my LCT again. 

Which brings me to what makes the Navy the Navy --- coffee.  In the Navy you drink coffee only under the following necessities -- shift breaks, that is at 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, 0200, 0400, and 0600 hours.  Whether you are going on duty, or ending it, heading forward or aft, working in the engine room or aloft, the Navy manual requires that you consume whatever scalding black liquid is available.  Every ship is equipped with a minimum of 28 mugs per bluejacket.

This made-over troop ship knew the Navy rules.   

One evening, with the seas running about thirty feet, a number of us were casually sort of playing cards, sort of conversing, not bothering to talk about home, and putting away coffee.

In good old Navy style, mugs were piling up on the cafeteria rail -- several trays of them. Then came an unusually hefty swell.  The cruise ship stuck its bow toward Arcturus for a moment, leaned slightly to starboard, promptly bucked its stern in the general direction of Cuzco,  shuddered momentarily, performed a  slow dance, and liked its own choreography so much it repeated the maneuvers.

None of this would have drawn any attention, except that the trays of mugs on the rails opted to join the dance.  With clattering joy, the loaded trays sprinted first toward one end of the rails, then back toward the other.

One of the card players said, “Uh-oh.”  The young man collecting mugs from tables cried, “Hey, ho!” and launched himself toward a double stack of mugs slithering sneakily toward a rail end.

Grabbing the rail with one hand, he yanked himself toward the rail end.  His free hand snapped to the end of the tracks.  The double tier of mugs was stopped.

At once, the coffee drinkers rose to applaud.

“That was GREAT!”  a voice called out.  The young man straightened up.  Grinning, he clicked his heels, gave a thumbs up, and bowed deeply... as the ship tilted some more, and the double tray shot off the railing behind him.  He launched himself in a fine, flat dive. A foot or so before the lead stack reached the end, he got his fingers on it and checked it just in time.

His audience applauded. The young man grinned, stood straight, and bowed deeply to even more applause.  As the applause left off, the next huge swell lifted the ship again, the room tilted again, and the two stacks of mugs completed their slither on behind the young man's back. The crash was worthy of the number of mugs.

From the far side of the room a voice said, “Wow! Do that again!”