That's the Way, Uh-huh Uh-huh, I Like It: Second-Hand Memories of the USS Midway’s Rescue of 3,000 Vietnamese Political Refugees

As children we take in all kinds of information, but because of our limited experience, we have no file system to store it in, no names or historical context to file it under.  Yet, the sounds, the smells, the images--they still are stored, just not in an orderly way.  Writers access some of those floating images through free-writing--allowing childhood memories to bubble up black and oily to mingle with the clearer waters of the adult mind until joined together something namable takes shape.  I don’t know what the rest of the population does.   Maybe the unnamable parts of childhood--that gray area you’re not sure was reality or a dream-- are simply forgotten.  Or maybe chance slowly sends a ray of sunlight through the key hole and ignites one hidden jewel at a time, happenstance after happenstance, until a story develops whether you write it down or not.

I had such an experience recently.  Three of my boys--Tyler, Rio and Everest--and I were on a scout trip in California and we spent one night aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Midway in San Diego.

Rio sits at the controls--not sure what to do.

Tyler writes important numbers--not sure what they all mean.

Everest takes the wheel--not sure where to go.

Right before leaving the next morning, the crew (many of who served on the Midway) shared stories during a presentation they called “Midway Magic.”

As they started into the final story, memories which I’d stored long ago were pried loose by the sharp blade of context.

However, before I tell the story--how they all came together--I want to share some images.

We’re watching a fuzzy black and white TV.  In my mind, we’re in my brother and sister’s bedroom in the apartment in Salt Lake City and the lights are out (the only way we could see the fading TV) I’m lying down on the trunk where I often slept.  But this can’t be right, for the story shared aboard the USS Midway happened in 1975, and we no longer lived in Salt Lake.

So, it had to be our next black and white TV--a new one, fuzzy not because of the set, but because our rural community, Fillmore, had incredibly poor television reception.

But the images are clear--a large ship deck.  Soldiers shove helicopters overboard.  They crash into the sea.  In my mind’s eye, skies are dark, water turbulent, soldiers frantic.  Terrifyingly chaotic music.  But I have no idea if this is accurate.  I only know--or think I know--that I saw soldiers push helicopter after helicopter off the flight deck.  Even though I would have been nine at the time, I guess I didn’t have enough political context to file the images well.  So, they seeped into the groundwater, black and sticky. 

Flight deck of USS Midway

In the next image I stare out the front door of the classroom that was in the double-wide that served as the 4^th grade at the old Fillmore Elementary.  It’s hot, the ceiling fan whirls, I look at Lan and she looks at me.  I’ve loved her since midway through the third grade when the mushroom farm built a trailer park and brought fifteen or twenty trailers and filled them with families from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  I love her long black hair, her soft black eyes, her tomboy attitude, the way she always wears a bright colored silk disco shirt over a white tank-top and leaves it unbuttoned.  I love when she’s running on the playground and the wind catches her shirt and blows it slightly off her shoulder.  I love how she sings, “that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh” every chance she gets, even though it’s usually to my best friend, Richard.  I love her even though she gave me a black eye after I got in a fight with her little sister when I was in third grade.  I love her even though she spent the next day telling the entire school about it, holding her fist up in a tight knot and laughing, “I, number one; you number 10.”

Back in fourth grade, in that hot room, the fan twirling, I do something I think will amuse her (I don’t remember what) and her face breaks into a big smile that gives me the willies.  As an adult I’ve seen that smile on a couple of women and now know it is a smile of love--eyes that look deep down into your soul while the lips pull into a sly, mischievous, omniscient I’ve-got-something-on-you look.  But back then I had no context for it.  It was foreign, loaded.  I felt like I’d vomit.

Now, to the story--finally:   On April 29, 1975 the USS Midway, as part of the Seventh Fleet forces, carried out Operation Frequent Wind as South Vietnam fell.  The Midway flew “in excess of 40 sorties, shuttling 3,073 personnel and Vietnamese refugees out of Saigon in two days” (USS Midway History, http://www.midwaysailor.com/midway/history.html).

I remember hearing the awful whoop-whoop of the blades, seeing the frantic crowds at the embassy gates, watching tears stream down faces as loved ones let go of other loved ones.  Was it the same sorties headed for the Midway or different ones?  Am I mingling in images from The Killing Fields?   Did Lan’s family escape then or a year or so later?  It doesn’t matter.  She was there.  The same circumstance--a political refugee.  And I didn’t even know it.  We played kissing tag while she had images of gunfire, bombs and blood in her head.  How many loved ones did she leave behind?  How did this new, strange language feel on the end her tongue?  (“You number 10,” which I hated to hear or “You number one,” which sent my heart fluttering). And what did I say that hot day that could have opened her heart fully to me for the first time?  How was it different from my many other attempts to gain her attention? 

Flight Deck, Helicopter and San Diego

Now, to the next part of the story:  As the Midway was already at capacity with its crew and aircraft, the hanger deck had to be cleared of aircraft to establish a refugee camp coined “Hotel Midway.”  As a result, the only place to put the aircraft was on the flight deck, which was already overcrowded because of the excess helicopters from Saigon.   But the crew was determined.

Then, just when things were right for the first time, a small South Vietnamese Cessna Bird Dog, appeared in the sky.  At first the crew thought it might be attacking.  But instead of dropping bombs, it dropped three notes.  One landed on deck.  It was Major Bung Lee of the south Vietnamese Air Force.  The note asked permission to land.  Two major problems:  First,  the deck was full.  Next, aircraft carriers are too short for normal landings.  Carrier planes are specially equipped with a large hook that grabs great cables to slow them down--no hook, no cable, no landing. 

Cut to memory: helicopters are shoved into the ocean.  I now have the context.  Under the direction of their commander, crew push helicopter after helicopter into the ocean to save the life of one man.  I’m not proud of much of what our military does, but even I want to salute here. 

Boy Scout Tomas Hunt fills in nicely as the Captain.

Then Major Lee did the impossible--he landed safely.  Perhaps God was involved as General Lee also had his wife and five children crammed into the cockpit with him, his youngest child 14 months old and, his eldest six years (Refugees 'come home' to the Midway after 35 years, http://www.ocregister.com/news/midway-246797-lee-chambers.htm).

As I stood in the hanger, listening to the story, in my mind’s eye it filled up with refugees and I almost thought I saw Lan, one of the 100 refugees who enriched my childhood and hometown from 1976 to the mid 80s.  Wherever she is, I hope she has a husband man enough to handle her intense, love-packed smile.  I also hope the bombs, the blood, terror and tears have lost their weight and flutter in the breeze like her silk disco shirts.

Oh, that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh,
I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh

© Steve Brown, 2012

P.S.:  Good video of Operation Frequent Wind featuring music by ELO.  Click below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQoQDkhbYw&feature=share

No Mirror: Native American Story Structure in Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”

As I need some time to flush out some current post I'm working on, I thought this would be a good time to share an essay I wrote last summer about Alexie's story, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.”  What I'd really appreciate is feedback, especially by Natives.  Please post your thoughts and experiences, whether you agree with my observations or not.

In a recent class in my MFA program, I was assigned to write an essay on Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” and decided to write off the following question developed by my professor:

Some critics would refer to Alexie's and other contemporary writers' fiction as "committed" fiction--that is, fiction with a clear political point of view and set of political arguments, often satirical. Committed fiction, they argue, makes its political arguments organic to the narratives they tell but they are not "didactic"--that is, intended to teach as moral instruction in a patronizing way. Is Alexie's story didactic or "committed"? What implicit political arguments is the narrator making? How are they organic to the narrative? Or are they simply heavy-handed?

I say “write off,” because, based on the information given in the prompt, I’m not sure either term quite works, and so I’ll have to modify the prompt, as I use it.  At first glance, it seems “Committed” would probably work:   any politics in this story are “organic to the narrative” and are not meant to “teach…moral instruction in a patronizing way.”   And yet, the term and its definition feel wrong to me.  To explain my reaction, I must first explain that I’m married into a Navajo family and have lived and taught on the Navajo Nation for eight years.  (As I write this, my wife’s family is sponsoring a family reunion.  However, if I let them know my intentions, they’ll say, “Always the bilagaana (white-man) trying to steal our culture; always the bilagaana trying to teach something.”  They’ll be joking and deadly serious at the same time and there will be no way to separate the joke from the non-joke, because in Navajo culture the joke and non-joke are fused—the sarcasm is there, but it is not meant to sting or change anything, it just is.)   Navajo obviously is a complete separate culture and language than Alexie’s, an oversight often made by whites, who treat Native Americans as if they came from one single, united culture, even though each tribe has its own language and religious beliefs, many of which clash.  However, there is a common Native culture and humor that is shared among the tribes, which is either intrinsic to all Native Americans, or has developed through the long history of white-imposed Indian Schools and the more recent inter-tribal Powwow circuit.  It is, I believe, this larger contemporary Native American culture Alexie is writing about, and this larger Native American audience Alexie is writing to, not Anglo-Americans.   It is a mistake to believe this story was tailored for our sensibilities in any way.

Which is why, ultimately, as useful as the prompt is, it fails.  As I will show, it imposes Anglo-American thinking on a Native American narrative structure.  It assumes an Anglo-American purpose for story telling, which Native Americans do not share.  Anglos, as I’m doing here, write primarily to persuade.  Rhetoric is just a part of who we are.  To make a point, to be slightly combative, to outwit, outsmart, debate, is just who we are, and we assume that is universally true of all cultures, and it’s not.  From what I’ve observed, “out-smarting” is definitely part of Navajo culture, but it’s in jest, and unlike in white-culture, it is not the primary purpose of language.  We use language to try to change the world to how we want it; Native Americans use language to share the world as it already exists.  There is no political agenda.  The point of the story is the story itself, as evidenced by an interview with the Acoma Indian poet, Simon J. Ortiz:

Why do you write?  Who do you write for?

Because Indians always tell a story.  The only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says.  The only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way.  Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued.

Who do you write for besides yourself?

For my children, for my wife, for my mother and my father and my grandparents and then reverse order that way so that I may have a good journey on my way back home.

                This short excerpt models Native American thinking and communication in several important ways.  First, it uses repetition, by fours, as its primary structure.  First Ortiz says he writes, “to tell a story.”  Then he says, “the only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says.”   Next he says “the only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way.”  Finally, he says, “Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued.”  He repeats, and then adds, deepening the meaning, each time he repeats, until the fourth time, when the “ah-ha” moment is allowed to shine through in all its glory.  It’s significant that this comes from an interview.  Ortiz did not compose it this way for an effect; it’s just how he organically thinks and communicates.  Native American students in public schools, and I presume college as well, often have their writing marked down for being redundant because Anglo-writing is thesis-driven, whereas Native American communication is experience-driven.  In white society, you state your theses, and then back it up with evidence.  In Native American societies, you share your experience and discover the truth through the narrative journey.   An Indian will not tell you what you need to know; they will only share with you what they learned along the way, which completely obliterates political discourse as we understand it.  Politics at the Chapter House do not proceed as they do in Washington, even if the outcomes are similar.

                This is the same basic narrative structure for Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.”  Because I’m Anglo, after I finished the story, I initially thought, “Where was the fistfight?,” which of the characters are the Lone Ranger? (Tonto was obvious enough even for me), and “Where is heaven in the story?”  The title seemed random, and the events seemed unrelated:  1) a mock confrontation with a white 7-11 clerk; 2) a break-up with a white girlfriend, 3) a basketball game with the white son of the Bureau of Indian Affairs chief; and 4) looking for a job in the white-man’s world.

            But, the title is not random—it is the essential experience the story shares: how “The Lone Ranger” (whites) and Tonto (the narrator) battle it out.  However, there is another important part of the title, which is “Heaven.”  As there is absolutely no reference to an after-life in the story, and all the details are clearly of this world—7-11, driving around Seattle to avoid his girlfriend, playing basketball, looking through want-ads—one can only assume “heaven” is this life.

            That was my experience living on the Rez.  I was treated as the enemy, but a friendly enemy, like an opponent in a game of Rez-ball, which is both serious and not serious at the same time.   There was a keen awareness of what my people had done to the Navajo people, a distrust that anything had fundamentally changed (in other words, my being there and teaching their children was still eroding the traditional culture as the presence of whites always has done), but a bond still existed, in the bigger bother-hood of life, that was larger than the tribal warfare between whites and Navajos.  Native Americans, unlike whites, have no need to hate their enemies, nor convert them.   Tease them, yes.  Laugh at them, yes.  But hate, or wish to alter their basic nature, no.  And, whether we like it or not, no need to forgive us either, because, first what we’ve done is so profoundly awful it is beyond forgiveness, and second, as Native Americans are culturally inward looking, rather than outward looking, we are not important enough to forgive.  We are not “the people.”  Native Americans believe they continued just fine before us, fine with us, and will continue just fine without us, if that day shall ever come.    

            My initial trouble at fully understanding the text arose from the fact that despite being married into a Navajo family, despite having lived and taught on the Navajo reservation for eight years, I am still primarily a white-thinker.  After reading Ortiz again, thinking about story telling in my classroom, thinking about story telling in my wife’s family, it became obvious.  This story is not about seemingly unrelated events--a mock confrontation with a white 7-11 clerk, a break-up with a white girlfriend, a basketball game with the white son of the Bureau of Indian Affairs chief, or about looking for a job in the white-man’s world—all used as details to frame a larger story about more global historical issues.  It’s not political at all.

            This brings us to the second important point about Native American narrative structure as evidenced in the Ortiz quote:  Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued.  Native American narrative overall is designed for the good of the tribe, the clan, the family, not some external audience.  As a white, you are more than welcome to sit in the circle and listen to the story being told, but the story telling is not for you, it is for the Natives.  Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is not written for us; even though we are free to enjoy it—it is written for Alexie’s people and other Native Americans who share a united experience and immediately get how the title and the four retellings of what it is like to be an Indian in white society are all different versions of the same experience.  It is meant as bitter humor—ain’t that just how it feels bro, when you’re in a 7-ll late at night, and it’s just assumed you’re there to steal?   This is not explaining, this is not converting, this is not making political statements.  It’s shit, this is how it feels, ain’t it?  And then big, rolling laughter after because it hurts too damn much to cry.  No fault.  No demon.  Just is.

 The only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says:  this is what it was like when Kit Carson and his Calvary rode through the Chinle Valley and burned our crops and homes, and chased your great- grandparents up into Canyon de Chelly and the only reason you’re here alive is because your grandmother as a baby was taken and hidden in a juniper tree and somehow survived a couple of days without food or water until her parents could come back to get her.     The only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way.  And this is what it’s like to go to boarding school and not be able to see your family or speak your language or eat your food or practice your religion.  Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them.  This is what it’s like to be “Too hot to sleep”  and “walk to the Third Avenue 7-11 for a Creamsicle and the company of a graveyard-shift cashier” (Alexie, 15) in a city that is built on your land but is built in the image of your enemy—to be alive in a country that attempted to annihilate your people and now wants forgiveness;  this is how [you] were born, how [you] came to this certain place, how [you]  continued:

  “Disembodied, I could never see everything that was happening.  Whites killing Indians and Indians killing whites…Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian woman’s head… Even more terrifying, though, is the fact those kinds of things are happening today in places like El Salvador” (17).

The story isn’t political because there is not enough evidence to credibly believe things will ever change between cultures who dominate and cultures who are dominated.    Instead, the story is a manual on how to survive, written for much the same reasons Ortiz writes:

For my children, for my wife, for my mother and my father and my grandparents and then reverse order that way so that I may have a good journey on my way back home.

If the story is political in any way, it is political this way.  It is sovereign: independent of our usual rhetorical structures, independent of our usual purposes in writing, independent of Anglos as an audience, only sharing what is universal—anger, hurt, love, getting on with life—because there is no way not to share those universal feelings when telling a good story.  In short, it is political in that it refuses to mirror Anglo society.    And that does change us, because it forces us to accept that the way we mentally organize the world is not the only way.   We have to let go of our expectations, our politics, and enter the story on its own native terms or sit around the peripheral only half getting the humor, which is what I spend much of my life doing.  But that too is a good journey. 

It is significant that Alexie closes with these parallel journeys.  The narrator and his girl friend can both say sorry, but she, very Anglo, ends by saying, “I want to change the world” (19).

The narrator, in contrast, closes by saying:

I wish I lived closer to the river, to the falls where the ghosts of salmon jump.  I wish I could sleep.  I put down my paper or book and turn off al the lights, lie quietly in the dark.  It may take hours, even years, for me to sleep again.  There’s nothing surprising or disappointing in that.

I know how all my dreams end anyway. (19)

 For her, there is still the possibility of a better world, that distant horizon, that brighter tomorrow, that final frontier, that constant movement that keeps her from the present.

For him, there are only the ghosts of some better yesteryear and the heaven of now (with or without sleep).  There is only the past and the is.   The future does not exist, except as another is moment, because experience has taught him dreams “end anyway.”  Surviving, carrying on, is moment by moment, story by story, survival.

 © Steve Brown, 2012

How to Integrate an Outdoor Room into Your Garden Space



Marci's Birthday Present about 50% Completed



1.        Excuses for not Posting

This post is going to be difficult to write because it’s been a while.  The conversation with my self has stopped.  An awkward silence has set in.  The only way to write well is to start and then not stop.  Breaks?   Sure--now and then, a few minutes, a few hours, maybe even a day or two.  But to put the pen or keyboard away for much longer than that is asking for trouble, especially with a blog, since it’s basically an online journal.  Skip a day or two and you risk writing summaries--the deadest of all writing forms.

So, I won’t do that.  Or at least I’ll make the summary concise.  At first I worked 10 hour days to get the garden in, which is important, since we’re counting on canning and freezing our own food to cut the cost of living substantially as our income will also drop substantially next year.  And after the long days of work I was just too tired to write.

Then, one evening while watching TV and looking at the glass doors at the garden I had a vision--an outdoor room for Marci.  As her birthday was coming up in a few days, it was the perfect project.  However, if I wrote a post it would ruin the surprise, and so I didn’t blog for a few more days.  Besides, the new project required  working more 10 hour days, and so once again I was just too tired to write.

However, had I blogged as I progressed, the energy would have been current, the writing fresh.  Especially since I worked through weather extremes:  90 degree plus heat, 65 miles- per-hour-plus winds and temperatures plunged into the low 40s one night.  And that was just in two days!  (But again, climate change is only liberal propaganda aimed at destroying our economy.  No one should actually worry about July and April flip-flopping back and forth on daily basis).

What follows is a photo journal of the progress of Marci’s birthday present.  It’s still not finished.  For one thing, it needs a roof.  But it’s complete enough to get enough to get an idea of how it’ll look.

2.        Photo Journal--How to Integrate an Outdoor Room into Your Garden Space

1.        To recap:  The original railroad tie planting beds for the vegetable garden.

2.       Adding log rails with wire fencing to discourage deer and other animals.  Even though the rails are not high enough to discourage the deer by themselves, I've found that deer avoid cramped quarters.  Even though a low fence around a field is no barrier, that same low fence around a small space works fairly well.

3.   Watching TV one night while looking out the glass door at the garden, I envisioned an outdoor living space integrated into the garden.  Located on the west side, it would shelter the vegetables from the scorching afternoon sun while still allowing morning sunlight to bathe the vegetables.  It would also provide shade for humans.

4.   I wanted to blur distinctions between indoor/outdoor spaces, and so flower beds begin outside the garden room but circle into it, with plantings on both sides of the wall.

5.       Black iron fountain birdbath will bring the sights and sounds of water into the room, again to blur the distinctions between interior and exterior space.

6.       The finished room will have a wire fence roof with branches laid across and tied down.  Lattice walls are raised above the ground level again to allow visual flow between the interior and exterior space.  Originally, I planned on having a brick floor, but decided it was nicer to have the prairie flow right into the partially enclosed space.