Many times people have (for some reason) asked me to write a book about my memoirs. I personally probably wouldn't read it and I rarely read anyone else's memoirs.
Also to do that I would have to remember a 75 year memory. I sometimes have a problem with a 75 second memory.
What was this about again?
If I put my old mind to it, I could probably come up with 1,000 pages. I do remember some interesting events, many don't even have anything to do with a War or fish.
I just got a fleeting memory. In about December 1971 I went to Australia for R&R from Viet Nam.
This was the first time I left the jungle in 10 months.
I landed in Sydney and had a map of the city. A "map" is like GPS on your phone with a dead battery. In other words you actually had to read all these squiggly lines in different colors.
I had the name of my hotel, which I am sure was not a 5 star hotel. More like piece of a a brittle star hotel, but my room had a door, running water, and electricity, something I had not seen in almost a year.
Anyway, getting to the hotel was a problem and I was totally lost. (Remember, no cell phones or computers then) I was reading the map, probably up side down, and came up to a busy intersection. I tried to cross this busy corner but cars were coming from all directions, there was no traffic light or stop sign so I had no idea how to cross. I lived in NYC all my life so was used to crossing streets.
I stood there for a while trying to remedy the situation when 2 men came up to me. One had his arm around the other.
The one guy said something quick to me that sounded like:
Hey Bloke, Kin, hep the gent, cross, stt. Or something like that. I said WHAT? Australians speak English but very differently than I do. It almost sounds like a version of Japanese and the only work I know in Japanese is Godzilla.
Then after he said it 3 times one of the men left and the other guy took hold of my arm.
Then I realized he was blind and had a cane.
We are standing there a while and he says something like: Whats the matter Bloke? Lets go.
I said, I can't cross the street. He says, Oh, you are American, follow me.
He points the cane upward and steps in the busy street dragging me with my hand over my eyes.
The cars didn't stop, but they went behind us right on the sidewalk and all around us.
At this point, Viet Nam seemed safer.
We made it across the street and the guy thanked me and left.
I stood there studying my map and another older guy came up to me and grabbed my arm.
He was also blind and wanted me to "help him" back across the street.
Now I was where I started from and looked for another blind guy to get me across the street.
I looked up and there was a building in front of me. It was a "Lighthouse" organization for the blind.
You can't make this stuff up.
