Читать книгу My First Hundred Years - Donald R. Fletcher - Страница 13

In Korea, as I was growing up, the term of service for Presbyterian missionaries was seven years, followed by a one-year furlough in the United States to be used for rest and refreshing. The furlough was also for promoting the mission cause—visiting churches, renewing contacts, spreading information, and inspiring a positive response.

Because Dad’s medical leave extended the furlough during which I was born, he and Mother offered to extend their succeeding term to eight years. Having returned to Korea in 1920, they would leave in 1928. Dad, who always had a plan in mind, had learned that our family of five could make the journey “by the ports” for not much more than going straight across the Pacific and the continental United States. “By the ports” meant boarding in Japan a ship that would cruise down the coast of China, around the Malay Peninsula, across the Indian Ocean, up through the Red Sea and Suez Canal and across the Mediterranean; then, by a different vessel and after travel in Europe, across the Atlantic to New York.

There would be stops in numerous fascinating ports along the way, as well as opportunities for land excursions. We children would be a bit young to get the full benefit—Elsie just twelve, Archie close to eleven, and I nine-and-a-half. But the next furlough would find all three of us in college.

Dad secured passage on the S.S. Sphinx, a ship of the French line Messageries Maritimes. It was my good fortune that, in Hong Kong, a British family with a son named David came on board. Now I had a playmate who was just my age. There were quite a few other children, particularly after the ship made port in Saigon, then the capital of French Indo-China. But they all spoke French and couldn’t understand us; nor we, them.

David and I learned our way around the ship. As she cruised into equatorial waters, canvas awnings were stretched above the open deck aft, where we Second-Class passengers could stroll or sit. David and I discovered that we could walk and even bounce on the taut canvas, although as our coal-burning vessel steamed along and soot gathered on the awning, we heard loud objections from below when some of it sifted through. That was French that we could understand, without knowing the words.

Another time, in our games we made us a flag. We went to the extreme aft rail of the ship, to the short flag pole, and started to haul down the red-white-and-blue of the French national flag so that we could raise our own. A sailor saw us and came swiftly to push us aside. We got the gist well enough, through his shower of French expletives, as he angrily restored the Tricolor of France to its rightful place.

There was no air-conditioning as yet—the Sphinx steamed along with portholes open. One evening, at the early Children’s Dinner, I was seated below one of them when a freak wave struck the ship’s side and the frothy crest surged through the porthole, drenching me, to the stifled merriment of several nearby tables. I felt deeply chagrined, as Elsie took me back to our cabin to get changed. It was a long voyage—though longer, I’m sure, for our parents than for us three. But eventually we reached Suez, at the southern end of the Suez Canal, and there left our ship, to take a train to Cairo.

I won’t catalog all of our travels. In retrospect, I admire how Dad and Mother were able to stretch what they had saved over the seven or eight years, so that our family of five could manage modest accommodations and a considerable amount of tourism. In Egypt it was just Cairo and its environs—then on to the Holy Land, British-controlled Palestine. Our parents were people of devout faith, well-versed in the Gospel story. To be in Jerusalem, to visit Bethlehem, the Jordan River, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee—these places, and the sites said to be linked with the life of Jesus, all were meaningful to them, and perhaps somewhat so to my siblings.

For me, it was just new and different to be moving constantly from place to place, even if the sites seemed much the same. I do remember one encounter with a shepherd boy who showed us his skill with a Palestinian sling—how he put a stone in the pouch fitted with two long thongs. Holding both of them in one hand, he set the stone pouch to whirling around his head at a dizzying speed, until, with incredible timing, he released one thong, letting fly with the stone straight at his target, which it hit with a frightening crack. This was a sight for a nine-year-old tourist to remember.

Another memory, both of sight and sensation, was sinking up to my neck in clear, cool water of the Sea of Galilee. Dad had found a small inn on the lakeshore that had a sheltered cove at one side. We had no bathing suits in our luggage; but Mother decided that the cove was private enough for us to go swimming in our underwear. The day was hot, and it did feel wonderful, just to settle into that limpid, refreshing water. There were smooth stones on the bottom, and when I raised my eyes, the far shore lifted and wavered a little in the hot air on that tranquil lake surface. It was, for a mature Christian, a holy shrine, as it would be for me later in life. For then, it was just a completely delightful setting to experience.

After Palestine we returned to Suez, at the northern end of the canal, to take another ship of the French line. Through some cross-up, there was no reservation for the Fletchers. Dad, the experienced negotiator, argued our case and got all five of us quartered on hospital beds in the single, quite large room that was the medical department’s isolation ward. This served very well for the voyage across the Mediterranean to Marseilles, France, our ship’s home port. What I remember from that voyage is Stromboli, the isolated island that is just a volcanic cone thrust out of the sea, off the north coast of Sicily.

We passed near enough to see tiny houses clustered on one slope, beneath a small cloud of smoke that hovered over the crest. A good while later, as our ship steamed away and the summer dusk was gathering, I could gaze aft and glimpse, on the underside of the volcano’s plume, a ruddy tinge from the burning lava in its cone. The far, shadowy glow still lives in my brain’s memory.

That memory retains little else from the rest of our family’s journey to the United States. Our funds would not reach for spending much time in Europe. I have only a blurred recollection of the gloom of some lofty cathedral naves, of flights of stone steps, and the hallways and casements of museums. What I do recall, in Paris, was the purchase, for Archie and me, of navy-blue serge suits with short pants, and a British-style cap to complete them. The cap I remember, because I put mine down in the Louvre, at the feet of the Dying Gladiator (a.k.a. Dying Gaul), making Dad return with me to hunt until we found it. That gladiator is one statue I didn’t forget, as I also remember the crisp feel of the serge suit—an extraordinary and extravagant purchase, it seemed to me.

Apparently, time and money did not allow for any tourism in the United Kingdom. We crossed the Channel only to proceed directly to Southampton, to board ship for New York City.

*****

In Princeton, New Jersey, on Alexander Street, stands a discreetly handsome, three-story building, Payne Hall, which houses twelve apartments designated, preferentially, for missionary families on furlough. It was a natural fit for us. We were given the use of Apartment D–3, on the third floor at one end of the building. From its balcony we could look down at traffic—still a novelty to us children, used to the isolated mission compound in Taegu—and across the street to the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary, the chief Presbyterian school training men for the ministry (no women graduates in those days).

The summer was past, public school was the new venture. The Calvert School course, with which we had been home-schooled in Taegu, was an accelerated program designed to prepare a student for high school in six years, rather than eight. When we left Taegu, Elsie and Archie were finishing Calvert’s fifth year, and I was half-way through fourth. The public school in Princeton placed them in seventh grade and me in sixth.

The rather long walk to and from school took us through a central part of Princeton University’s campus. My siblings’ junior high school dismissed its students later than my elementary school did. Doing the return walk alone, I could loiter, to admire carved tigers on a stone gateway and absorb something of the neo-Gothic feel of what was then the university’s Lower Campus. All of this was new, as so much else about suburban life in the United States in that year spanning 1928–1929.

In the Payne Hall apartments, there was another family on furlough, missionaries to some country in Southeast Asia, I think, who had two daughters. Jean, between Elsie and Archie in age, was vivacious and inventive. I found her fascinating, although beyond me. She had a talent for impersonating adults, including some public figures of the time. I, of course, knew nothing about public figures in America, but joined eagerly in the applause when Jean was imitating their characteristics and foibles. Jean devised grown-up games that Elsie and Archie seemed to understand, and I wanted to play them, too.

On the other hand, there was Julia, Jean’s younger sister. Julia was perhaps a little younger than I. I have just one recollection of the two of us—a game she and I were playing on a warm day, venturing to use an open, grassy slope beside one of the seminary buildings. I think it was some kind of war game, and I was a wounded casualty; we were of the post-World War I generation. What I have in memory, once more, is an impression of sun, of closeness to earth and grass, and of a wide, cloud-sailed sky beyond the spire on that seminary building. I was a bit uncomfortable, though, with the game, feeling that it was childish.

Two other recollections may show my bashful eagerness to fit into this world full of other children, after the isolation of our recent childhood in the Taegu Station compound. One of these involved the elementary school, which was on Nassau Street. There were some rather tough kids, of Irish parentage, who occasionally took notice of a student as obviously different as I was. And in our grade, there was also a boy who was quite chubby, also a target for them. In one recess period, when we were all in the school yard, the Irish kids brought the two of us together, trying to get us into a fist fight. We didn’t want to fight, nor had any reason to, but were being boisterously egged on and didn’t want to seem cowardly or weak. Quickly, a ring of onlookers gathered around, which made us even more conscious of needing to fight acceptably.

Of course, a teacher intervened, and within a day or two, I was with Mother in the principal’s office. The principal had an idea that she could get the other boy and me to have some training with proper boxing gloves by the school’s athletic director and put on an exhibition match to demonstrate our real manliness. It was an exotic idea, and nothing came of it. Yet I do give that principal credit—at this long remove—for wishing to enhance our self-esteem and to show up those bullying toughies.

There were playful, prankish moments as winter gave way to spring on the university campus, with large, delicately transient magnolia blooms here and there. On a warm Saturday we found that from our third-floor balcony we could take aim with a water pistol at cars passing below with convertible roofs folded back. And in the long evenings, joining with other kids as dusk was coming on, we could run and hide and call each other “out,” among the shadowy houses. It was a good time, but brief.

As soon as school was over, our family needed to start on a deliberate trip back to Korea. The deliberate part was because Dad again had a plan. With some gifts he had carefully gathered, he had bought a Silver Anniversary Buick—the beautiful 1929 model. Was this extravagant? In appearance, it wasn’t exactly a “missionary” car. Dad’s reasoning was that a Ford could not be expected to hold up on Korea’s rutted roads for seven or eight years, until the next furlough. Perhaps the heavier, more solidly built Buick might do so. His next project was to equip this car with a carrier in front for a large picnic cooler and a rack on one side for a tent and some sleeping bags. His plan was that we would camp our way across the United States, from east to west, saving on lodging, while we enjoyed the countryside.

Along the Lincoln Highway, as on other principal routes, there were occasional tourist camps that might offer an area for tents, plus a cluster of cabins, plain and spare, with men’s and women’s facilities in a separate structure. Dad’s Buick was adapted so that the back of the front seat folded down to form a bed of a sort.

On our first night on the road, after a late start and a short run, we found a place to camp. It was dusk already and the sky looked threatening, as Dad and Archie pitched the tent. Then we boys bedded down in it, while Elsie insisted on squeezing in with Mother and Dad in the car bed. That was a wise choice, because rain came on. The tent was on a slight slope, and there was no ditch around it to divert the water that flowed in, sopping Archie and me. Mother was resourceful; but I don’t recall how she coped with helping us get through the night.

The next day brought us to Pittsburgh. We might possibly have gone a little further, but it was Saturday. My parents’ conservative Presbyterian tradition—that rock from which I was hewn—based their observance of the Christian Sunday on the Biblical commandment and ordinances of the Sabbath. Therefore, they would not travel on Sunday. We would find a suitable campsite in the environs of the city, to rest there until Monday morning.

Our camping location was pleasant enough, at first; but then we began to realize that Pittsburgh, at that date, was a coal city. The gritty dust seeped into everything. We were glad to pack up and roll westward on Monday. And it should be recorded, although perhaps at Dad’s chagrin, that from here on, for most of our overnights, the camping gear stayed packed up while we used tourist cabins.

An intermediate destination was Orchard, in northeastern Nebraska. This was to visit Dad’s family, which was easy, because his three brothers and families all lived in Orchard, and his one sister and her husband lived in Clearwater, not many miles away. When both of Dad’s parents died, and the children, now grown, decided to sell the family farm in Ontario, Canada, each took his share and went his way. Tom, the eldest, moved to Nebraska, where he settled and prospered in business in Orchard. Dad, Gordon, and Dave all chose to study medicine, and the latter two set up a joint practice in Orchard, which they continued for the rest of their lives. To complete the picture, the only sister, Olive, married a doctor and settled in Clearwater.

In Orchard I was happy to find that Gordon’s youngest child, Bruce, was a boy almost my age. For the few days of our visit Bruce became Archie’s and my companion, showing us many things about the half-rural life of the small town. Bruce had a Daisy air rifle, a “BB” gun that used compressed air to fire the little lead pellets. This seemed to me an intriguing, grown-up-style toy.

When we were ready to leave, Bruce and his parents insisted that I should have the Daisy. They could easily get another, and they knew that, with the strict Japanese custom officials and the import duty charged, there was no way that I could order one and have it sent to Korea. I had that air rifle in Taegu for years. Archie and I used it to shoot at tin cans and such. We took some shots at birds, but, while abundant, they proved to be very small and quick-moving targets. Once we did score a hit on a crow, but the bird just flapped its wing, knocking the pellet from its feathers, and flew away.

Our next westward stopover was Yellowstone National Park. There were wonderful sights—cascades of the Yellowstone River, brilliant hues in steaming pools of the Geyser Basin, and, of course, an eruption of Old Faithful. But to me, the most memorable experience was sitting in an arc of benches at Old Faithful Inn near dusk and watching, at a safe distance, while bears came from the woods to explore a garbage heap, and a park ranger regaled us with anecdotes, his comrade astride a horse nearby, cradling a rifle for security.

I enjoyed the jokes and anecdotes so much that I retained them and would retell them with gusto to any adult audience that might be assembled with Mother and Dad. In spite of my shy nature, I always, even from an early age, took pleasure in that kind of “public” speaking.

A final experience, from our family return to Korea that year, came with the ship’s brief layover in Hawaii. We went to the famed beach at Waikiki, and Dad shared a rare outing with Archie and me, renting surfboards. Naturally, we couldn’t ride the surf, so we lay on the boards and paddled, kicking also with our feet. It was fun, and the water was sparklingly beautiful. We stayed out in the sun much longer than we should have, Dad included.

The result—a burn by that Hawaiian sun, the most severe sunburn any of us three had ever experienced. We could only lie face down on our bunks afterward, writhing as Mother went from one to another, anointing us with cold cream as gently as she could. We had no other emollient available. She did observe that Dad, as a physician, should have considered the risk of exposure to that unforgiving, subtropical sun.

About the return to Taegu I have little recollection. It was a blurring blend—familiar sights renewed, but in a different light, while our home bustled with preparations for a new chapter in the lives of Elsie, Archie, and me. We would be off, within a crowded pair of weeks, for Pyongyang, some four hundred miles to the north, to the mission-supported, English-language Pyongyang Foreign School. The quiet life of the small, home-schooled world in Taegu was gone. Ahead was a whole new scene: boarding school with other children ranging all the way from upper-elementary age to high school seniors.

The prospect—all unknown—was exciting, bewildering, unnerving. Elsie and Archie seemed to regard it as something wonderful, so I tried to feel the same. When the time came that Mother and Dad took us to the station and we got on a train, leaving them there, I tried to enter into the excitement; but inside I was already torn by the loss of what I was leaving behind, wrestling with what this drastic change would bring.