The value of travel, as Sigmund Freud once observed, lies in self-discovery. I would add, the destination itself is seldom relevant, it’s about the journey. Who you are, who you wish you were and who you have become cannot be ascertained around the familiar. You have to wake up in a strange place, eat strange food, introduce yourself to strangers to find answers to those questions. It takes a detour from the routine to see, maybe even to feel, the person who has been you for all this time.

My buddy and I took a road trip from Denver to Arches and Bryce Canyon this past Memorial Day weekend. Dave and I hadn’t seen each other in over a year and he had a new car he was breaking in. “So how about a road trip?”, he suggested. “What happened to the old car?” “It got totaled. It’s a long story. Tell you about it when I get there.” He drove from Seattle to Denver to get me and Like millions of others, we launched ourselves into the stream and headed downriver to see what we would see — a short vacation. It turned out to be one of those pilgrimages.

Thinking of getting a jump on the weekend traffic, we left Denver on a Thursday morning. The forecast was for sunny weather so I packed accordingly. Tossed my walking shoes into a sports bag along with some shorts, tee shirts and just to be safe, a pair of jeans and my fleece warm-up jacket– it could get cold in the mountains.

* * *

The first wrong turn occurred at the turn off to Golden which we weren’t supposed to take. Dave explains, according to his favorite Uncle, there weren’t wrong turns on trips, only alternative routes.
A trip without alternative routes was hardly worth making — might as well stay home and watch the travel channel. Besides which, I was the navigator. When he goes on a cross country tour, Dave declares, ( a hankering he seems to have every few years) he is usually by himself and he never gets lost, but since I’m riding shotgun and we’re yakking away, he’s not able to focus as he usually does. “Since you don’t drive, ( I’ve never driven — it’s a long story.) maybe you don’t read maps too well.” This sounds like a put down, but I realize that it’s not wrapped up in a dig like “Are you sure you know how to read a map? (pause) Seeing as you don’t drive.” No, I think Dave is actually trying to console me, expecting and accepting that we’ll probably take a few detours which would be OK. Don’t sweat it. It’s a nice sunny day. No one’s on the highway except us.

I reach for the road map lying on the back seat and study it quietly for a few minutes. Once we find our way back to the right highway, we resumed our conversation.

“I was born in Denver. My mom didn’t want to have me in the internment camp.” Dave is telling me his life story. His cousin is tracing the family tree and has asked everyone to contribute pieces of the family history. Dave is hell bent with glee to keep the history from being a dry compendium of births, marriages, deaths, educational attainment and career achievements. “Yep, nine months to the day they arrived in Denver. They were poor as church mice but happy to leave Idaho behind. I bet my Dad was especially happy”, he says with a wink in his voice. “My brother was the youngest infant in camp. They waited to get settled in Seattle before having my younger sister.”

Stories tumble out of Dave like the chapters of Moby Dick. (which we both agree is a great book.) : about growing up, working in Alaska, the old house in south Seattle, his current neighbors, how his car was totaled, anything and everything interspersed with musings about the economy, the election year, how we might form an unbeatable political party for dummies. (Whoops, that might have already been done — dumb and dumber.)

The highway channels us like a raft through the mountain passes. There are a few remaining patches of snow on the peaks but the rest is luxurious green and granite. We pass Vail well before noon. ( A friend had recommended we stop for lunch to taste the best veal bratwurst on the planet, but we were too early.)

The sky was a crystal clear blue, the sun was out and the temperature did not require air conditioning. We jawed away taking turns narrating the dog-eared and not so dog-eared pages of our memory books. And playing in turn, arm-chair ( or, maybe bucket seat ) psychoanalysts.

If you’ve ever had to say “I was born in this country” then you know what it means to be white on the inside, or as my mom used to call me — “a banana”. I’m an Asian American — a census category that did not exist until 1980, prior to which I was just ‘other’. Being other, I felt, was more accurate in its indefiniteness than being “Asian American” which pretends to be more precise only to further cloud the issue with “Asian” and “American”. When I was a boy, America was a melting pot. It was a goal to become like everyone else, equal without thought of creed or color. I suppose that was naive. Your skin would never change, which I honestly knew very early on, it wasn’t about skin color it was about attitude. Is there anything weird about a small and short Chinese boy wearing Roy Roger’s cowboy boots with spurs to school in the second grade? I worked on becoming an “American” — a becoming analogous to what the top sergeant means when he says his job is to turn you into a soldier. I’m not sure anyone can be “American” — without a hyphen — anymore.

Dave’s an Asian American I suppose. Although to put he and I in the same category is to stretch the definition beyond meaning. Anyone who knows Dave, knows that he’s a oner. He might be a disabled person if you could label a disability as being Dave. He laughs at his own jokes, jokes he plays out silently in his own head. Knowing that explaining jokes is lame, he just laughs and as you get to know him, you cease to ask what’s so funny. Dave is Japanese without a trace of Japanese in him. The Japanese of his generation worked hard at working hard because of the war. That is, they worked at being model citizens, accepting without complaint the injustice which had befallen them, blending in until their children would reclaim their pride by becoming senators, doctors, professors and businessmen. They can be credited or blamed for setting the Asian bar so high. You are expected to work hard and excel in school — definitely a positive racial profile short of being White. Asians or Orientals as we were called back in the day were fast tracked, given the benefit of a doubt and given job opportunities commensurate with undeserved reputations. Happy subjects of the Peter principle (or is it Noblesse Oblige?), we kept quiet and shuffled to the right of the Bell curve.

After the war, being Japanese was problematic, Dave likes to joke that his father passed as a Chinese person — a fabrication I’m sure that carries a sarcastic slur aimed at my heritage. Dave says he passes for Korean these days. Dave’s strategy is to get by as the lowest Asian category he can. Avoiding high expectations is a dilemma which has plagued him since childhood. Having a brother who graduated from MIT, who was actually hard working and smart didn’t make it easier growing up. Unable and unwilling to compete with his brother, Dave decided at an early age to create a persona that allowed him some breathing room. Choosing to be an Asian American Comedian, however, is not exactly an obvious choice. As he recounts his childhood, he was a constant source of amusement for his father and constant source of exasperation for his mother, both outcomes he is rather proud of — aspiring to be the Shakespearean fool he has become.

You can picture Dave as the laughing Buddha, Hotei, without the big belly. He was bald at an early age which he explains is the result of having expended too much time in serious thought. Which in turn, explains why he laughs so much. After all, Life for the thinking man is a joke. (At whose expense we can never really be sure.) After all these years, the only prominent change is the appearance of gray amid the tufts of his bushy eyebrows. Dave chooses the fool’s prerogative to call himself a fool before you can, and then comes up with a bon mot like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. He insists that he has no tastes–in dress, in food, in women. Whatever is just fine. His wardrobe is explained by shopping at Goodwill. The baseball caps and team jerseys have nothing to do with anything except convenience. The sometimes bizarre mix of colors between hat, shirt and pants are due to being color blind. He claims everything is just a shade of gray (ha, ha). Is there a problem with that?

Like the laughing Buddha, Dave embodies enlightenment. He is cheerful without reason and generous to a fault. He will literally lend you the shirt off his back which is why, he will remind you, he shops at Goodwill. (huh?) He will lend money to someone because they can’t get credit. He will loan you his car and take the bus because he doesn’t really need to drive. ( what? This, I find out, is how his car got totaled. He wasn’t driving it at all. He actually put her on his auto insurance policy – but that’s another story!) Dave’s relationships with the people in his life have a quirky quality that approaches scenes from The Twilight Zone. This is not normal — could he be Hotei for real? It occurs to me that I may be the only normal, ordinary acquaintance he has.

* * *

Going from Denver to Arches takes you through the Rockies to the Colorado/Utah border. As you leave Grand Junction going west on I-70, you are crossing into Utah, gliding down the western slope of the Rockies to a desert called the San Rafael Swell. Having geographical features resembling those found on Mars, according to one observer, the landscape is at once recognizable to those of a certain age, who grew up watching westerns. This alien landscape is a place of myth and memory. Cowboys and Indians crisscrossed the desert in an endless enactment of good over evil. Not until John Ford’s “Searchers” which was filmed in Monument Valley was there a hint that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ might be mixed up with more complicated stuff like Racism, Genocide or Miscegenation. These adult issues, issues that were beyond Good and Evil, so to speak, were incomprehensible. (As a boy, I could not imagine how anyone in their right mind would want to kill Natalie Woods, much less John Wayne. What was going on? ) The good old days–childhood in general–was pretty much black and white. Good guys rode white horses and Bad guys were always cowards and bullies who ambushed Good Guys, stole stuff, and generally caused havoc by never getting a shave and never going to church. The desert makes this plain. No distractions, and, of course, with place names assigned by the Mormons, the valley is, no pun intended — of biblical proportions.

If ever a stretch of highway fit the catch phrase, “See the USA in your Chevrolet”, it is highway 128 going south along the Colorado River. Circumscribing the eastern edge of Arches National Park, it gently winds and turns showcasing one spectacular vista after another. The highway engineers who designed this roadway were artists. The canyon walls have the architecture of great music. Not a note out of place –Theme and variation, voices ascending and descending in the face of the cliffs in perfect harmony. This is Nature in all its timelessness, reminding us of how little of the universe we understand or even paid attention to, preoccupied as we are, with our puny selves. What we came to see is right before us. We pull over a few times to let others pass — people with somewhere to go, something to do, rushing towards the future — been there, done that. Pretty sure we know how the story ends. We’re taking our time, savoring a near perfect day.

We reach the entrance to Arches National Park at two in the afternoon. Dave flashes his lifetime pass to the ranger who hands us the map and visitor’s guide to the park. “It’s free”, Dave mumbles, congratulating himself for his foresight in purchasing a membership many years ago. We flow through the toll gate still ahead of holiday traffic and proceed up a winding incline to the plateau where other wonders await us. The road to our first stop, Balanced Rock, is a tourist attraction all its own. Here we see the handiwork of time. Long ago, before there were witnesses, ancient forces caused the land to buckle and break and toss huge slabs of earth to make mesas, buttes and pinnacles. The sandstone layers reveal time like tree rings. This was once the ocean floor that dried up leaving a salt bed which was covered by sand that turned into rock whose weight eventually caused the salt to liquify– causing an uplift of the sandstone you now see. Water and wind sculpted the rock. At the base of cliffs are aprons of fine sand, a sign of time past and time future when all will be dust. But for the time being, figures locked in sandstone are still emerging. This wall looks like a temple, that one a hall of justice, these are a group of bishops, that is a band of beggars, as far as the eye can see and the imagination can leap, the rock formations come alive. It is as if you are looking at clouds only they are not being moved by the wind: they are still; you are the traveler.

These thoughts come to me as in a dream, all of them in a tangle, in an instant rather than as a drawn out meditation. It has taken a thousand times longer to write this down than the actual moment. And as I struggle to find the precise word — words to convey what I see, what I feel in my dream, I realize quite helplessly that meaning is slipping away as it turns into memory. The stories we tell, the stories we share, are shaped in the telling and in turn, shape the teller. The willy-nilly, jumbled nature of memory is like the sandstone, layered, but not at all orderly, sitting at odd angles in dramatic poses and sometimes entirely eroded away. It’s not like there’s no meaning, but rather, too much meaning.

Balanced Rock is aptly named, a huge rock ( the size of three school buses according to Wikipedia ) seemingly balanced, from one angle, on the tip of a seal’s nose. We park and walk around the formation to take some pictures. The trail is marked by stones stacked in tiers of three. It’s still warm, I’m in hiking shorts, tee shirt and sandals. The wind kicks up in small gusts of grit. It makes one wonder just how long before the balancing rock will topple, months, years — will I still be here? (I expect they’ll put a webcam up soon.)

The parking lot is suddenly full of cars. The weekend seems to have caught up with us. A tour bus arrives and a crowd of Japanese tourists pours out as an organized troop. We decide it’s time to move on.

The parking lot at “Delicate Arch” is full. We luck out and pull in just as another car is leaving. Dave grabs his camera. He’s dressed in a short sleeved jersey, jeans and tennis shoes. My camera is inoperative without fresh batteries. I forgot to check before leaving, oh well. We follow the trail going to petroglyphs and spend a moment contemplating a few stick figures scratched into the sandstone from the 1800’s –equivalent to an Indian, “Kilroy was here”. It’s curious to note that there isn’t more graffiti. Did the park service clean it all up? Did nature remove modern, more impermanent attempts to leave a mark?

We start up a trail leading to the Delicate Arch. It has tapered to a single file walkway serving walkers going to and coming back from the attraction. It’s hot. About a half an hour in, after the third switchback over successive slabs of sandstone that are pitched like toppled dominoes, I’m wondering where the damn arch is. Dave is up ahead about a 100 yards, he waits for me to catch up. “Where the hell is the Arch?”, I ask. “Dunno, but the trail is 1.5 miles long”. “What?”, I’ve been duped by the Balanced Rock stop– that was a short hike. I should have read the guide before proceeding. My body is panicking, we’ve covered about a half a mile. I’m wearing sandals and the slipping and sliding is wearing me out. Dave says, “you can wait here if you want.” This is one of those macho gambits that forces me to say, “No, I’ll see how much longer I can hold out.” Dave nods and walks on ahead.

“Wait here”, I think to myself, there’s no shade, it’s hot, I’m beginning to have odd rambling thoughts like — what if the arch turns out to be four feet tall and the picture is all clever camera angles, or that it looks just like the golden arches and that’s why it’s so popular. No, my mind is rifling through the drawers for a handy excuse to turn back. I ask a returning couple if it’s worth it or should I just buy the postcard. They laugh, but they don’t offer any encouragement. I peer ahead and notice a few people the size of ants heading over the horizon. One, two at least three more slabs to climb. My resolve gives way and I shout out to Dave. I pantomime that I’m going back. He nods and waves goodbye.

On my way back, another old guy asks me how much further. I admit that I don’t really know having turned around before reaching it. He decides to join me, noting that he could drive to the lower viewpoint to see the arch without the long hike. We chat, he’s a retired chiropractor from Minnesota. The walk back is slightly easier than the walk out if only for the fact that I knew that it had an end. When I got back to the parking lot it is five-thirty. The car was locked so I leaned against the trunk and watched the other tourists and waited for Dave to return.

There were quite a few cars with groups that just seemed to be waiting. First I thought that they were just resting up after a long hike, but it turns out they were waiting for sunset. According to the park guide: “Delicate Arch 3.0 miles (round trip) Elevation gain 480 feet, no shade–(in bold) take at least one quart of water per person! Open slick-rock with some exposure to heights. Best at sunset.”. About half an hour before sunset, people better prepared than I ( Had they been here before? Did they read the brochure? ) started moving en mass to trek to the Delicate Arch. Where the hell was Dave? I started to worry. Could something have happened to him? Would I have to hike in there again to find out?

Just them, to my relief, Dave shows up. He’s not exactly fresh as a daisy but he did get to the arch. Pictures to prove it. Somehow he had taken the wrong fork and was headed toward the lower viewpoint ( adding an hour to his trek ) when a family who had made the same error, turned him around. It got windy and cool out there, but he wasn’t affected because he is impervious to cold having worked in Alaska. A kindly couple had offered him water which he didn’t need, of course. Some old coot had approached him to ask if he was a veteran and thanked him for his service. All of this is revealed as we drive out of the park to Moab where we intend to stay the night. “Why did that guy ask me if I was a veteran?”, Dave wonders. “’cause you look like an old man and its Memorial Day weekend.”, I surmise. “Should have told him the Korean Conflict, a north Korean vet.” Dave grunts.

Moab is a short distance from Arches. We begin looking for a place to stay. The super 8 parking lot is empty so we check there. The place is booked. The super 6 – – Full. Comfort Inn, full. Ramada full. I’m thinking but the parking lots are empty, then it dawns on me, everyone is in Arches waiting for sunset. Guess we should have made reservations. We check the map, and head for Green River, 57 miles away, a town far from any park.

Dave and I have been friends for 45 years. We met in college in the 60’s at the start of the war protests. We were English Lit. majors, commoners ( not Greek) and Asian so that it is not surprising that we found ourselves at the same lunch table, killing time between classes and occasionally trying to discuss weighty matters like why we were reading Spenser’s Faery Queen, etc… My goal was to take as many classes as I could without graduating. As long as I was working for a degree I wouldn’t be drafted. (College was really affordable in the good old days.) Dave graduated a year before me and decided to volunteer rather than be drafted. (Wanted to get it over with, he says) I still remember him outlining an elaborate plan to find out who was who in the Vietnam War and if he found himself on the wrong side, he would don black pajamas and cross over. Was he kidding? Probably, but that was Dave — he doesn’t really know why he volunteered either, but he had a college degree and was older than the 18 year olds who were being drafted, and if someone had to be in charge, it might as well be him.

My turn came in my fifth year in college. I got the classic draft notice from the president and I let myself be inducted because I wanted to become a man. Yes, I finally admit it. I didn’t realize it at the time, in fact, I only realized it just now. All those westerns and war films, the medal of honor comic books and Hemingway novels had done their work and I was primed for my fate. Never one to go quietly into the night, I told myself that the Army was such a big organization I was confident I would find a place to hide and be safe from harm. The fact that I’m still here writing this is alas only a testament to pure dumb luck.

We don’t talk about Vietnam much. I try not to think about it at all. Dave thinks my daughter would like to know more about my experience there, how it might have shaped me. Myself, I think I probably suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome — although how I might have been — who’s to know? I was also lucky unlike 90% of the GIs who were in country with me. “The 1st Cav? Someone made a mistake, my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was cryptography.”, as I explained to the company clerk who was guffawing at my insistence on filing a request for transfer. Minutes after I signed the papers, someone told me to grab my gear and get on the helicopter, I was going to help them move a LZ. What’s an LZ? ( A “landing zone”, — a large clearing in the jungle created by a huge bomb dropped by a flying crane. Big enough to land helicopters). There were two other guys who were returning to the LZ. When we landed they took off running toward the berm. “Hey, why are you guys running?” “They’re shooting at us, stupid”. I’m doing the 50 yard dash in a crouch while the Huey is lifting off behind me.

That was my introduction to the boonies. No one bothers to explain too much. If you don’t catch on on your own, too bad. We strung concertina, laid out claymores, dug latrines and foxholes, build bunkers and camped out on one of the southern branches of the Ho Chi Minh trail inviting the gooks to find us. We got overrun twice by NVA or VC who thought they could overwhelm us with numbers. The first time I was so concerned of dying by friendly fire that I stuck myself to Moose, the biggest blond guy in the outfit. I needn’t have worried. When morning came the bodies on the concertina looked like thirteen year old kids. I was at least a foot taller, wore glasses, and was about 80 lbs heavier than any gook. I was 25 years old.

Moose’s rotation was up a couple of months later. We were happy to see him go. It meant however slim the chance, some of us would rejoin the real world. Sadly, Moose was back a few weeks later. When he got home the girl he thought was waiting for him, hadn’t. He didn’t give it a second thought and re-upped to be with us. I think it was then that I began extinguishing my hopes –less candles, less hurt. Hopelessness gives you an insane kind of freedom. Once fearlessness sets in, normal bookkeeping rules no longer apply. I stopped trying to make friends — a pain avoidance tactic that anyone who sees combat first hand eventually adopts.

My only funny memory of those times is about a lizard. A patrol had caught a big lizard, brought it back and had it staked to a chain in the LZ. It was about six feet long and looked like a komodo dragon. We were going to make it the company mascot. We had no idea what kind of lizard it was, we called it the ‘fuckuu lizard’. At night it would make a windup sound, ‘clac clac clac clac clac..’, a long pause, then when breathing out would come a long wistful lament ‘fuuuuck uuuu fuuuuck uuuu fuuuuck uuuu’. It still brings a smile to me now when I think of it. How appropriate. Unfortunately our CO didn’t find it amusing and we had to let it go.

The second time we were overrun the smell of cordite clung to the ground like morning fog. Gun ships had peppered the perimeter like a monsoon rain all night long. Dawn finally arrived as the chaos of night gave way to silence. I remember thinking while I watched some guys taking ears that that was repulsive, but that was only what I thought, what I felt was overwhelming elation at being alive, still. They say that every combatant believes in God. I can attest to that. But I will admit, I’ve forgotten the promises I made.

That morning they flew in hot breakfast packed in olive drab artillery cannisters: soggy fried potatoes, greasy rashers of bacon and scrambled eggs. The eggs had undergone some chemical transformation and had turned a hue of greenish yellow. Green eggs, they looked disgusting but tasted great.

I cut my wants to the daily minimum requirements: enough water to shower, enough C4 to heat up C-rations, some LRPs and cigarettes that weren’t left over from the last war. I was pretty much a death row inmate who had run out of reprieves. Then after 6 months in the boonies, my transfer came it. This was blind luck, I had long forgotten about my transfer request. This was totally fucking unbelievable! I was outta there. I had been right about the bureaucratic army providing loopholes I could exploit. My only and almost fatal miscalculation had been to forget that it also took its own fucking sweet time.

I spent the rest of my term in the rear, a place with actual buildings, roads and a mess hall, sending secret messages, from who to whom about what I had no idea. Just set the dial and transmit. I held my breath and wore a flak jacket until the commercial airplane taking us home leveled out at 10,000 feet when everyone including the stewardesses let out a huge yell of relief. (The planes departing from Bien Hoa lifted off at a 45% angle to avoid possible bullets or rockets in the flight path.)

I was back in Seattle, a civilian in 48 hours. I spent the next 6 months with a reoccurring dream, that I was still in ‘Nam waiting to go home when new orders came reassigning me to another year in the boonies. Every time I sat on the john, it felt like I was dreaming, modern plumbing was a fucking miracle. How could I have taken it for granted for so long? I couldn’t step into a supermarket without being overwhelmed by the lights, the colors, the choice, the plenty. My nightmare and cold sweats finally went away when I discovered in my dream that the name on the orders was misspelt — hence, they’re for someone else! It took some doing, but my brain finally found a loop hole consistent with my unintentional life — a misspelling, ha! The war was only 48 hours away, but in that instant, I put it behind me once and for all and returned to the “real world”.

Dave wasn’t so lucky. He was an officer and had to pull three years and not just two. His year in country was spend in Cam Ranh Bay where he ran the bakery for the first six months and Graves Registration for the remainder. According to Dave, this was the cushiest job he’s ever had. All it was was picking up bodies and body parts. putting them into body bags and shipping them home. Nobody fucked with him, there were no inspections, he did whatever wanted, because it was taboo to mess with graves registration. I don’t press him about this, the worst was yet to come. His last year of service was spent stateside at Ft. Hamilton where he had to deliver death notifications to families in the New York City area. He doesn’t like to talk about it. I’m sure he and I share a kind of survivor’s guilt. This is Memorial Day weekend and between this and that we find ourselves talking about war, our war and the subsequent conflicts since.

“It is asymmetric warfare”, Dave argues, “that’s why you can’t win with overwhelming force, that was the lesson of Vietnam.” ( We were talking about the current mess.) “Whoa, what are you saying?”. “There was a guy on NPR who …” Ah, there are pundit debates and personal debates. Don’t get me started. In my not so humble opinion, pundits of all stripes are members of a Greek chorus. They point out things the actors don’t know, They provide a commentary as if there were actually a script! They see the future as though it were a logical conclusion. It’s all horse shit and vanity. I finally get it. If we were remotely rational, we wouldn’t engage in war in the first place. Wars don’t have winners, only survivors.

And to our shame, us survivors, we let the pundits prattle on hoping they will concoct some plausible horse shit to give us back some dignity, some illusion of having done something meaningful and heroic instead of what we know in our heart of hearts — that we were profoundly stupid– soldiers following orders from clueless, gungho officers who put winning medals and furthering their careers over making sense. ( I take every opportunity with Dave to insult officers.) Of course, I exaggerate for effect, but I’m basically right, aren’t I? The more the media shills palm the idea that anyone in uniform is a hero, the more embarrassing and threadbare the idea of a hero becomes. Whose guilt are we trying to assuage? Do you really believe anyone wants to give their life for their country? No way — those lives are taken. We keep the silence, take the dole and avoid our own reflections staring back when we search for names on the wall. Dave agrees of course. Memorial Day is fraught with memories we wished we didn’t have. History rolls over the past like an iron taking all the wrinkles out, sizing a canvas to paint a story without nuance, without fear and loathing.

It’s ten at night before we locate a motel with a vacancy sign that had a vacancy and not just a broken sign. It is vintage Edward Hopper/Hitchcock, a single story concrete bunker with a parking space outside each unit. A single room with double beds, TV, air conditioner atop a mini refrigerator, a window with a small table and two chairs. I ask about a place to eat, the manager volunteers that the place next to the truck stop is real good. Although she can’t remember the name, “Heard you could even get a nice glass of wine with your dinner there”, she says.

We eventually find the diner. It has a name like “Good Eats”. The booths have joke books to keep you entertained. The remark about the nice glass of wine rattles in the back of my brain until I realize that this was Utah. We must look like we really needed a drink which I did. The waitress is a little surly, it is late to be serving two old guys much less two old Asian guys. “Wadda ya want?”, She’s doing all she can to keep up her end of the conversation (we’re keeping her from filling the salt shakers.) I’m dying to say “we’re Mormon too.”, but I’m hungry and don’t want to be thrown out. So I order chicken (which takes extra time to cook), Dave orders patty melt. I can report that the fried chicken was really good — if you happen to be in Green River, Utah, it’s worth the extra wait. Dave says the patty melt was just OK. ( Duh, how can there be a really good patty melt?)

We’re still yakking back at the motel when a tipsy broad barges into our room with a six pack, takes a look and says, “whoops, wrong room” and leaves. We lock the front door before turning in. My legs are cramping up as I try to relax and sleep. I give my calves some severe karate chops to shock them into obedience. Ouch, Ouch. Tomorrow I’m putting on my shoes…

The next morning starts out bright and sunny. Dave has already shaved and showered and is studying the map when I wake up. I’m feeling much better after a night’s rest. We’re in no rush and decide to drive to Bryce Canyon that day. I reach in to my sports bag for my shoes. “Oh, NO!”, I blurt out when I see them. They don’t match! One walking shoe, one dress shoe. What was I thinking? They were left and right but totally mismatched. Well, this means no hiking for me. ( My legs breath a sigh of relief, maybe I had this planned all along. ) Dave is getting a grin out of this, he wants to see how I’m going to turn this story of general and increasing ineptitude into a triumph of clever fortitude or some such. Too early for that, my feet are still tender as I slip them into my sandals. Time to get out of Dodge.

We pull on to I-70 heading west to Bryce Canyon. I check the map and notice that there’s a long stretch of uninterrupted highway ahead of us. “How we doin’ for gas?”, I ask. “Oh, shit — it says empty, although empty isn’t empty. Should be a gallon left.” “How long has it been empty?” “We gotta turn around”, Dave says decisively as he pulls over”. He’s heading the opposite direction before I can point out that I-70’s a divided roadway. “Oh shit”, says Dave as he makes another U-turn. By the time we are completely awake ( good thing no one else was on the highway.), we’re back in Green River pumping gas. Somewhat sheepishly, we retrace our steps to the highway. It’s a good thing we don’t have any women with us, we would be eating large portions of crow, “two totally useless old men”, “Knowing how to read maps is only useful if you have someplace to go.” “Not only is it downhill, the grade is steep.” Women are merciless that way. We don’t say much, being properly chagrined. No point promising to do better, we know ourselves too well.

The drive is again a scenic marvel. The ride through Salina Canyon is panoramic. The endless succession of calendar art finally overwhelms the senses and a kind of exhaustion envelops us. Or perhaps it is the cold front that is bringing in some clouds. By the time we get to Bryce, it is definitely cold. I stay in the car as Dave ventures out to take a few pictures. Being the exemplar, ever the second lieutenant, Dave is still in a short sleeve shirt while everyone else is bundled up in parkas, scarves and gloves. At Bryce Point, I watch from the parking lot as Dave joins a bunch of tourists to peer down into what’s called the Bryce amphitheatre. They are crowded on the edge of a cliff jutting out into the abyss. It looks like an illustration of angels on the head of a pin. As to the answer of how many, I would say it depends on what they’re trying to see. It’s all beautiful I’m sure, but the cold wind erases every opportunity to luxuriate in it. Hoping that pictures will suffice, everyone is briskly taking snapshots with their cell phones and scurrying back to their cars — us included.

We start back at about four in the afternoon. Our plan is to return to Green River, stay the night there and drive back to Denver the following morning. True to form, Green River is entirely booked, even the “Bates” is full. It’s already dusk when we are forced to implement plan B — back to Grand Junction, Colorado. We drive into night listening to the BBC on the radio. The woman announcer rattles off one story after another at a BBC clip in that weighty English accent that renders everything into officialese that we Americans are particularly susceptible to. It is a long litany of current atrocities, intrigues and political maneuvers from all over the world. There is no escaping it, the human track record is a dismal catalog of cruelty, madness, and mayhem. It’s depressing. We turn off the radio and drive in silence for a bit. We better talk about something or we’ll both be asleep soon.

Dave chortles to himself and starts telling me about Sergeant Manley. “This guy was ‘strack’. One of those kind of lifers that can sniff a smudge of Brasso on the edge of a belt buckle — the type that keeps a second pair of boots in the fridge to safeguard a spit polish shine. Well anyways someone had rigged up the classic bucket over the door prank on Manley. He was in his hooch and someone yelled “Hey, Manley yo (the N word)”. (He was black). He came out seeing red when a bucket of white paint hits him square on the top of his head. I didn’t actually see it myself but the Captain is explaining this to me at morning roll call. We are standing at the back of a 200 man formation who are at attention while Manley is up front hopping mad, swearing up a storm at the entire company, vowing to find and punish the culprits responsible for this insubordinate offense. Apparently it wasn’t just the paint but the pranksters had also emptied out the water from the shower and the two showers adjacent to their barracks. They also drained the trucks of diesel so that when Manley went to wash the paint off, he only succeeded in smearing more of it over himself. He had to go to the next company to find a working shower. Manley was ranting and raving while the Captain is telling more and more of the details — it took the Captain and I our all to keep from busting a gut.”

The perpetrators were never caught. Dave didn’t find out who planned and executed this excellent caper until his last day in country. His guys knew he loved a good joke and since he was a ‘good’ guy they revealed the parties who were responsible. “I suspected one of them because he was the company wise-guy. The others were a surprise. There were eight of them and the mastermind was the chaplain’s assistant.” Curious, I ask, were these guys all white?” Dave ponders this for a moment and answers to my surprise, “No, they were all black”.

I felt a twinge of sympathy for Manley. I was reminded of the time I asked a black guy in my platoon what it felt like to be a black in the Deep South. We were in Georgia, just the two of us stuck on base while the rest of the guys were off on a weekend pass. He was from Detroit and Civil Rights unrests was in the news. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Hey, you ain’t exactly white neither.” Touche.

“The only time I was really scared was when I had to go out to pick up two bodies from a helicopter crash in an unsecured area. The night before, I checked out an M16 and all the ammo. The entire company had only two M16’s, we mostly did baking, laundry and bodies. I was in my hooch cleaning the rifle and repacking the clips to make sure it wouldn’t jam when I had this premonition that this might be it. So I arranged my stuff in a neat pile to make it easier for the graves registration guy and I skipped dinner and the next morning’s breakfast,” As Dave tells it, pausing for effect. “You don’t want to be shitting on yourself when you’re dead.” He ordered a FNG (Fuckin’ New Guy) to help him. “This guy was a big black guy who had civilian mortuary experience so he was ok with the chore, but this was his first venture out of Cam Ranh and he was as scared as I was. So when we got there, I stationed him by a tree and told him to stay put and keep an eye on the trail. “If you see a bunch of asians running down this trail. Let the first one by, that’ll be me.” Nothing happened of course but Dave loves to embellish. I’m all in with the braggadocio, it’s classic Dave — nothing so serious that it can’t be made into a joke.

We get off the interstate at Grand Junction and drive through town for a couple of miles until we run into a block of motels. It’s ten-thirty when we find a place right next to a 24-hour diner. The parking lot is almost empty. This is an eerily sister motel to the one in Green River. Same cinder block construction, same double beds, air conditioner atop a mini-frig, maybe even the same bed spreads! Have we run into a clandestine Eastern European motel chain? Too tired to continue this line of inquiry, we walk next door for a late supper.

* * *

Today is an easy drive day. We mosey around, have breakfast and start back at around 10 AM. It’s a cold morning and I’m comfortable in my jeans. We keep the palaver going. We seem to have an endless supply of stories. We’re so old, we’ve forgotten whether we told them or heard them before.

When I was a young boy Memorial Day was spent visiting grave sites. We would clean up the gravestone, place a small meal for the deceased: a bowl of rice, a small plate of chicken, and bow three times.
This was ancestor worship I was told. The fact that I didn’t know anything about them didn’t seem to matter. This was mostly true except for my brother Dixon. Dixon was a year younger than me. He died when he was eleven. He had been playing under a load of wall boards which were leaning against a wall. Somehow the pile fell on him and in trying to get free he pushed upwards and ended up with his neck trapped between the wall boards and the wall.

Dixon had a difficult life. He was retarded – a handicap we did not allow him until he was five or six. Before that he was lazy, obstinate or stupid. His life definitely got better when his condition was accepted and he was allowed to go to a special school. Unlike Dave who actively engaged in resistance to his older brother, Dixon always followed me and did what I asked. Being the eldest automatically put me in charge and made me responsible for my younger siblings. They will tell you that I was a mean and angry tyrant. I plead the fifth. My only excuse is that I didn’t know how to be a parent. I was too young for the responsibility.

I remember coming home the day Dixon died. It was evening. One of my uncles took me aside and told me what had happened. The house was full of aunties and uncles communicating in hushed tones while my mother wept inconsolably. I remember trying to be invisible. I went about doing my chores: took out the garbage, swept the back porch, picked up the glasses and cups… I overheard the Pastor telling my mom how God, in his infinite wisdom, had taken Dixon early to his bosom and had relieved her of the burden she had borne for so long. Was that right? Did we live in a universe where there were no accidents? Was it really OK for me to feel relief that Dixon had died? Had I misheard? Did I misunderstand what was said? All I know is that as of that moment I no longer felt any allegiance to that God.

* * *

We get to Vail a bit after noon. I remember about the bratwurst and suggest that we stop for lunch. If you’ve never been to Vail it is the quintessential mountain resort town. A ski destination for the rich and famous, Vail is done in the international alpine style: chateau, chalet, haus, grand hotel – in other words, money, money, money. In the summer, the place is given over to family vacations, condo living, mountain biking, golf and shopping. There is also a West Vail, a Middle Vail and Vail proper. A topographical fact we were not aware of until we had visited all three Vails. We stopped at West Vail, parked in the visitor’s lot, went to a hotel and asked for directions to Vail Village. ( I also used the restroom, which was so fancy that it made you want to clean the sink after you washed your hands.) The concierge tells us to go down the stairwell and out to the back terrace and follow the creek.

We take a small hike and watch some fly fisherman practicing by a stream. We wonder if the hotel stocks it with trout. My bet is absolutely, this is Vail after all. I’m looking for a bridge crossing into Vail Village, no luck. I’ve been here once before but I had come with someone who knew where they were going. To be frank, I’ll know it when I see it and this was not it. We bump around like sightless microorganisms in pond water for a couple of hours or so. We are strangers in a strange land. I’m wearing a black fleece jacket, Dave finally conceding that it is cold, dons a light gray hoodie that is frayed at every seam. We finally find the bridge and the Hotel Gasthof Gramshammer where Pepi’s Restaurant/Bar is located. It’s now 3:15 in the afternoon and it looks like lunch is over, although there are some remaining patrons seated on the deck still waiting for their food.

I rub my chin to consider what to do next and discovered that I have forgotten to shave that morning. No doubt we were pretty scruffy looking for Vail. Dave turns to leave when I step over the chain, walk to the tables and asked a bus boy if it was still possible to get lunch. He was hardly a boy, more like a foreign college student from Latin America working for room and board and a chance to practice his English. He hesitates and tells me that the kitchen closed fifteen minutes ago, but offers to check with the cook. A few minutes later, a middle aged woman with a slightly exhausted expression comes out and flatly states, “you want lunch” — not a question. She looks at me, shifts her gaze to Dave and says, “OK, I’ll feed you.” It must have been obvious to her that we were not her normal clientele and that this was the first and probably last opportunity she would ever have to feed the likes of us.

The waiter comes over at her bidding and seats us. He’s not too amused that us late comers were going to be his last lunch table, but he’s polite and hands us menus and asks us what we want to drink. We are outside in the chill but quite comfortable nevertheless under the heated awning. White table cloth, white cloth napkins, and real silver wear — all the usual amenities of fine dining. I peek at Dave out of the corner of my eye, wondering when he last went to a restaurant for a meal — maybe never? Did they teach table manners at Officer Candidate School? Dave orders coffee. I really want a winter ale with half a lemon dunked in it, but Dave doesn’t drink and I want to see how this plays out. “I’ll just have water”, I say. The waiter returns with my water in a crystal goblet and Dave’s coffee in a china cup. He withdraws to let us study the menu, the other patrons have returned to their muted conversations. Even the children have too much breeding to continue staring.

While my nose is buried in the menu, Dave announces that he’s not hungry and will just stick to coffee. I find the bratwurst plate: twelve dollars for one bratwurst, fifteen for two. Dave claims that he only eats one meal a day. Any more is an indulgence. As for myself, I like food. I like to cook. And even though Dave is going on about imperial decadence and the twilight of the Roman Empire, he’s never failed to eat any meal I have put in front of him. He even manages on occasion to say, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” So, when the waiter returns I order two plates of bratwurst. “A plate each of the single bratwurst.” The waiter repeats my order just to make sure he’s got it right. Dave grudgingly complies by saying nothing.

The waiter brings us a small basket of dinner rolls wrapped in a white napkin to keep them warm and a dish of butter that is just the right consistency to spread. We dig in. The rolls are freshly baked. By the time lunch arrives which is only a matter of minutes, Dave has scarfed down two dinner rolls and eyeing a third.

The bratwurst is plated on a trendy square white china plate. There are three sides evenly spaced like a header on a web page, below, a perfectly browned veal bratwurst is floating atop a window pane of demi-glace. Sauerkraut, mashed potatoes (Yukon Gold) and red cabbage, three mounds the size of ice cream scoops invite themselves onto our forks and into our mouths. A bite of this, a bite of that. Combine with bratwurst dipped in sauce…It was delicious. (If you are a foodie, put this on your bucket list!)

The waiter refilled my water and placed a small carafe in front of Dave. Dave looked at me quizzically and I whispered confidentially, “coffee”. He grunted and poured himself a fresh cup as if he knew what it was all along. The cook comes out and serves us more dinner rolls which did not go to waste as we used them to mop up the last of the gravy. “Well?”, I asked, as we sat contentedly after our indulgence. “Pretty good”, Dave admits with a wry smile. I’m grinning ear to ear.

That was the highlight of our day, perhaps of our entire trip. Not just the bratwurst, but the kindness of the cook and the professional courtesy of our waiter — a demonstration that grace under pressure was still possible.

* * *

The next day we hunt down the house Dave stayed in until his first birthday. Naturally, Dave has no recollection of it, but it sits pretty much brick for brick as shown in an old family photograph circa 1945. Dave is astounded that the structure is still standing, seemingly untouched by time. This was the refuge his family found and lived in for a year – the four of them in transit waiting to return to Seattle to reassemble their lives. We take pictures and go around back where the neighbor is tinkering in his garage. He tells us about the owner who passed away in the ‘80s, an Italian carpenter who had his workshop in the basement — a man who had rented out rooms to a Japanese family during the war.

The shame of the internment camps is long buried in the national memory – at the bottom of the cliffs under years of dust. The poet Keats offered that “Beauty was truth, truth beauty”. It’s a pity Keats contented himself with ending the poem in a sound bite. It seems to me, much of truth has very little beauty. What is forgotten and recollected is a function of history; the need to tell a story we can live with.

* * *

As I search the laminated mantle of my memory, I realize that it is a product of uplift. Some things are turned on end, others have totally eroded away. Is there any significance to what is still standing? Will the delicate arc of my story reveal itself come sunset?