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He's
talking about Project Crutch, a non-profit organization his VFW buddy,
Forrest Williams organized in 1999. The men have built walkers and crutches
out of PVC pipes for over 7,000 crippled children.
"We’re going
to the crippled children’s home in Khan Kaen next week to deliver 30 more."
(See information at end of article about how to donate to this project.)
By 6AM the next morning, seven members of Phun's family have arrived for
the wedding after an all-night bus trip from Chiang Rai.
They squat
in a circle on bamboo mats on Bob and Phun’s kitchen floor (the dining
table and chairs go unused) eating sticky rice and lahp neua. At 10:10
AM Bob pops open the first Chang of the day and offers me one. "No thanks,"
I say. "I like to stay alert until at least noon." He tells me that Chang
means elephant in Thai, "and this beer kicks like an elephant too." A fighter
jet screams overhead and we stop talking until we can hear each other again.
"Is that normal?" I ask Bob who is looking up, "Yea, ain’t it nice?" He
says. He tells me it’s an Alpha jet, sold to the Thai military by the Germans.
We walk down
the street to Bert and Yen’s house. Bert met Yen when he was first based
in Udonthani 30 years ago. They’ve been married ever since and have lived
all over the world including the United States and Saudi Arabia. Their
son lives in the United States with his wife and child. Yen says she misses
them but she’s too afraid to visit them in America this year. "Too much
war there now," she says. In Yen’s western-style kitchen loaded with modern
appliances, the women sit in a circle on the floor preparing food for the
wedding reception. Bert says to his wife, "Honey, why don't you use that
slicer I bought you?" Yen just shakes her head and continues lopping off
symmetric slices of tomato into a bowl with a carving knife. I join the
women on the floor. Phun spoons some potato salad in a bowl for me to sample.
They all sit back to watch my reaction. I say that it's the best potato
salad I've ever tasted and mean it. A local Chinese caterer will cater
the other half of the menu Bob says. "Why no Thai food?" I ask him.
"We’re having
Chinese. Thai. Chinese. It’s all the same," he says. By 6PM that evening,
the men are gathered outside in the soft heat of the evening, empty beer
bottles are stacking up – Bob says they’re giving the Chang a test run
before the reception tomorrow.The men laugh together and share old war
stories and tales of ex-wives. Doug is a soft-spoken southerner from South
Carolina, and there is Ken, a former FAA executive who looks like the doll
of the same name, except for the shock of silver hair on his head, and
Tom from Yorkshire, the one the guys tease because he speaks "weird English",
and Bartle, the tall, soft-spoken Swede who tells me he was single for
10 years after the death of his wife, and he figured no woman would want
him; until he discovered Thailand, and fell for the first woman he met
here.
Ken says, "I’m
a true American. I love America, but damn it, I don’t want to live there
my whole life." After his second divorce in America he tells me, he moved
first to Australia then to Thailand. "I like the weather and the people
here and after I met a Thai woman, I called my three kids and said, ‘Guess
what, I’m not coming home.’ They raised holy hell. ‘I have my life and
you have your life’, I told them." (He spends half the year in Thailand
and half in the U.S.) "I made two women rich and I’m not about to do that
again. American women just want a man for security."
"Thai women
don’t," I ask?
"Well sure
they do, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper here."
I join the
women who are sitting across the street on a raised bamboo platform gossiping
animatedly in rapid-fire Thai. Acham (teacher) Nit, introduces the old
woman sitting next to her as her mother. "Where does she live?" I ask.
Acham Nit tells me in her halting, but excellent English, that in Thailand,
when a parent is old, they live with their children. "My mother lives with
me," she said. The ladies ask me to find good American men for the two
young single women there tonight. "My mother say you look like Thai people,"
Acham Nit says to me. "Thai people smile a lot - You smile a lot." I guess
it's true.
I can't seem
to wipe this smile off my face.
The Wedding
The next morning
by 8 AM, The caterers are setting up the tables, chairs, and bandstand
for the post-wedding block party. Two elder women from the neighborhood
and Yen are draping white strings on the branches of a traditional Thai
wedding tree, called Bah-Si-Su-Kwa. It’s shaped like our Christmas tree,
but intricately woven into shape with individually folded banana leaves
and jasmine flowers.
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"I'll
be in the third jungle, second rice paddy to the left." Bob told his
ex-wife when he left Michigan for Thailand last year.
