The Dream, The Challenge, The People
by Bob Kranich
(Excerpt 7)
“The Lodge Called Folkestone”. You may wonder why the first half of the book is about my many adventures throughout the USA. Well, this first part explains just why my interests changed from hot rodding cars to backpacking. How the idea of a lodge came about, and just how the lodge came to be in North Carolina and next to the Smoky Mountain National Park, Deep Campground to be exact.
We stopped at two places, Anchorage, Alaska, and Tokyo, Japan. There was no layover in Japan, only refueling, but the first stop was in Alaska. I’ll never forget, looking out the airplane’s windows to see huge icebergs. When we landed, the snow was piled so high along the runway that it looked like we were landing in a canyon! We went inside the terminal, and were greeted by a tremendously large stuffed polar bear. It was standing up with its paws and claws extended. Wow! So large I wouldn’t have wanted to meet one of those in the wild.
We landed in Kimpo, Korea. It was cold, and snow was on the ground. I think that the weather there was similar to Wisconsin’s. I know this because I was born in Wisconsin. I can remember the cold and snow. We were shown to our transit barracks, and were given a welcome and indoctrination. They told us that part of our mission was to show good will to the Korean people. While we were there, we were to be on our best behavior, and make a good impression. I kept this in my mind, and put that into action later.
A short time later, I found myself at my duty station, which would be my home for the next year. Camp Ames was a small military base located in a valley surrounded by mountains. It was in the center of South Korea, both north to south, and east to west. We were ten miles south of Taejon, which was a fairly large city. Camp Ames was primarily an ammunitions facility. It had double fencing around the base with guard towers located amongst this fencing. This was protected by an MP group, but they were more like infantry. There was also another area inside the base that had additional fencing around ammo bunkers.
We had two Quonset hut buildings which housed about twenty-five soldiers each. One for the sergeants or “lifers” as they were called, and the other for us. We also had a very nice motor pool building with offices, and a section for our three equipment testing vans.
Officially we were the: NIKE Hercules platoon (ground support), 65th Ordinance Command (GMDS, ground support), 55th Maintenance Battalion.
This was when I met my great friend and compatriot on many of the Korean adventures and activities the Good Lord led us into. Ed Clement was from Chicago. He was a very nice and congenial fellow, and very Chicago “street smart.” I have to quote Clement, “There are times when you have to have a healthy disrespect for the rules.” This policy got us through many complicated times.
Clement and I had the same Army training, so we worked in the same area. One day Ed came to me and said, “Bob I, was just talking to a sergeant, and he is looking for a couple of decent guys to teach English conversation at a girls’ high school in Taejon.”
I said, “I don’t know if I can teach English.”
“No, don’t worry,” he said, “All we’ve got to do is just talk. The students need the practice. They need to talk to English speakers. Besides, listen to this...to get off of this base, you have to have a pass. We will have special orders that will let us leave any time we don’t have duty. These orders will be signed by the base commander.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, “It sounds good, I’m in. What do we do?”
Ed said, “I’ll give him both of our names. I’ll keep you posted.”
This was very good. We got our orders, and started to ride the Army bus into Taejon every Saturday to Taejon Girls’ High School. Ed was correct, it was easy to do. The students were very interested in the United States and serious about learning English. The principal and leaders of the school were very appreciative.
After school, Ed and I would explore around Taejon. Then the hiking began. On many occasions, we would not be watching the time, and would miss the Army bus back to camp. We would just start walking out of town. Sometimes, we would walk the entire ten miles back to the base which took us two to three hours. Other times, we would flag down a local Korean bus, and ride it as far as it would go. These buses had all sorts of travelers on them, people with all kinds of packages. Some even carried chickens, rabbits, and pigs! It was an experience.
We got interested in the countryside. There were few roads. The main ones were paved, and the rest, dirt. To get to little villages on the other sides of mountains, there were paths going over the lowest point. We would often go out, even on Sunday, and walk these paths over the mountains. We found lots of historic sights, and went through many small villages. The people would be amazed to see a couple of Anglo guys just walking along. We had started to take a Korean conversation language class on the base, and we practiced what we were learning with the friendly people. They, too, would try to talk to us, especially if they knew some English.
One Sunday afternoon, we were walking out of Taejon. We decided on a whim to walk across some rice patties to see what we could find. This was going to be one of our greatest discoveries, as well as a new project to go along with all the others. For some strange reason, we were drawn to a small group of buildings across the wide expanse. When we got there, we first saw two men and three small children pulling a plow with one man guiding it. Ed and I walked up, and stood there, watching. We guessed that they were too poor to not have an ox to pull it. We started to look around, and then saw that there were many small children, too many for just one family.
We walked up to the biggest house, and a young man came out. One of the children must have told him about us. He could speak some English and took us inside where there was a bulletin board. On it was some information about this place. It seems that it was an orphanage. In fact its name was Sung Yook Orphanage. The bulletin board had some information about two U. S. Air Force officers who had been working as volunteers and helping them. It looked to us like God had sent replacements...us.
From the Author
This is a new book. It is about the Lodge I built in the Smoky Mountains, near Bryson City, and Deep Creek campground, North Carolina. Having been from Florida, I know that a lot of Floridians love to visit the Smoky Mountains National Park. Therefore hopefully you will enjoy my story of the building of “A Lodge Called Folkestone”.
No comments:
Post a Comment