water. One of the Chinese lifts off the top and reaches in with his “Quetsa,” chopsticks, and whips out – you’re never going to believe this but so help me its true- a squirming- live, hairless, pink fresh-born baby mouse. He dips the little rascal into the bowl of boiling water then into one of the four sauces and pops the little beastie into his mouth- down it goes - Holy Shit! I thought- Holy shit!
Fan looked at me and winkled. I was completely flabbergasted- what the hell was this? Another guy did the same and all the time the others were watching me. I pretended that this was perfectly normal and never let on that I was aghast and disgusted. The conversation continued while a couple more of the boiled baby rodents met their gastronomic fate. I knew that the Chinese will and do eat absolutely anything but this was totally over the top. No, I passed on that one.
Anyway, later Fan tells me that this was a test and that they liked me- I had lunch a few days later with one of them – turns out his English was perfect and he had graduated from MIT. He explained that they just wanted a chance to size me up. I must have passed but, for a number of reasons, we never did start that airline. Fan died two years ago. I have been back to Hong Kong several times since those days. The place has changed a lot- dirtier now that the Brits have gone and there is still a lot of spitting.
CHAPTER 9
THE HONEY BEAR
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
— Langston Hughes
One day the diminutive Cagin and I rode downtown and were wondering around Tudo street when we saw two Vietnamese kids with a little black bear with an orange scruff of fur under his chin. The bear was just a cub. Jason said he just had to have it. He wound up paying the equivalent of about a hundred bucks for the beast and since we couldn’t very well sit in any of the downtown bars with a bear on a leash, we “de-de mau’ed” ( Vietnamese for getting the F--k out of Dodge) and headed back to the crew house.
We hailed a very small but very clean and neat cab- barely big enough for the two of in the back plus the bear sitting on Jason’s lap. Half way home, the bear said “grrrr” Jason, said “now isn’t that cute, he said Grrr” The next minute all hell broke lose, The bear commenced to turn from a cute cuddly ball of bear into a twenty-five lb. terribly strong, mean tempered maddened beast. We both made a dive into the right front seat with our legs against the roof. The cab driver started howling and the bear was jumping around growling and trying to bite our legs. Frustrated for whatever reason and spitting mad, the bear began ripping the back seat to pieces. When we finally got back to the house, Jason had to give the driver a honey-bee ($100.00) to repair the damage to the cab.
Not knowing exactly what to do with the little tyke, Jason put it in one of the second floor bathrooms. This house had three floors with rooms for ten pilots. Later that day one of the helio-pilots, Dan Walen came dragging in, covered with red dust, hot and tired as all hell.
Dan headed up to take a shower and while he was trying to find the light switch in the bathroom, the bear found his long leg first. It must have felt like a familiar tree- Dan being well over six and a half. Feeling the claws biting into his leg in the pitch black room, he quite naturally screamed bloody murder and came tearing out of the room with the frightened baby bear bawling horribly and digging in for all he was worth onto Dan’s bleeding leg. His towel fell off and the maids started screaming like hell when this huge white, naked, mad-man came running at them with a bear climbing like mad up his leg trying to make a home run and bite Dan’s wildly swinging dick.
Jason, realizing what had happened ran up the stairs yelling at the top of his lungs in his Louisiana accent, “Donсha hurt mah bear now, hear!” Jason somehow got the little bear off Dan’s legs before any serious parts were ingested and Dan went off to tend to his wounds muttering horribly under his breath about “ how the hell anyone could be stupid enough to hide a man-eating, hydrophobic, God-dammed killer bear in the fucking bathroom…etc., etc..”
Jason brought the bear down and introduced it to the shaken maids. Eventually it settled down and began to sleep in one of the chairs. Jason got some water and vegetables for the little critter and thus began the last and happiest twelve months of the little honey bear’s life.
A few days later, I flew the Porter on one of my last single engine trips in Vietnam from Saigon to Danang. I was scheduled to work from this station for two weeks. I remember the weather getting worse as I flew north. This was the monsoon season and I finally arrived somewhere about fifty miles south of Danang with min fuel VFR on top.
I picked up the mike to call for a descent clearance when all the radios suddenly when dead. In fact, the entire ships electrical system was dead. I guess I must have been operating on the battery for a while and had not noticed that the generator was not genning. This was not good! I flew on top of the heavy grey cloud layer to about where I figured I would be well north of the airport and hopefully would have nothing between me and the South China Sea to the east. I could see on the charts that if I was where I hoped I was, the mountain north and west of the field was behind me. I started down through the rain and clouds heading west and praying.
I descended like this through the heavy rain and turbulence to about 300’ above what I sincerely hoped would be the South China sea. After what seemed too long, I finally broke out of the dark clouds and saw the tops of the still darker sea. Slowly, I reversed course and headed back due west. After a few minutes, I could see the beach in front of me and suddenly I saw a company C-45 Twin Beech flying at a few hundred feet north over the beach. He must have been heading to Hue. That told me that if I was right and flew south, I would likely find the airport.
I was right, I could see the many Navy ships in the harbor. At my very low altitude, just under a three hundred foot heavy cloud cover, I had to dodge around their masts and antennas. I could see the south end of the field- my fuel gauges said zero but with no electrical power there was no telling how many minutes I had remaining. With no radios and no lights I couldn’t call the tower and they may not have seen me. With no options I just went ahead and landed on the west taxiway and made the first turn off into the Air America ramp.
I was relieved that I had made it and understood that luck had once again played a big part in my education. I had no business not landing someplace for fuel. There were a lot of options along the way and, in that weather, to cut things so close was stupid. I never did it again. It was raining like hell and I got soaked getting out of the aircraft with my bag and into the ops office.
The station manager, a kind of harried and impatient type wanted me to load up, fuel up and fly a few late afternoon missions. I told him for the second time that there was no electrical system. Either he was a dumb as he looked or didn’t listen- he said, “so what- you can fly it anyway, you just flew in here didn’t you?” He had a point- I told him that the door wasn’t locked and he had my permission- load if up and fly it himself. He elected to remain on the ground as did I.
That
