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
