~ This post is the 12th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Note:  A new category “Going to Afghanistan” has been established so that one may read this series by accessing it as a topic.  Meanwhile, the narrative continues:

Fred Clayton kept a diary of sorts as well as the record contained in letters.  The pages were 4 x 6½ inches in size, preprinted with the year and date and for 1958 the names of Catholic Saints associated with certain days, not that he was Catholic - but the diaries sold in 1958 in America had this built-in flavor of religion.

October 2nd was the 275th day of the year (the diary tells us), there are “90 days to come”.  These are reassuring words for someone just arrived in Afghanistan, or not, as 90 days (three months) is not a great deal of time to accomplish that task which one has been given.  Maybe the diary is only for “this year” and does not mean what the words seem to say.  Nevertheless, Fred notes his “1st Staff meeting of USOM Afghanistan”, he abbreviates the word Afghanistan.  That night he has dinner “@ Fox & Price - Reunion of International Club of Amritsar”.

The 3rd of October is dedicated to St. Theresa.  “Went down Kabul River gorge to Bridge site with Bill Shaw of E.B. Steel Co.”  He returned to a Staff House Italian dinner - Neapolitan Nights as it was billed.

Saturday October 4th - St. Francis of Assisi - Fred took administrative leave to see a game of Buzkaski, “the dragging of the goat”.  He notes that the “King and Voroshiloff (were) there”.

Each person in life chooses what he or she may see as important, noteworthy, worth remembering or writing about.  For Fred it was mostly about the people, eating was almost as important as engineering, lastly came events.  The makes and models of cars made little difference as did the clothes that people wore.  His pictures told that story better than all the incantations of the followers of tailors.  But Fred expected people to be properly dressed and expected his dress to be equally proper.  The “Staff” wore coats and ties at dinner at the Staff House then, the evening meal was observed more in the British tradition, a formality that might end each day.

I have posted about Bush-ka-shi, the national sport of Afghanistan.  It is not at all like football, not like football at Notre Dame and certainly not a sport that the patron saint of San Francisco would have wildly endorsed, but that alone does not make Bush-ka-shi bad.  What you see here is world’s colliding; the Afghan King and the Soviet President enjoying sports while the Americans can only watch and meet in meetings and take International Harvester Carry-alls down the Kabul Gorge to visit bridge sites on the road to the Khyber Pass and to Peshawar in Pakistan.  But first one must go as far as Jalalabad where the river widens and the gorge has ended and there is a plateau reaching toward the Pakistan border.  Fred did not go that far this trip.

There are three holy days in each week; depending upon ones religion.  Friday is the Sabbath of Islam, Saturday the Sabbath of the Jews and the Adventists, Sunday is holy to the Catholics and some other Christian faiths.  In Afghanistan one had Friday and Sunday off.  Saturday was a work day, or a school day if one were young.  Every week had a “three day weekend” with a little work wedged in-between; the system worked well once one became used to it.

It was upon the holiday of Fred’s first Friday in Afghanistan that he went down the Kabul Gorge to see a bridge being built across the water.  The Kabul Gorge is like an untamed Khyber Pass for those that have or have not seen it.  It is like the “Million Dollar Highway” in Colorado only with lanes half as wide and the same absence of guardrails or block walls or rock obstacles to help keep one on their footing.  The gorge is an ancient route through which countless armies and countless missionaries have ebbed and flowed and walked and carried and carted their way to “march on India” or “march from India” to the unknown world beyond from where all things  first flowed, or so goes the myth of Ariana, land of the Aryans, the people of the global heartland as Humboldt called the space, some call it “waste”, the vastness of central Asia.

The Hindus came, according to the legends, through the Kabul Gorge to settle India and to bring civilization to those more southern shores.  The British first invaded Afghanistan and then retreated through this same canyon of the river.  Every mile meant another 50 lost, it is a formidable place to pass.
In peace the flow of maybe millions would mark the canyons passing as each spring the wandering people of what seemed like all of central Asia would follow the river uphill and west from the valley of the Indus to regain the mountain pastures of their ancient home.  But that was before customs points and border crossings and checkpoints and military fortifications with barbed wire and machine gun nests and pill boxes and all the things that made the modern Khyber Pass impassable into Pakistan; but in Afghanistan the way still was free.

Almost everything American came into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass and the Kabul Gorge.  It came by way of Peshawar.  It came in first by sea through Karachi, then made its way north by rail or by truck, then things were sorted out in Peshawar and the trucks bound for Afghanistan were loaded.  From Peshawar they were Afghan trucks, those from Pakistan would not usually venture up the Kabul Gorge.

The Russians were building all the roads into Afghanistan from the north, from mother Russia, from places like Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent.  The Americans were building (or rebuilding) the roads into Afghanistan from Pakistan, from (old) India, the old colonial highways that the British were not invited to build as the memories of earlier invasions were still too fresh.

The Gorge Highway was not paved then; it was gravel or it was rock, but it was getting better with every day and every new bridge and every new turn-out and every new passing lane and every new rock retaining wall built by the hands of a thousand Afghans breaking rock with hammers and laying up the rocks and building walls a hundred or more feet high though they were measured in meters; Afghanistan was officially metric then, like America was; but Afghanistan really meant it in 1958 while America was still playing at measuring the world in “English” lengths.

With Mr. Shaw of EB Steel in tow one might think the bridge that Fred went to see was made of steel, not wood.  I think that that is the point.  It wasn’t.  It wasn’t made of steel.  It was made of wood.  It would be Fred’s first picture from Afghanistan, two men sawing wood the old fashioned way, long saw - working together.  This was their country after all; “who needed EB Steel?” he might have thought, but at the time he did not say.

Note:  Fred’s grandfather, Warren Shelton Clayton, was among other things a carpenter.  He helped build the first bridge in the State of Nevada, made of wood, crossing the Carson River near the site of Fort Churchill.  Pony Bob Haslam crossed this bridge just before bringing the news of Lincoln’s election to the telegraph at Fort Churchill.  By 1958 the bridge had been replaced by a newer one made of steel.

Kabul, Afgh.
Sat. 4, Oct.  ‘58

My Beloved,

Just a note to say it is Saturday and I love you so very much!

Yesterday was a day off and I went 40 miles down the Kabul River along the Kabul-Torkum road to see the bridge construction.

I’ll describe all this later.  I planned to do it last night but had to go to bed to keep warm.  No fires in the Staff House yet and the last three nights have been freezing.  Today the stoves go up so we should be more comfortable and I can sit up and write.

Stamps are very hard to get here.  I hope you got the cable O.K.

All my love
Your Fred.

Note:  Both the Afghan paper currency (“Afghanis”) and the postage stamps for Afghanistan were printed by the British.  The stamps were not only scarce in Kabul, they were rare in America.  An unknown number of letters were stolen while in the custody of the USPS by employees wishing to get the stamps.  The problem was virtually eliminated by writing “please forward” on the letter-envelope underneath the stamp.  A number of letters arrived “forwarded”, but without the Afghan postage (stamps).  The “Staff House” was the USOM Staff House operated by the United States Mission to Afghanistan.  USOM staff members who were not married or did not qualify for family housing generally were quartered at the Staff House located to the east of Duralamon Avenue.

[2010.03.09 / Tuesday - The Kabul River Gorge]

~ This post is the 11th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .Western Union telegram - Kabul via Mackay:

Kabul via Mackay Oct 2 1630

Mrs. Fred W. Clayton
405 North Roop St Carson City Nev

:Arrived safely in Kabul Wednesday =
Fred ==

(received) 1958 Oct 3 AM 8 29

It was uncertain how long it would take an air letter to make its way from Kabul, Afghanistan to Carson City, Nevada in 1958.  There may have never before been an air letter from Kabul to Carson City.  Foreign travel, especially by air and especially to the less visited nations was not assumed to be essentially safe as it is now.  Airplane crashes were much more numerous per passenger mile.  The Hollywood production of “Around the World in 80 Days” reinforced the notion that travel disaster may be as close as a mickey in ones drink while they drank in Hong Kong or Singapore, if not Calcutta or even Delhi; although “New” Delhi was supposedly much safer.

It must be remembered that you as a reader know much more about Fred and Fred’s whereabouts during these last several days, perhaps the last week, than did his own wife and family.  International telephone calls then were expensive (say $50 per minute by today’s standards) and so were not generally used.  There was no such thing as a sense of entitlement regarding telephone conversations.  The alternative to the telephone for almost instant communication was the telegram, although as you see by the above example the telegram traversing half the world was hardly instant.

How instant can easily be ascertained by finding out the time zone in Kabul and comparing it to the time zone in Carson City and subtracting (or adding) the hours between; make sure to note what day it is in Kabul when you think you know the date in Carson City - the International Dateline thing.  P.S. note that Afghanistan has no “standard time” (or did not in 1958).  These things make comparisons difficult.  I did a post once on the theory of “Mecca time” without going into the political implications and religious issues that make the discussion of time so important and may make the questions about, “how instant are telegrams” seem a little less important.

Telegrams come in two forms, “wire” and “wireless”.  The end result was a piece of paper 5½ x 8 inches in size with the Company Name and Logo at the top and a box below where strips of teletype paper were glued to the cheap Kraft paper that constituted the form.  Telegraph messages were always in ALL CAPS and the message had dozens of numbers and letters preceding each message that had to do with routing and transaction identifications  and payment codes, not unlike the credit card slip of today, but much more cryptic.  One paid by the word, each word was expensive, talk was not cheap and so the goal was clarity in brevity.

In the best of all worlds a telegram would be received at the telegraph office and after it was cut out by hand with scissors and pasted to the form a Western Union operator would then telephone the recipient and read them the message; this assumes that the recipient had a telephone and that Western Union could find the number.  In either event the hard-copy message would then be dispatched by delivery truck (or bicycle) to the actual address where the recipient lived or worked as stated in the telegram itself.  The message was always enclosed in an envelope with a cellophane window that showed the name and address.

People alive then (adults) were used to sending and receiving telegraphic messages most commonly regarding deaths, second was births, third was probably marriages, and forth was the “arrived safely” telegram.  One never knew what the message was until the envelope was torn open; which is why so few envelopes survive in relation to the surviving telegrams themselves.

There were other telegraph companies besides Western Union and there had been still others before them.  Communication systems have always been the natural domain of the engineer.  Roads and railroads and even airplanes were first made feasible and profitable by carrying the mails.  In America it began with the “Boston Post road”.  By 1860 the United States was connected together in its parts only by the horse delivered letter, the Pony Express; but in October of 1860 Carson City was connected to the outside world by telegraph; it was Fred Bee’s telegraph line; it traversed the Sierras with a line running to Sacramento, California.  Actually the line went a little further east than Carson City, it ended in Fort Churchill just a few miles more down the Carson River below the Dead Camel hills.

I don’t know when Lincoln was elected, but I do know when word of the election reached Carson City.  It was November 14th in 1860; and word came by telegraph from Fort Churchill where “Pony Bob” Haslam had just got off his horse to report the news that no one in California yet knew; “Lincoln elected president”.  Of course the “Fred Bee” line changed that in a hurry; no horse drawn delays between Nevada and California then, but it would take another year for the wires west to reach Fort Churchill and connect with the wires east already in place and thus connect the nation with the miracle of the telegraph.  It was a lesson not lost on Mackay.

“Mackay was a miner,” goes the old saw from University of Nevada days.  Fred graduated in Engineering from the University of Nevada, in Reno, in 1939.  A lot of his classes were held in the Mackay Mining Building located at the north end of the Quad; out front was the Gutzon Borglum statute of “Mackay” holding a pick in case you might forget the “miner” part of Mackay’s life; the riches he found on the Comstock Lode, the silver and the gold.  He gave the University its mining school, and gave the school money for many other things too, now mostly forgotten.

Forgotten too was the bigger part of Mackay’s life.  The part that had nothing to do with mining, except that his endeavors called for a lot of copper; copper for wire and zinc for casings and lead to make things waterproof and engineering things that could extend the telegraph under the seas and around the world and make even Kabul, Afghanistan as connected as Carson City was to San Francisco and later to New York even.  That’s where Mackay went after he made his millions, to New York.

The story gets all entangled with the likes of Gould, the exploits of the great failed ship the Great Eastern, the efforts of robber barons to control all communication and Mackay’s efforts to make the world free; but perhaps I exaggerate or pontificate a bit but there is a reason why the man that made Mount Rushmore possible also made this one statute in honor of a miner, a Nevadan, a person alive when only the horse carried communications efficiently.

Perhaps the greatest contribution that Mackay made was to bring the miracle of Marconi’s wireless to a world dominated by the notion of transoceanic and transcontinental wires and cables.  While Gould and Western Union were still stuck in the mentality of land-lines, cables, and sea-cables Mackay went wireless.  The telegraph company that bears his name was the first to set up a system of wireless transmitters and receivers around the world to transmit telegrams where wires had not, nor easily could not be laid.

When Fred walked into the Mackay office in Kabul at 4:30 PM that Thursday afternoon he certainly must have felt at home.  Another Nevadan had been there before him, at least in spirit - Mackay himself never went to Kabul.  At what point Mackay’s wireless message from Kabul met Jay Gould’s land-lined Western Union is anybody’s guess.  But the “cable” did get stopped in Reno, duly noted on the telegram itself, “attempt to deliver from Reno unsuccessful”; but the message left Kabul just fine.

Note:  The “pony” part of the news regarding Lincoln benefited from extra horses and riders and fast riding given the gravity of the “breaking news”.  At the time, even with the hiatus of horses between the wired portions of the country, the news of Lincoln’s election set “an astounding new speed record for long-distance communication.”

The Gutzon Borglum story is interesting, among other activities he designed the flame that flickered in the torch of the Statute of Liberty.  It was John Mackay’s son, Clarence Mackay that commissioned the Borglum statute.  The statute was originally supposed to be situated on the Capitol grounds in Carson City.  The “Mackay School of Mines” building was originally the “Stanford White School of Mines”.  Gutzon, “thought of himself as a Western artist and dreamed of cattle, horses and open spaces.”  See: “Six Wars At a Time” - The Center for Western Studies; Sioux Falls, South Dakota

[2010.03.08 / Monday - Arrived Safely]

~ This post is the 10th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Air tissue writing paper:

Kabul, Afghanistan
Wed. 1 Oct. ‘58

My Darlings,

Here I am in Kabul!  I was met at the airport by Mr. Snyder, Mr. Swanson, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Sharma.

I’m temporarily housed in the V.I.P. quarters of the Staff House.  The evening meal was good so I think everything will be all right.

Everyone is friendly.  Mr. Swanson’s coming to the airport was an excellent beginning!  I’m quite tired as the days of waiting in Amritsar were strenuous.

Friday is the Muslim Sunday as you know so I hope I’ll then have time to write my Amritsar story to you.

Kabul is just as I anticipated.  All ready I feel at home in the high dry climate with the vivid stars and the crisp night.  In fact the night is so cool with no fire I’ll have to go to bed to get warm.

Wish you were here!  However, we’ll have fun anticipating your coming.

Good night.  All my love,
Fred and Father.

[2010.03.04 / Thursday - I am in Kabul!]

~ This post is the 9th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Occasionally it is wise to clarify the progress of a story lest the important points are somehow missed in the passing.  Let us review what we know and add a bit of what at the time was perhaps unknown or even unknowable.

FWC is in Amritsar, India on September 27th of 1958, the date he was scheduled to arrive in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Unfortunately the plane, an Indian Airlines DC-3, has compass problems and cannot leave Amritsar.  Then adverse weather keeps the necessary parts from being flown in.  By Monday, after the events of the weekend, Fred decides to write a book or play describing the ordeal with the title, “Week End in Amritsar”.  In time the weather clears, the parts arrive, the compass is fixed and then, alas, more adverse weather keeps the newly repaired plane grounded.  Time passes, the weather does not.  FWC contracts diarrhea (at the time called “Delhi Belly” by the Americans in the region, but the name does not so easily apply as this is Amritsar).  In his distress he now contemplates changing the book title to “Weak End in Amritsar”.

Finally, on October 1, after a five day delay the Indian Airlines plane is ready for its early morning departure to Kabul.  On October the first Fred finally leaves Amritsar, India bound for Kabul, Afghanistan on Indian Airlines.  As the plane approaches Kabul the pilot is informed that he cannot land in Kabul before the Aeroflot plane carrying Russian president Voroshiloff (President of the USSR / CCCP), who is on a state visit to Afghanistan, lands.

The Russian plane is not expected to land before 12:00 noon, the pilot of the DC-3 is told, so the Indian Airlines plane cannot land in Kabul in the AM.  Fuel is an issue.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Indian Airlines can over-fly Pakistan on flights between India and Afghanistan, but cannot land at any Pakistani airports.  But, no one knows whether the plane has a right to re-enter Pakistan’s airspace without actually landing in Kabul.  Eventually instructions from Indian Airlines managers in New Delhi, India dictate the obvious, the flight must return to Amritsar.

Pakistan does not object (owing probably to an imminent coup which might be jeopardized by an international air incident) and will allow the plane to return to Kabul after a second departure of the day from Amritsar; this one in the early afternoon.

About 3:00 PM in the afternoon the Indian Airlines DC-3 finally arrives in the air above Kabul Airport and proceeds to make the customary three low passes over the dirt runway to scare the various wandering and grazing donkeys and camels from the approach path and off the landing field.  At 3:30 PM FWC actually does land in Kabul.  He is met by Snyder, Swanson, McGuire and Sharma of the United States Operations Mission (USOM / Afghanistan).

Despite aircraft mechanical failures, heavy winds, torrential rains, intestinal distress, Russian diplomats and Afghan diplomacy, international air protocols, pending coups, wayward donkeys, nomadic camels, and windblown dirt runways; Fred W. Clayton has arrived in Kabul.

Epilogue:

All traditional cities in Afghanistan were surrounded by a wall.  The city walls had no less or greater function for the city than the wall of a house has for the family at home.  Each house has at least one door, often more, the Pharsi word is “darwaza” which is also used to refer to the door (or gate) of a city.  In Qala Bist virtually all that is left of the city is the arch, the door, now forever open, for there is nothing left to hide, or steal, or rust, or rot or take away save a few potshards, coins and broken bits of weaponry.  Maybe there are still bones in Qala Bist, there probably are still bones.

Today the gates of our cities (in the United States) are guarded by the gates of Homeland Security and their cameras and their sensors.  Every person must pass through a gate in a distant city before being
permitted to pass through the portal of the destination city itself.  Sometime there are delays.  There is a pecking order regarding who is allowed through first.  It may at first seem that things have not changed in this world so much after all.

But, what Fred experienced was not overtly planned and organized by any given government or person.  It was more like an initiation, or an initiatory step that would encapsulate everything that one would need to know about Afghanistan before even setting foot in the place, provided that everything IS knowable; at least in metaphor or symbols, which as cell phones prove is a language so much more efficient that our own.

He immediately knew that there was something there, a story or a book or play or play on words and more, but almost as quickly events overtook him; the situation became overwhelming, Amritsar was becoming everything and “everything” seemed in the way of the goal which of course seemed to be Kabul at the time.  What might have been learned if he had of made his way to Lahore, learned more then of Kashmir, lingered longer at the Golden Temple or taken one of another thousand roads less taken?  He would probably say, “nothing” and add, “which is why I did just exactly what I did”.  And in that, maybe he would be right.

[2010.03.04 / Thursday - A brief vignette]

~ This post is the 8th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Air tissue writing paper:

Amritsar, India
12:00 Noon - 27 Sept. ‘58

My Darlings,

Here I am at the holy place of the Sikhs about twenty miles from the Pakistan border and not too far from Kashmir.  The weather has closed in and the planes’ compass is broken so the flight is grounded until tomorrow.

Lahore is just over the border in Pakistan but since I have only a single trip visa I won’t be able to go there.

It is cool here but extremely humid.  The rains fall continuously.  However it is better here than in Delhi.  I understand that all the passengers will be housed in a guest house tonight.  Right now I think I could sleep for a week.

Air tissue writing paper:

Sunday 28 Sept. ‘58

This letter was interrupted yesterday by lunch and now I just finished breakfast.

Yesterday afternoon I visited the Golden Temple of the Sikhs.  I suppose I took too many pictures.

Seven of us had dinner together here last night.  Three Germans, two Americans, one Italian and one Scotchman.  The dinner conversation was fascinating.

Must close now and get ready to go.  All my love,
Fred.

Air tissue writing paper:

Amritsar, India
Tuesday, 30 Sept. ‘58

My Darlings,

Today I’m still in Amritsar!  The experience here is worthy of consideration for a play.

“Title”:
“Week End in Amritsar”.

Cast of Characters:
Fred W. Clayton - bound for Kabul, of Carson City, Nevada.
William Fox - returning to Kabul after a fortnight in Kashmir, from San Francisco; son of “Jack” Fox  former General Manager of Columbia Steel

At this point the letter writing was obviously interrupted.  The page was used to record an address:

Mrs. P. Bhandari
No. 10 Cantonment
Amritsar, India

Air tissue writing paper:

In the Air
Wed. 1 Oct. ‘58

My Beloved,

Someday I’ll write a book or play entitled “Week End in Amritsar!

After staying in Amritsar since Saturday we left for Kabul this morning only to find that Indian Airlines cannot land at Kabul this morning so we are returning to Amritsar.  I don’t know when I’ll get to Kabul.

I’m fine and hope you are.  Time in Amritsar is spent trying to arrange transportation to Kabul.

All now, Love Fred.

To appreciate the situation one must remember that Afghanistan owned much of northern India before the British overran the subcontinent.  The jewel of this domain was arguably Kashmir which the Afghans always regarded as occupied territory, especially the more Moslem part also called Jammu.  While the Afghans succeeded in driving the British out of the areas west of the eastern mountains they were not able to drive east through the heavily fortified Khyber Pass and retake Jammu if not all of Kashmir.

During negotiations preceding “India Independence” Afghanistan made a clear case for the return of the area now known as Jammu.  What emerged was a rejection of an orderly withdrawal from India by the British as the rival politics of Hindu and Moslem politicians in India vied for control of the new nation state.  The Moslem parties, centered mostly in Lahore moved to wrest a Moslem Nation from what was British India that included the areas claimed by Afghanistan.

In time it was agreed (because of no other agreement) that India would be partitioned with a “Hindu” India in the middle and a “Moslem” India taking lands to the east and west to be named West Pakistan and East Pakistan.  Needless to say the Afghans were furious; Afghanistan was an ancient nation-state indigenous to the region, Pakistan was little more than an inflammation of extremist political ideas and groups hardly worthy of even the term “parties”.

In what probably was the greatest exodus of populations in the history of the world, modern or ancient, millions of India’s Moslems moved west and east, millions of India’s Hindus moved toward the center.  This transmigration not only resulted in millions becoming homeless, the migration radically reshaped the population profile and politics of the areas around Lahore and further west and south.  The emergence of Pakistan in western India was very much like the emergence of Israel in what was Palestine; it was made possible by a huge influx of people who did not historically live there or at least had not for countless centuries.  The Afghans and those religiously and ethnically most affiliated with the Afghans were often displaced, often deprived of property and power.  This generally occurred without justice, fair compensation, or remuneration.

By 1958 this whole double-cross of negotiations and the travesty of Pakistan came to be summarized and simplified as Afghanistan’s ongoing claim to “Jammu”.  This claim put Afghanistan and Pakistan at odds and made Hindu India, enemy of Pakistan, Afghanistan’s friend.  There was no “hot war” between Afghanistan and Pakistan though for the entire time that I was in Afghanistan there was a perception on the streets that a hot war could break out.  There were difficult situations.  A plane leaving India for Afghanistan was allowed to fly over Pakistan, but could not land there; hence one either entered Afghanistan (in the east) through Karachi or one went to India and flew over Pakistan to Afghanistan.  When Fred’s plane was refused the right to land in Kabul it had no choice but to return to India and to do so before the fuel on board was too low to make the return flight.  Further, Indian Airlines had no right to fly between Kabul and Kandahar; only Ariana Afghan Airlines had that route so landing in Kandahar or any other Afghan city was also not an option.

[2010.03.01 / Monday - Amritsar]

~ This post is the 7th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th.

Air tissue Hotel writing paper:

Hotel Imperial - New Delhi, India - An Oberoi Hotel
Cables & Telegrams “COMFORT” New Delhi - Telephone 47111 to 47119

27 Sept. ‘58

Dearest Lloydine, Ken and Don,

It is 5:15 A.M. and I am waiting for Breakfast.  At this time of the morning it is served in ones room only.

Last night “Mother India” almost had me down.  India is the acid test!  India is the France of the Orient!

Breakfast

The service was good.  A tea table wheeled into the room.  The coffee pot covered with a ‘tea cozy”.  The ants from the kitchen came along too so I had a bit of company.

The world is bright and cheerful this morning even though my reservation for Kabul has not been confirmed.

Last night while I was checking on the ticket problem the airport bus left with my suit case, my brief case, and coat but without me!  At the hotel only my suit case was unloaded.  I had to take a taxi to the hotel and then another to get my things.  Everyone was excited and helpful but anything but direct and forceful.  I was patient and now there is organization for the moment.

Off for Kabul.

Lots of love, Fred.

Fred takes the hotel bus to the New Delhi airport and boards an Indian Airlines DC-3 for his flight to Kabul via Amritsar, India.

[2010.03.01 / Monday - France of the Orient]

~ This post is the 6th in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Air Mail Envelope with air tissue Hotel writing paper - Two Dollars Hong Kong postage stamp with the head of Queen Elizabeth, purple ink with royal crowns and swastika motifs in the corners.

Hotel Miramar - 134 Nathan Rd. - Kowloon, Hong Kong
Cable address “MIRAMAR” Telephone No. 61261-9

26 Sept. 1958

Dearest Lloydine, Don and Ken,

Thought I might write on the plane coming down from Tokyo but it was so late they turned off the lights and everyone slept.  Hong Kong has built up in the last seven years.  There are many new buildings, newly paved streets and twice as many people.

The Miramar (hotel) is quite satisfactory.  It too has expanded but it is still reasonably priced, neat clean and comfortable.  It is not fancy.  After talking to a couple who were married in Kabul I decided to get a suit of clothes here.  I get twenty-four hour tailoring service but have been tied down because of fittings.

I’ve met a Dick (Richard) & Jane Koken from Salem, Oregon and San Francisco who are going to New Delhi as mentioned before.  Last night we had dinner together at Aberdeen’s  on Hong Kong Island at the world famous floating restaurant.  The Kokens have invited you to stop for a visit in New Delhi.

I could write a book about my trip so far.  Wednesday I visited Pacific Architects in Tokyo where I saw their operations.  We have many mutual acquaintances including Grafton.  We had lunch in the old part of the Imperial Hotel.  I’m completely captivated by the Old Imperial.  It has charm and feeling beyond description short of a whole book.

At three o’clock on Wed. I went to she Suehiro in the Telecommunications in Japan.  He was delighted!  The Ministry then sent him a big Packard to take me sightseeing in Tokyo!  We drove by the Imperial Palace and up to the main gate.  We  saw parks, famous Ginza Street and Tokyo University.  Finally we had a snack in a Japanese restaurant!  You should see me handle chopsticks.

This morning it is raining.

I’m sending my first roll of film.  I hope I have some pictures.  Without this new camera I would not have had light enough for most of my efforts.  I hope they aren’t too bad.  I’m sure I’ve muffed some of them.

I must close now and pack for today’s’ flight.

I wish you were here and that we could travel together.  Lots of love.
Fred & Father

The Miramar is very near the much more magnificent Peninsula Hotel, which really was expensive and snobbish even then in a way that only British grand hotels could be.  He could have stayed at the Peninsula, but probably remembered too well the story about when Bing Crosby was thrown out of the Hotel Vancouver because he did not have a Tux to wear for dinner.  Fred lived for five months in a hotel just about across the street from the Vancouver when he was working in Vancouver B.C. on the new trans-Canada gas line project immediately after his return from Burma.

The “I could write a book” theme followed Fred throughout his life.  He had the experiences and talent to justify and write no end of stories but engineering always came first in the economy of time.  Another factor is that Fred was left-handed and found it difficult to write longhand which is why his letters are often short.   He never really learned to type, his fingers were short and wide, his hands large and the typewriter keyboards were designed then for the women (and their hands) that did most of the western world’s typing.  The keyboards and computers of today might have made all the difference in enabling Fred’s’ writing life, but they came out too late to make a difference.

My transcriptions of his brief notes and letters will have to do.

Note:  There is of course the other half of this trip to Afghanistan; the life and letters from the family left behind.  Every invasion of Afghanistan for the last two thousand years has involved these families left behind, not invited to march with Alexander or participate in the founding of Kandahar.  Tamerlane’s troops had families too, and the followers of Genghis Khan and the British “Kiplings soldiers” and the Russians more recently - they all had families back at home, waiting for the life and death decisions, waiting for their loved ones to return or to be told of an often unmarked Afghan grave.

But now the US ships its bodies home.  It did too in 1958.  There was always risk of death in the foreign service; civilian or military doesn’t matter; the dieing is all the same and it is a basic tenant of Orthodox Mohammadism that one cannot predict their time and place of death.  That was the outrage of the “Persian” poet Omar Khayyam when in the Rubaiyat ones own death was predicted.  Omar Khayyam was an Afghan by birth, he was born in Afghanistan.  The Omar Khayyam Restaurant in San Francisco was long one of the cities best, to even go there was a special occasion.  The inspiration for the Grateful Dead music group logo and first cover was taken directly from the most popular printed version of the Rubaiyat.

However, I wander and I digress.  The point is that the family left behind, in this case “Lloydine, Don and Ken”, continued a life in America that was now increasingly overshadowed by life (or the possibility of death) in Afghanistan.  There was no Twitter then, no web; telephone calls were almost impossibly expensive; daily contact could only be made by mail, and even by air mail was always delayed.  Messages would cross and miss over the Atlantic or the Pacific or get stopped in Karachi or a field office someplace else or maybe even get lost in the Department of State Mail Room - Washington 25, DC.

A waiting wife may be patient, but she must also be brave; more so if she has children.  It is for the home fires why people fight, or for Empire.  Wives can understand the home fire part, Empire not so much.
It may be argued that it is the mans’ work that is important, his life, what he does each day.  The TV Show Madmen set about this same period of time argues differently, argues the case for women in New York; big houses or more single girls, glamorous and romantic.  It really wasn’t like that in the big picture, it’s the little pictures that make the series work, the household things, the fads, the “I remember that” toaster in the corner.

Lloydine might not have been an average wife, but she lived a life more typical than those that lived in the east.  There was the expression then, “a typical New Yorker” or “A typical easterner” which was a stereotype of course, constituted “profiling”; perhaps even had a religious bent, a cultural bias certainly.
The point is that Lloydine lived in the west, in Nevada and had deep California roots with no small measure of Oregon, spiced with a bit of Kansas (but Kansas may or may not be west).  If you find her letters portray women a bit differently than Madmen you are probably right or you get my point (or something).

Anyway, the letters begin on September 26, 1958.  They represent “her” side of the story; her being Lloydine and not necessarily me, though I am mentioned fairly often, at least in passing, maybe more often than I realize.

The lyrics to “West” can be found under January of 1922.  Needless to say they didn’t build a Broadway Play around the lyrics but the Song and poem were wildly popular when Hoover (a Californian, westerner, and engineer) was President which is probably why the Dust Bowl people went west, not east, when everything fell apart.

The letters may be accessed by using the Index to the left and locating the year and month.  To read the letters in order read them by date.  Otherwise the story continues here.

[2010.02.28 / Sunday - Hong Kong has changed, but it’s more about Tokyo]

~ This post is Part 5 in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

If one were to go to Afghanistan today one would probably fly through India.  In that, things have not changed too much.  The difference is that one would have maybe one stop in-between the US city of departure and ones arrival in New Delhi.  Fifty years ago things were quite different.  A trip to Afghanistan was not just about Afghanistan, it was about the trip there.  There would be many stops in ones journey “half way round the world”; one would change planes, stay in hotels overnight; visit the sites in each city along the way if there were time.  This was why people traveled.  This was also why people took jobs that enabled them to travel.

Tuesday - 23rd of September, 1958 - 1:19 PM Tokyo Time:

“It has been a good flight.  Very smooth and quiet all the way.  Tokyo weather is reported overcast and 67 degrees Fahrenheit.  Customs promises to be simple.  Landing cards are filled out.  Fred and Father”

Almost exactly 35 years after the September 1st 1923 earthquake Fred Clayton enters Tokyo.  He was (almost) ten when he first heard about the Tokyo earthquake that had “leveled Tokyo”, killed 91,000 people, destroyed 83,000 homes and damaged 380,000 more.  This in addition to the tens of thousands of commercial buildings lost.  It was the Tokyo earthquake that had first inspired Fred to become an engineer, he vowed, “I will go to Tokyo and help rebuild it.”

The one notable “commercial building” that survived the earthquake was the Imperial Hotel, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1916.  The hotel was mostly undamaged.

Needless to say Fred did not get to Tokyo in time to help rebuild the city .  By 1958 the city had been rebuilt, again destroyed by American fire bombing, and again rebuilt.  Amazingly the Imperial Hotel still survived.  The second time it was because it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, American, and the US bombers were given strict orders to keep away.

Imperial Hotel - Tokyo
Wed. 24 Sept. ‘58
5:30 AM Tokyo Time

“I’m staying in the new section of the Imperial Hotel.  It is as modern as the Holiday (Hotel) in Reno and the most modern big hotel I’ve stayed in.  Much nicer than anything in New York.

Money - $10.00 = 3,682 Yen.  Airport Bus 480 Yen, 20 Yen tip.  Room 2,900 Yen plus 10% tip.

I haven’t bought a meal yet so can’t tell you how they are.  I arrived at the hotel about 4:00 PM yesterday.  As I was very tired from the 20 hr. flight from Seattle I took a big hot bath and went to bed thinking I’d get up later and have dinner.  I awoke at 12:00 midnight so went back to sleep.  When I awoke at 5:00 AM I felt rested.

This is an interesting room.  The light fixtures are all fluorescent and the lamps all have Japanese lantern shaped shades illuminated with both fluorescent and incandescent bulbs.  The chairs and bed stand and the bed are made of white oak.  The writing table, dressing table and coffee table are mahogany with a light finish.  The casements  and doors are of pine.  The walls are covered with beige cloth with gold leaf figures.  The ceiling is also covered with beige cloth.  All interior corners have cording instead of molding.

All table surfaces are plastic.  The wardrobe closet doors are framed in oak and paneled in matching wall cloth.  The floor is carpeted wall to wall in green.  The outside wall is almost all window with double glass about 6” apart.  The room is completely air-conditioned.

Tokyo air terminal is modern and beautiful too.  Out of my window I see a double track electric elevated railway about a block away.  Structures of any size express earthquake resistant design and are more satisfying than structures on our own east coast.

Yesterday was a holiday so I didn’t miss any contacts as offices were closed.  Tonight I leave for Hong Kong.  More about Tokyo later.  Must pack, dress, and eat now.  It’s raining outside.  Love.”

It was not a good day for pictures.  There was the rain, there was the heavy overcast.  35 mm film for slide cameras was still expensive and hard to get; there were only so many rolls allotted for the trip and the trip was young.  There would be no film available in Afghanistan.

Fred started taking slides when he left for Burma.  He bought a new Kodak camera and pointed it out the airplane window directly at the rising sun at Wake Island and clicked the shutter.  The instructions that came with the camera said “never do this”.  He did.  I still have that first picture, “Dawn at Wake Island”, it’s still a beautiful shot.

His “Burma Slides” became somewhat famous in a limited sort of way.  My parents gave colored slide shows about Burma in the days when even Life Magazine was black and white and the National Geographic still had pictures in that 1950’s print media sketchy color.  A lot of his photographs were taken for technical reasons, to show how things worked or how things got done or could get done.  Buildings, bridges, and transportation were also always big; but he also enjoyed taking pictures of people, of the everyday people doing everyday things in their everyday clothes - living life and working, or just being sometimes.

For Afghanistan he bought a new camera, a Nikon, a really nice Nikon in those days; nothing like the cameras now, but pretty good for 1958 and for Afghanistan and for a few pictures of Tokyo in the rain.
The Imperial Palace - click.  The U.S. Embassy - click.  The Capitol Building of Japan - click.  Frank Lloyd Wright’s now “Old Imperial Hotel”, click, click.

Note:  The Holiday Hotel (not a Holiday Inn) near the Post Office in downtown Reno was at the time the newest hotel in Reno.  Fred did the engineering work on the restaurant that overhung the Truckee River.

[2010.02.27 / Saturday - Approaching Tokyo]

~ This post is Part 4 in this series of posts - “Going to Afghanistan” begins on February 26th .

Fred’s title was “Transportation and Industry”.  Most economists would argue that Industry comes first; evidently they have never “hoofed it” to get a job and don’t really understand these posts.  Transportation does come first, the discovery of America, immigration and emigration, soldiers shipping off to fight the local rebels in Concord or Lexington; it’s all about transportation.  In the US west it was walking and wagon trains, paths, the trails and roads and then railroads.  With the railroads came Empire, “the Empire Builder” is I believe still an Amtrak train.  And then there were ships, Columbus and the Chinese ocean going Junks before them - Spanish galleons, British steamers and Men of War.  With Orville and Wilbur Wright or the Russian guy who might have come first or the guy in Grass Valley, California that might have been even sooner a new mode of transportation took off; became airborne; changed the way we spoke and thought and thought about the world.

In this regard there are two things that one must know about Afghanistan.  First, Afghanistan is and always has been land-locked; one cannot get there by the sea; no oceans wash her shores, there are no shores.  Second, there are no trains in Afghanistan although there are reports of a few miles of track once being laid in Kabul during the British occupation.  Finally, in 1958 there were no paved roads in Afghanistan outside the six or seven major cities.  These three realities had for a century helped keep the country free and for at least the past eighty years free from war.

If one had to (or wanted to) go to Afghanistan one would pretty much have to walk in, often with the aid of camels, sometimes with donkeys.  In Afghanistan the horse was generally associated with authority, wealth, and war for the thunder of hooves for centuries had almost always meant a new invasion.   And the land itself was a defense, like Switzerland Afghanistan in the north and east was protected by the mountains, in the south and west the desert did the same; the nation is a lot like California without the coastal Pacific Ocean.  This is perhaps why even in 1958 so few from the western world had been there and why so few Afghans had ventured west.

ICA wanted Fred in Afghanistan in a hurry, so naturally he flew.  There were after-all now four dirt runways in the country; where even a DC-3 could land and maybe on a good day a DC-6 could land in Kandahar or Kabul, with the proper approach of course and with pretty much perfect weather.

But before I try and explain the history of aviation of the 30 years before 1939 when the DC-3 was functionally invented and the 20 more interesting years of aviation from 1939 to 1959 and then try and tie it all in to Afghanistan I should make this point:  When it comes to flying, everything changed with 9-11 and the invasion of Afghanistan that started with the B-52s bombing of the Kandahar International Airport.  During this time we saw the birth of Homeland Security and the universal screening of passengers and bags; the requirement of IDs before one was allowed to travel; the end of the airline industry as people had come to know it.

Fifty years ago airplane travel was quite different.  People talked of “Prop-lag” as the concept “Jet-lag” had not been invented.  People did not complain of any “lag” when flying even across the Continent, say Washington to LA - flying was still exciting, special.  One was well-fed on the planes.  There was silver plate silverware and white cloth tablecloths even on a short flight like from Reno to Sacramento.  And, well first-class (invented by Western Airlines) was even something more, often including full sleeping berths and endless Champaign if one wanted it - and some did.  The US flew their diplomats first class in 1958, the airline flown was supposed to be an American flag carrier if available.  Fred had the Field Service Officer (FSO) rank of a diplomat so he flew first class, something new to him.

Flying across the Pacific was not new to Fred.  He had flown to Burma on a Pan Am Clipper (Queen of the Skies) in 1951.  At 251 MPH one did experience prop-lag flying across the Pacific, flying at lower altitudes, flying against the weather with four giant propellers chopping relentlessly hour after hour against the wind.  Matters were made worse by the fact that Pan Am (Americas foremost overseas airline) still wasn’t flying into Tokyo and as a result was island hopping across the Pacific to Manila which is the long way across the Pacific if one knows their geography.  Great Circle routes are much shorter and therefore faster.  The short distance between Tokyo and San Francisco is through Seattle and then up and out over the Aleutians, the tip being more or less Shemya (Alaska).

The Manila galleons of Spain leaving from Acapulco went north to go west (a shorter route, not just an effort to follow the coast).  And of course the Japanese knew about Great circles, which is why they started their attack on the United States mainland at Attu, within sight of Shemya.  There was no commercial airfield on Attu in 1958, but refueling could occur at Shemya which is why Northwest “Orient” Airlines landed there, to refuel on the way to Tokyo.

But, before going to Shemya, one had to board the flight in Seattle.  “Northwest’s Flight #1 is delayed until 1:00 AM so I have ample time here.  I had dinner with a couple bound for New Delhi.  We’ll be together as far as Hong Kong.  They are also staying at the Miramar.  Their names are Dick and Jane Hoken and they have been to India before.  Dinner was courtesy of Northwest so I had my steak.  I registered my camera with Customs and inquired about the need for listing the tape recorder.  I don’t have to register the tape recorder.”  Letter of September 21, 1958, excerpts.

Tape recorders were still mostly a consumer novelty in 1958.  Most American-made recorders on the market didn’t work.  Fred anticipated a wide variety of potential uses for a tape recorder in Afghanistan so he asked around for suggestions from those in ICA.  Their response was that there probably were no tape recorders in Afghanistan so it would be unwise to use ones limited weight allowance to take one as nobody was there (in Afghanistan) to fix it when it (inevitably) broke.  Other people answered more directly, citing the brand-name of Norelco, a Dutch company affiliated with the North American division of Phillips.  He bought the recorder, the size but not the shape of a very full flight bag, while still in Washington and carried it on the plane to Reno and continued to hand-carry it across Asia to Afghanistan.  It was probably the first tape recorder in Kabul outside a few owned by the Afghan government.  It never needed repair.

Northwest landed its westbound planes in Shemya at about noon Pacific Standard Time; the time in Shemya was different and only knowable if one left the plane and went inside the very small and dreary Northwest Airlines cement block hut and carefully studied the large institutional type clock on the wall.  Then, while recovering from 10½ hours of prop-lag and after contemplating which side of the International Dateline one was on one might look at the clock and try to guess what time it was in Tokyo or Seattle or someplace else that mattered.  Shemya time did not matter.  There was nothing on Shemya except the airfield, the radio tower, the block house and some very important underground fuel tanks which without their aviation fuel one perhaps would never leave Shemya.

The block hut had a very simple refreshment counter and a few tables at which one could write, “It is raining and 47 degrees Fahrenheit in Shemya.  Another eight hours will put us in Tokyo.”

The letter was mailed in Seattle by Nortwest Airlines two days later - Shemya didn’t even have a postal cancellation stamp.

[2010.02.26 / Friday - Transportation and “Industry”]

~ This being Part 3 in this series of posts - read up for sequential clarity.

Fred’s birthday was on the 20th.  He had just turned 45.  Two days before he was still living in Washington D.C. going through briefings and finishing preparations for his transfer to Afghanistan.  Lloydine had returned to Carson City two weeks earlier for the start of school for the kids (actually we were never called “kids” by our parents, kids properly speaking were baby goats); but whatever way one says it “Don and Ken” were again enrolled in school in Carson City, capital of Nevada (Ormsby County then, for the record).

Kenneth had spent the summer bucking hay bales.  I had spent the summer slowly moving north from southern California starting with Los Angeles, staying with relatives about two weeks at a time.  Los Angeles in July, Coalinga in August, Los Altos in August, Reno and Donner Lake as summer turned to fall which September was fall in Nevada based on the Memorial Day to Labor Day summer vacation schedule and the Labor Day to Memorial Day school schedule.  I started Fifth Grade in the old west side two-story school house built with hand hewn blocks from prison labor from the Nevada State Prison somewhere well after the territorial days, but before modern times as Nevada remembered history.  The daughter of Nevada’s new Governor Grant Sawyer was in my class, otherwise it was mostly just the same old Carson City faces.

Nevada was a part of the Old West, but Nevada was not as a populated area “old”.  Sure there were the Washo and the Shoshone and Piutes out near Pyramid Lake, but they were “Indians” (for most historians easily forgotten or vilified) not unlike the real Indians from India.  I was going to Afghanistan where real Indians lived nearby, my perspective on things was changing.  But I protest too much.  Carson City also had Stewart, an “Indian Boarding School” where people my age and younger and older were sent from Colorado or New Mexico or Arizona sometimes to be “westernized” and to learn how to play basketball and eat with knives and forks and not ones hands and learn that the old ways were bad and primitive and that the new America offered more than the cigar store Indian on Carson Street that seemed to offer just smokes and peeling paint even a hundred years after the end to fighting.  And there really still was a cigar store wooden Indian on Carson Street in 1958 and it had only been a year or two since Indians could legally be downtown on Saturday night and there were other problems too, but Carson City certainly wasn’t a bad place.  At least it didn’t seem a bad place at the time.

Afghanistan of course (as a populated area) WAS “old”.  Afghanistan did not “start” in 1864, or 1861, or 1846, or 1776, or 1506 or something in time rather recent.  There were cities in Afghanistan before America was even a dream, poetry beyond imagining, “the Persian poets” among others.  Rulers debated the freedoms of men, passed laws to ensure freedom of religion, set up places of learning for the arts and the development of crafts and for better ways to heat the houses.  From Bamiyan went missionaries to the Emperor of China and from China went ships to discover America and to take Afghans to the Yucatan (in Mexico) and they brought back the record and you say it is the Americans that will teach and the Afghans that must learn?

Fred’s birthday was celebrated in Reno with a dinner with Lloydine and Paul and Jo Garwood.  They ate at Eugene’s on south Virginia Street.  Everyone ate in those days at Eugene’s in Reno for special occasions.  They always had a photographer at Eugene’s, a few dollars for a snap.  Everyone smiled and looked well fed.  The conversation centered on Afghanistan and telephones.  Paul was the President of Bell of Nevada, part of the Bell System that made America the greatest country on earth, or so said the Bell System ads.  I liked Paul Garwood, spent a lot of time at his home in Reno when my parents would visit them, usually on Sundays, and talk over regulatory issues about how to grow Nevada and to grow Nevada Bell and to make industry and government work together for the common cause.  My father was on the Nevada Regulatory Commission then; so I guess Paul’s input was important.

“Yes, they have telephones in Afghanistan”, Paul of course knew that and so did Fred, but they were Siemens phones mostly, German made, a German system - worked pretty well.  “Did you know that the Germans think THEY invented the telephone?”  The conversation drifted on.  Toasts were made.  “They’re Moslem, right; they don’t drink do they?”  “Here’s a toast to your last toast, Fred”.

“And tell us once again exactly WHY you are going to Afghanistan and what you REALLY expect to accomplish.”  “Lloydine, you are so patient.”  “Fred, how long again will you be gone?”

The next day, the 21st, was a Sunday that year.  For Sunday morning breakfast, on special Sundays, my mother would bake biscuits.  My father would fry bacon.  We ate the powder milk type biscuits with syrup or jelly and ate bacon and then ate more biscuits.  It was a ritual from days of yore going back at least a generation (maybe), or maybe my mother started the whole thing but in either case these Sunday morning biscuits turned into the occasional Sunday morning buffet; which was like a dinner; but was really breakfast.  Guests would be invited, friends and relatives and sometimes people we hardly knew would show up, or at least a lot of people that I didn’t know seemed to show up.  Fred and Lloydine had a lot of friends.

September 21st was the day for another one of these breakfasts.  All the relatives came in from various Nevada points and points in California to wish Fred Bon Voyage and to say “Goodbye” and to ask one more time when he planned to come back and to say once again that, “I am so glad Lloydine and the boys aren’t going”.  “Afghanistan is no place for a family Fred, I may know nothing about Afghanistan, but I know it is no place for a family.”

The Burma Trip had just about been the  end of things for Fred’s relatives; his mother and his sisters mostly.  They worried.  They worried that he would not come back alive, that the water was deadly, that the telephones wouldn’t work.  They worried about the mail and about medicines (they were against the required shots being good Christian Scientists) and about the food being foreign and the foreigners not being American enough.  They were good hearted folks, believed in helping people, the “right” people maybe, but, “Fred, why do YOU have to do it?”  “Can’t someone else go?”  There are so many jobs right here in America, with all your contacts I am sure you could find one.”  “Pass the biscuits, please.”

Going to Afghanistan is perhaps a bit like dieing.  The question is about who it is harder on, those leaving or those left behind.  Fred did not die in Afghanistan; but his mother died while he was gone.  Also his favorite brother-in-law died, Charlie Dean, husband of Deanie died.  This was the last meal that they would share.

Clara May Boomhower, “Caddie” to her sisters and friends was born in Hollister, California on January 16th 1875.  She now lived in Los Altos, California in a small (then yellow) cottage on Orange Avenue a block away from the Christian Science Church and two blocks from the S&P train tracks that then went through the center of Los Altos.  Her husband (Fred’s Dad) had died in 1950.  Fred went to Burma just a year after his death.  Under the circumstances she was not ready to let Fred go.  Nearly a decade later things were different, there was an acceptance and a resignation regarding Fred’s lifetime work, to be an engineer and to let engineering take him where he somehow needed to go.

She took the United Airlines DC 6 from Reno down to San Francisco with him.  This was the first leg of the flight to Afghanistan, so in a way she was leaving for Afghanistan too.  They talked most of the way; but not when flying over the crest of the Sierras; they paused to look once more as they had so many times before at the mountaintops.  An hour later the plane landed at SFO after a stop in Sacramento; she took the train to Los Altos and Orange Avenue.  He caught a flight to Shemya.

Note:  The least known part of Afghan history is the story of the Bamian missionaries going to China and the subsequent Chinese voyage (perhaps voyages) to America long before even the Vikings arrival.  The history was well documented.  Unfortunately, the greatest records were on deposit in the Imperial library in Peking and somehow were destroyed by a fire that somehow involved the British involvement during the Taiping Revolt. The story is further complicated by diverse spellings of the participants names and the historical conflict between emphasis on Chinese or Afghan leadership.  Further, while the Moslem King of Afghanistan acknowledged the event, it was a Buddhist achievement, not a Moslem one; making the whole subject difficult at best.  Needless to say neither the Americans nor the British are fond of the story.  The Italians and Spanish have much to lose and the Catholics seemingly have everything to lose.  Even the Scandinavians are on the wrong side of this one.  So now you know why Afghanistan isn’t included in ones Third Grade instruction about “explorers”.

[2010.02.26 / Friday - Leaving for Afghanistan]