Little Dickie

It was a dark and stormy night when we left the Roman ruins of Maiden Castle and headed for Japan. Mystep- father, a Wing Commander in the USAF stationed in England, had recieved orders to report to Misawa AFB in just thirty days. That gave us just three weeks to visit Paris and Cairo, so we hit the road for the mysterious Far East. Dad drove us in the little Ford Anglia to Colchester where we made a quick sale of the wheeled conveyance and caught a fast train to London.

After touring the Tower viewing the Crown Jewels, the Royal Palace, Parliament, Big Ben, St. Paul's, Hyde Park, Piccadilly and the British Museum, the three of us boarded the ferry at Southhampton and passed over to the port of Calais, France. After touring the Louvre, the Eifel Tower, and almost the entire Left Bank, including the apartment where Lautrec had lived, we boarded a train and settled in for a short trip to Rome.

After viewing the Parthenon and the Roman Senate for as long as we wished, we proceeded to Athens by boat to see the Acropolis and to visit Plato's Academy. From there we thumbed a ride via a caravan and headed for the land of the Pyramids via the Holy Land. By limiting ourselves to one night each in Istanbul, Damascus, and old Jerusalem, we found ourselves sitting in the shade of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, just outside Cairo, in no time (probably around 2:15 p.m. on July 10, 1957).

My parents had taken a room in old Cairo for three days (address unascertained) and having nothing special to do, I visited the Sphynx. I had no more serious purpose than to view the Sphynx as anyone might enjoy a theme park. However, I could not (or refused to) see the Sphynx as merely an ancient sand lot toy, but instead I got into a strange mystical state of mind. I had never experienced anything at all like this before, which is saying a lot, since I had been a frequent visitor to Camelot, the English Sherwood Forest, the German Black Forest, the California Petrified Forest, the Florida Everglades and once slept in a camper overnight at Stonehenge!

I kept on repeating silently, yet intensely, "I Am" in Coptic, while standing at the foot of the man-cat. I really don't remember whether I repeated the phrase more than ten times, but probably I did; it is in my character to persist at phrases. I must have been annoyed by my own contumacy in phrasing, and perhaps for this reason I invoked Isis, presumably by the invocation printed in the Sphynx tour guide, which I probably knew by heart.

Had not I, in various and sundry ways, attempted to learn and study all about the Egyptians, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Hyksos and all the Semites, Hittites, Kassites, and Canaanites the entire previous year? Monday I possibly I visited the Sphynx again.

After three days of Egyptian sightseeing and a short bus trip to Marrakesh, we finally boarded a flight to Kabul, where we visited the Giant Buddha at Bamyian; then we rode the rails with a load of Sufi dervishes right into Old Delhi. Hailing a rickshaw, we set off on the Grand Trunk Road, in order to visit the Connaught Circle, the Red Fort, the Taj Mahal, Braj, Sarnath, Bodhi Gaya, and as many holy spots, peeths and dhams, mutts, yogis, swamis, and fakirs as was humanly possible.

I remember one short fat bald-headed guy in a bedsheet, a yogi tea walla inside a stall in Kashi, and a funeral on the Ganges. On the train I read "Following the Equator" by Mark Twain.

From Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi. we flew into Haneda International Airport, Japan; I could swear I saw the Great Wall of China, but that may have been the following summer. In no time I was kowtowing to Zen Masters, wearing various and sundry silky kimonos, and eating deftly with chop sticks. In Tokyo we found lodgings in a Hotel next to a Taoist Dojo where I learned all about Judo and Aikido. W took a bus tour to Kamakura where I stood at the feet of the Great Buddha and repeated the famous phrase:

"Namo tasso Bhagavato Arhato Samsambuddhasa!" in Japanese three times.

At Misawa AFB, the very next day, I enrolled for my first year of middle schooling. In a class assignment I wrote a short little essay for my teacher and entitled it, "What I did Last Summer". I think I got an 'A' on it but I'm not sure.

At any rate, the other kids in the class were not too impressed as I recall. I guess all the rest of the 'military-brats' had experienced quite a summer for themselves!