Title: "Tale of the tape."
 
The "exciting" life of Marines in Southeast Asia. Not all fun and 
games for we who were there well know.
 
Well, here we are in good ol' Nam Phong. Hot and muggy. Take a quick 
shower and as soon as you get out you're ready for another. So what 
do Marines do when off duty for relaxation? I mean there was nothing 
there. Nothing. Sure, a trailer for a PX. A roof over the chow hall. 
I remember burning my hands washing my mess kit in that boiling water 
in the garbage cans with those burners to heat the water. (That 
picture in the photo file brought back some memories) 
 
Find what ever to amuse ourselves. 
 
One thing we did that we wouldn't have normally done was to take 
frogs, bugs or anything we could find and freeze them. The favorite 
thing to do was throw them in the air and watch them break when they 
hit the ground. That was the advantage of making liquid oxygen and 
nitrogen.
 
When we left Iwakuni we were told to only take our Marine gear. We 
could buy things when we got to where we were going. Yeah, right. Now 
I have two of everything.(I had over a thousand dollars of stereo 
equipment in Iwakuni and it was still there when I got back in 
August. And I knew I couldn't take it with me. We had a good idea 
were we where going.)
 
Well one guy happened to have a radio but the problem with that was 
there wasn't any FEN stations we could pick up. Only one Thai AM 
radio station that played that cultures' music. All the songs sounded 
the same and we could only listen to that twanging sound for so long.
 
Then one day we get a new guy and he has a cassette player with some 
tapes. Oh thank you great one! We have been delivered from this abuse 
of oriental entertainment. WRONG!
 
He gets in his sea bag and has one tape. Yep, one tape. And it 
is "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" by Simon and Garfunkel. Well, that's 
better that nothing. So here we are, sitting around, swapping 
stories, drinking beer, looking at the stars listening to Simon and 
Garfunkel.
 
And we listen, and we listen, and we listen, and we listen over time 
to that one tape. So we decide to put it up for a while. Later Brown, 
( can't recall his first name but he had a real thick head of dark 
brown hair and always got in trouble for being out of haircut 
regulation, untill we got here) decides to put the tape in. 
 
So here we are listening to it again and the batteries start going 
dead. And the song that was playing was the title song, "Bridge Over 
Troubled Waters." And the song gets slower and sslloowweerr and 
slooowwweeerrr and ssssllllooooow. Tape stops. Brown gets up, takes 
out the tape and starts to throw it. We all start shouting FOD, FOD! 
He was facing the runway. So he turns and chucks it into the bush 
ending that tapes life.
 
To this day I cannot stand that song or any song on that tape. If I 
hear it I will either switch stations or turn it off. Nothing against 
Simon and Garfunkel.
 
So here we are back to square one on how to pass the time. But that's 
another story. 
 
Semper Fi Marines and friends,
Buzzbag72