Category: Places
A Night in Delhi (Part 1 of Return to India)
“We need to head straight for Delhi,” Tom said. “I want to get you to a doctor.” I simply groaned. I didn’t want to miss Rajasthan, our next planned stop, but I was miserable and scared. (page 281, Wherever the Road Leads) This illness in early March of 1973, set the stage for my return…
Memory of a Beijing Market
March 2003. Tom burst into the room as I finished my second cup of tea. “I’ve found the market,” he announced. “It’s just around the corner.” We had arrived in Beijing the afternoon before. After checking into the hotel, eating a Chinese meal in a dining room filled with western tourists, and wandering Tiananmen Square…
Illustrations for a Travel Memoir, Wherever the Road Leads.
Wherever the Road Leads has always been planned as an illustrated memoir. After all, with a subtitle that starts “An Artist’s Memoir . . .,” readers will expect to see artwork. Luckily, I didn’t have 1000 drawings to choose from like I did with the photos. However, because of page consideration (Print on Demand…
Camp Young, Desert Training Center, World War II
On Sunday, June 19th, I celebrated Father’s Day as part of a panel of authors of military literature, an event sponsored by the Friends of the San Juan Capistrano Library. The other panel member was Frank McAdams, who wrote the Pulitzer nominated book, Vietnam Roughrider: A Convoy Commander’s Memoir. Before the panel started, the moderator, Pat…
The Best Job in the World – Working at the Zebra Room in Los Angeles
“Herman was sure he had landed a job in one of the most exciting nightclubs in Los Angeles. The Zebra Room Cocktail Lounge, its tall chairs upholstered in zebra skin, hummed with action from afternoon until long after midnight.” – Immigrant Soldier, p. 141 Herman’s life was studded with serendipity. One of those moments, meeting the bartender…
Meiningen, A Hometown Revisited
Both my father and Herman had fond memories of their hometown, Meiningen, located in the southern part of the state of Thuringia, Germany, and just over the border into what was, from 1945 until 1990, East Germany. I was able to travel there in the Spring of 1991 with my elderly parents and one of…
Visiting Camp Ritchie
June 2012. We are again surrounded by Ritchie Boys. Bob and I sit in the auditorium of the U.S. Navy Memorial Heritage Center in Washington, DC. The men we are here to honor enter the theater and find seats. Many walk with the aid of a cane or leaning on the arm of a friend…
Finding The Ritchie Boys
Somewhere in the middle of a day of taping Herman’s memories in 1991, he mentioned his special training. “They sent me to the Army Intelligence Center,” he told me. “That was in Camp Ritchie, Maryland. And I took the course and graduated from the Army Intelligence Corps. We were trained in interrogation, espionage, and counter-espionage.”…