A big thanks to patient Mary Jerz for quilting my latest flimsy: I am calling it, "The Journey". African fabric scrap strips in the Railway pattern...bold blue, my sister's idea...perfect.!!!
Next:
I am almost finished with my Hour Glass plaid scrap top...then off to Mary again...Today, I walked for exercise and read: The Women, by Kristen Hannah. I could not put it down.
Great historical novel...bringing back cursory memories of my Vietnam travel.
I was a flight attendant for Pan Am, based in NYC. I volunteered to fly in and out of Vietnam during the war, bringing soldiers to Hong Kong or Bangkok for R and R...(rest and recuperation) The airline gave us dog tags and told us that if we were captured by the enemy, we were to tell them that we were American and they would send us home. I was 22 and believed every word. I have my dog tags hanging on my apartment wall. The bombs went off as we took off and landed, but naive me was not scared. Young GIs took us on a little tour of their barracks....a tent with a stick Christmas tree., two cots on the ground. I worked those flights for months, going through Saigon and Danang.
Last year I told a grocery store manager here in Charlotte that I was parking that day in the veteran parking spot because I had been to Saigon and Danang. He asked, "Where is that"?
This brings back even more memories. A few years later, I was based in Los Angeles , working on a big 747 filled with bi-racial babies and toddlers coming from Vietnam to America to be adopted. Each baby had someone with it....most children were vomiting because of the food difference and the travel. It was a long, long flight from Asia to LA.
I have not thought of this for years, until now, reading this book. I must say it is one of the best books I have ever read.
My son-in-law is Vietnamese. He was evacuated during the fall of Saigon. His mom was a translator for the Americans and was on the death list. She actually managed to escape the north Vietnamese soilder that came for her and make it to the us embassy. She somehow talked them into taking her and her 5 year old son and putting them on to the Nimbus. He was one sick little boy eating the ships food. He remembers how ill he was. They finally got to the U S. He is very grateful for the people who helped them escape certain death.
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