That had to be the nicest weekend of the Fall. I stopped by the Belmont Distillery to pick up a couple bottles of their Copper Kettle Vodka to enjoy after the chores, and marveled at the quality of the rich blue cloudless skies. I puttered on the bushes and did some trimming around the farmhouse, and even moved some boxes around in the office annex to the garage.
It felt grand to be alive, and in a place that was quiet and peaceful, except for the occasional sound of gunfire from Happy Acres up the lane. It is a little funny that in the city the explosions would make me a little uptight, but not so much down here. It is actually a comfort to have anyone in the neighborhood know that the residents are ready for about anything.
There was a time when our worlds were a little wider, the sites a little stranger, and we trotted the globe with a certain innocence that is long gone. My pal Beth is out in Utah, looking around (like a lot of us) for the last place she wants to be.
She wrote me about being sixteen and bouncing around Asia, a region I once called home, and her words have a remarkable resonance. Here is the second part of her view of 1963, when some remarkable things were just beginning:
“After meeting the Royal Couple in Thailand, Dad had been hired by his next consulting engineering firm, and we knew we were headed to Lahore, in what was West Pakistan in those days- the remnant of the division of the old British Raj with majority Muslim states on the west and east borders of modern India.
He wouldn’t report to Pakistan until all the generators had been brought on line at the Bhumipol Dam … so he expected to fly from Thailand to Lahore sometime in July.
So, Mom decided this would be a fine opportunity for us to go to Hong Kong to shop, have clothes and shoes made, and then take a freighter from Hong Kong to Karachi, the port city on the south coast of West Pakistan.
She booked passage on a Danish freighter that could carry 12 passengers – for most of the trip, there were only the 3 of us – and this freighter was to stop in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bombay, Madras, and Cochin before reaching Karachi were Dad would meet us. And in 1964, there were no containers in which to carry the cargo. Everything was carried in the hull or in crates, meaning that we stayed for several days in each port while the freighter was emptied and re-filled.
For instance, in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, the ship took on coconut oil in the hull, with huge pipes carrying the product directly into the hull. It was a very neat way to travel, and it took us six weeks to make the trip from Hong Kong to Karachi.
So, we flew into Hong Kong in June 1964, where we were booked at the grand, newly-opened President Hotel (our budget couldn’t afford the Peninsula). Beautiful hotel, beautiful lobby full of antiques, lovely carpets, etc. We stayed in Hong Kong for a week or more as we shopped and commissioned clothing and shoes to be made to our specifications.
Harilela’s is where we went. When visiting Chiang Mai in up-country Thailand, I had selected several bolts of lovely Thai silk to be made up as dresses later, and these were what I brought to Harilela’s to be tailored. I loved these dresses and wore them when cocktail attire was required in college, or after marrying and attending formal USAF functions. I parted with them with great regret.
One afternoon, we returned to the President Hotel after a day of shopping, standing for fittings, etc., and saw a throng of Chinese girls screaming on either side of the street that led up the small hill where the hotel was located.
Our taxi driver was stopped by the police and they had a conversation in Chinese, which we didn’t understand. Then we were allowed to proceed, and the driver dropped us off in front of the entrance. It was very strange- our lobby had been stripped naked. The beautiful porcelain vases were gone. The decorations had vanished. No artifacts. No carpets on the floor… Just the furniture sitting alone on the floor.
My brother went up to the desk to request our key (these were the days when keys were large and heavy and one always left them with the front desk when leaving the hotel), and asked what was going on.
He came back to where we were standing by the lift, waiting for the door to open, and told us that some VIP’s were staying in the hotel, so they had to remove valuables from the lobby in case excited fans got inside. It made no sense to us at all.
The elevator doors opened, and there, standing in front of us were four of the strangest guys I’d ever seen. Their hair was long… longer than anything I’d ever seen. They had on strange suits with strange collars to the shirts, and their shoes were different.
They looked at us and we looked at them with no emotion, no nothing. They seemed a bit surprised, and then walked out of the elevator. We never said a word, entered the car, and as the elevator boy closed the door, he asked “Don’t you know who they are?” We replied “No”, and he said very excitedly those are the Beatles!!!
Well, that meant nothing to us… remember, their first hit didn’t come to the U.S. till June 1963, and by that time, we were already in Asia. We’d never heard them. Their famous U.S. debut on the Ed Sullivan Show didn’t happen till winter of 1964, and of course we knew nothing about that.
My brother and I asked the elevator boy lots of questions about The Beatles, and he was amazed that these Americans didn’t know anything.
I was intensely curious, and resolved that as soon as we got to Singapore, I would find a record shop where I could buy a Beatles album.
And this is the first Beatles album I bought. I looked at it all the time while on the freighter, but I wasn’t able to play it for months to actually hear what they sounded like…
We had the six-week freighter trip, then the flight from Karachi to Lahore. We stayed at the Ambassador Hotel for three weeks or so while we searched for a house to rent. Then we had to wait for our household goods shipped from Bangkok. None of this was completed until late November 1964… And then, finally, I was able to listen to this album…. And it was love at first hearing.
My brother became a life-long Beatles fan and played guitar in a rock band that covered a lot of their music. And it’s still funny to think that I saw them, up very close, before I had any idea who they were…. And they were visibly surprised at our non-response.
So, Hong Kong, for all of my life, has been closely associated with shopping and tailoring by Harilela’s… Because of the time it took for tailoring at that fine establishment, we stayed much longer in Hong Kong than we would have, and that gave us our Beatles experience.”
That was one of the better letters I have received, and it brought back a lot of memories of places far away, and a society that no longer exists. The Beatles were controversial, and I watched them for the first time on the black and white Television with Mom and Dad.
I never stayed at the President Hotel in Hong Kong, but I did eventually get around to staying at the Peninsula in Hong Kong. That was on the trip I arranged for Congressman Bill to talk to the SLORC Junta in Burma (I can’t call it Myanmar, but do highly recommend The Strand Hotel in Rangoon). In fact, since I got to arrange the itinerary, I called it the Outlaw Hotel Tour of Asia: The Oriental in Bangkok, The Strand in Rangoon, The Peninsula in Hong Kong, The Metropole in Hanoi, and in Ho Chi Minh City, the legendary Rex Hotel, where the American Military Assistance Command used to hold the Five O’Clock Follies press briefings on how the war was going.
The last was a spooky place before it was upgraded and remodeled. I may have seen a few ghosts there, but I never did meet the Beatles.
Copyright 2014 Vic and Beth
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303