I enjoy seeing on Facebook or TV these surprise homecomings of our military personnel. There will be the sudden shock of discovery, then cries of joy as the couple hug one another. The surprise return today was pulled on the wife sitting with friends in a neighborhood restaurant. Sometimes the reunion does not always work out as expected. Once, Florine, my wife, expected me to land in San Francisco and went from Georgia to greet me there. The military travel planners had decided on sending the troop ship I was on to Seattle, Washington, not to San Francisco, California.
Four of us Korean returnees on the troop ship booked into an ornate hotel in Seattle that had been built in the Alaska Gold Rush era of the 1890s. We got our rooms, took baths and put on our Class A uniforms. The trouble was our uniforms had been stored a year in mothballs! As we put them on we used powders and a few sprinkles of after shaving cream, but in the fancy hotel with giant chandeliers and floor to ceiling windows and gold fittings there was a lingering smell of moth balls!
A group of ladies and gentlemen around a long table had a violin player to entertain them with soft music and he paraded around our table while playing patriotic tunes on his violin. The party goers in formal dress toasted us with wine and then cheered and clapped in our honor.
The next morning I branched off alone to catch an early train bound for San Francisco. It was a wonderful scenic ride down through the mountains, passing through tunnels and crossing high bridges over famous salmon rivers. I spent all the daylight hours in the plastic dome on top of the train.
The reunion with Florine at San Francisco was the crowning joy of my return. We spent two days with a couple we knew living just south of Frisco. Later we rode a bus to Los Angeles, looked around in the smog-filled city a couple of days, and then caught a bus to Flagstaff, where we took a side trip to see the Grand Canyon. It was a wonderful but brief time to readjust ourselves to being together after a year apart.
