Author: pat Stith

Everything Is Relative

USS Los Angeles at anchor in Hong Kong one year later, by artist Wayne Scarpaci.
USS Los Angeles at anchor in Hong Kong one year later, by artist Wayne Scarpaci.

When my ship, USS Los Angeles (CA-135), dropped anchor in Victoria Bay, Hong Kong, in late 1961 our captain allowed several Chinese men to come on board at meal time to glean food from our trays.

When we finished eating we would hand our food trays to one of the foreigners and they would rake our scraps into one of several garbage cans. Uneaten mashed potatoes, for example, were saved in one garbage can, uneaten beans in another, bread went into a third can, and so forth.

They were not saving our scraps to feed hogs. If that were the case, all the leftovers would have been raked into the same garbage can.

No, they were going to serve our scraps to people.

And now? Thousands of poor people in Hong Kong love in wire cage homes.
And now? Thousands of poor people in Hong Kong live in wire cage homes.

The federal “poverty level” for a family of three in the United States in 2017 is $20,420.  And, yes, don’t tell me, I know: renting a decent place to live, keeping the lights and heat on, buying clothes, paying the bills for a family of three on that kind of money, or less, is tough duty.

But when I see a U.S. “poverty level” number like that I can’t help but think about a family I saw in Hong Kong, near the dock where I boarded a tender to return to my ship, anchored in the bay.

It was nighttime and I walked past a woman with two small children.  I saw her lie down on a piece of cardboard on the sidewalk, a child on each side, and pull a second piece of cardboard on top of them, for a blanket.

That’s poverty.

NOTE: A regret I still have: I went on liberty several times in Hong Kong and I saw a lot of poverty, all of which I just walked past.

Coming Friday: The Wasp Nest

Covered With Slop And Blood

It was my turn to slop the two hogs Dave and I fed –I was eight or nine years old, my brother was two and a half years older — and I had waited too long. There was still some light outside, but the barn was pitch black.

Without a flashlight I wouldn’t have been able to see anything.

The hogs were in a shed-like enclosure attached to the barn. There were several windows — openings, I guess, is more like it — in the barn wall next to the shed.

We raised hogs to eat. This is one of them, with my mother, Alice Cameron Stith.
We raised hogs to eat. This is one of the sows, with my mother, Alice Cameron Stith.

All I thought I had to do was lean out one of the openings and pour the slop in the trough below. But I couldn’t. The hogs had rooted the trough over to the other side of the pen. I was going to have to get in there with them.

I was late feeding them and the hogs, who could smell the slop, were going nuts. I was afraid of them, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t pour the slop on the ground.

I decided to sprinkle a little of it in their faces, drive them crazy, which would hold them at the first window. I’d leave my light there too, trained on the trough, while I slipped quietly down to the third window, jumped into the pen and ran to the trough with my bucket.  I’d pour the slop and be gone before the hogs knew I was in there with them.

That was my plan.

When I jumped I landed on a plow I had forgotten about –and couldn’t see– gashing my head above my left eye and knocking a small piece of bone out of my skull. I had slop and blood all over me and, moments later, hogs.

Postscript:  That was one of the few times I was taken to a doctor to get sewed up.  We didn’t go to the doctor much, most cuts were just bandaged. I slept in same bed with my two older brothers, Pop and Dave, and, that night, one of them accidentally hit me in the head and knocked the stitches out. A doctor closed the wound again, this time with metal clamps.

There’s still a small crevice in my skull above my left eye.

NOTE: I got my share of scars growing up, including one that was [accidentally] self-inflicted.

I had been warned not to run with an open knife in my hand — advice I ignored.

When I was 12 or 13 I was playing in the woods near the gold mine, at the end of Leigh Avenue in Charlotte, when I fell and stabbed myself in the left thigh.

I was more worried about the repercussions at home than I was about the wound.  So I didn’t tell.

I poured alcohol on the cut, taped it closed, and washed the blood out of my jeans. No one was the wiser. The small hole in my jeans – and the scar on my left thigh were never noticed.

Coming Monday: Everything Is Relative