Really loved this travelogue through time, space and geopolitics. It isn't war and conquest we remember best. It's the intimate relationships that place us face to face with another soul. Especially on foreign soil.
Many moons ago, I spent a couple of years in Turkey during my teens. Among other things, we house-sat for a couple traveling to Russia who'd inherited the former base-housing residence of Francis Gary Powers of U-2 fame. [Not the Irish rock band — though a nascent version of the band was forming in Dublin about that time — but the Lockheed "Dragon Lady" U-2 surveillance jet.] Powers survived the destruction of his U-2 spy plane, two years of Soviet imprisonment, and an international prisoner exchange — only to be killed in a television traffic helicopter in Los Angeles shortly after we left Turkey.
Like you, I have vivid memories of Turkey: splitting open a juicy red watermelon, beside a vast blue municipal pool at Atatürk Park, with a Turkish native and an American friend (all of us had summer jobs at Incirlik AFB); riding daily over an aqueduct-style bridge nearly two millennia old in Adana; listening to the final Elvis hit while crossing that Seyhan River bridge [https://youtu.be/WBYRIFyiZfE?si=_ZwmMry248kpTCYk]; wolfing down lamb and parsley tantunis at the Turkish base cafe on our lunch break; learning from my friend, Donald, that the $1.75 per hour minimum wage he and I earned on our summer jobs was more than Charlie, a Turkish national with more than 20 years of experience, made at the same TUSLOG supply detachment; working with the dapper Mr. Fikret and the laid-back, blue-collar backgammon master, Mr. Ziya, at TUSLOG; shelving back-breaking buckets of paint and sweeping away inches of dust accumulated on the little-used upper level of the metal supply warehouse, in intense heat; and learning one Monday, with Donald, that our good enlisted friend, the golden curly-haired Airman Grubb would not be reporting for duty after a drug-induced weekend fall from the roof of his multistory barracks. That was the summer I learned the world works in wonderful, awful and mysterious ways.
Love this Chris. Your stories remind me of A Stranger in the House of God, memoir by John Koessler (my pastoral studies professor at Moody). Great detail, honest, fun, human, hopeful. Look forward to reading more!
Amazing story, Chris. Thanks for sharing that.
Really loved this travelogue through time, space and geopolitics. It isn't war and conquest we remember best. It's the intimate relationships that place us face to face with another soul. Especially on foreign soil.
Many moons ago, I spent a couple of years in Turkey during my teens. Among other things, we house-sat for a couple traveling to Russia who'd inherited the former base-housing residence of Francis Gary Powers of U-2 fame. [Not the Irish rock band — though a nascent version of the band was forming in Dublin about that time — but the Lockheed "Dragon Lady" U-2 surveillance jet.] Powers survived the destruction of his U-2 spy plane, two years of Soviet imprisonment, and an international prisoner exchange — only to be killed in a television traffic helicopter in Los Angeles shortly after we left Turkey.
Like you, I have vivid memories of Turkey: splitting open a juicy red watermelon, beside a vast blue municipal pool at Atatürk Park, with a Turkish native and an American friend (all of us had summer jobs at Incirlik AFB); riding daily over an aqueduct-style bridge nearly two millennia old in Adana; listening to the final Elvis hit while crossing that Seyhan River bridge [https://youtu.be/WBYRIFyiZfE?si=_ZwmMry248kpTCYk]; wolfing down lamb and parsley tantunis at the Turkish base cafe on our lunch break; learning from my friend, Donald, that the $1.75 per hour minimum wage he and I earned on our summer jobs was more than Charlie, a Turkish national with more than 20 years of experience, made at the same TUSLOG supply detachment; working with the dapper Mr. Fikret and the laid-back, blue-collar backgammon master, Mr. Ziya, at TUSLOG; shelving back-breaking buckets of paint and sweeping away inches of dust accumulated on the little-used upper level of the metal supply warehouse, in intense heat; and learning one Monday, with Donald, that our good enlisted friend, the golden curly-haired Airman Grubb would not be reporting for duty after a drug-induced weekend fall from the roof of his multistory barracks. That was the summer I learned the world works in wonderful, awful and mysterious ways.
Love this Chris. Your stories remind me of A Stranger in the House of God, memoir by John Koessler (my pastoral studies professor at Moody). Great detail, honest, fun, human, hopeful. Look forward to reading more!