WolfPack Diaries

Three-Timer · #1 03-30-2007, 02:32 PM

I will be posting some stories and bits and pieces from my three volunteer tours to Kunsan over the span of 3 decades. 1987-1988, 1998-1999, and 2002-2003.

Yes, I am a little engrossed laying the foundation in the 1987 diary. I am a bit anxious to get to the more recent diaries.

They involve the changes after a ten year hiatus, My love for Korean food, and the courtship of my Korean wife, leaving the peninsula with my wife, headed for Alaska, and ultimately our return and finally the acceptance of my Korean Father in law...

Of course I will be uploading thumbnails when appropriate.

Stay tuned......

Three-Timer · #2 03-31-2007, 04:11 AM

It was early August 1987 and I just landed in Osan AB on the 'roach coach'. All of the inbound personnel were divided in their destination groups to board the buses to their respective locations. Of course I was headed to Kunsan. Upon arriving at the Rec Center, I did what everyone else did. I grabbed my bags from under the bus and seeked out my sponsor. Well, time ticked by, and little by little, the crowd thinned, and I was becoming irked by the waiting. I happened to gaze across the street and notice an intramural softball game going on, and by this time most newcomers had moved on to their dorms and finally some relaxation. Not me. About this time a couple guys had come over from the softball game and struck up a conversation. Well, actually they ask me if I was me and that I was. I asked which of them is my sponsor. Neither. He was still playing softball. Strike one. These two members of my squadron got me settled into my room, even pointing out that the room just across from me was where my sponsor lived.

After getting about as much sleep as I could muster from the jet lag, I went about the business of showering and getting dressed to saunter out in search of the ‘orderly room’. It just so happens that my ‘sponsor’ had to stop by his room to get something. I met him, finally, as I was exiting the dorm. We had a brief introduction. I steered the conversation towards inprocessing and where I needed to be. I was expecting him to be more of a hands-on person and escort me, being my sponsor. Instead, he just stepped outside and pointed down the street past the post office and the flags by the track, and said that the orderly room was over in that direction.

A few days later while in the orderly room the NCOIC made a point to ask me why I wrote such a negative report on the sponsor. I said to him, “What’s the point of writing anything, if you expect me to lie, isn’t the sponsor program designed to recognize the good sponsors as well as identify those who might be better off not sponsoring anyone.” He thought about if for a quick second, and then agreed.

Moving on….It’s about six weeks later…..no, wait. I can’t skip to the next month, not without talking about my ‘Greenbean’ party. Unless, you don’t want to hear about back when there was NOT a curfew……

Three-Timer · #3 03-31-2007, 07:15 AM

Well, going to A-Town for the first time is an experience. By that I mean you have to experience the whole thing…meeting at the rec center bus stop, giving the driver your 800 won for the trip, and of course listening to the rants for the driver to hurry up and get there. “Ppoli ppoli adashi”. Each of my subsequent tours I couldn’t help but want to scream at all of the GI’s—didn’t they think the driver had heard it enough over the many years. The bus itself is actually a bit nostalgic. I’m talking about the old bus, not the newer one that is used most of the time. The old one is the only one they had for quite awhile.

If you didn’t exchange some money at the club before you left, most A-town goers exchange their dollars for won with the shoe store guy just up from the taxi/bus drop-off area. This WAS a couple stores to the right of what I believe is still the video karaoke place. I will tell everyone now that it is always a good idea to exchange your money to won. It helps keep track of what you spend. We all know after drinking, conversion rates get a little fuzzy. It’s best to stick with the local denomination.

Well, now we’re on the bus, I am sitting there with some coworkers, Watson and Figueroa were their names. I listened to all their stories and advice about how to handle situations and where I could go and what was off-limits. Amidst all of the other chattering going on in the bus, most got some ribbing in from the ‘old-tiners’ picking on the newbies predicting when we were going to buy a ‘juicy’ , how many, and in which club it would be. This was quickly becoming information overload. I never realized going out for some beers was such fanfare. Ok, it’s not often that I had the opportunity to do a ‘Sweep’, hitting each of the bars one at a time in sequence, stopping long enough to almost finish my beer before moving along to the next bar, but I was giving it my best.

Prior to hitting the first bar, our group pointed out the restaurants, town patrol, soju tent, it was a tent back then, opposite the first bar at the top of the hill.

The Paradise Club was already hopping. We sat down, everyone ordered drinks and began talking about nothing. Of course, being one of the newbies, I had to dart my eyes everywhere, from the topless pictures on the wall, to the scantily clad women talking with the GI’s or sitting off in the corner, and lest I forget, the one in the thong gyrating around the pole up on stage.

From club to club this went on, I was getting a nice buzz, the eye candy was overflowing, American persuasion, as well as Korean, and I had even managed to keep from buying a juicy….until about the 6th bar. Heck, I was getting tired of some of the ‘Mi-Guk’ conversation and wanted to try to get the lay of the land a little bit and possibly learn a few things.

Yeah, it turned out to be mostly small talk, as the working girls were just doing their job, trying to make money through the purchasing of drinks. What I did not really notice until we got to the last handful of bars is that our group had become smaller and smaller as the guys would hook up with their yobos or favorite girls from their favorite bars. It turns out that one other greenbean and myself were standing near the shoe store guy’s place wondering where everybody had disappeared to. Luckily for us it was explained to us about the bus times and we grab a quick snack of yakimondu having already tried it earlier in the evening and sat down on the bus for the trip back to base.

Three-Timer · #4 03-31-2007, 08:22 AM

OK, so I’ve had my greenbean and been through all of the in-processing and was getting acclimated to Kunsan AB, my job, my dorm room, and my ROOMMATE. Yes, a real roommate to go along with common latrines. Back then most of the bases had ‘house’ servants that we paid every month to do our laundry, tidy our rooms, polish our boots, and iron our uniforms. All we had to worry about was sleeping, eating, working, drinking, and keeping from going over our ration limits on booze and smokes. Black market was rampant.

As I settled in to the Wolfpack lifestyle, I came to think that there would be plenty of time later to study for things like WAPS testing. Even though I frequently read fiction novels, I also enjoyed checking out my new environment, which I did, wholeheartedly, but somewhat frugally, as I was never without money, and did fine keeping the bank balance in the black. I also became one of the popular guys on the job, learning quickly and even providing solid input. My roommate, on the other hand, was a bookworm. He was also well-liked, and talented, but he was always studying. He rarely left the yard, and I don’t think he ever went to A-town until his brownbean. I quickly chose another buddy when it was time for our squadron to move to another dorm. It also made sense because, I had switched to night shift. My schedule was 4 days on and 2 days off, from 1800-0500.

Since there was no curfew, and ‘wing-man’ was a guy who liked chicken, we were free to go and come as we pleased. I became so good at my tasks that I frequently finished them by 0130 and sometimes earlier. It turned out that I even trained my next 2 supervisors on night shift. Both of these supervisors were married and were not inclined to do the party thing, so I worked really hard and they usually let me off work by 2230 hrs most nights unless I was so out of shape from partying that I needed a break. I would catch the last bus to A-town and stay out til the 0500 bus in the morning. I would get off the bus in front of O’Malley and stop in for some biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs and sausage.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I came into the Air Force as a cook. Yes, that’s me, the ‘chow hall guy’. I came on duty at the end of the dinner meal, worked the carryout service from 1900-2200 and then the midnight meal. Man oh man were there a ton of Styrofoam containers in the trash cans at the bus stops around the base and especially at the A-town bus stop.

In the very beginning, when I first switched to night shift, I did my tasks and there was a fair amount of time to spare. It couldn’t be helped, the facility had to be manned and that is how it went. The way the contracts were set up, the military cooks could not do much more than paperwork, money, meal planning, box lunch preparation and some other menial tasks. I watched my fair share of TV in the dining area, and even sat sometimes during the slower parts of the meal service reading a novel. One thing we had to do was man the cash register on the cashier’s night off. Were any of you there during this time? Do you remember Sam, the cashier? When I came back in 1998, he was a cook. We used the old club as the dining hall while O’Malley was being renovated. Anyway, on the days when I had to cover cashier duties, on Saturdays, Sam’s night off, I usually brought in my boom box and played music while I rang up the customers. I also just remember that back then the STARS and STRIPES newspaper box was easy to retrieve newspapers from with a couple of butter knives. Usually the delivery guy just gave us a free copy. On the other nights when I actually stayed the whole night, I brought in a VCR and hooked it up to the TV for the guests.

Aside from riding my bicycle around between the 2 dining rooms,disturbing the Korean staff from their break/nap, they were open back then, the thing I remember most was picking their brains about culture and language. I was constantly asking them about certain phrases. Of course, I also learned the naughty language, too. But it was the nice phrases and even some Hangul characters, like writing my name in Korean, that were the conversation starters that helped make me one of the most-liked ‘A-Town Honchos’ around.

Three-Timer · #5 03-31-2007, 09:19 AM

Sure, I may have become one of the many ‘A-Town Honchos’ but it didn’t start out that way.

My 2 closest buddies from my previous assignment, Minot AFB, and I were a pretty close group. One of the guys had left 5 months before me and was stationed at Osan. He and I both kept in contact with Minot. He stayed in touch with his wife, and I kept tabs on our third musketeer through monthly morale calls. It was not long after my second morale call that I had received some messages at work from my friend up at Osan. Since I worked nights I guess it wasn’t that easy to reach me. I got up early the following day, to run into the job to make the phone call to Osan to see what was going on. When I finally got through, he explained to me that our friend was involved in a car accident and was paralyzed. He had been a passenger in a vehicle driven by a short female in the squadron when an 18 wheeler had run a traffic light and their vehicle slammed into it. Our friend had just enough time to cover her with his body to protect her. She came out pretty much unscathed. He was in a wheel chair for the remainder of his life.

I never made another morale call the rest of my time at Kunsan. I did keep up with letters to my family. It was stamps and word processors back then. A few years later, while back in the states on leave from England, I drove from Detroit, Michigan to Minot to visit some other friends. I met a few new people, and one night while out a someone’s place, I was introduced to the girl driving the vehicle. My friend was back in Minnesota at this time and I had not spoken to him. That night while playing cards, it was weird talking to her and explaining that he was my best friend since joining the Air Force.

But back to the Wolfpack…To this day, I think in a location such as Kunsan where we’re all pretty much a captive audience and 90 percent of the base is on meal card….where does one go to meet up with their friends before going on to other things? O’Malley Dining facility. Meet there before going to the movies, after a workout at the gym, or like a lot of patrons did during that tour, time it so they showed up at 1730 in time to watch Jeopardy. The number of customers that ccomplained when we had to shut the televisions off was ridiculous. They always said that the TV’s were for them, but they never understood that the only reason we turned them off was because 70 percent of the customers were finished and their trays had been removed. They were just watching TV. They never seemed to notice from their strained necks that 20 people were standing around with trays in their hands looking for someplace to sit down and eat. I alweays tried to suggest that they come over and eat immediately after work, rather than go to the dorm, change clothes, and hangout before showing up at the last minute to the sight of ham steaks and veal patties. Couldn’t they figure out that the lasagna would be gone by then!

Anyway, since the ‘chow hall’ was meeting central, I couldn’t help but talk to the customers, find out where they were from, and eventually be the one staggering down the cobbled, and finally, after 9/11, paved A-Town streets, hearing such subtle comments from passersby, “Hey, it’s the chow hall guy!”

When everyone else is off recovering from holiday hangovers, guess who is still working? Cops and cooks.

Three-Timer · #6 03-31-2007, 12:41 PM

Did you know that drinking is a science? Yes, it’s not that simple. Everyone has to learn their own tolerances and figure out what their ‘standby’ is, you know the one drink that you stick with. But you can’t figure that out without experimenting. For me, of course there was beer, and after enduring 8 Long Island Iced Tea carafes back in Minot during my 21st birthday, I had to settle for whisky and cider (7up). I then went on to try a little soju, and oh< I almost forgot the couple bowls of jungle juice, aka green slime, that we all slurped down to begin the evening. You all know what I am getting at, don’t you. Never ever, mix the beverages you’re drinking. If it’s beer, stick with beer. Enough said about that. I did make it back to my room before sunrise, barely. I don’t even remember feeling all that bad before falling asleep. It was when I woke up around 2:30 in the afternoon feeling really dehydrated, and generally feeling awful.

But hey, it was still early, I didn’t have to be at work for about 3 hours. I had plenty of time to clear my head. I drank a lot of water, and orange juice, nothing to eat, though, I wasn’t hungry. Well duty time came, and I went to work feeling exactly the same. During my shift I continued to drink water and juice, but couldn’t quite manage to feel any better. If you remember, it was carryout service at the chow hall—Burgers, yardbird, fish, both fried and baked, dogs and chili….everything you need, to stuff your belly for a night filled with OB Beer, the beer that made Korea famous…

Well, at this point I was scared to eat, but I was starting to get really hungry. Customers were piling through the line, Mr Kim, Sam, and Mr Chae(I think) the young kid, were getting everyone through the line. I stepped back into the kitchen. I sneeked a piece of chicken from the fresh out of the fryer or oven, I can’t remember which, and proceeded to chomp on it hungrily. I stepped to the bathroom, washed my hands and returned to the kitchen, what seemed like an instant, all of the water and juice and pieces of chicken decided to get re-acquainted with my tonsils. I barely had enough time to turn my head to the side before everything exploded from my mouth into , thankfully, one of the dozen sinks in the kitchen. I stepped back into the bathroom for a moment and upon returning out to the serving line, “Hey, it’s the chow hall guy from last night.” “Hey, you don’t look so good.” I replied, “You wouldn’t either, if you had just yacked in the sink like I just did a moment ago”.

About 45 minutes later, Nutball and his partner show up for their customary styrofoam tray full of grub for the evening. They are K-9 patrol. Woof Woof Because of my love for dogs, especially larger dogs, like the shepherds I grew up with, I stuck up conversations with the dog handlers often. That’s how I came to find out that Nutball and I were both from Michigan. Through our conversations, we found out that we had mutual interests at the paradise club. We made plans to hang out sometime and thus our friendship had begun.

Mira was one of the Paradise girls that we both knew. You should've seen the look on her face when we both showed up. I asked her if she wanted to meet my friend......

Three-Timer · #7 03-31-2007, 01:57 PM

There are two things that I think Kunsan has over most bases. One is the best Birthday meal in the Air Force. Frankly it’s one of the few places where it makes sense. Second, wait, I can’t remember…..and it’s not like I’ve been drinking the soju that’s in my cabinet.
But I still can’t remember.

So it’s October, and Nutball and I are making the rounds. I am showing him around town, and he is showing me some of the amenities of Kunsan AB that I had failed to take advantage of, most notably, the photography dark room. We both had an interest in photography. We would take our cameras just about everywhere. All 35mm film, no digital USB models here. We took pictures around Kunsan City. One thing we liked to do is go down to Young Hwa Dong in the afternoon around 2pm. There were 2 bars that were open then for the Americans. One was called Eagles Club. It was the only one of the ‘A-town’ type bars in Kunsan city that opened during the afternoon. There WERE about 4 others in the 3 block area, one that burned down, the 21 Club, and another that I don’t remember the name.

Eagles club was pretty cool, we could relax, eat some fruit from one of the vendors, listen to American music and enjoy some OB Beer. It was here during these visits that I became interested in playing music. Nutball and I befriended the DJ and soon he was letting us help. Well it was mostly me because I had more knowledge of music than Nutball. It turns out that the club owner liked this because when GI’s made requests, I could understand them and locate the songs for the DJ. This way we became very popular and business picked up on weekend afternoons. I was eventually entrusted to DJ into the early evenings.

We would always end up in A-town afterwards, most often at the Paradise club. Nutball and I decided that Mira was a good conversation piece for us and enjoyed chatting with her and giving her a bit of teasing of the A-town rhetoric. We became so comfortable there that everyone that worked there became comfortable with us.

By this time, I had introduced Nutball to another friend of mine from Minot, who was rerouted to Kunsan instead of Taegu. Nutball had introduced us to his best buddy, and the four of us became quite the group. We always seemed to get along and have a good time. So much so, that after a bit of thinking I came up with the idea of having hats made that we wore, each with a 1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars, and 4 stars, and some other appropriate markings. We would wear these in accordance with the juicy factor. If you bought a girl a juicy you were ‘demoted’. It was quite fun.

We started hanging out in Young Hwa Dong later and later, just catching a ‘kimchi cab’, not an AAFES cab back to A-town for the ‘All night’ clubs.

We also tried to make as many of the Birthday Meals as well. We were always ‘dressed to impress’. Of course, after the meal, we always headed downtown with our cameras in hand. Until my was stolen because the bartender at Eagles club wasn’t paying attention or sold it to someone.

Three-Timer · #8 04-01-2007, 04:29 AM

One of the things the ‘working girls’ were notorious for was ‘milking’ a guy for drinks most of the night, and promising to meet them in the ‘all night’ clubs. They usually showed up with their yobo, or not at all.

During this tour, working nights, there really wasn’t a whole lot else to do. The Community Center didn’t have karaoke, the Yellow Sea Bowling alley did not have neon bowling, nor did the education center offer classes in the middle of the night. At least we did not have to wait 24 hours to go off-base after an exercise. Lee Greenwood is the man! Not only did his song, Proud to be an American, release while I was in tech school, but it became my anthem. By the time the exercise was over, I was suffering some serious kimchi withdrawals. I had to get downtown to eat. Working in the chow hall, I rarely touched a piece of food. If I had to smell another grilled ham and cheese sandwich or piece of meatloaf, I, well, I like meatloaf, and I certainly miss a good bowl of chicken and dumplings, but that stuff wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get my fill of all things Korean.

Time had passed by, and although many of the short-timers ‘airplane’ countdown to leaving signs had come and gone, I had settled in, met a lot of people, enjoyed the sights, and was spending a lot of time at Eagles club. Do you remember my mentioning the girls at Paradise club sitting in the corner? Well, one of them had since moved to a new club, Eagles. So, per my usual, I became friendly with her. It didn’t hurt that she was intrigued having been in the apartment in the other room during an escapade between the sheets with one of her former co-workers at Paradise in which afterwards I had to endure the gossip of women, I think there were 4 girls, chatting of what had transpired between Mira and I. Every so often there would be surprised looks in my direction.

How can I be stationed in Kunsan and not have stories of exercises and Alarm Blue MOPP 4? One just has to take it in stride. If you’re on your way to Korea, don’t worry you’ll get used to it. Now having developed the reputation I had for being a frequenter of A-town, I was brought in to the ‘circle’ at work. You the one where everybody sits together and swaps stories. On the real, my stories paled to those of the manager, Ramos. Ramos was Mr Barbershop. If you’ve heard of it, he’s done it.

The Base Barbershop and Beauty shop used to sit between the Post office and the Jet Stream, but flooding in the late 90’s warranted their removal. The girls that worked the Aafes Barber Shop were considered a step above the A-town girls. They wore really short and sexy, blue miniskirts, and were very good at manicures and massages. I was always getting compliments on my well-manicured hands. I couldn’t get enough of those massages.

Now it’s March, I believe, I have since bought a few mink blankets, had some suits tailored, which later I will realize I had done too early, as I forgot to take into consideration my expanding waistline from my current lifestyle. Mike, my friend from Minot and I had become engrossed with the idea to go to Thailand on our midtour. Mike was Mr ‘Short-time Honcho. He had a girl in nearly every bar. Not every bar. He was notorius for garnering the company of the best of the worst. Rather than peddle his won at the larger scale Young 11, Stereo Club, OB Club, and Paradise, he preferred ‘the best house in the worst neighborhood’. He picked his clients from Las Vegas Club and the lesser frequented venues, although I believe he was also seen in the Savoy Club, which wasn’t as popular then as it is nowadays.

Team Spirit ’88 was the regional exercise on the peninsula where units from all over the theater came in and played war games. It was a pretty big deal that has since been discontinued. Of course with the AEF schedule, that is completely understandable. What wasn’t so understandable was the decision I had made to spend the night before the exercise in A-Town with Mira. I wanted a nice evening. I should’ve been ok, because the rumor was that the siren wasn’t going off until noon the next day. There is a siren in A-town, so I had no worries. I woke up the following morning, standing outside the apartment, just north of the Town Patrol shack, I decided at about 0830 that I would head into base, get a nice shower, and be ready for the bell. As I came up to the gate in the AAFES cab, I couldn’t help but notice the gate guard in MOPP gear. You could imagine what I said next. I got to my room, called the job, got dressed, and headed to work. I was 3 and a half hours late for the biggest exercise of the year. Ramos, had already returned to the states. My new boss was understanding, I was not a bad apple, I was a good one. I had to pull a 15 and a half hour shift to everyone’s 12, and then return the following morning. That was the end of it.

I really had only one bad vice while I was there, and that was requesting an OB glass with the ’88 Seoul Olympics logo, to drink my Budweiser. Yes, I decided that the extra 200 won for the Bud was worth it. OB for 1,000 won, Bud was 1,200 won. Problem was, I never used the glass, I put it in my pocket. Having had a lether jacket

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Mr. Joe (03-30-2007)