Paul Graupp
From:
Macon Ga USA
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Posted 17 Apr 2004 2:53 pm |
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was the title of a short story I wrote in the July 2001 issue of the 5th Comet. This is a publication of the 5th Communications Group Association. The outfit was the USAF follow on to the original 934th Signal Battalion, US Army in South Korea about the time the Air Force became a separate entity.
I thought it might be of interest to the Forum.
We were driving to K-18, an air policeman and myself. It was a gas run for fuel we used in the putt-putts used to provide electricity for the Relay radios. The site was Cairo Relay, roughly about half way between K-18 and K-3 It was some thousands of feet up in the clouds and getting back to earth wasn't just a figure of speach. We would also be getting the mail and some rations and some medicines for the site medic.
Kentuck was a year or two older then I was and a lot more worldly. By that I mean he knew lots of things I hadn't learned yet and he taught me a lot as well. We stopped on a deserted beach as much of the route to K-18 was along the shore and was littered with bombed out and deserted railroads. We swam out to a big stone about 200 feet off shore. But as we swimming back to shore a wind came up, dashing waves into our faces. I thought we were being washed out to sea and began to swim frantically. Kentuck saw what I was doing and yelled at me to keep my eyes on the shore. When I did that, I saw that we were making headway to the shore and I calmed down. I used to wonder what my mother would have thought had she had gotten a letter saying I had drowned...
Everyone complains about mess hall chow but after a few months on C rations and various other forms of canned "this or that", a good mess hall meal really hit the spot.A visit to the PX or an afternoon movie were also welcome respites from mountain life on the relay site.
On the way back to Cairo, we spotted a demolished house we hadn't noticed before. Taking a leg stretch break we checked it out. There was a remmant of a guitar left behind as useless so we salvaged it.The frets were almost all gone and all the strings were missing. Only four of the six keys worked but Kentuck got some field wire left over from running a EE-8 to base camp for communicating between the site and the foot of the mountain. The wire had some steel strands for ridigity and he somehow got four wires as strings on that guitar.
Since the fretts were gone he decided we would call it a steel guitar. We used an old olive drab ra-o-vac battery as a bar and match sticks or some other pick he would fashion from what ever he could find. He showed me how the play Steel Guitar Rag and bits and pieces of other songs that he knew or that he would just pull out of the clear blue sky. I don't know when he left the mountain or what became of that guitar. That is how I always thought of it; THAT GUITAR.
Nowadays, I play a 24 string, double neck, beautiful turquoise steel guitar with a 1000 watt amplifier and custom made speakers of my own design. I stayed in electronics and five or six years after leaving Cairo Relay, I went into music big time.
Without the gentle man from Kentucky it never would have happened and if I hadn't been awake at 3 AM one morning in January of 1953 listening to FEN from Kyushu, Japan; I wouldn't have heard that Hank Williams had just died. I forget how many months I had been up there but I asked them to get me down and they did. I suppose I've come a long way but I keep going back... and back !
Regards, Paul |
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Roy Ayres
From:
Riverview, Florida, USA, R.I.P.
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Posted 18 Apr 2004 2:35 pm
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Paul,
A wonderful story, my friend. How about some more? |
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