I forgot to
include a most important little side story to my blog about Vietnam. Let’s go back to early 1969….
I was going
to college in the City at the time. One
night I was out with my best friend, Lucy, her cousin, her brother and one of
their friends, Phillip. Phillip, I
believe, was drafted (he may have enlisted, I’m not sure) and leaving for
Vietnam soon thereafter. During our
evening at the bowling alley, I mentioned (I have no idea why) that I loved
mail. (Till this day, I LOVE mail and
opening mail is the first thing I do when I get home from a trip – can you
imagine the amount of mail I’m going to have when I get home on May 11th)
– but I digress….
Anyway, the
next morning, I met Lucy on the GG line of the subway as I did every day and
she said to me, “guess who asked for your address?” No surprise there, I said, “Phillip,
right?”
Well, for
the next year, I wrote to Phillip while he was in Vietnam. I sent him one of my
high school photos in which I was wearing a dress of dark pink with a gold
design. They were very stylized at the
time if you can remember and the photo was in my year book. He sent me flowers for my birthday and we had
a lovely platonic relationship. When he
returned from Vietnam, his parents threw him a welcome home party and we were
all invited.
It was a
lovely evening and we were all happy that Phillip had, in fact, returned with
all his parts and healthy. During the
course of the evening, he announced he had something he wanted to show us. He left the room and came back a moment later
with a painting which was, if I can recall, maybe 10 x 14. It was a portrait of me, painted from my high
school photo. I have to say it was quite
lovely. Phillip also said the man who
painted it loved the photo so much that he painted a second one and kept
it. Well, we (me, Lucy, her brother and
cousin) thought Phillip was going to give me the painting but he wrapped it up
and returned it to his room. We went our
separate ways and nothing more was said of the painting.
Well, years
later, I mentioned this story to Michael.
As most of you know, Michael’s mind doesn’t quite work the same as the
rest of us – he created the following scenario:
The second
painting of me has been hanging in some shrine in a small village in Vietnam
where people light incense and place offerings in front of it. He’s also convinced that the second painting
shows me naked and considered some kind of goddess among the villagers (after
speaking to someone else who was also in Vietnam during the war and confirmed
that this regularly occurred – taking photographs from back home and painting
the person naked). His quest upon being
in Vietnam was to locate this second painting and its shrine.
Sadly, his
search was unsuccessful. We found no tattered
or scorched (from the incense) remnant of a canvas painting of a blue-eyed,
long straight-haired blonde American 16 year old (yes, I graduated high school
when I was 16) either in a pink dress with gold design or naked -- anywhere.
Michael’s Observations: I still believe there are members of a secret sect, known as
Leonanites, who regularly meet in a remote mountain village in Vietnam for the
annual worship of the naked blonde goddess.
They can be identified by their long elaborate ceremonial robes which
feature two large mountains which symbolize their secret location….or maybe
something else????
Leona’s Observations of Michael’s
Observations: My husband is a kookaloonie.
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