Reality is merely an illusion,
albiet a very persistent one...

--Albert Einstein

When you are sad,
...I will get you drunk and help you plot revenge against the scum sucking bastard who made you sad.

When you are scared,
... I will laugh at you and tease you about it every chance I get.

When you are worried,
...I will tell you how much worse it could be and to quit complaining.

When you are confused,
...I will use little words to explain it to your dumb ass.

When you are sick,
...I will hold your hair while you pay homage to the porcelain god.

When you fall,
...I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

This is my oath,
...I pledge till the end.

Why you may ask?
...Because you're my friend.

Up and down the dusty main drag leading into the town of Takhli were about a dozen or so hastily erected bars and "night clubs" were one could buy the local beer, or mixed drink setups. You provide the main ingredient, and the bar would provide the ice and the mix. That is if you had the nerve to use the ice. There was a constant fear that the local water was not safe to drink, and that included using the ice made from the local water.

There was always a big crowd of children meeting each bus as it came into town from the air base. They crowded around the arriving GI's and were constantly begging for small change and such. Among the begging children were a more enterprising group of boys selling small bags of peanuts. One small bag of peanuts sold for 5 cents, or one baht in the local money. Bob and I had gradually, over time, came to enjoy playing a game with the peanut boys. We would slip one a quarter, take one bag of peanuts, and tell him that he owed us 4 bags. After several weeks of this, they must have owed us a couple of hundred bags of peanuts.

Soon all the peanut boys knew us on sight, and knew our town names. If I went into town and wanted to find Bob, I would just ask the nearest peanut boy, and he knew exactly where Bob was. I don't know how they kept track, but they were better than the CIA.

We could be sitting in a bar and one of the peanut boys would come to the door. I would just turn to him and ask him to throw me a bag of peanuts. He would just throw me a bag and walk away. Newcomers or strangers in the bar would wonder why I made no effort to pay the boy. It was just one of the "fun" ways to pass the time away.

Peanut boy peeking into the Hillbilly bar

On one of our many forays into Takhli village in the distant year of 1967, Bob and I were on our way back from a feast of Kobe beef steak at one of the local resturants (I think it was Charns Steakhouse). This stray dog came charging out of nowhere and started to yap and nip at Bob's heels. Bob took it for a minute or two and then took a kick at the darn thing. Bob missed but the dog did not. The dog bit him on the ankle. It was not much of a bite, but we took him to the dispensary anyway.

There was no way to capture and observe that one particular dog so the medical decision was to be on the safe side and do the Pasteur treatment for potential rabies. This treatment consisted of a series of about ten shots given once a day...in the stomach. For this to be real funny, you had to have known Bob back then. Bob had no stomach. He looked like a refugee from a concentration camp. They had a hard time finding a spot to put the needle in.

The Real Bangkok Bob

I escorted him to his daily shot. He said they were like getting kicked in the stomach by a mule. Then I made sure he got back to the barracks.