"ShuLinkou Air Station, Fireworks Humor"

HUAN-YING

"ONE WAY TO TAIPEI"

("The Phantom on the Road to Taipei where he'd Lurk in the Night")

Page last screwed up - 21 February 2000

{click on the lightning}

Did Somebody

call for a

"202". . .GRRRRRRR!

Here it was, Chinese New Years - the Prince Club in all it's glory, a few "less than sober Linkouites" and one "mobile" Fireworks stand. Does anyone want to guess how this story unveils.

Yup, we bought one of those big bunches of firecrackers - lit it and somehow it landed right on the mobile fireworks stand and we all stood around watching the most beautiful fireworks display I've ever seen.

What was really funny was watching all the young ladies from the Prince Club running out of the club with those little glasses (the ones they use to serve mixed drinks in) full of water and attempting to put the fire out and save this guys livelihood.

Well, when the fireworks display was all over and the only thing left of the mobile fireworks stand was the metal axle and wheel rims, we decided, out of sympathy, that this the guy deserved some money for putting on such a good show for us.

I don't remember the exact amount, but it was more than the guy would have made selling fireworks for the next 20 years of Chinese New Years. Heck, he was so delighted with what we gave him, he gave us the axle and the rims.

Enough with the Chinese New Years stories for now - there are a couple of more, but I'll save them for later!

Not to be out done,"Lemmon" adds: I think it was Chinese New Year's 1965 and we were doing pretty much the same thing Scotty and his cronies were doing, "getting screwed up". And of course there was the mobile "fireworks stand" that not only sold the infamous bottle rockets but something that looked similar to what we called back home "M-80's" or "Silver Terrors". Actually, they were nothing more than a 1/4 stick of dynamite.

Fully armed with a couple dozen skyrockets, 5 or 6 of these mini-bombs, and a pint or so of the OK Bar's CoolAid each, off we went firing skyrockets through open bar doors and throwing the bombs out into the street to see what the taxi's would do.

To make what could be a long story short, I thought it would be funny to throw one of the mini-bombs into the front entrance of a bar (can't remember the name) to, shall we say, get the attention of the girls within. The damn thing goes off about midway between the two entrance doors (swinging type) and totally destroys one of them. And I mean "destroyed". Not only did it blow the glass out, the frame just didn't look right.

Not knowing how the folks within were going to react to our adventureous stupidity, off we go running as fast as a bunch of drunks can run with the bar's doorman and a couple of his "gopher" boys hot on our tails. I guess the chase lasted a couple of blocks and we found ourself in a standoff with a bunch of folks wanting a piece of our butts along with our bank accounts.

Luckily (for us), an AF Security Police jeep happened by and one of the "cops", knowing the "doorman", finally got him calmed down and in agreement to a deal whereby if we paid for the door he would let bygones be bygones.

Our only problem was "we probably didn't have $5 between us" and this guy (doorman) starts screaming again that he will have us thrown in jail. Once again, our buddy the Security Cop comes up with the idea of our paying the guy with (ready for this) Linkou Club chits. He even tells the "doorman" that he will take us to the club, let us get the chits, and bring us back to the bar.

In ending, we not only wound up paying for the door with Linkou Club chits, we wound up staying at the bar drinking free for a few hours after paying our debt. We also found out that the "doorman" was part owner of the bar so that explained why he was so "pissed".

I wonder if the Linkou Club ever knew what their "chit books" were used for? Personally, I remember using them to pay off my bar tabs and selling them (at a slight discount) to finance a trip or two to Peitou, paying for taxies, and so-forth. The Linkou Club sure saved our bacon more than once , not to mention keeping some of the local "lovelies" from starving.

The more I think about it these "Linkou Chit Books" could be the subject of a good humor page. Not to think that my memory is failing but I remember that they were called "chits" and that came in little booklets of $5 to be used in lieu of cash at the bars and in the restaurant. I believe our limit was something like $30 a month and you paid for them at the same time you paid your club dues.

Let's here it from the "DAWGS" and other Linkouites to tell us what uses they found for these "chits". This could be interesting!

Scotty{of the Clan "Scott"}

Writes again: There was an apartment that nobody lived in because, obviously, no one was allowed to live downtown - it was against the rules. Being on the 3rd floor, our, I mean, the balcony was a great place for "eye balling" the street below and getting hooked up with a blind date or two if the right party walked by. And directly across the street was a house (actually the back of a house)in which lived a very nice Chinese family {all 150 of them}.

Being Chinese New Years' Eve afternoon a bunch of "Linkouite wannabees" were preparing for the night's festivities and to put it bluntly, some of these them weren't feeling any pain. We (er, ah) these guys were standing out on the apartment's balcony with a bunch of bottle rockets and practicing a trick we had learned earlier (probably from some Baker flight Linkouites of circa 1964-1965).

With a little practice, these bottle rockets could pretty much be thrown like "a paper airplane". And if you were good, they went exactly where you aimed. Anyway, the apartment balcony faced the house across the street and it should be noted that their back door was missing a pane of glass which was great for flies and bottle rockets. And sure enough, one (stray) rocket found its way through that empty hole in the door, into the house, through the kitchen and into the dining room, and finally landing under a table where at least a million Chinese were eating. Needless to say, when the rocket went "KABOOM", half the world's Chinese population knocked over the table and began running in every direction possible, to include out the back door.

Needless to say, the GI's on the balcony weren't sticking around to "take the blame" and vacated the balcony while at the same time falling over each other and laughing until they cried.

I sure miss that place - that was the neatest, "no frills", apartment I ever had. It was a "bachelor's dream". I had the ahma's room, which wasn't much bigger than a walk in closet and when I put a mattress in it, it was wall-to-wall bed! It wasn't much, but the rent was sure great.

Those are the memories that make life worth living.

{EDITOR'S NOTE: Scotty, you were sure lucky that the head of that household across the street wasn't the "doorman" in the previous story or you would still be paying off your Linkou Club chit bill)

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"Head Hostess at the OK Bar"