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Jump in Feet First

By

Nancy Whitworth

Moisture dripped from the edges of a rusting corrugated metal roof supported by four metal posts. Under this canopy sat a washing machine supported by planks sunken into the moist jungle soil of Guam. As I smiled and gestured with an armful of dirty laundry, my Filipina neighbor graciously invited me to join her. Although neither of us spoke the same language, we worked together, taking turns placing loads into the metal agitator and swinging the wringer into a locked position as needed. Unlike the old maytag my mother used, there was no galvanized tub of fresh rinse water to catch freshly washed laundry. As the sheets were fed through the wringer, I attempted to balance myself to feed with one hand and catch with the other. As the sheets tumbled, the edges that missed my grasp rested on orange pieces of decayed metal surrounding the platform and in mud puddles formed by the dripping water.

“Dear God, what am I doing in the middle of the jungle, sharing whatever resources are available and grateful not to be wringing these clothes out by hand in the kitchen sink?”

I was very grateful that my neighbor was so generous with her time and her washing machine, but I was determined using both would be the first and last time. During our first month of married life together, I had washed the towels and sheets by hand but did not have the strength to squeeze the water out. They hung dripping from the kitchen chairs and table onto the tiled floor. Brian, my 20-year-old husband, was stationed at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. He refused to take the laundry to the barracks. “I can’t do that. I would be too embarrassed.” My compromise was to ingratiate myself to my neighbor. Now another solution had to be found.

As a young, 21-year-old, bride in 1968 during the Vietnam War, I left college in Maine and joined my husband at his new duty station in Guam. As an E-3, Brian was not eligible for base housing. The struggle to join him was only the first of many challenges. I had borrowed $200 for airfare from relatives. That would get me to Hawaii. My monthly dependent’s portion ($130) of Brian’s military pay would more than cover my airfare of $113 from Honolulu to Guam. Already in Guam, Brian had found a new house in Yigo, the first village out the front gate, about 3 miles. We would need a car for transportation. Before leaving for Guam, I had also secured a small installment loan over 12 months for household supplies. My once-a-month $130 allotment and Brian’s pay on the 1st and the 15^th of each month totaled $330.00, not nearly enough to pay for all we needed.

The news did not get better when I arrived in Guam. The house Brian rented could accommodate three couples. Brian’s vision was to share the house to pay the rent. The house had three bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen and a living room. The furnishings included a kitchen table and four chairs, one bed, and a couch. Unfortunately, Brian could not find two other couples to share expenses. In addition to paying $175 for a car, rent for the house was $175 a month. Neither of us were strangers to hard work so we would find a way to manage.

Brian was the oldest of five and a military brat. His father was a B-52 pilot stationed at Loring Air Force Base, Maine. The family allowance for clothes covered the basics. If Brian wanted Bass Weejuns instead of regular loafers, he worked after school to make up the difference. In fact, he had worked in the Officers Club kitchen, as a lifeguard, as a bagboy at the commissary, and was even driving a school bus on base at age 16.

I began working in the potato fields of my father’s small farm at age eight. School always began in the middle of August. Classes ran for three weeks, and then recessed three weeks for potato harvest. Fall was always full of promise, hard work, fluctuating temperatures, and the anticipation of financial reward from the potato harvest. Before dawn Monday through Saturday, we would dress in layers: union suit (long johns), shirts, sweatshirts, pants, one or two pair of socks, sneakers, and brown cotton work gloves. We were paid in cash each week: twenty five cents a barrel. A barrel held one hundred and sixty pounds of potatoes. We were each given a basket, a section of the length of the field was marked for each of us, we were handed tickets to mark our barrels, and the day began.

On Saturday afternoons, all the pickers - school children and migrant laborers from the Mic Mac Indian reservations in New Brunswick, Canada - lined up in the farmer’s kitchen. Tickets were tallied and the monies due calculated. I would keep a little money for the movie and a treat. The rest was put aside for shopping and kept in a small safe in my parent’s bedroom. We never had a checking account or savings account. The small safe held a few hundred dollars for emergencies such as making sure family members could get home if a death occurred.

At the end of harvest, we were each responsible for purchasing our one pair of shoes and clothes for the school year. Usually, I bought one pair of Bass Weejuns and three wool skirt and sweater sets. We made our own selections, handled any layaways, and paid our own bills. I would lay the three outfits out on my grandmother’s horse-hair stuffed sofa and admire them every evening. The sense of pride, accomplishment, and responsibility I felt in those days has always remained with me, along with a strong work ethic. I learned early on that when you commit to a job, you do the best you can regardless of the circumstances or the pay level.

For Brian and me in Guam survival was not a question of handling our financial obligations; we were responsible and hard working. The question was how to increase our income and reduce rental costs. Brian worked swing shifts and midnights as a K-9 handler on the flight lines. During the day he worked full time at a warehouse job on base. He also negotiated with the landlord to perform yard work, painting, or whatever needed to be finished on the house for a reduction in rent. We searched for other rentals and Brian found a cashier’s position for me at the Officers Club part time until I could enroll at the University of Guam to finish my senior year. I had already applied and been granted work-study money by the University.

Until I began school, I spent a lot of time alone in a house without heat, air conditioning, radio, television, or a telephone, and neighbors who kept mostly to themselves. The island’s climate, plants, and topography were new to me and it took time for my body to acclimate. Guam’s environment was as different from Maine’s as my Fillipina neighbor’s body was from my own. She was built to withstand year long soggy humidity and sweltering heat. I was built to withstand the snow and ice of Maine winters.

On the flight between Hawaii and Guam, the initial humidity kicked in. I went from a wavy haired, 110 pound woman who had boarded an airplane in Bangor to a frizzy headed, water swollen version of myself that walked into the terminal in Agana,Guam. Brian’s first question, “What happened to you?” would be repeated many times during my thirteen months here. The shock of the heat and humidity was soon met with the unwelcome guests that accompanied the climate. Water bugs (cockroaches), water buffalo (caribou), geckos, chameleons, and large lizards greeted me during the first few weeks.

Northern Maine, known by many as “the other Maine” or “the county,” was not what tourists define as Maine. We had access to neither ocean nor quaint coastal towns. The nearest large city was Bangor, about 150 miles from my hometown, Fort Fairfield. We seldom had reason to travel that far.

I loved the county’s uniqueness, history and sense of permanence. The land has always soothed me. The quiet, calm exterior of rural nature asks for nothing. The openness of the fallow fields with their boundaries was a landscape in contrast to the closeness of my two sisters and me sharing a full-sized bed during our childhoods. My refuge from the confines of a large family living in close quarters was to walk up the farm road with fields on my right, woods on my left, and headlands that formed part of the border of the farm straight ahead. A light breeze, bright sunshine, and solitude were my companions. The fields were a window framed by the headlands - a spare and pure buffer from the outside world. The light to medium brown color of the land belied the richness of the pungent soil that lay beneath. The hard crust looked tough and lifeless, but once the soil had been plowed and harrowed, the turned-over soil was soft and deep chocolate brown. The dark, moist soil evoked a feeling of oneness, peace, and serenity.

On Guam, the tropical climate produced torrential downpours randomly several times a day. The saturated soil formed a pungent mud that sucked up everything in its path. Planks were needed to support foot traffic, and washing machines, from the mire. The humidity only deepened the effect. When it wasn’t raining, my attempts to keep the burning sun at bay served only to preserve the muck. Yet, the life growing in the soil produced lush green fronds and brilliant floral bursts. The only cultivation required was that used to keep the roads from being overgrown and to protect small pouches cut into the jungle. Each three-sided pouch held a small wooden house lifted off the ground by wooden stilts. Wooden steps led up to the living quarters while chickens and rooster roamed beneath the house protected from the elements by the porch floor.

Guam sometimes reminded me, the way opposites that share traits can, of the many qualities of Maine that I had left behind and deeply missed. It had its own rich culture and history. Although finite in size, like Maine, the variety of plants, animals, insects, and land formations presented a new world to me.

Each end of the island was occupied by a military installation:

one Navy base and one Air Force base. Nearly the entire interior swath of land connecting the two bases was made up of deep, thick jungle growth. We learned after we had returned stateside, that a WWII Japanese soldier had emerged from that jungle. That someone could survive, undetected, in the jungle for over 25 years seems too implausible to believe if you’ve never seen that jungle.

When traveling the two lane road that led out of the Main Gate at Andersen AFB and connected that end of the island to the Navy Base, I was often reminded of the country road I had walked in Maine. The Back Gate road traversed the other coast. The convex edges of the island had a smattering of small villages, a university, and the island capital of Agana. Andersen AFB (APO 96334) was an active outpost in the Vietnam war effort. On takeoff, B-52s rumbled off the runway and out over a cliff. While we were stationed on Guam, one the giants did not gain the lift it needed, and we lost a crew.

Like Maine, Guam’s weather, with the accompanying erosion of hard and soft rock formations, carved out beautiful beaches, offset by cliffs with caves gouged deeply into the surface. From the bluff that supported the campus of the university, an uneven collage of green fed down the steep slope to the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. The unevenness of jungle canopy complemented the jaggedness of the rocks and the white caps beyond. The soil supported deep roots but the true richness and depth of the soil lay in its people.

In Maine, I was the oldest child in a large Irish Catholic family. Creativity, self-expression, and individualism were not conducive to the family’s work as potato farmers. My role as surrogate mother, keeper of family secrets, standard setter, goal achiever, and good Catholic girl cast a long shadow on my life. I felt like a top, always in motion but someone else was controlling speed and function. Events and roles are easily understood but the emotion, anxiety, and repetition over the years wear deep grooves into memory. At times it feels impossible to record over the sublimated messages of the past.

On Guam, the native peoples were of Spanish descent. Family, religion, and celebrating their heritage were key elements of the culture. I felt a closeness and acceptance by the open, warm, generous people I met. Although I was isolated by lack of a driver’s license and a vehicle, I always had transportation – to the university, to the summer work-study job on campus, and to the teaching job after I graduated. When someone went on vacation, they arranged for someone else to pick me up. Their love and generosity allowed me to explore the “self” that lay dormant. Like a rogue wave disrupting a calm ocean, their support was the soil I needed for growth.

Little did I know when I began this journey that isolation, family, and financial insecurity would continue to impact my life - only on different soil.