On the road…again!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

Perry Sings for his Supper

He had already had his supper at a nearby restaurant, so it is more correct to say that Perry was going to sing after supper.  When two or three little kids from the neighborhood gathered at the wooden picnic table outside the motel where Perry was drinking a Pepsi, the young daughter of the motel owner asked him, in English, if he knew any American songs.  He must have been singing at the time because after he nodded yes, she ran into the motel and soon came back with a booklet of America songs.

The event turned out to be such a joyful affair that is goes down in his memory as one of those eidetic moments from which chronicles would be created.  And in a stream of consciousness mode, this Chronicles of a Footloose Forester now comes into life.

Perry was one of those handles that his Army buddies gave him because he was known to sing in the shower, sing at his work station, and sing during his dark nights on guard duty.  An officer once scolded him when he entered singing into a classroom where advanced weapons technology was about to be taught.  Perry (Como) Pellek wasn’t miffed, but he had another eidetic moment for his future disjointed chronicles.

 view of modern Nakhon Sawan

The Footloose Forester had just gotten off a bus at Nakhon Sawan, Thailand when a friendly Thai contractor who worked with Americans at a nearby air base picked him up and dropped him off at a small, family-friendly motel.  Memories now begin to flow.  It was cooler outside at the picnic table, and the kids must have heard him singing.  And that was when one of the most joyous times On the road…again! was added to his travel story-oriented mind.

He had previously hitched a ride on a logging truck loaded with exotic tropical timbers; and the friendly truck driver even stopped to buy him lunch. A bit further up the road, the trucker told him that he should take a bus to his destination because the roads were not safe.  And that was why he descended from a public bus at Nakhon Sawan.

A delighted Perry Pellek sang American songs to the kids for two full hours. Those wonderful children went into the motel more than once to bring him a cold bottle of Pepsi.  No wonder that Footloose Forester wanted to have that scene in his memoirs.