Ticket to Ride: “My Wife Screamed Like She Was Being Murdered”

Thank you Bill. Your comments made an impression on me.

I love America but I’m no jingoist. I lost my business to a sociopath business associate so I was left to survive on Social Security, which is almost impossible in the U.S., let alone California. Two years ago I moved to Saranda, Albania, where on S.S. I can afford a modern apartment in a beautiful beach resort overlooking the Mediterranean (actually the Ionian) and socking away half my S.S. check each month. It’s beautiful and clean with great food. Hard to go back to barely affording to live in a garage in a California ghetto. But I guard my U.S. Passport (and my bank card) with my life.

I’ve been outside the US a few times and I’ve always felt a little uneasy wondering if I’ll be let back in. It feels different to me when I’m standing on US soil again and brings a tear to my eye when the Immigration officer says “welcome home”.

I was born here in the US. I have been a citizen of this great country and know why I never needed a passport until Obama was elected, twice. My brother was telling how my dad was acting, and because I knew I may have to fly to California I decided to get the passport. I was still employed at Olemiss at the time and the photo guys helped me get the picture for the passport. It was a group effort which really made me realize how much everyone else cared about me. Anyway, a few weeks later, I had my passport, which is now required to fly anywhere in the US. At least it helps when bypassing the checkin counter, or not. Depends on the Airport.
When I was serving in the US Army in the early 1970’s, I didn’t need a passport to get on any of the planes heading towards Vietnam, with a machine gun pointed at the deck, and my sidearm holstered. My pack at my back. The bent tailpipe of the Deuce sitting in front of me. I didn’t even think about a passport back then. The time was just before the end of Vietnam. And I didn’t even know that. It was April 1974. Vietnam ended May 7, 1975. But don’t rely on the US Army to tell you anything. Only found out the exact date it ended from the VVA email on that day, 2 years ago in 2020. That was the 45th anniversary of the end of Vietnam.
Just remember, that you didn’t need a Passport to fly until recently. Since both my parents are gone, won’t need to go back to California again.

After listening to Steve and Scott’s story, I guess mine was not as unique as I thought, but since this is a “sharing safe space” I’ll relate my scary passport story as well.
7 years ago I’m heading to the Changping train station in Guandong China, (think halfway between Guangzhou China and the (then) actual civilization of Hong Kong. I had just wrapped up my 10 day Asian Biz travel, and me and my associate are heading to Hong Kong, then back to the USA (HOME).
I must have walked into a older train station like Changping many dozens of times. I got this. No big deal. Since it’s a special direct train to HK, you have to go to a special zone in the station, a immigration floor on this 3 story building. The rule is, don’t go in there until 15 min to board your train. I broke the rule, thinking it was going to be busy at the immigration line, we entered 45 min early. I thought ‘what’s the big deal’? We’ll just sit there nicely and wait, right? Roooooong!
Everyone gets on the first train, except 2 US Citizens. We just let everyone go, and we’re politely sitting there waiting for the next and correct train.
Up walk 3 really angry China ICE guards, the woman of the group says in perfect English…”Passports, NOW!” Ok, we think she’s just going to check them and hand them back. Nope The 3 guards turn, with our passports, and walk away rapidly and into a windowless room. Door slams. Then comes the sinking feeling. Stuck in a Chinese hovel train station, no passports, no way out, and no where to go. Sinking.
30 minutes pass. 30 long minutes. No one in the waiting room. We’re doomed, arrested, interrogated but mostly doomed, we think. Then the door opens about 8 inches, just enough for me to peer through to see what’s happening in that room.
The 3 mean guards with our passports are drinking diet cokes from cans, and laughing at each other as they hold up our passports. Laughing. Drinking Coke. 5 minutes before our train arrives, they walk back out, looking quite stern, walk up to us, still looking P.O.’d…then hand us our passports. The angry woman, unable to contain herself, finally breaks character and started with a giggle and turned into full laughter, with the other male guards joining in.
We had just been punked and they had their fun and laughs. My associate and I had the last laugh. We got on that train, and in less then an hour we were in Hong Kong, and in less that 24 hours, I was walking through the immigration station at San Francisco International Airport, where the Immigration officer looked at my passport, handed it back, and said, “welcome home”. Meanwhile, those 3 Chinese guards are still stuck in that craphole of a train station in Changping. Ha…Ha…

That is a great story on so many levels. First – you had the last laugh and got to come back to the freedom of the US – though that didn’t really happen until your next flight!. Secondly, it does show that people are people. They knew their reputation and decided to have a little fun at someone’s expense. Very human, non-automaton behavior – which I have also seen with clients and colleagues in China.
Third of all – they were drinking diet coke. Not tea, diet coke.
Lastly – the customs officer had enough empathy at their job to say “welcome home”. Knowing how important that is to those who have been out on long trips in strange lands.
Really an excellent tale all around.

Thanks, ‘Ron’. Didn’t know you did the China loop as well. I did it for 20 years until Dec 19, 2019 – that was the last time I returned home from a biz trip. Now that a key CCP official declared last week that China will continue with the “Zero Covid Policy” (think Shanghai) for the next 5 years, it’s pretty apparent that I’ll probably not get on a plane to HK and high speed rail it into Zhaoqing/Guangzhou again before I retire from a 50 year career in 2024. Too bad too, because the individual local people I worked with, the Doris, Junes, Marthas, Teds, Henry’s of the China world were pretty much like the Doris, Junes, Marthas and Teds and Henrys of the USA. Some of us currently despise our own governent’s present administration, but most of the ordinary non governmental folk are pretty ok. Like over here, the ordinary people of china are pretty ok, hard working, have wives, husbands, kids cats and dogs, suffer commutes, power outages and weather related catastrophes. It’s the CCP that we hate. When I say we, I’m omitting Joe, Hunter and uncle ‘what’s his name’. Those three love the CCP.

I made my first trip in 2019. Had avoided it (and India) several times but finally had to go to. It is really far from the Eastern seaboard to get to Shanghai and then another couple of hours. So I avoided it by being successful with US based clients. The times early in my career that I had Chinese visitors, I was in upstate NY. Took multiple groups to Niagara falls in less than a year. Always with the same caution: don’t cross the bridge into Canada.
I survived Baijiu – but I don’t recommend it. After the first several lighter fluid drinks, I switched to Red Wine.
But I have calls multiple times per week with different clients in China and find the individual people to be very nice; though they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t really know what they are missing though you have probably seen that change over time. Heck – when you first went they were probably still wearing Mao jackets, huh?

Ah….Mou Tai Baijio….when I first experienced that glorious 1st biz dinner in China, everyone used to smoke cigarettes back then, and the smokers would extinguish their cigs a few minutes before the Baijio was poured. There couldn’t be any glowing embers left in room to ignite a ‘flash over’.
Funny you mention lighter fluid, doesn’t the classic MouTai Baijio bottle look exactly like a white Wizard Charcoal Lighter fluid container? Finally, one morning as I woke up in the hotel, after one of those MouTai nights, I looked over next to me in the bed, and there was my liver, reading the paper and muttering, “what can not last, will not last…”.
I began travelling there just as Chek Lap Kok Hong Kong International opened up, and never got the thrill of flying in a 747 into Kai Tok international… December 2019 marked my 60th trip to HK/China/Taiwan. If I never get a chance to return, I’ll miss the Taiwanese, or as Steve Green calls them, the ‘good’ Chinese.

People tried to explain how bad it was. No amount of preparation is satisfactory for the utter vile-ness that is that liquid.
It is easily the worst thing I ever put to my lips on purpose.
There is a special level of hell that Dante could not imagine for the person who created and inflicted such wickedness upon the earth.

That said, it doesn’t look like I will be returning in the next 5 years, and since I have targeted retirement in 2029 – don’t think I will have to return.
I am not tall, pretty avg, but long flights not in business class just suck the life out of me.

“America: SO great, even her enemies refuse to leave.” During my Navy career, I visited over a dozen foreign countries and saw what passes for life “Over There.” One of the reasons I believe in universal conscription is I think it would reverse the ignorance about America inculcated in our youth.

Commander, I understand the thinking behind that attitude, but I can’t agree with it. When the incoming missile hits my space, I want the DC team coming to rescue me to be volunteers, not conscripts. I want them to be shipmates, people who chose to be there, people who will drag my ass out of the fire because it’s as important to them as their own.
We all knew that if one of us saw another sailor being mugged in a liberty port, we’d jump in to save him and never ask who he was. And if it turned out he was our worst enemy on the ship, that’s okay. I wouldn’t feel confident of that from a bunch of whiners constantly trying to think up reasons why they shouldn’t have to deploy.
I lost 21 shipmates aboard Saratoga, 3 days before Christmas of 1990. 4 of them were friends. To this day it still hurts me that I wasn’t aboard that liberty boat to try to save them. I honestly can’t tell you if I’d feel the same had I been a draftee.

I’ll never say that there aren’t many excellent arguments against UC, and you’ve mentioned a few. I consider at least most of the anti-UC arguments are tactical (or micro perspective) arguments, while most pro-UC arguments are strategic (or macro perspective) arguments. I freely admit that there are plenty of (short term) disadvantages of UC, but IMO, the long term advantages of UC would have slowed down America’s long term freefall. You can point to a few hundred or a few thousand casualties in the short run, but look at what we have now. We have 330 MILLION Americans who will soon be crushed in the long run.

“See you abroad?” Come on Bill, let’s drop the sexist language. A more proper phrase would be “See you a birthing person”.
Do better Bill, do better =8^)

Is that like the dipshitocrat ending the prayer with Awoman?

Have not heart about that “prayer”- insane!
I am first generation born here. Our families of Greek-Macedo heritage came through Ellis Island. The gratitude they expressed, almost daily, was as if they had experienced a miracle! My love for America is so much a part of my life that my family had an American flag hanging outside the home they were building for me! Young and old sacrificed or that house would not be there if that Greatest Generation had not existed! As my uncle loved to say, “God Bless America.”

Things have calmed down quite a bit since my days of international travel. There were times and places where an American passport was not something you wanted to flout. Those situations were more common back then than they are now and even back then they were somewhat rare. Most people from the U.S. wouldn’t consider going those places anyway. I was not a tourist so I went where I was sent.

I remember a ship named the Achille Lauro where the 11 American citizens who were aboard were rounded up and held at gunpoint by PLF terrorists who hijacked the ship. The tangos threatened to blow up the ship, after killing all the Americans, if their demands were not met. The Americans were identified by their passports.

Just to show they were serious they killed a 69 year old American who was wheelchair bound named Leon Klinghoffer. Then pushed the wheelchair carrying his dead body overboard.

Ronald Reagan thwarted the terrorists escape to Tunisia by means of a Boing 737 with an intercept by F-14 Tomcats. Forcing the airliner to divert to a NATO air base in Sicily. Where they were taken by Italian authorities.

Then a somewhat sympathetic Italian court found the terrorists were acting on “patriotic motives” and sentenced them to prison terms of between 15 and 30 years. Which is not a slap on the wrist exactly but it wasn’t what they deserved either. They deserved death.

The Tomcats couldn’t shoot down the airliner without sacrificing the innocent air crew. So they didn’t.

So yeah, usually your American passport is a good shield but not always.

Fast forward more than 30 years to today. My Sister just got back from a trip to Europe about two weeks ago. The biggest worry she had on the whole trip was a labor strike by Ryan Air that left her itinerary in a mess. Things have calmed down a lot since I was in that part of the world.

I’m done travelling now, I’ll never leave the United States again and have absolutely no desire to do so. It’s good to be home and it’s good to know I’ll never have to leave my home again. More than the passport and travelling and all the stuff the guys talk about in this video — Home is something I perhaps appreciate more than most people. This is why, at least in part, I’m so enthusiastic about defending my home from people who would turn it into something that is best left in the pages of a history book.

My passport is expired and I see no reason to renew it. My old passport resides on a shelf about 4 feet from where I sit typing this. Once a year or so, when I dust that shelf, I take it down and look at all the stamps on all the pages and remember those days.

I’m glad they’re over. Foreign travel for me was an adventure that I appreciated as a younger man. However, not all the memories of those days are good ones.

Great message, I remember, and had forgotten. Thank you!

You’re welcome. 🙂

This is something I posted in 2019:
By some amazing “accident,” I was born in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. When I was in Belarus a couple of years ago, the older son of my host family asked me something about my feelings about the United States. This was part of my response to him. He immediately realized the truth of what I said. We don’t get to choose our country of birth and I am grateful every time I think about it that I was born here. I could have been born in a country that is constantly war-torn or under Communist rule or in England or Europe, where there is now such an invasion of Muslims that the countries have largely become unrecognizable. But G-d allowed me to be born in the United States. I cannot ever lose sight of what a privilege this is and keep fighting against the lies that are being perpetrated against the plain, simple truth that we are the luckiest people in the free-est of countries!

We’ve done a lot of cruising and the only thing you need to get back on the ship is your key pass. You are advised to leave your passport onboard in a safe place. One time when we were cruising the Baltic 2 couples decided to take their own tour on shore (which is not advised). If you take a tour provided by the cruise line you are guaranteed not to miss the next sailing. These 4 people were left behind without their passports. Fortunately the cruise line helped guide them through the ropes and they were able to get onboard at the next port. That was an expensive and terrifying experience,
On the other hand, I am the first person on my father’s side of the family to have been born in America and I have been extremely thankful for my 87 years of citizenship.

Would be funny to ask the Coast Guard if they had to pick up ‘Little Johnny’ who got tired paddling for Cuba just at the edge of cell phone coverage down in Key West.

When I was in Guatemala where a lot of wealthy American Expats reside, the poverty is shocking. It is a beautiful country but I wondered why there were what appeared to be scrap pieces of tin discarded on the steep hillsides. I was told that people live under them. There was one young boy we saw every day in the town square. He wore the same blue shirt every day. The country is very beautiful and the people were very friendly. However, you can’t help but notice that shops hire their own armed guards because the police aren’t coming. I later realized that even the driver who picked us up at the airport was also an armed guard.

I loved my trip to Germany in 1984 in high school.
I remember changing the 25 west marks to 25 eat marks. I had a little over a hundred bucks in US cash in my pocket. I could have bought half of East Berlin with that. The DDR required the currency exchange, and you couldn’t take any unspent East marks back, you had to give them to the East Germans. A lot of kids hung out near the checkpoint, asking you to give them the money rather than give it to the government. I gave them the bills, but smuggled the coins out in my boot. Still have them.

I also remember that you couldn’t possibly spend all twenty five marks. We tried eating it, but the food was cheap. We tried drinking it, but their beer sucked (even for a seventeen year old). We tried eating their ice cream, but it only came in three flavors, red, white and red and white swirled. The red was supposed to be chocolate, I think. The white was supposed to be vanilla. It all tasted remarkably like Kaopectate.

This was 1984, Thirty nine years after the Battle of Berlin. There were still machine gun bullet pockmarks on in-use government buildings. In West Berlin, only the church they left as a memorial to the war was still wrecked, and that was why it was left in that condition. In East Berlin, the most pristine area was the Soviet War Memorial. Nice T-34-85s. The goosestepping East German Honor Guard, I forget where they were on Guard over there, was an interesting site.

We took a bus tour to a satellite village of Steinstucken, part of the American administrative zone, but completely surrounded by East German fields. As a result the village, smaller than almost every US shopping mall, was completely sorrounded by the Wall, except for the circuitous road to get there, and the two gaps in the Wall that allowed train tracks to go through. Here we were four US high school boys, walking along this poorly contructed Wall (concrete slabs sticked up on edge, often not enough mortar between the slabs to keep you from looking through). Despite all the warnings, we walked to the tracks to look around and step “over the line” At the same time, two East german soldaten were walking along the wall on their side of it. The older (maybe mid thirties) sergeant, and a young conscript, probably not much older than us. The sergeant tried to look mean. I nodded at him (still on the Steinstucken side of the wall.) We waved and smiled. The conscript lifted his hand slightly, and smiled, probable because he was behind the sergeant.

And, of course, we all got shots of the best graffiti site in the history of the world. Fuck the Wall and Fick der Mauer. Bothe close to Checkpoint Charlie. And, like Bill noted, nobody ever got caught or shot at trying to get into East Germany. I think the Checkpoint Charlie museum might still be there.

We drove from West Berlin to West Germany. My physics teacher/chaperone/West German refugee got on the wrong road, and instead of driving the quickes route out, to Magdeburg, we ended up on the longest route out, to Nuremberg. I forget how many hours of farmland. Almost all farming equine powered. We pulled over at a rest stop to eat. The garbage can and the picnic table were both painted the same flat duck egg blue. On the other side, in the opposite lane, there was another rest stop. A picnic table, a garbage can, and one of those ubiquitous East German Trabants. All three were also painted the same flat duck egg blue. It must have been the color they made that month.

Now I tell my kids I was in East Germany before the fall of the berlin Wall, and they have no frame of reference, each having been born after the fall of the World Trade Center.

Listen to the Audio Version

25 replies on “Ticket to Ride: “My Wife Screamed Like She Was Being Murdered””

Leave a Reply Cancel reply