Author: Geoffrey Garrison

Person

The Ferry

Geoffrey Garrison

vendors_sm
Vendors at the My Thuan Ferry (if I remember correctly) on a branch of the Mekong River. In QL 4, the ferry is recast as the My Linh Ferry and Vinh Long is replaced by Van Loc, to avoid having geographical limitations on the descriptions in the book.

A bridge, completed in 2000, has replaced the ferry. Also, the road known as QL 4 is no longer. Instead, it is National Highway 1.

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MP_kid
On the ferry—greeting the passengers. The MP relationship with the Vietnamese public was generally quite friendly, although there were some rough moments, some of which are described in QL 4. Unpleasant contacts included confrontations with Vietnamese soldiers (involving firearms and grenades) and terrible traffic accidents, such as a boy being bisected by a deuce-and-a-half.

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From_ferry_sm
More photos from the ferry, taken with a small Brownie Instamatic from an MP patrol jeep.

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kid_cig_sm
Street toughs at the ferry, my guess about ten years old. It wasn’t unusual for one of them to tell you, “GI, tomorrow you die,” or some equally encouraging remark.

Race Relations

Geoffrey Garrison

Black_panther_sm
A Black Panther newspaper that I brought home from Vietnam. Racial tensions were high in 1970, both in the States and in Vietnam. Black soldiers viewed their oppression as exacerbated by being sent to fight in a war to keep the Vietnamese “free” when they did not have many basic freedoms at home. Slave bracelets and segregated cliques were common. The “race riot” in QL 4 is described pretty much as it happened, although there probably wasn’t the critical mass for a real “riot.” The author did witness a real riot while a law student at Duke University the year before: phalanxes of police in riot gear, clouds of tear gas, and flying rocks. It made the front page of The New York Times (Feb. 14, 1969).

A Rising Tide (Winner first place – poetry Houston Writers Guild Press contest – April 28, 2017)

Geoffrey Garrison1 Comment
  • I feel the tide rising,
      I see faces all around,
      different shapes
      and shades of hair
      and colors of skin.
  • In a Budapest museum, homage is paid to those who fled
      —inventors, theorists, thinkers
      —artists, musicians, writers
  • Welcomed in another place,
      and what they brought with them:
      television, laser, computer,
      paint, piano, and pen,
  • The HY-DRO-GEN BOMB,
      and the eighth dimension unstrung.
  • They, the celebrated,
      are only the froth,
      the effervescence of the movement of peoples,
  • Not the essence.
  • Yet another wave comes—
      short, dark men,
      digging, hammering, sweating, straining,
      building houses, mending roofs.
  • Imagine their struggles, their strivings,
      their sorrows, their fears,
      their loneliness

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