The day we left Laos our mother showed up at our school in the middle of the day. She told the vice-principal that she was taking us to a dentist's appointment.
That part of the story I do remember. The teacher in my first grade class (Mrs. Coleman) was handed a slip of paper, and she called my name, saying (with a curious look in her face) to report to the vice-principal's office.
There was no dentist's appointment. My father had somehow gotten word that the Americans were soon to be evacuated from the country, and that we in particular should leave Laos immediately. Our mother then got us out of school early and drove us home, where we made hasty preparations to have the household furnishings shipped to the states. This shipment included, among other things, the Baldwin Acrosonic upright piano at which I would learn to play.
The piano and all our stuff (as my mother would often mention) would travel over desert sands by camel caravan at some point on the journey.
The drive home from school was not without indicent. We drove through the center of Vientiane, where a large group of people had gathered to either protest something or maybe to presage the impending invasion of Laos by the communists.
Whoever they were, this mob of people saw us and did not like us. They pounded on the windows of our car, surrounding the vehicle and rocking it as my mother gingerly drove through.
We got back to the house. I remember entering my room and finding a large wooden crate. I pitched anything I could get my hands on into the crate as my sister did the same in her room and as my mother did throughout the house.
The furniture and large objects were tagged for movers to pick up after we left.
I clearly remember that we had to leave the enormous stereo system in the living room. That was where I listened, countless numbers of times, to Elton John's "Caribou" album, Leon Russell's "All That Jazz," and Edgar Winter Group's "Shock Treatment." Those LP records sit on my shelves to this day.
Our early departure from the country conflicts with one of my memories of the event. I thought we were the absolute last Americans to get out of there. In fact we may have been the very first, and we had the large ferry across the Mekong all to ourselves, with plenty of room for our car and as many crates of belongings as we could assemble in such short order.
We spent three days in what I only know as "the General's trailer," located on the Thailand side of the Mekong. I do not know the General's identity or why we had exclusive access to a private residence of such a high ranking officer.
I remember that trailer, though in my memory it was, for some reason, in Tampa, not Thailand. There is a mental association between that trailer on the Mekong and a house we stayed in for a few days in Tampa when we landed there months later. The house in Tampa had a similar layout as the trailer, I think. And it had a television, which we had not seen for 2 years. Bill Cosby was on the TV.
The three day head start ultimately gave us no advantage in getting ourselves stateside before the rest. But it let us get our house full of belongings out of the country and shipped to an air base in the U.S. Most of the Americans in Laos had to abandon their houses and everything in them.
On our third day in the trailer the rest of the Americans were evacuated from Laos, and we joined them at the Chau Pia hotel (no idea if I'm spelling that right) in Bangkok. That part of the adventure has many vivid memories for me, but the strange fun today was in filling in the rest of the experience, reviving and clarifying some foggy memories along the way.
I can see myself forgetting the mob of people shaking and pounding on our car. I would forget that not because of fear or trauma, but because of my 1st grade inability to comprehend what was happening.
I do not know that my behaviour ever manifested these inclinations, but I remember arriving at school in Tampa feeling like some sort of royalty. Having been individually plucked from school that day and virtually escorted from Laos under U.S. Military protection I guess I imagined myself something special. I have foggy memories of either being excused from or thinking I should be excused from a certain 3rd or 4th grade course by virtue of the advanced courses I already took at the American School of Vientiane. I forget how that worked out.
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