Monday, June 18, 2012

The Empty Apartment Blues

by Pa Rock
Mover and Shaker


I have been carefully wrapping my possessions and placing them in plastic storage boxes for the past two weeks.  This morning, shortly after 8:00 a.m. and just after I had pulled down and packed the last of my curtains and drapes, the movers showed up and went to work with a vengeance!  By noon my apartment was completely empty, and within a few days my stuff will be on board a ship slowly heading toward the United States.

Regardless of how slow that ship goes, my belongings will still be waiting in storage in Phoenix long before I am ready for them.  I don't leave Okinawa until July 14th, and when I do get back in the Scorpion State, it will still be several weeks before I find a place to live and unpack.

I will be camping in my empty apartment until June 30th when I will go into transitional housing on Kadena.  And "camping" is the appropriate verb.   I have an air mattress, clock radio, old wooden chair, a  towel, knife, fork, spoon, can opener and enough clothes to get by on until I fly off of "the Keystone of the Pacific."

One of the four young men who packed and moved my stuff today spoke very good English.  I told him that I had been on the island forty years before.  He said that his mother was an American high school student on Okinawa in the mid-70's, and that she had met his dad here (an Okinawan) married, and had him.  The young man said that his mother now lives in Phoenix but doesn't like it there.  She is  trying to move to northern Arizona.

We were under a typhoon alert last night, but nothing happened.  Today the weather was great for awhile, but it began to rain lightly as they were loading my things onto the moving van.  As the van pulled away, the skies opened!   Now I am at an Internet cafe (The Spot) on Camp Foster blogging and waiting for the rains to cease.

Blogging will be difficult and catch-as-catch-can for the next couple of weeks, but I will try hard to keep the effort going.

Come see me - but bring your own chair!


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