{"id":4771,"date":"2010-08-23T23:28:55","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T03:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/?p=4771"},"modified":"2011-07-28T14:46:40","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T18:46:40","slug":"you-cant-go-home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/you-cant-go-home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can’t Go Home Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure most of us have mixed emotions when it comes to thinking about the places where we grew up.\u00a0 In movies and tv, you see it a lot, famous people and athletes returning to their humble homes with a lit match or a bulldozer in tow.\u00a0 For regular followers of my work, I’m sure you know a little bit about my story; if you’re Lao or a refugee\u00a0you can pretty much look to your own family’s history to see my own.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

On the road leading up to the small town where we first settled, there was a dam where we used to fish for food.\u00a0 I remember as a kid getting really filthy in the shallows,\u00a0flipping over stones looking for crawfish or other critters.\u00a0 We would come home with buckets full, and\u00a0combined with bamboo shoots found behind the local high school made for some nice family meals.\u00a0\u00a0Today the area is fenced off with no tresspassing signs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Tryon, North Carolina was the home of the church that sponsored us, and it became our home as well, in the autumn of 1980.\u00a0 It is a quaint small town, hardly changing at all\u00a0since then.\u00a0 I’m sure locals back then wondered about us, the scruffy immigrant kids walking the streets.\u00a0 I don’t know if we ever dared enter in any of those stores, I only remember walking to the local gas station with my older brothers to get candy.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The church gave us a house, which is no longer there.\u00a0 I remember it was at the bottom of a wooded hill, and below the local elementary school.\u00a0 It was a simple\u00a0fireplace and kerosene\u00a0heated home, and even though I was bit beyond that age, I slept in a crib.\u00a0 Everything we had came from the donation box at the church.\u00a0 From our oversized suits to the furniture.\u00a0 I remember it was really cold in the bottom portion of the house, and one of our sponsors would come over to teach my mother how to\u00a0can and preserve\u00a0all sorts of fruits and vegetables.\u00a0 My dad worked at a textile mill and when he would come home on his bicycle, I would meet him at the door and he would pat me on the head and give me a candy bar.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother spoke no English, while I was lucky enough to enter school as a kindergartener.\u00a0 It was October, around Halloween actually, when I had a most frightening experience as a little kid in America.\u00a0 In class one day we were all having lessons when a teacher dressed as a green skinned witch burst through the door and cackled.\u00a0 All the other kids laughed and tugged at the make believe witch’s straw hair while my cousin and I bolted to the next room.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember one day in gym class getting to experience hula hoops.\u00a0 My mother would walk up the hill to pick me up in the afternoon.\u00a0 One day I had just learned to tie my shoes, and was so proud to have taught my mother.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The local landmark was the Tryon horse.\u00a0 I remember looking at it every time we would go into town, to church, or to the grocery store.\u00a0 The little theater is still ticking, and we once saw Annie there.\u00a0 It was an odd coincindence that I fell asleep at the same Annie did when Daddy Warbucks took her to the cinema.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a short year, our family and extended family was growing quickly, with my\u00a0parents and the church bringing over our relatives and friends.\u00a0 In Tryon I remember my uncle’s family living in basically a tool\/storage shed on the property of an okra farmer.\u00a0 My cousin had a little duck toy that had a weighted base that never let it tip over.\u00a0 The place was so small that when he and I would jump on the bed we would have to watch out not to bump our heads on the ceiling.\u00a0 I think there was a crab apple tree in front of their home, I tried climbing it, slipped and a branch split open my leg, which I still have the scar from.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We then moved across the state line to Landrum, South Carolina, which was a mere stone’s throw away from Tryon.\u00a0 Most of us lived together in these apartments.\u00a0 Our lives had progressed to the point where we were now driving clunkers instead of old bicycles and had a normal life of school, work, church, and\u00a0television.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the apartment where\u00a0we lived, during the times when you really start storing memories as a kid.\u00a0 It’s still the same after all this time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Back then my dad borrowed a Polaroid camera from one of our sponsors and he would take photos of us.\u00a0 I remember sitting on that bench with my corduroy brown pants and yellow Mickey Mouse t-shirt.\u00a0 We had a blue Toyota Corolla that my dad basically built with his own hands.\u00a0 I used to ride around with him everywhere.\u00a0 He was so proud when he bought a steering wheel cover from the store and I watched while he was lacing it up.\u00a0 I even remember the day he gave up smoking.\u00a0 Being from the old country and in the military, everyone smoked.\u00a0 One day he just pushed a barely puffed cigarette into the ashtray and that’s where it stayed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

As I was taking my own photos, I could hear little kids laughing inside our old apartment, and I thought that it was just like that when we were here.\u00a0\u00a0I remember my oldest brother bought Michael Jackson’s Thriller on vinyl and was playing it full blast while my uncle’s\u00a0foot tapped.\u00a0 He was of the long hair Santana and Steely Dan era but appreciated the music.\u00a0 Around Christmas,\u00a0one of our sponsors at the church dressed up as Santa Claus and he brought me a Snoopy toy set.\u00a0 I remember rushing home after school to watch He-Man on our black and white television.\u00a0 I remember being so afraid of the dark and would run as quick as I could to my parents’ room where I slept on the floor to grab my blanket.\u00a0 We didn’t have much then but the memories were still pretty good.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the second\u00a0elementary school I went to.\u00a0 In our early years we would ride the schoolbus,\u00a0and\u00a0I remember there was a new Mexican\u00a0immigrant family that would board it in front of their house\u00a0right at the railroad tracks.\u00a0 It was a house smaller than the one we were given, without running water,\u00a0so they couldn’t\u00a0bathe.\u00a0 When they got on the bus\u00a0we all pinched our noses and no one would let them sit down.\u00a0 We were fortunate then, and now.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This empty shell was the local TG&Y, a K-Mart type of store.\u00a0 We rarely got to go in to look, and even rarer, did we get\u00a0a toy.\u00a0 One day my cousins were in town to visit and they would always remark how their mom would buy them things and how my mom was never as seemingly generous.\u00a0 It was perhaps true, most of my comic books\u00a0and toys came from my road trips with my father to the flea markets in Greer and Spartanburg, while my mom was concerned with preparing food and saving money.\u00a0 That day my mother for some reason, perhaps under unwarranted pressure,\u00a0took us there and said we all could pick out toys.\u00a0 My cousins picked cap guns and I chose a rubber and plastic toy dinosaur that was a bit out of the price range.\u00a0 I rarely, if ever pitched a fit in\u00a0a store, but I believe I was on the verge of one, so she bought it for me anyway.\u00a0 My mother didn’t have an easy time in the early years in America.\u00a0 She had an enlarged thyroid that had to be operated on.\u00a0 She had numerous dental problems that caused her pain and embarrassment.\u00a0 One day my dad was working on one of our jalopies behind the apartment.\u00a0 He had the thing jacked up precariously and summoned my mother to come help him.\u00a0 I don’t have a full recollection of what happened but I do remember screaming, blood, and a neighbor helping my mother away from the scene.\u00a0 My father’s never asked my mom to do any type of mechanical labor again.\u00a0 Maybe that memory was just a dream, maybe this entire thing is just a dream.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

We were blessed to have so many good people in our lives back then.\u00a0 Sadly, there aren’t too many left.\u00a0 One of our\u00a0host families, we called Mr. and Mrs. D for short, with the inflection of dee<\/em>, which in Lao, <\/em>means good.\u00a0 Can’t really say enough about them and their kindness and generosity, people who sponsored and supported a family they’d never met before, and definitely took a gamble on how we would turn out.\u00a0 We spent so many good days and summers there, at their house in front of the lake.\u00a0 Mrs. D would call me her “Monday Grandson,” as she would take me to the local art center and restaurants while my mother was taking weaving classes or at the hospital.\u00a0 Somewhat embarassing but true, she can still recall the difficulty of showing me as a little\u00a0boy\u00a0how to use the toilet, and not always sit Indian style everywhere.\u00a0 She is an artist herself, with paintings covering her walls, and perhaps that simple gesture of taking care of a young boy set me on my way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

One summer she took\u00a0me and my brothers\u00a0out on the lake on the canoe.\u00a0 In trying to teach us English through experience, she pointed out the tons of water lilies on the surface.\u00a0 One of my brothers snatched one up and bit the stalk.\u00a0 She was surprised that we had lilies back in Laos, and would eat them.\u00a0 Sharing of culture, sharing of lives, I don’t know if those summers will ever come to pass again.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When we escaped Laos\u00a0on the Mekong river, we had two families and two boats.\u00a0 From what my parents tell me, the boat that I was on with my mother and brothers was leaking and it was amazing that we didn’t die right there.\u00a0 We didn’t, and we continued to live.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure most of us have mixed emotions when it comes to thinking about the places where we grew up.\u00a0 In movies and tv, you see it a lot, famous people and athletes returning to their humble homes with a lit match or a bulldozer in tow.\u00a0 For regular followers of my work, I’m sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,7,260],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-lao-culture","8":"category-photos","9":"category-writing","11":"post-with-thumbnail","12":"post-with-thumbnail-large"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/0001.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pelE0-1eX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/lao-new-year-sabaidee-pi-mai-lao\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":0},"title":"Lao New Year 2007 – Wat Buddha Khanti – Snellville \/ Stone Mountain, GA – Sabaidee Pi Mai Lao","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"April 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Lao New Year 2550! Photos of Sunday's Events at Wat Lao Buddhakhanti (Stone Mountain, GA) | April, 2007","rel":"","context":"In "Lao Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Lao Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/category\/lao-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/Lao-NY-Stone-Mt-07-001.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":844,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/lao-roots\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":1},"title":"Lao Roots","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"January 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Check out my work in Lao Roots Magazine. Based out of San Diego, CA, they provide articles on all sorts of Lao things. Betcha didn't know there are Lao actors, Lao fashion designers, Lao skateboarders, and oh yeah, Lao artists...:)....REPRAZENT!","rel":"","context":"In "Lao Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Lao Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/category\/lao-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/0001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2219,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/photos-lao-new-year-riverdale\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":2},"title":"Lao New Year 2009 – Wat Buddha Moongcoon – Riverdale, GA","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"April 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Lao New Year 2009 | Wat Lao Buddhamoongcoon | Riverdale, GA \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Lao Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Lao Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/category\/lao-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/w_bvong_lao_new_year_riverdale_09.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/lao-new-year-wat-lao-buddhaphothisaram-conley-ga\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":3},"title":"Lao New Year 2006 – Wat Lao Buddha Pothisaram – Conley, GA","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"April 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"April 23, 2006 | Conley, GA \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Lao Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Lao Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/category\/lao-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/04\/Conley-New-Year-01.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2308,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/photos-lao-new-year-habersham\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":4},"title":"Lao New Year 2009 – Wat Lao Habersham","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"June 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Wat Lao Buddhakhambouneheuang | May 30-31, 2009 | Baldwin, GA | Habersham County","rel":"","context":"In "Lao Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Lao Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/category\/lao-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"bvong_pix_lao_ny_09_habersham_2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/bvong_pix_lao_ny_09_habersham_2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2170,"url":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/international-lao-new-year-festival-photos\/","url_meta":{"origin":4771,"position":5},"title":"International Lao New Year 2009 – San Francisco, CA – Festival Photos","author":"Boon.Vong","date":"April 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"International Lao New Year Festival San Francisco, California | April 11, 2009 Presented by: Center for Lao Studies Laotian American National Alliance Lao Heritage Foundation Sabaidee Pii Mai! 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