January 12, 2002

Pakistan: Where I first met Merle

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

Pakistan has been in the news a lot lately, facing down India in yet another war threatening to complicate the one our armed forces are fighting against terrorists next door in Afghanistan.

India and Pakistan have already fought several wars since the British moved off the scene after dividing the two parties into separate nations. Think the British would take them back?

Pakistanis pause to watch the live television address of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf at a shopping district in Islamabad, Pakistan on Saturday Jan. 12, 2002. Musharraf, seeking to defuse the crisis with India, declared Saturday he will not permit terrorist activities on Pakistani soil and announced a crackdown on Islamic extremism including a ban on two Kashmiri groups accused by India of attack on its parliament last Dec.13. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

We've actually lost far more members of our military in Pakistan than we have in Afghanistan. The recent crash of a K-130 aircraft that killed seven Marines was in Pakistan, and earlier war accidents have also claimed American lives there.

Of course, Pakistan has proven to be a faithful ally in the war against the terrorists, and if they weren't allowing us to use their bases and territory for operations, we wouldn't have losses there.

Pakistan has long been a friend of America, and with enemies like Osama bin Laden and his Arab cohorts, we need all the friends we can get in this increasingly hostile world of today.

One of the more curious adventures of my four-year tour in Uncle Sam's Navy was a stay in Karachi, Pakistan, that nation's sea port, where the ship I was on spent a while in a dry dock.

The USS Valcour was an converted seaplane tender built in 1938 and at the time I was aboard her, 1970-71, she was the flagship of the Persian Gulf fleet, stationed on Bahrain Island. At that time, she was a spy ship full of secret radio gear, but it's a secret, so don't tell anybody.

Going all the way back to the states for shipyard work was not an option. The Valcour was so old, every time we went out for a cruise we wouldn't venture far before one or more of her four diesel engines would quit. Sometimes all four would quit at once and we'd float around until the engineers could get us going.

There's no way that ancient tub would have made it back to America. She was decommissioned after I left, and I'm sure they made a dubious gift to a friendly nation in the Indian Ocean, minus the spy gear, I'm sure. I worked on a sister ship of the class the Navy had donated to Kenya during a port call to Mombasa.

So we deposited the Valcour into a dry dock and the Navy rented most of a hotel in Karachi for temporary housing for the crew of some 300 officers and sailors. We stayed for several weeks, so I got to see quite a bit of Karachi. Somewhere I have bunches of photos, among them some slides I developed in the tub in my hotel room, not trusting the mail for sensitive film.

But that hotel room is my most enduring memory of Karachi. That's where I was introduced to the music of Merle Haggard.

By the luck of the draw, I got a roommate from the engineering department that I didn't know. But I quickly found out he was a big fan of Merle's. He had a tape deck and recordings of every song Merle had done up until then were playing in our room, day and night, every day we were there. That was back in my rock and roll days, and I was of the opinion that Merle Haggard was a redneck hick from Oklahoma, in particular that he was "proud to be an Okie from Muskogee," and being the cool "hippie" type that I was then, I despised his music.

Short of murder there was no way I could stop that engineering guy from playing Merle night and day, so I spent as much time as possible out of the room, rubbernecking Karachi.

I survived, obviously, but here's the strangest part of that story. As I've grown older, my tastes have changed. When I was younger, I wouldn't eat greens, and now spinach and collards are two of my favorite foods. I also wouldn't listen to country music, and developed an absolute loathing for Merle Haggard's tunes.

And now I have a musical collection that not only includes Merle's classics, but Willie and Johnny Cash and most of the other "outlaws." But I have no desire to return to Pakistan.