Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (2-a) : 高校は卒業したが、迫りくるベトナム戦争の影

Chapter #2: ENTER THE WAR AND THE COLLEGE YEARS

高校は出たけれど。迫りくるベトナム戦争の影。Draftは「徴兵」の意味。大学に行かなければ徴兵されるという不安・恐怖。
So, here I was, a high school graduate with no academic skills whatsoever except for maybe typing and using a calculator, and the US Army just loving to draft an athlete type like me and sending me off to the Vietnam War to fight and possibly be killed. I heard that one of my friends that I went to high school with joined the US Army after graduating from high school. He was on the gymnastics team and in great physical shape. I learned from somewhere that he was killed. Then, years later when I was traveling through Washington DC, I visited the Vietnam War Memorial. I looked down the names, and found his, James Ellsworth. It brought me to tears.

As I could not possibly get into any 4-year university at that time, I enrolled in the local community college (American River Junior College) and signed up for the minimum required basic classes, to get a student deferment from the Vietnam War Draft that was in effect at that time.

コミュニティ・カレッジ（Community College）とは、公立の二年制大学のこと。全米の大学数、約4000校の約3割にあたる1200校ほどがこのコミュニティ・カレッジ。

その地域（＝コミュニティ）の人に、できるだけ安価で大学教育と職業訓練を提供する役割を担っており、成人教育や生涯教育にも、力を入れている。

一方、四年制大学にストレートに進学するには十分な成績ではない生徒が、コミュニティ・カレッジで2年学び、それから四年制大学に編入することを目指す。

また、大学の学費が上がっている現在、コミュニティ・カレッジで2年学び、それから四年制大学に編入、2年後に卒業する「2＋2」（ツープラスツー）といわれる進学方法にも利用されている。

It took me two semesters to get into a regular college English class, but I got there. I couldn’t get into the normal English preparation for college class, so I took an even easier class. After that, I took the normal English preparation class and then after a year and a half took the normal college English class.

さて、ここから先がRon-sanの頑張り。

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (1-d) : 「上を向いて歩こう」

以下は、1966年高校を卒業するまでのRon-sanの話である。詳細はない。
この頃、日本は高度成長に沸き、そんな日本の姿が映画「Always三丁目の夕日」に描かれていた。

さて、サクラメントで育ったRon-sanは。

Right up and through high school, I was just floating and wander along with no idea where my life was going. Outside of basic mathematics subjects, I was pretty poor in the three “R’s” (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic). One thing I could do was talk. I used to collect Bill Cosby stand-up comic records and memorize the stories. Then, I would go to school and literally present the recording verbatim to the girls in the school to make them laugh. Even in those days, I thought I had a skill of motivating people and changing moods. Other than that, coming out of high school in 1966 and was an academic loser and with the Vietnam War raging. I really had to start deciding what I would do with my life.

Bill Cosbyは、アメリカを代表するコメディアン。日本ではあまりなじみがないかもしれません。


In those days in high school, I didn’t know very much about Japan. At that time, the song “Sukiyaki” became popular all over the world and I loved it. It is very rare for Japanese songs to be that popular, but that one was.

日本名は「上を向いて歩こう」。坂本九が歌い日本では1961年にヒット。インターネットのなかった時代、少し遅れて1963年米国で大ヒット。
米国のBillboard誌では、1963年6月15日付においてHot 100、週間1位を獲得、同誌の1963年度年間ランキングでは第10位にランクイン。

Also, around that time I saw the movie, “Sayonara” which was about US soldiers in Japan during the Korean War. That movie also, got me thinking about Japan. I never could dream of going to Japan though in those days.

「Sayonara]は、1957年公開の映画で、マーロン・ブランド主演の朝鮮戦争下の日本を舞台にしたラブストーリー。
日本でヒットしたのは、1955年公開の「慕情」。香港を舞台にしたラブストーリー。従軍記者の恋人は、朝鮮戦争で戦死。
米国でアジアを舞台にした悲恋物語が流行った時代だったのか。

From that point on I started eating with chopsticks and learned how to use an abacus.

Abacusは「そろばん」

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (1-c) : サクラメントの隣人たち

20年ほど前、職場が横浜の天王町に移った際、私が生まれた釜台が近くだと思い出し、母と訪ねてみた。

間借りしていた大家さんの家は建て直され、遊び場だったゴルフ場は、横浜国立大学のキャンパスになっていた。

Ron-sanが住んでいたGrass Valleyはゴールドラッシュ時代の賑わいの面影を残すシックな町。





そして周囲は幼少期のRon-sanが遊び回ったシエラネバダ山脈の懐に広がる森。美しい町だ。



さて、両親の離婚後、Ron-sanは、母親、姉とともに、そのGrass Vallyからカリフォルニア州の州都サクラメントに移った。

There were the Osegueda’s. They were a very tight Mexican family with five children. I was always closest to the oldest son, Art, simply because he was about my age. Art’s father was “Big Sal”, and he was big. I can still picture him out there in his front lawn mowing, washing or repairing the car, or barbecuing for the whole family. Having that family around me was very helpful in my growing up.

There were the Irish’s. They were the sharpest family on the block with a strong matriarch in Marcel (the mother). Chuck, the father, was an executive for the local newspaper in Sacramento, and all the children, four in all, were destined to go far. Here again, Chuck was another father figure in my life.

There were the Sollom’s, a family with nothing but girls, until the last one was a boy after I entered school. I had nothing to do with him because of the age gap. That family too had a great impact on me. It gave me the grounding as to what an extended, complete family looks like and what was possible.

These families and the fathers in the family were very much a part of my early parenting figures. This is particularly true of the fathers, who were willing to play catch with or invite me over for a barbecue. In those days, air conditioning was not so common, and we would often barbecue outside to get out of the overheated house in the evening.

I was a sport type in those days and nothing much else. My mother was a book reader and a wiz with the English language. My sister was more of an artist and creative thinker. So, there we were, three very different people in the same house.

My life was Little League Baseball, mud football and nothing much else. I did command quite good respect from my teammates and coaches. Even today, I still have strong pictures in my mind of many of those coaches, their leadership and guidance.

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (1-ｂ) : 両親の生い立ちと家族関係

Ron-sanと蒲田で飲み会。しかし、いつもの居酒屋が休業中。正確には、コロナ開け再開準備中。

ここの明太ポテトを楽しみにしていたのに。

完全に調査不足。しかたなく近所のトルコ料理店「ユルディズ」に。

これが大正解。「なんで蒲田に！」。

昭和レトロな蒲田に不釣り合いなくらいに小綺麗な店で、料理も銀座コリドー街の「イスタンブール」に勝るとも劣らない味。

コース料理のBを注文したが男二人でも食べきれず「持ち帰りに」。満足な飲み会であった。







さて、Ron-sanのLife Story（更新版）の続き。

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父親との別れ
After a very short time in Sacramento, my father was transferred to the Bank of America Head Office in San Francisco. So, the closeness to our father did not stick. I was 5-6 years old at the time,and would only see my father occasionally when he was able to get up to Sacramento.

父親の生い立ちと家族関係
As I look back now at my parents, I always wonder why they were ever together. My father comes from a broken family in the Mid-west (Springfield, Missouri).

My father was good at sports and got a university sports scholarship to play baseball. So, he left Missouri to go to college. That was during World War II. In college, he enlisted in an ROTC program which sent him into the US Air force before finishing college. He did not grow up in a happy family, and when he went away to university military service during World War II, he never returned to his family for any long time. Just short visits it think. To my understanding, all communication stopped, or more precisely faded out in the preceding years. By the time I came along, there was simply no family on my father side. I never met any of my father’s family. I saw a few pictures of my grandmother though. When I asked my father about them, he would not answer or just say he doesn’t know anything about them. Years later, my sister tried to look up some of those people.

母親の生い立ちと家族関係
My mother grew up on the poorer side and a very successful extended Jewish family in Miami Beach, Florida. My grandfather traveled a lot, so, my grandmother was pretty much responsible for raising four children on her own. My mother was the second oldest. She didn’t like the competition, the pressures of the religion applied by my grandmother and all the financial concerns. So, when my father came along during World War II, she was happy to make an exit from Miami. My parents met in Miami where my father was doing military training during the World War II. He never did fight during World War II, but stayed in the US Air Force Reserves for many decades after that. His reserve unit was sent to Korea during the Korean War as I mentioned above.

So, with the divorce of my parents, even my father himself was 90% out of my life, and there was only a weak, distant link on my mother’s side as her family was mostly on the east coast of the United States, and we were on the west coast.

So, here I was with my mother, sister and a very distant family on my mother’s side. We lived on Gladstone Drive in Sacramento. The street name is not important, but the community created there for me was.