Tasty bbq stories

Her family had moved to the US from the Philippines in 1971, but that's not where our conversation began. She'd noted that we had the same credit cards (Hawaiian Airlines) though I said I often flew Southwest, to which she made a funny face. Then there was a snide remark about dear leader from me, which displeased her not at all. She'd worked for DOD and NATO in Heidelberg and Stuttgart, she said, and knew how much money got spent for fuel (one thing he's right about, she said, is that other NATO countries don't pay their way). When I collected my kalbi plate, for we were in line at the Korean bbq, I asked if she was leaving; she said no, she'd eat there. So I sat across from her in a narrow booth, I with my plate, she with her soup, and talked story.

 

Her father had owned a ranch in the Philippines, where he organized some political events for Ferdinand Marcos. Her voice got softer when she told me this. I'd mentioned Marcos's former grave at the Valley of the Temples, before his body was shipped back home. Her parents bought a house in Enchanted Lake in the 1970s, and also four plots in the cemetery (cheaper then, yeah). She doesn't want to be buried there, but her parents are. Her father didn't want a flower vase on his grave, so they didn't get one, but when her mother died, she thought a vase would be appropriate for her. So she added to "the plan." The vase was placed on her mother's grave, but close to her father's; it didn't look right. So she asked that the vase be put between their graves, so it could be shared. 

 

Nothing happened. So she called, and she called. Finally, she went to the cemetery, explained in person what she wanted. Got a photograph later of the vase in the right place. And then the conversation came around again. Again she whispered as she said she's only voted once or twice in her life. For Ronald Reagan. She loved that man! 

 

This was yesterday. I can only write so many stories each day, especially when the news keeps intruding. Yesterday a man was shot in the neck. My son, in law enforcement, watched the video over and over again to see how people reacted; he tells me not to watch it, though I confess I tried to find it. Before all of this happened, S in the cemetery had offered a long monologue on the horrors of the funeral industry. Two companies own big cemeteries on island, and their people hate each other.