Steven Garfield

Banner: Civil War monument, downtown Jacksonville, Illinois

The python? One of our neighbors!!

*********************

 Ronald Steven Garfield

15/4 Dharshana Mawatha

Hokandara South 10118

Sri Lanka

Dear  J.H.S. Classmates 1959,

 

I recall my father’s J.H.S. 50-year class reunion when my late sister Diana June Garfield Spencer (class of 1964) and I were ‘dumped,’ so to speak, at the Illinois Theatre while Mom and Dad went to the reunion dinner.  Although I do not remember what wonderful cowboy movies and cartoons we must have enjoyed, I do remember Dad and his classmates saying that it didn’t seem it could possibly have been fifty years! Indeed, indeed. 

 

And through these years for all of us a lot of water surely has passed under the bridge and over the bridge,  with its being wiped out and rebuilt a few times in between! 

 

At the Love Feast I remember you all predicted I would become Secretary of State and learn something like 50 languages!  Well, hardly. Had I been Secretary, I could have taught Nixon a few more swear words, which I learned in the U.S. Navy in Viet Nam, and maybe saved him from bringing himself and our country into disgrace. As an elder statesman, I could have brought some reality to Jimmy Carter’s well-meaning policies, especially as they related to the Middle East; been a softening effect on Reagan’s intractability; taught Bill Clinton how to be discreet; and given George W. Bush the English lessons and the spankings he obviously never got while he was growing up!  At this stage, I would be waiting for Obama to consult me.  By now I would have written my autobiography, revealing some of the still-dirty Washington linen on the “Tonight Show” before Jay Leno had retired.

 

Hallelujah! None of that was to be, thank God!!!!!

 

Yet, however, and still: your prediction was in the ball park: I recently counted up the countries I have passed through or lived in, and that number did come to fifty.  I now live in a small country, the size—they say—of West Virginia; its name when we were in high school was Ceylon, and now it is officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, or the latter for short.  It is a place of mutual adoption.  I came out here, as the British would say, in 1994 to teach in the Overseas School of Colombo (the capital city) and it grabbed me in social and linguistic ways.  Though a white man in a brown-peopled country, I feel at home here, and they accept me: when I open my mouth, out comes their language, not flowing Sinhala but at least it is a good attempt!  If there are any qualms about skin color, they are likely to be remnants of my own cultural up-bringing.  Here, unfortunately, it’s one’s religion that comes under scrutiny.  “Hi, I am Kushal, Roman Catholic,” or it could be Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Anglican, Dutch Reformed, Pentecostal.  “Hi, I am Steven, I live in Hokandara.”  (I think the founding Fathers of the United States of America were very wise—perhaps, not going far enough—to keep religion separate from government.)

 

Enough: the purpose of this letter is to greet you in our 50th reunion year and to say I really, really regret being unable to do the greeting in Jacksonville, at Hamilton’s, in person, and also am sad to miss sharing some of our stories. (I have my doubts that Facebook is very good for that.)  And more important still, to say that in Sri Lanka I have a wife, a step-son, and two lovely grand-daughters, the eldest named Kavishka, seven years old, and her sister Dinithi, going on three.  We live in a rural area, not at all like Greasy Prairie, but it well could be the Murrayville of Ceylon.  We don’t have burgoo, but we do enjoy curries. Our seasons revolve around the two rice harvests each year, which occur in between the two monsoons; we slap mosquitoes, try to avoid being hit on the head by coconuts falling from the tree, run from cobras and vipers (and pythons--see photo), and get angry when the monkeys go amok on our tile roof. Oh, there are wild elephants here, but you’d have to go a ways out from Colombo to find them.  Be assured, I have introduced burgoo to my family, and I too have a secret ingredient to rival that of any in Morgan County. More important: most of the people here like burgoo and it keeps me connected to my roots.  By the way, the next time you buy tea there’s a good chance that it will be Ceylon tea. And if you are into fancy lingerie—Victoria’s Secret, I think it is—that too may have come from here!!

 

All of the time I have spent in Sri Lanka has been overshadowed in one way or another by civil war, which hopefully came to an end in May.  The central government’s forces defeated militarily, at least, the LTTE—Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; it remains to be seen if the central government will address the serious issues that led to the rebellion in the first place, but they had to do with religion, language and opportunity without discrimination. Sound familiar?

 

Oh, I haven’t retired yet! But the year 1941 may be forcing it upon me.  I will have to add a post-script to this to let you know.

 

See you on Facebook.

 

Sincerely,

 

“Ronnie”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. I am teaching again in 2009-2010. American International School and American College of Higher Education. I am the American part!  LOL