My Little Town pt. 1

It’s hard to write about Hamdeok. Hamdeok is heaven. How do you describe heaven? It was more like hell at first. I guess that’s what Korea is to me, hell become heaven.

In Shelby County, going East on interstate 40, there is an underpass just before Exit 20. The bridge above is, in my mind anyway, the outer limit of Memphis. It is from there that as adolescents Robbie Caldwell and I used to wave at cars passing underneath. We were unabsorbed in the complications of adult life. We had no cell phones and no cars. We had never kissed a girl, though we often talked about it. The children in my classes remind me of that time, a time when saying hello to strangers was the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Less than a mile from exit 20 sits the psychiatric hospital I worked in just after college. I arrived at 6:37 every morning and swiped my key card, waiting for the “click” that the electromagnetic locks made upon being released. These were just some of the ghosts I left behind. Past the P & H, past Memphis University School, past the Summer Ave. drive-in theater (Rocky Horror on Halloween), past Bellevue Baptist I drove. Past the translucent inhabitants of my memory. Old lives upon old lives. In Nashville I gave my Jeep to Garrett and with it the only key I still owned. There were no more locks for me to open in the U.S.A.

This was after my Southern Tour 2009 of course. I had first left Memphis on July 29th, headed to New Orleans, Louisiana for a last hurrah with old friends. Then to Mobile to see my dad, then Atlanta for my Visa, then again Memphis for a few hours. I loaded the Jeep with a backpack, suitcase, and guitar. Then it was Nashville, Paducah, Chicago, Incheon, Suwon, Seoul, Jejusi, and finally Hamdeok. I was exhausted, completely worn out. My only greeting was a hotel bed with a neon orange cross outside one small window. Disco Golgotha in the middle of nowhere.

After ten days I moved into an apartment on the second floor of Ocean Love pension. That’s when the gravy started coming.

They tell me Hamdeok was nothing five years ago. They tell me Jejudo was nothing twenty years ago. Like I said, build build build. Hamdeok has four grocery stores, one bank, three pizza places, four saunas, two resort hotels, one of the best beaches on the island, and an amusement park. Ocean Love pension is actually for weekend getaways, but some times the landlord, who calls me “Songsangnim” (teacher in Korean), takes in semi-permanent renters. On Summer and Fall evenings I played guitar on my balcony and watched the weekly batch of warriors from the mainland wander in and out of my pink, six-story building. On Monday morning everyone showered and flew back. This lead to a noticeable dearth of hot water and a slightly disheveled English teacher on the first day of the week.

Most visitors to Hamdeok are Korean, but there are the occassional Russians, Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners. One evening I heard a Korean couple fighting overhead. The woman was screaming so loudly I feared for her safety. I ran downstairs to get my landlord, urgently banging on his door. He followed me upstairs to listen. He smiled, said “couple,” and went back down. That was the first couple of many. Koreans have a higher tolerance for fighting than we do. Of course they don’t invade other countries either.

Right now Ocean Love is empty but for the landlord and me. Hamdeok, fat and boisterous with excess residents during the Summer, is now gaunt and subdued. The beaches are covered with nylon netting to prevent the sand from being blown away. The amusement park is unlit but for one hanging bulb in the corrugated steel shack wherein sleeps the caretaker. The yellow tents that line the shore have been stripped of their plastic covering. Only aluminum skeletons remain. I keep my windows shut tightly, but the wind gets through.

If you walk West from Ocean Love you will leave town and pass a Samgyetang restaurant with a small blue sailboat atop which sits a table. When Spring comes we will eat on that boat. If you continue be careful not to stay right along the shoreline. That’s not a public road, but a private street with a guard dog. On November 14th I mistook one for the other in an iPod and Wes-Anderson-soundtrack-induced haze. I saw the dog just in time to be out of the reach of his chain. I did an abrupt about face and half laughing, half hair on end, followed the public road, which leads to the Northernmost point of the island.