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The Women's Quarters

With all apologizes to the guys, I remember when they renovated the Women's Quarters.  They had to move us to do it, and I remember where we went being referred to as “Resurrection City,” which had been the name of the encampment of civil rights protesters on the mall in Washington, D.C. in May of 1968.  This was the about end of August 1969.

The implication of the name was that it wasn't home, or even as home-like as we had tried to make the steamy, hot Quonset hut hootches from where we had been living.  But it was temporary, and we could only hope that promise was true.

We had taken all our stuff, our trunks, our radios, our clothes, our posters, our pillow and blanket, eliminated all privacy from our lives, and moved into one of the empty wards closest to our hootches.  No individual rooms, just wire strung up with sheets between each bed.  But I can't say we were miserable.  I don't remember people complaining then the way they tend to do now, myself included.  You just did whatever you had to do, no whining.  For one thing, we were all in the same boat.  And we knew it wasn't so awful as it could have been.

We probably weren't there for a week.  It was pretty much like a big slumber party, with stereos blaring different music. I personally remember playing a tape I had gotten from Jack Klein (worked in the lab) after he went back to the World (Philly). “Honky Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones.  I have always been a Stones fan.

They had installed a ceiling to each of our rooms, and air conditioned and painted!  I don't remember if they asked us what color we wanted ­ mine was bright yellow with orange high gloss trim.  I probably did ask for it, but it was the ‘60's, after all.

The new ceilings meant we couldn't talk to one another over the walls of our rooms, and the A/C made it too loud to hear anything through the walls.  Privacy taken to a new level! 

I don't remember an awareness of numerical temperature in Viet Nam, ever.  It was just hot.  There was no thermometer on Long Binh that I knew of, not even on the Wells Fargo Bank, and I don't think the DJ's on AFVN thought knowing the temperature would be entertaining.  But it felt 40 degrees colder in our rooms than outside.  There was no thermostat, it was just cold.  And the cold blasted from the plain, bare duct coming out of the top of the wall, across from my bed.  I had a little corduroy neck pillow, like the ones you see for sleeping sitting up.  So, at least when I slept, I would stand on my footlocker and stick that into the duct.  My room kept plenty cool even without the direct blast.  But, no one complained about being too cold.

And then one day, I realized I had concocted my own refrigerator!  A bottle of Mateus (remember that Portuguese wine in the squatty oval bottle?) would fit fine in the duct ­ handy for entertaining.  But no one had a corkscrew.  Didn't matter because I didn't know how to use one, anyway.   What I had been shown by my fellow nurses (this was the first wine I had ever purchased) was how a spinal needle through the cork, with the obdurator then removed, would push the cork out if you injected 50 or 60cc of air!  It still works, I just don't drink Mateus any more.

So, here is my room after the renovation, and personal decoration.  I am looking as if I had been drinking Mateus.

Courtesy Cindy Mason Young
Click on the photo to see a larger version

Updated: July 7, 2003