Dad was resourceful and clever. He knew so much. He could fix anything. For a guy who had little education, he was the jack of all trades. Other than fixing computers, he could fix anything in the house and he always did. He also had an amazing sense of direction. He never got lost and even when he did, he found his way home every time. Back in the days, Houston’s Chinatown was downtown, so if you could find your way home from all that mess, that’s impressive. Dad never ceased to amaze me.
Dad worked at a hardware store when he was a teenager. When I was growing up, my brother told me Dad owned a junk yard in Cambodia. Earlier on he worked at his sister’s husband’s company. Something happened and he left and opened his own company. He was pretty successful. He could convert trucks and cars into all wheel drive and he would. He would sell it on the “black market”. Not really sure what that means in terms of a third world country but, he was successful doing it. He’d drive to Thailand and Vietnam to deliver his vehicles. In doing this, he met a lot of people and he was quite connected. No question, he was confident he knew what to do. He had many friends that were also connected so I’m sure that’s how he got away with some things.
Dad was also multi-lingual. He attended Chinese school so he knew how to read, write, and speak Mandarin. He could also speak Cantonese as well as many other Chinese dialects. Dad spoke Cambodian, Vietnamese, and eventually English. When you live in South Asia, you’re bound to learn more than the mother tongue. When Dad spoke, he was genuine, friendly, and down to earth. His honesty was funny and kind of “that’s me… that’s how I do things”. No one ever really gave him problems other than at work in America. Maybe I’ll go over that one day. The short of that really quick is, people didn’t like that he became a leader in his group when he could barely speak and write English.
In the 1970s, Dad started a shrimping company in Cambodia. I never knew. When I was really young, maybe 5 or so, my uncle had a shrimping boat in Louisiana. Dad would take me with him and we’d drive all the way to go help my uncle do things on his boat. I’d walk around the boat trying to find dolphins. I did see them once and they were dark, not the pretty light grayish color I’d see on tv. Maybe it’s from oil spills or all the mud in the water. Dad taught me how to fish off the boat. I wasn’t impressed. I don’t like catfish and that’s all I caught that day. LOL. Mom would tell me that her dad would bring his boat to my dad for repairs in Cambodia. I think this is how Mom met Dad.
Remember earlier I said Dad would convert cars and trucks to all wheel drive? Well, now that he had a shrimping business, he had access to boats. Dad’s curiosity would lead him to modify a regular boat with an 18 wheeler truck engine. Rumor has it that people from all over would come visit Dad to see his monster boat, this 100hp boat engine. He also modified other boats with 72HP, which he was later nicknamed “72”. Those boats would help him escape the Khmer Rouge later.
Dad was comfortable. He had built himself multiple businesses. He had assets. He paid for all his siblings to attend school at a time when there was no free public schooling. He was smart and he had status. Did all of this accumulate to how he escaped? Maybe? But he for sure got up and left with his family because he didn’t want anyone telling him he had to be a farmer, or murdered because he worked his way up to where he was. There’s no substitution for working hard to get to where you want to go. There’s also at this time no other option but to leave everything behind if you want to survive and escape to a better life. Staying is no guarantee of survival. The Khmer Rouge killed without a second thought. Morally right or lawfully wrong, those that followed this party was about equalizing the country, starting over, and hungry for power. Was this my first hand experience? Hell no. Thankfully. But sadly, this is the sense from the overview of the few stories reluctantly told.
Spoiler Alert: No one really pays for the atrocities they committed during this time. They kind of just go back to life. Super Spoiler Alert: Pol Pot dies without any real justice.
Dad tried to convince Mom to escape Cambodia with him and his family but Mom needed to help with her family. She still had young siblings to help take care of and she couldn’t leave them without knowing they were safe. Dad told her how to escape to Thailand but he left with his two 72HP boats at 2am. Mom and her family waited. Not really sure why they waited but maybe to not have so much activity with so many boats in the water to draw attention to them. They made it safely to Thailand.
This is the shit I think about when I’m mad at my washer dryer machines because again, there’s another issue and it won’t just work. I run the troubleshooting and get the error codes. Then, I look up the error codes and the resolution on Google and hope it’s a quick fix. And I think about how Dad was always my first call whenever things went wrong. He was my fixer guy. He always made things better. He was my plumber, my mechanic, my therapist, my home for so long. When I go around fixing stuff around my house, I think about him and how I eventually learned how to troubleshoot and fix things myself instead of calling him to do it for me. I still hate my washer dryer and I’m tired of fixing it but at least this time around it wasn’t the thermal fuse again. I’m sure he’s proud I’m fixing my own shit. LOL.
Family History Unknown 