White Flight

Hey, we're old. I have kids, grand kids and some great grand kids. I was born and raised on a farm before I made the army a career. I would like nothing better than to spend the rest of my life back on one. One where the neighbor is a good ways a way. So we won't be sending any kids to school. That was taken care of a couple of decades ago. Heck, my oldest daughter celebrated her 50th birthday last month, our youngest is 37.

Besides the wife is from Thailand and there is a Buddhist Wat out in the country north of Griffin that we go to all the time. Finding a place close would be good. Property values, past caring. I'd like a place if I wanted to step out in the back yard and seen a rabbit, I could shoot the darn thing for supper if I had a mind too. Someplace where the wife could raise some chickens and have a good sized garden.

Heck, I'd settle for 20 acres, just enough to avoid any housing division from going in.

 

Blacks moved into America a long time ago... how long is it supposed to take?



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Did you meet your wife while you were serving?
I find overseas military love interesting...I can only imagine time spent in other places makes one more familiar with the culture.

 

I know two families where a soldier brought a wife home. One brought a Japanese wife home, the other a German wife home. Both had kids in the US that grew up as very American. All four children grew up to be very successful. Much above average. The German wife acclimated much moreso than the Japanese wife. Any insight as to why?

 

White flight is reversing itself as younger successful individuals, usually white, are seeking more urban lifestyles. Here in Houston, the Heights was a dump 20 years ago. Now the poor low income individuals who lost affluent tax dollars for public services are being driven out by higher property values.

Japanese people are generally xenophobic.

 

Dinks? Haha...double income, no kids...
Yeah they like city life until their kids are school aged.
Several cities in Fulton county have kind of severed themselves from the county. Chattahoochie Hills, Brookhaven... Affluent parts of the county were sick of footing the bill.
Germany hosted the Holocaust. Why would you think Japanese folks would be more xenophobic?

 

Never tried rabbit...but tomatoes picked off the vine are unparalleled.

 

I’d say you’re correct. I spent a lot of time working with the Thai Army, then the Lao army when I went to Laos. I would say I had little problem adjusting to their culture and traditions. Perhaps that is what made my marriage such a long successful one. We still observe Thai culture and traditions in our house. Heck, I can speak Thai and Lao, my oldest daughter married a Laotian and they live across the road. So when on visits our place, you will find Thai, Lao and English all spoken. More times than not in the same sentence.

I knew quite a few GI’s who married Thai girls, another who married a Vietnamese. About half worked out and are still married and half didn’t. I suppose that is about average. I do think being an old country boy made it easier to adjust to life over there than a city guy would have. Then again, maybe that is just the way it worked out.

 

As a kid, I used to take my .410 back to the woods hunting. I’d usually come back with rabbit and squirrel. Both were good. But that is when I was young. I think when I was a kid, I spent more time back in them woods than anyplace else. That is once the chores were all done.

 

That's unusual in my experience that you speak Thai and observe much of your wife's culture...admirable, too. Were you inclined to do that because you grew to live the culture or because you loved your wife?

 

Yeah, our kids are very American. That is except our oldest daughter. She was a smart one, she can speak, Thai, Lao, German along with English. She picked up German when I was stationed in Germany. My son, he lives in Augusta, he is pure American and doesn't understand a bit of Thai. The grand kids follow the same along with the great grand kids.

I know after spending 10 years in Southeast Asia, being sent to Germany was like being back in the states. So adjusting from Germany to the U.S. in my view isn't much of an adjustment. Japan is quite different. The U.S. is based on European culture and tradition, Japan not so or in the case of my wife, not either. I spent 3 and a half years in Germany, the culture and traditions didn't seem all that different. Although in Southeast Asia, now that was a big difference and Japan would be the same.

 

Always been a suburban girl. Nobody in my family hunted anything...ever...haha... Even my country grandparents.
My grandfather wpuld be almost 100 if he were still living. He grew up on a farm. Churned butter, planted, fed livestock. Had a 5th grade education before his parents told him he had to quit going to school to manage the home/family. He was one of 19 children.
I can't even imagine. My memaw never drove.
Grandaddy was a milkman, a blue collar labor man. My dad was a blue collar man, too.
I've always been afraid of guns. My five year old cousin got a pellet gun for Christmas and my older brother told him to shoot me... Lol.

 

As for growing up, just like any other American farm kid. No, I thinks in the beginning it came with the job of training and advising Thai soldiers. I became very close to them and for awhile lived with them much like I did with the Lao.

I noticed a lot of other American GI's had an air of superiority when dealing with the Thais and Lao. I didn't, I adjusted to them instead of having them adjust to me. They would tell me things and make suggestions to me that they wouldn't other Americans. We made one heck of a good team. With the wife, it all fell in line with that. It was like I was one of them instead of that strange Americans always telling them what to do and how. I just never lost that.

Some would call it going native, I call it sort of. Respect works both ways, one must give it to get it and vice versa. I never really thought of it. Perhaps deep down I prefer their customs and culture, traditions to ours. I really don't know. It just came natural.

 

Great post. Very interesting conversation. I really appreciate that. I've never been outside the US. Oddly the German wife had much cliser ties to her roots than the Japanese wife. The German wife took her husband and kids back home every year. The Japanese wife never did. I am inclined to think Japanese are less accepting of a multicultural marriage. I once read suicide is highest in Japan and usually caused by shame. Honor and loyalty to country and culture are important, moreso than elsewhere. This is just my understanding and my understanding may be inaccurate.
Those soldiers and their foreign wives that I know had kids that outperformed white American kids. Each couple had two kids. A pilot, a doctor, an engineer, and a businessman working as a bilingual liaison between American and Japanese companies.
Any thoughts on that?

 

Exactly. If choosing the best possible environment for my tribe to be educated, prosperous, safe and content makes me a "racist", then I wear the title with pride. Lib/progs must malign and impugn as "racists" or "privileged" or "lucky" those who wisely escape their corrupt, dangerous, high tax/no return, bankrupted "utopian" welfare states and war zones....that they obscure or pretend don't exist...just need 'more money and government oversight'..or are altogether someone else's fault.

They "built that" and hate or 'don't understand' anyone who doesn't want to wallow in it.

 

I have a cousin who fell in love with Hispanic culture. She feel in love with the culture and language before she fell in love with her husband. I recently watched McFarland USA...have you seen it? Great movie based on a true story. A story of a family that fell in love with another culture.
I think Americans don't have deep cultural roots or traditions. I can see why cultures that do would be appealing.

 

I’ve been around guns all my life. On the farm, in the army. I own a few. I’ll leave them to my son, he also is right at home around guns. I can remember taking my .410 on the school bus and leaving it in my locker at school so a bunch of us kids could go rabbit hunting after school. Nothing thought of it back then. Of course that was before society went crazy. But to each his own. If you’re not comfortable around them, then don’t have them. Perfectly understandable.

But back then that school was an old country school, very small. Heck there were only 13 of us in my graduating class.

 

Work and study ethics I presume. I know my two daughters would stay up until their homework was finish and they always studied a lot. Now my son was completely different. We left Thailand in 1976 and the wife has been back just once, by herself. That was around 1982. I was still in the army then stationed on the East German Border and couldn't go or get leave to go.

I do think the Japanese are an honor bound society. Much more than us or other places in Asia. That's their culture. I do know the Thai, Lao, Vietnamese have no problem with mixed marriages. But until recently, America was known as the melting pot of the world. Our culture, traditions etc. constantly changing. Taking the best of what comes in and tossing the rest. Japan for quite a long time was a closed society which didn't want any foreign influence. We are a mixture. First English, then as we moved west French and Indian. Spanish from Florida and Louisiana and then the southwest. All the while tons of German, Italian, Irish, you name it were coming in from Europe. All mixing together. We had the Japanese and Chinese on the west coast. It is said it was the Chinese that built our railroads in the west. We are a bit of all of these and more. The melting pot at work. Over time all those melted into what was America. It always took a generation or two, perhaps three. I must not forget Africa also. Where else on earth could so many people from so many places, so many different cultures, traditions slowly blend into one.

Being as old as I am, I am not sure this push for diversity as it is called is a good thing. I think it may be slowing the melting pot. I don't know. The wife will never be fully Americanized. But the kids are. They are part of the melting pot. I think it is perfectly alright to have your little Havana, Chinatown, little Italy and the like, but the kids move out and assimilate into the larger melting pot. As long as that keeps happening then we're fine.

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No, never seen it. I do think I address the cultural roots in my previous post.

 

13?? Wow..you did live up the country.
We don't have guns because if we did we'd be those people that end up getting shot by our own guns... Haha.
That said, I am a huge supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
In present US society, what do you think is the most powerful entity, how/why?

 

I can't imagine life without diversity. I appreciate our differences. You're one of the most interesting posters I have conversed with here.
Been to the Varsity?

 

I'm a Libertarian who favors fiscal conservativism and social liberalism. I really cringe when sweeping generalizations are thrown around in politics. Lincoln was the first Republican president. Truman was the Democrat that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Lige for the middle-class was rich under Clinton and Federal government grew about 50% under GW.
If you have criticism or praise, be specific.

 

Not mad.

 

It was a very rural community, nothing but farms. Wyatt was the closest town, five or six miles, it had two grain elevators, three bars, a small grocery and around four churches. The Population couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred. Back then there was a place known as Oak Grove about a mile and a half from my dad’s farms. It was on Beech and Shivley road. On one corner was a gas station, two pumps, the old hand lever type. Inside the gas station was a real small store with around 10 mail boxes where we picked up our mail. On the other side was a church, forget what denomination, then a farm house on the other corner and a hog swallow on the last corner. 1950’s.

The school was Madison TWP, the year after I graduated they closed the Jr High and High School portions turning it into an elementary school only. That was when school consolidation became the big fad. Now the kids in 7-12 had to be bussed 15 to 20 miles to Penn TWP. That school has a thousand or more kids. There were nothing but farms and woods.

Yeah, I support the second amendment. As for the most powerful entity, it has to be the federal government. They have a hand in almost everything you do or buy or at least an influence. Back when I grew up, Washington D.C. might as well been on Mars or Venus for all the influence in our daily lives they had. That has changed big time.

 

No, never. I rarely get north of Stockbridge and never into Atlanta since the World Series. I use to work at Ft. McPherson until it closed and went with FORSCOM to Ft. Bragg for 18 months until I retired and second time and came back here. I never sold my house here in Stockbridge. So I had 20 1/2 years active duty and another 26 working for the army as a Department of the Army Civilian. Total military since I was drafted back in 1966.

I stay active in my American Legion and VFW posts. Then too with the Thai Wats. Plenty of them around. But with 3 kids, 10 grand kids and 3 great grand kids, they also keep me busy. Then too there is this dang computer I find hard staying off of. Something I never did ten years ago. But it has it uses. I love politics, even though outside of the Reform Party, I never belonged to any other political party. Always preferring to vote for whom I think is the best candidate regardless of party. That also includes third parties. I first became interested in politics watching the Democratic and Republican conventions on TV back in 1956 and never lost interest in it.

 

I remember 7 digit phone numbers...in Colorado they still have 7 digit phone numbers!
The federal government is trying very hard right now to get open access to Apple's customers. Americans my age are sensitive to terrorism and the government is insisting Apple access is necessary to combat terrorism. Apple said no. The gov took Apple to court and the court ruled in Apple's favor.
Government is never going to get public support for cellphone transparency. Communication, information exchange, technology... DC can't dictate it. Apple, Verizon, Google..these are the most powerful entities today in my opinion.