My earliest recollections while growing up during the late 1940's and early 1950's in Mount Vernon, New York include eating Chinese food in New York City's Chinatown.

My mother's sister, Aunt Rose, was a concert pianist and performed regularly at Carnegie Hall in New York City. To facilitate her career, Aunt Rose leased a flat at 51 Market Street where she lived and gave piano lessons. Market Street is located in what was then known as Knickerbocker Village and borders Chinatown and extends down to the East River just under the Manhattan Bridge. Aunt Rose died rather unexpectedly and at a rather inconvenient time. My Dad was in the process of selling a home in Mount Vernon and had not yet finalized the purchase of what was to be our new home. I remember the time quite vividly. I remember my mother packing me up to go live at Aunt Rose's apartment until she could figure out what to do with her sister's belongings, in particular a magnificent baby grand piano. I also recall my older sister Maralyn going to live on Long Island with Aunt Lea. Through all the chaos, I recall my Dad coming to visit us from Mount Vernon three or four nights per week. I further recall the weekends where we all got together to become a family trying to make the best of the terrible situation. What was supposed to have been a very temporary situation turned into a two-year tenancy (the exact amount of time remaining on Aunt Rose's lease).

I remember going to school and growing up in a neighborhood that was quite different than the one to which I was accustomed in Mount Vernon. In the evening when the windows were open I could hear and smell City life. The sounds of people sitting on the front stoops of the brown houses, the aromas of street vendors cooking sausages and peppers, and most of all the gong sounds coming from the Chinese Theater district.

During the late afternoon or early evening on those hot sultry days I would walk to Little Italy and eat Italian ices of every conceivable flavor. On the way home I remember walking down Mott Street and Pell Street and seeing the roast ducks hanging in the windows of the Chinese grocery stores. I remember stopping into basement restaurants and ordering those deep fried eggs rolls dripping with oil and licking my fingers to get the last bit of flavor. Even the sights and flavors of Little Italy linger in that I recall going into the little bakery on the corner and buying the still warm Italian bread. I would rush home as fast as I could so that the warmth of the bread would melt the gobs of butter we piled onto it. Most of all I remember the crunch of the bread when I bit into it and how the crust would flake and leave crumbs all over the front of my shirt.

I left New York City when I was twelve years old and moved back to Mount Vernon, where Dad had finally purchased a thirteen-family apartment building. I recall getting my General Class amateur radio license K2OJJ when I was thirteen but, in spite of that achievement, I was a troubled teenager. I recall always being in trouble while in AB Davis High School and on two separate occasions I was thrown out of school for fighting. I really did know right from wrong but almost always choose to take the wrong path. Through it all during my early teens I recall continually going back to visit my friends in the Chinatown section of NYC and having feelings that that was really my home.

In 1962 I joined the Air Force and in 1965 I was sent to Thailand at the behest of then, President Johnson.

Living in Thailand for me was merely an extension of living in New York City. There is little doubt that my childhood experiences influenced and prepared me to immediately fit into the everyday lifestyle of Thailand. Little did I suspect then, that the influence of the Thai culture would remain for a lifetime and eventually pervade all aspects of my existence.

While in Thailand I took the opportunity to experience every sensation I could. I ate the food daily and in general lived life to its fullest. Whatever the Thai people ate... I ate. I rarely ever asked what it was that I was eating. I frequented the outdoor markets on a more than regular basis, morning noon and night, seeking out every vendor to sense the next flavor. Many a night I remember sitting in the open-air market place watching the vendors cook the foods for their customers. Whatever possessed me to write down the recipes is totally beyond my comprehension.

After being discharged from the Air Force in 1966 I enrolled to New York University's uptown campus in the Fordham Road section of the Bronx to study engineering. I worked full time during the day and went to school in the evening commuting some 75 miles each way, five days a week. After earning my BEEE, I worked as a hardware engineer, eventually achieving reasonable management positions in the high-tech industry. Two patents and numerous patent disclosures later and still not completely settled as to who I was, I began making decisions that would eventually take me from the field of hardware engineering into other endeavors.

During the period that I worked in industry I continued to correspond with a friend I had made in Thailand, a Mr. Mana Sanguansook. In 1979, I received a letter from Mana, telling me he would be coming to America to study. I waited patiently for his expected call. When he landed in California, he called me to tell me he had arrived safely and would be staying on campus at the University of Oklahoma. I did not tell him I would go to visit him but I immediately booked a flight to the nearest air terminal where Mana was living. Within four days, I began making my way to his address in the Oklahoma panhandle. It was a great reunion.

I invited Mana and his wife Thuey to move in with me in my Stoneham, MA apartment. After completing, one semester of study in Oklahoma, Mana and Thuey moved to Stoneham. They had a natural affinity for attracting other Thai people who were living in America. They would often invite their new friends to our home. One day they brought home a Laotian person that they had befriended and it was through Boonlouie that I eventually met and married Chanthip.

Chanthip was a teacher in a small village in Northern Laos. As she explains it, Houie Sai is about a two-day walk into mainland China. By my reckoning, that would be somewhere around forty to fifty miles to the Chinese border from Chanthip's front door step. Chanthip's father was a policeman in the village. When the communists overran her country her father was arrested and sent to a re-education camp. He remained there for five years. During that period, Chanthip's life was in a state of turmoil and limbo. She stayed home to help her Mom care for younger brothers and sisters, waiting for the day when the communists would release her father. When her father did come home, he ordered Chanthip and her younger brother to leave the country and seek refuge with relatives living in Thailand. Chanthip left Laos in the dark of night with her younger brother and two cousins and crossed the Mekong river in a small boat purchased from the black market dealers who specialized in helping people escape the communist regime. It was the last time that Chanthip ever saw her parents. Within three years from the day she left her home in Laos both her Father and Mother passed away.

In order to be eligible for immigration to the United States Chanthip had to enter a refugee camp in Thailand. She left the Thai refugee camp with her brother in April 1981 after having spent a year learning to speak English. Six weeks after her arrival at her cousin Boonlouie's house in Hartford, CT Chanthip and I were married. I will be forever grateful to Boonlouie for interceding on my behalf and convincing Chanthip that she should marry this crazy American who speaks a little bit of Thai.

Who could have expected that the thread of interest concerning my love affair with the Asian culture would have remained unbroken though out my life? And, who could have guessed that a half-a-life-time later after having taken some notes in a remote village in Thailand some ten thousand miles from home would have had such a profound impact upon the lives of so many people? But above all else, who could have predicted back then that someday I would realize my innermost wish of being married to an elegant and loving Asian woman?