The Magic of Monterey

We are on our way to Monterey, where we were married and spent our first year together. I looked at some old photographs yesterday, and they reminded me of my first arrival at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Back then, when I arrived in 1972 it was called the Defense Language Institute West Coast. “DLIWC” was located on a hill overlooking Monterey Bay, on a military site known since Spanish times as the Presidio of Monterey. The Spanish also had a presidio, or fortress, overlooking the ocean at San Francisco. It, too, served as a U.S. Army installation until a round of base closures shut it down.

When I finished basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina during the Vietnam War, I received orders to report to the Presidio of Monterey to be trained by the Defense Language Institute West Coast as a Chinese Mandarin translator. I received this news with mixed emotions. On the one hand, this came as good news because I had never been to California, the land of Hollywood, the Beach Boys and Disneyland. On the other hand, it was 3,000 miles closer to Vietnam and just a short hop away from Travis Air Force Base, the gateway to Southeast Asia. I arrived at Company A late on a Friday afternoon in April 1972. I was hastily assigned to a room and told that a roommate would be arriving sometime during the following week.

The next morning, I rose early and donned my fatigue uniform because that had been our normal attire at Fort Jackson. Fearful that I would miss a company formation or a drill of some sort, I went to the Company A orderly room, as the office was called, to ask for instructions. I had been given no information about where to go, what to do, when classes would begin, or when and where to work, study, or eat. Nothing.

The soldier who met me at the counter in the orderly room was a language student like me whose name had come up on the rotation to serve as the CQ, or charge of quarters. He was responsible for the company area when the First Sergeant and company officers were not in the office. I noticed that he wore his Class A uniform, technically a dress uniform, because it sported one’s ribbons, medals, and brass. Later in my tour of duty at DLI, I would pull that CQ duty myself.

He told me, “We don’t have classes on weekends, so unless your name comes up on the rotation for duty, you don’t wear a uniform. Until Monday morning, your time is your own.”

He gave me a few other details, such as the times for meals, and then suggested, “Show up here in the orderly room at eight on Monday morning. The First Sergeant will be here then. He’ll know what to do with you new guys and tell you everything you need to know.”

As I headed toward the dining hall for breakfast, another student passed me in the hallway.

“Why are you wearing your fatigues on a Saturday?” he asked. “Did you get gigged at inspection and assigned weekend duty?”

Unwilling to reveal my total ignorance as a newcomer, I mumbled, “Yeah, something like that.”

I didn’t bother to tell him that when the men in our training cycle left Fort Jackson, we were instructed to take no civilian clothing to our next duty station. We were to take only our government-issued clothing. All of it filled my duffel bag. The only items we didn’t carry in the bag were those we were wearing. Army regulations required us to wear the Class A uniform on commercial airline flights. Everything else I had was government issue, and it was in my duffel bag.

After breakfast, I explored our billet. I found the dayroom, a lounge with a television and a pool table for entertainment during our off-duty hours. I hung out there with a couple of other guys, watching an old Star Trek rerun.

As I resumed snooping around the company area, asking questions and learning my way around, I became weary of having to answer the question, “Why are you wearing your uniform on a Saturday?”

I found out which gate to use if I decided to walk into town, and I learned that we didn’t need permission to leave the base. That afternoon, I went back to my room and wrote a long letter to my mother and another to Glenda. After that, I spent quite some time reading my Bible.

I was beginning to realize the stark difference between the Presidio and Fort Jackson. Here, you were still in the Army. There were formations and inspections of your quarters, your uniform, and your haircut, but they treated you like a human being. If you did your job, which was to learn a foreign language, the officers left you alone. I was discovering that the Defense Language Institute was as much a college as it was a military institution.

I was starting to think that I liked this place, but it was the next morning when I was struck by the magic of Monterey.

It was Sunday. I woke before sunrise and put on my Class A uniform, which in those days consisted of an olive-green coat and trousers, a brown poplin shirt, a black necktie, and shiny black leather low-quarter shoes. Company A was silent, like the city down below, still asleep.

I wanted to walk down into the city of Monterey just to see where in the world I was. I had read about the city’s history. When American naval forces took possession of Monterey in 1846, the old Spanish presidio came under American control. Back in 1602, Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno had sailed into Monterey Bay and given it its name. The Spanish later established the Presidio on the hill overlooking the bay.

As I discovered that morning, it is a rather high hill. I descended Franklin Street, an incline as steep as a stairway, while the unrisen sun still slept behind the mountains to the east.

Thirty-six hours earlier, as my flight from Los Angeles ended, I had glimpsed the round green hills of the Carmel Highlands. The view from the airplane gave no hint that I would now feel as though I were stumbling into a crater on the moon. The darkness and the terrain together made me wonder whether I had mysteriously been transported into another world.

Far below me, I saw the roof of a multistory building with a sign announcing in illuminated red letters the location of the “Hotel San Carlos.”

I headed toward the sign, and as the sky began to glow behind the mountains, I had some misgivings about what a passerby might think of a soldier in dress uniform walking alone through the predawn darkness. Then I remembered that the sight might not be considered strange. Monterey was a military town. In addition to the Presidio, the area was home to the Navy’s Postgraduate School, and huge Fort Ord, “Soldier City,” as it was called, was just a few miles away in Seaside. Anyone seeing me on that Sunday morning would assume I was just a G.I. walking to church.

When I reached the Hotel San Carlos, the ground under my feet was finally horizontal. I stopped and stood there for a full minute, experiencing one of the strangest feelings I have ever known.

At that moment, I felt more free than I had ever felt in my life.

There in California, I had no home; no family; no friends; no possessions; no schedule; no clothing I could call my own; and, for the time being, no job.

For the first time in my life, I was totally and completely free.

The feeling was exhilarating, and it was also terrifying.

I regained my composure and turned right onto Pacific Street. In this strange new world, I began seeing something familiar. Every block or so, I saw a black bell hanging from an iron pole shaped like a shepherd’s crook. Signs on the poles told me I was on El Camino Real, the Royal Highway connecting the string of missions that Franciscan priest Junípero Serra began founding in the 1770s.

The sight of those bells brought me comfort because I remembered that one of them was pictured on the cover of my junior high school Spanish textbook. In fact, the book was titled El Camino Real. It was good to see something familiar for a change.

By this time, the eastern horizon was brightening, though the sun had not yet cleared the mountains. The city was still wrapped in its Sunday morning slumber. I stopped occasionally to read historical markers identifying buildings that had stood since California was part of Spain. I walked past the old City Hall and the new library, turning to find myself in a tiny plaza where I rejoiced in the sight of a splashing fountain and happily flapping flags.

Turning back for my return trip to the Presidio, I strolled along Alvarado Street, passing the many charming shops of an obviously prosperous city. I noted with interest the location of the JCPenney store at 438 Alvarado Street before beginning my climb back up toward the Presidio.

Twenty-four hours later, in the orderly room of Company A, a fatherly First Sergeant officially welcomed us to DLI and gave us a brief orientation. He told the few of us who had already arrived that our roommates would be arriving throughout the week and that our classes would begin the following Monday. Until then, we would be placed on “casual status.”

In nonmilitary English, casual status meant that we would be assigned to various facilities on post for little jobs requiring unskilled hands. For example, one new guy was assigned to sweep the orderly room floor. They put me in the supply room.

While the supply sergeant sat back in his office, I tended the counter. On that Monday, I assisted soldiers returning items they had checked out for the weekend—camping gear, surfboards, fishing equipment, skis, and golf clubs.

Some of the guys had spent the last two days camping at Yosemite, surfing at Carmel, deep-sea fishing in the Pacific, skiing in the high Sierras or golfing at Pebble Beach. I had only heard of these iconic places on television, and here I was in California, where they were actual locations within driving distance.

I knew then that I would love Monterey.

That afternoon, the supply sergeant let us knock off around three o’clock. I quickly scurried to my room, changed into my Class A uniform, and hurried down to the JCPenney store. I bought one pair of Levi’s jeans and one short-sleeved cotton sport shirt.

Returning up the hill, I wrote a letter to my mom telling her about my strange new world and asking her to mail me a package containing a pair of casual civilian shoes. I also wrote a letter to Glenda, my fiancée then, telling her how much she was going to love Monterey.

In the weeks to come, I began to love Monterey even more. DLI was not just about fun and games. One of the most satisfying experiences came from the instruction in Chinese. All of our teachers were from Beijing, all native Chinese speakers. They were kind and patient, and led us masterfully through the deep immersion language training lasting a full year.

When Glenda arrived in June, she did love Monterey as much as I did.

We were married at the Base Chapel, Presidio of Monterey, on June 16, 1972, and spent most of our first year of marriage living in a little apartment in old Monterey.

It was one of the happiest times of our lives.Read more