Pattaya Hash

By Avram Mednick

This book, which takes place in the present, is about a family dealing with the challenges of modern life. Beyond that, however, it is a commentary about different ways, some healthy, some not, that people are choosing to network in the 21st century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450277532

Avram Mednick

Avram Mednick is a retired educator living in San Francisco with his lovely wife, Janet. This is his second volume of poetry, his 13th book overall. How lucky.

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PATTAYA HASH

Avram Mednick

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Pattaya Hash

Copyright © 2010 Avram Mednick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-7752-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7753-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 12/7/2010

This one is too disturbing to dedicate to anyone. Our world is a tough neighborhood.

Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles

And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go.

- Jimmy Driftwood, 1959

Set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul.

You’ve got to run like an antelope: out of control.

- Trey Anastasio, Tom Marshall, and Steve Pollak, 1983

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Richard Dumas and family for hosting us so brilliantly in Thailand and for introducing me to the bizarre world of the Hash House Harriers. Thanks to Heath Norris for befriending us and taking us under his wing on the other side of the globe. Thanks to the international membership of the Hash House Harriers, from Thailand to Argentina to San Francisco and all points in between, for welcoming me and for keeping camaraderie alive. And, as always, thanks to Janet Mednick for tolerating my nonsense and for taking my photograph.

The Hash House Harriers were founded in a moment of post-prandial inspiration at the Selangor Club Chambers, about 1937-8, by the inmates, who included myself; E. J. Galvin; Malay Mail; H. M. Doig (killed in an air crash just before the Japanese War); and A. S. Gispert of Evatt & Co. Gispert was the real founder – a man of great wit and charm, who was killed only just returned from leave in Australia to rejoin the Volunteers. I am glad of this opportunity to salute his memory. He was a splendid fellow, and would be happy to know the Harriers are still going strong, and are as merry and bright as ever – or more so. Gispert was not an athlete, and stress was laid as much on the subsequent refreshment, etc., as on the pure and austere running. It was non-competitive, and abounded in slow-packs. Life was then conservative rather than competitive.

The name was a mock allusion to the institution that housed and fed us. Later, Torch Bennett returned from leave, and produced order out of chaos – a bank account, balance sheet, and some system. But we prided ourselves on being rather disorganized – or the minimum organization sufficed. The original joint masters were myself and Horse Thompson, still running somewhere – a past master at short-cuts and the conservation of energy.

Celebrations were held in various places, and the first was in what is now the Legislative Council, then the Volunteer Mess. The oratory, I recall, was much the same as now. Lew Davidson is an old member. Morris Edgar was one, but apart from Lew and John Wyatt-Smith I do not think there are any more ante-diluvians still running. Philip Wickens was also one who kept us going post-war.

We started up again after the War due to Torch Bennett, who discovered a Bank Balance and put in a claim for War Damage on one tin bath, and two dozen mugs, and possibly two old bags (not members). We started by a small run in reduced circumstances around the race-course – then the horses were not much better.

The Emergency cramped our style but did not diminish our activities, and we were even called in for information on various by-ways in Selangor, but our period of usefulness to MI 5 was brief, and our information probably otiose. But the Hares ran into two bandits at Cheras, who were later copped.

An Irish Accountant, Kennedy, drew up the Rules when we had to register as a club, and it seems to have preserved the old traditions just as you do now.

Cecil H. Lee

Selamat Tinggal HHH

Kuala Lumpur

24th October 1958

Chop-chop, you cunts! was the first thing he heard when he got to the top of the ladder. He had been running for over an hour, not really running, but walking quickly and jogging occasionally, just enough to keep up with the group ahead of him on the trail without exerting excessive energy. He was in the middle of nowhere, about 45 minutes by bus northeast of Pattaya, Thailand, to be exact. He was in a thick jungle and it was at least one hundred degrees Fahrenheit and humid.

The trail opened up to a clearing, at the end of which was a wall with a ladder leaning against it. The trail marker clearly indicated that the runners were to climb the ladder. They were among the last to arrive at the checkpoint, prompting the above exhortation from the club member stationed at the wall. Stone steps down awaited them on the other side of the wall. Another quarter mile jog and they reached the buses, which had miraculously appeared, and the beer.

H3

Alan Feig checked into the Amari Coral Beach Resort at about 10 PM. He was exhausted, having been traveling for almost 24 hours. From his home near Sacramento, he had flown via San Francisco, Singapore, and Bangkok to the Thai island of Phuket. The Amari, which has its own stretch of beach at the south end of Patong, is an upscale resort, maybe four stars, very expensive during the holiday season between Christmas and Chinese New Year. But Feig was there off season, in August 2008, prices were dramatically reduced and the hotel was relatively empty, which enabled him to receive an upgrade to a suite, due to some ongoing construction in the lobby.

Despite his debilitated state, Feig had observed from his taxi that the Amari was walking distance from Patong’s commercial zone, but he was too beat to go exploring. He had dinner at one of three restaurants on the grounds of the Amari. He settled into his suite, looking at the local map. He had a bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchenette, and a great deck with cushy furniture and a view of the Andaman Sea. He figured he’d get his bearings in the morning.

He awakened, jet lagged and disoriented, from a dead sleep. After cleaning himself up a bit, he checked the resort map and made his way to the buffet breakfast area. It was a feast for pigs, three different kinds. In addition to every conceivable food item traditionally associated with an American or British full breakfast, there also was an extensive variety of Asian cuisine. Not to mention a station for constructing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, two of which he wrapped in napkins for lunch.

He wasn’t completely clear on how he ended up where he was. He wasn’t on vacation exactly, he certainly wasn’t there on business, he had no business, he wasn’t on the lam, maybe he was on the lam, but only from himself. He had lost everything, his company, his home, his marriage, and, most recently and worst of all, custody of his children. His friends tried to remain supportive, but he avoided most contacts, dreading the pity in their eyes.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that things had been so good for so long. A nerd as a kid in Sacramento, he was a scholar-athlete at the University of California at Davis and then first in his class at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Business. He returned home triumphantly in 1984 to open his own real estate company and to marry his college sweetheart, Aracely Arenales, who had one more year to go at Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.

H3

The Hash House was the mildly derogatory nickname given (for its unimaginative, monotonous food) to the Royal Selangor Chambers in Kuala Lumpur by the British civil servants and businessmen who lived and dined there between the two World Wars, when it had become something of a social center of the times. Situated close to and behind the present Selangor Club, its function changed after independence and it became an office for the Water Board. The Hash House was demolished in 1964 to make way for a new highway, although the buildings housing the original stables and the servants’ quarters are still in existence.

The early harrier groups in Malaya were based on English public school paper chase or hare and hound runs, which date back to the 18th century. The idea of harriers chasing paper was not completely new to Malaya in 1938, as there had been such clubs before in Kuala Lumpur and Johore Bahru, and there were clubs in Malacca and Ipoh (the Kinta Harriers) at that time.

Horse Thompson recalled being invited to a run shortly after his arrival in Johore Bahru in 1932, which chased a paper trail and followed basic Hash rules every week, but was so magically organized that it had no name. The other branch of Hash ancestry comes from Malacca, where A. S. (G) Gispert was posted in 1937 and joined a club called the Springgit Harriers, who also operated weekly under Hash rules and are believed to have been formed in 1935. Some months later, Torch Bennett visited him and came as a guest on a few runs.

By 1938, Gispert, Thompson, and Bennett had all moved to Kuala Lumpur, and, joined by Cecil Lee, Eric Galvin, and H. M. Doig, they founded their own club, following the rules they had learned elsewhere. Gispert is credited with proposing the name Hash House Harriers when the Registrar of Societies required the gathering to be legally registered. Other early members included Frank Woodward, Philip Wickens, Lew Davidson, John Wyatt-Smith, and M. C. Hay. After 117 runs, the KLHHH was forced into temporary hibernation by the arrival of the Japanese. Sadly, Gispert did not live to see his extraordinary creation revive, being killed in the fighting on Singapore Island in February 1942.

H3

By now, Feig was poolside at one of the two massive pools at the Amari. He quickly realized two things: The room price may have been reasonable, but everything else at the resort, such as his bowl of pasta the previous night and the drinks and snacks available poolside, were vastly overpriced. Secondly, the Amari is designed to be a totally self-contained environment. If one chooses, one need not leave the grounds for the duration of one’s stay. However, he learned from new acquaintances on chaise lounges and in the pool that life indeed existed outside of the Amari compound, and that there were delicious meals to be had in town.

After baking in the sun and swimming in the pool for a few hours, still woozy from time zone traveling, Feig made his first foray into Patong. His walk was a brief one; it was hot as Hades. He oriented himself to the main streets, changed some money, competed with flies for an ordinary lunch of chicken satay, did a little grocery shopping at the 7-Eleven, and returned to his suite, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

H3

It took nearly 12 months after the war for the survivors of the KLHHH to reassemble. Post-war run number one was a trot around the racecourse in August 1946. It took another 16 years for the second HHH chapter to be founded, by Ian Cumming, in Singapore in 1962, followed by Kuching in 1963, Brunei, Kota Kinabalu, and Ipoh in 1964, Penang and Malacca in 1965.

Sydney HHH was the first Australian Hash, founded in 1967; Perth HHH followed in 1970. The idea then spread throughout Europe and North America, booming in popularity during the 1970s. At present, there are almost two thousand chapters or kennels in all parts of the world, with members producing websites, newsletters, directories, and magazines and organizing regional and world Hashing events. There are two organized kennels operating in Antarctica. There’s a Hash in the green zone in Baghdad.

There are many international events where Hashers from different groups get together to run and socialize, the most famous being the biennial InterHash, where Hashers from around the world gather. The first InterHash was held in Hong Kong in 1978. At this writing, the last one was in Kuching, Borneo, in July 2010, to be followed by Borobudur, Java, in 2012 and Brussels in 2014. There are also many regional and continental Hash events as well as Nash Hashes, or national events.

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