I’m thankful that, even after 44 years, Buddha still rides with me

The sight last week of a Lucky Buddha Enlightened Beer bottle sitting on the shelf at Habersham Beverage brought an immediate smile to my face. There were a couple of reasons for that. One, its unique red-and-white cap would be a welcome addition to my collection, and two, I’ve got what can be described as a long-running relationship with Buddha dating back to 1969-1970 when I was stationed at Nakhon Phanom, a remote Air Force installation in northeast Thailand. About midway through that tour of duty, a couple of other airmen and I flew out of NKP to Bangkok. We were headed for a week of R&R at Pattaya Beach, an idyllic resort on the Gulf of Siam, 90 miles or so from Bangkok. We had a choice on how to cover that distance: Take a slow, but safe Air Force bus, or hire out a Thai taxi, a little risky, but likely to get us there first and into an ocean-view room. The taxi, which operated under the auspices of the Armed Forces exchange system, looked safe from the outside. But, instead for safety belts, it had only short pieces of straps, neatly cut off near the seat. When I asked the driver about that, he smiled and said, in words that have stuck with me ever since, that we didn’t need seat belts because “Buddha rides with me.” Well, that may have been so, but at some point on the ride, almost all of which was spent speeding past other vehicles on a two-lane road, I’m quite sure that Buddha wished he could have buckled up. We arrived at Pattaya Beach, in a time that has also stuck with me, in 79 minutes.  I laughed, I screamed, I sweated so much that my khaki uniform looked like I’d put it on while in the shower. It remains one of my life’s indelible experiences. Thanks, Lucky Buddha, for the memories.