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“Parting Words from Moristotle” (07/31/2023)
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By Vic Midyett
Recently someone sent me a group of pictures of which one was of the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. It reminded me of my semi-personal experience with its magnificence – a memory from when I was 6 or 7 years old that I have never written about.
I was born and lived in the State of Assam, India, as it was called then. It is now Bangladesh. We had no electricity or running water. Water came from a well that was brought into our home in buckets. We did, however, have a refrigerator, which ran on kerosene. With no electricity we didn’t even have a fan.
Raja
By Vic Midyett
[Editor’s Note: This Missionary Kid story originally appeared on May 6, 2014. The author was reminded of his story about Raja when he learned from a cousin in India of a story about Dr. Kushal Konwar Sarma titled “32 Years Without a Weekend Off: This Elephant Doctor Treats 700+ Jumbos Every Year!” by Jovita Aranha. Make your day by reading both Vic’s and Ms. Aranha’s stories.]
I was about six years old when we got Raja, a half-grown elephant. He was about the same height as Dad. We didn’t have him long, because his appetite was bigger than Dad’s wallet. For several weeks though, I enjoyed his company immensely. I have no picture of Raja, so this one will have to do; Raja was about the size of the smallest of the three elephants.
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| “Kite” (detail) |
By Vic Midyett
[Originally published on September 7, 2016. The original stock image of a kite has been replaced with the painting by Shirley Deane/Midyett, and Vic has made a few minor changes.]
I was about 10 years old, maybe 12. Every summer the kids where we were living in India bought or made kites and flew them in the summer breezes. Any given day or time you could see hundreds of kites in the air.
The Indians did something that I haven’t heard of anywhere else. Most kite makers there also sold a string with very fine crushed glass glued onto the string. The reason for this was a game kids played where, with skill, they would wrap their kite’s string around another kid’s kite’s string, and jerk down suddenly in hopes of cutting the other kid’s string and setting his kite loose. This brought bragging rights.
(Bengali for crazy man)
By Vic Midyett
[Editor’s Note: After the author submitted the story published yesterday, “I do not know him...but I respect him,” which refers to the Pugla Walla in today’s story, we discovered that he had never submitted his “Missionary Kid” story about the original Pugla Walla. Here it is, at last. And may Vic discover a few other such stories he hasn’t submitted yet!]
By Vic Midyett
[Editor’s Note: Vic sent me this story recently with the comment:
For some reason, I got to thinking about my kite again yesterday, this time it was in light of “big or tall stature does not make you the best.”
Tell me I shared this story with you a long time ago.
And I happily replied: “If I told you that, I would not be telling you true.”
So here it is!
Otherwise, the most recent of the Missionary Kid stories appeared on May 31 (“Rule Number One: Get in the house before dark”). I hope Vic keeps finding stories that he hasn’t shared with us yet.]
Get in the house before dark
By Vic Midyett
Anita and I were too young for watches, so Dad told us the following:
No matter what you are doing, come home and get in the house before your shadow becomes as long as you are tall. The reason for this is that the animals of all kinds would be needing water.
By Vic Midyett
[Editor’s Mea Culpa: The author submitted today’s Missionary Kid story last year sometime, along with another story that together had lain forgotten until they came to our attention recently as a direct result of Bob Boldt’s “Happy Mother’s Day” post of May 9, which prompted Vic Midyett to submit a piece about his mother. In the course of looking for a photograph of Vic’s mother, which we thought could be found among his Missionary Kid stories, we came across the two forgotten stories. Vic’s tribute to his mother, “Mom’s last good-bye,” will be published on Sunday, and his other Missionary Kid story a week from today.]
My first hunting trip
By Vic Midyett
The only meat we ate in Assam, where I was born, was what Dad shot in the jungle. The reason no meat was available for purchase is that the locals were all Hindu by faith. They didn't eat meat. Many animals were sacred in their faith.
Dad had a twelve gauge shotgun and a .30-06, and he would go hunting in the jungle once or twice a week. The jungle was about a ten-minute walk away through some rice paddies. Because the average annual rain fall was about 350 inches, it was an extremely dense jungle. One would walk about 20 feet into it, in some areas, and be required to turn on a flash light to see. Dad had a watchman by the name of Beejooly (who slept all night, but that was another Missionary Kid story) whom he took with him for security. Beejooly would cut a path with a machete when needed.
Stories in print
By Vic Midyett
JT: Another Mighty Midyett, the book about my dad that includes my Missionary Kid stories, is being typeset and will shortly be available.
The fact that there is a book at all owes to my cousin Randy Somers, who was a small boy when his mother's brother, my father, James Thomas Midyett, left for India in 1950, where I was born within two years of my parents' arrival there. But even 12,000 miles away, Randy says, my father was a continual presence in his family's home:
My schooling
By Vic Midyett
As I was born in India, the first language I spoke was Bengali, one of over 800 different languages and dialects in India. When it came time for me to start school, Mom and Dad taught me to speak English.
My first three years of scholastic learning (kindergarten, first and second grades) was via the Calvert Correspondence System mailed to us from America. I was totally in love with Jill from “Jack and Jill” and adored “See Spot Run.”
Book in preparation
By Vic Midyett
As you know from previous “Missionary Kid” stories, I grew up in India to American missionary parents.
Caste
By Vic Midyett
When we visited with neighbors in the 1950s, in a part of Northeast India called Assam, the neighbors were usually tea growers. This was always a yummy and extravagant experience for me. Yummy, because we got to eat food we did not normally eat, although I can’t remember exactly what. Just that it was different.
Rabies
By Vic Midyett
I apologize ahead of time for this disturbing memory.
Rabies was, and is, rampant in India. When I was about 5 or 6 years old (mid-1950s), one of the missionary wives was bitten by a rabid dog. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was discovered too late, or no vaccine could be found in time, or something else terribly untimely happened. The horrible and devastating affects had taken hold in the woman's body.
Raja
By Vic Midyett
I was about six years old when we got Raja, a half-grown elephant. He was about the same height as Dad. We didn’t have him long, because his appetite was bigger than Dad’s wallet. For several weeks though, I enjoyed his company immensely. I have no picture of Raja, so this one will have to do; Raja was about the size of the smallest of the three elephants.
Night Elephant
By Vic Midyett
One dark, moonless night, when my sister Anita and I were kids in India, we were riding with our missionary parents on a windy gravel road with thick jungle on either side. Our Jeep truck had about a 15-inch wide pine board going across the width of the vehicle behind Mom and Dad's two seats. This is where Anita and I slept lying in opposite directions.
Yellow wicker chair
By Vic Midyett
Our home, when I was a kid in India with my missionary parents, had a screened-in veranda almost three quarters of the way around – every side but the one the kitchen was on, which was the cliff and tree side.
The veranda was quite wide too, 8-10 feet, and screened in from floor to roof with the very minimum of wood framing.
Beejooly and Dad
By Vic Midyett
My parents arrived in India in 1950 as missionaries. I was born on the kitchen table soon after they arrived, and my sister, Anita, was born four years later. There were no paved roads where we were—only four-wheel-drive access.
