Searching for Kokomo

“Off the Florida Keys, there’s a place called Kokomo,”

Roughly forever ago, I was an Army soldier stationed on the DMZ in Korea. It was freezing cold. Every step through icy mud seeped water into my combat boots. Our unit was into the second week of a month-long field exercise and like the 12,500 other soldiers in the infantry division, I stunk. Trips to the Korean bath house rotated and when it was time for my team to get clean, we piled onto a helicopter for the short flight.

My Army Days

To not aggravate North Korea, we flew low, extremely low, over fields of cabbage and rice. Korean farmers fertilize with night soil — human waste — and I gagged as fumes were sucked up by the rotors. It was far worse than even our own body odor. The pilot, immune to the stench, looked back with a pirate’s smile and played a catchy tune by the Beach Boys over the headsets.

…Off the Florida Keys, there’s a place called Kokomo
That’s where you want to go to get away from it all
Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand
We’ll be falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band
Down in Kokomo…