In December of 1960 I was selected to serve an 18 month tour of duty in Turkey and to be stationed at Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey where a fleet of our U-2 spy airplanes were based. You may or may not have heard of the incident when the USSR shot down one of these spy aircraft piloted by Gary Francis Powers a few months before I arrived at Incirlik.

I've always enjoyed fishing for both the sport of it and to put food on my plate.

During our off-duty time at Incirlik we were allowed to check vehicles out of the base motor pool. A few fellow fishing enthusiasts and I did that a couple of times to go fishing in an area known as the "blue hole" east-northeast of Adana in a mountainous region. To get there was a long and tedious trip which didn't leave us much time for camping out and fishing before we had to start our return drive back to Incirlik. But while there we observed Turks fishing "their way" by lighting sticks of dynamite and throwing them in the water and then retrieving the stunned fish that floated on the surface. We gave the Turks some of our fishing hooks when we left to return to Incirlik, which they admired because they had nothing like them.

Later we obtained a topographical map of Turkey and saw on it some streams which might contain fish that were closer to Incirlik.... slightly to the northwest of Incirlik.... and decided to explore that area and try fishing there. I was designated to be the cook for our excursion, to plan our menus, and to buy groceries for us to eat. On the scheduled day of our departure we checked out a 3/4 ton vehicle with a full tank of gas and several "Jerry cans” full of more gas and departed on our adventure into the unknown.

A few hours later we arrived at our destination which turned out to be a small stream at the base of a very steep gorge between two mountains. No sooner did we arrive there, and before we even began to unpack and set up camp, than a heavy rain began falling and increased in it's fury with every passing minute. We surveyed in our minds the situation we were in. The road we traveled to reach to bottom of this deep chasm was a dirt road. The stream was only a small one when we got here, but it was rapidly rising and we thought we might be caught in a flash flood if we stayed there, so we decided to go back up the steep road we had come there on.

Before we reached the top of the chasm we began slipping, sliding, and eventually bogged down before we reached to top of the mountain. As we sat there hoping the roadway didn't wash away down the mountainside and us with it, we heard the sound of an engine and soon, behind us, a bus appeared around a bend in the road. The road was too narrow for the bus to get around our vehicle so it had to stop.

Soon, around 6 Turkish men got off of the bus and began to push on the rear of our truck until they freed it from the muck and then they jumped into the bed of our truck until we got bogged down again. Every time we bogged down they pushed us free and jumped back aboard once we were moving. This process was repeated over and over until we reached the mountain top with level terrain ahead of us.

We continued slowly down the road getting bogged down less frequently and those men would jump out and push us free again. Then we noticed that one by one the men jumped off and disappeared, likely going to their homes which we couldn't see from the roadway, or to whatever their destination was. This portion of the roadway was wider and the bus had passed us and disappeared.

Eventually, all of the men had jumped off and we got stuck again with no one to push us free. So there we sat as the torrential rain continued. It was decided that the other two airmen would try to walk ahead a few kilometers down the road to where we had passed though a small village on our way to our camping spot, and that I would stay with the truck in the event anyone should try to steal all of our gear since some Turks had gained the reputation of being thieves which we understood to be called "klefties" in their language.

Soon after my companions had disappeared into the rain I heard a tapping sound on the window of the cab of the truck. I looked out to see a grizzled old man with a toothless grin looking at me. It's difficult to even guess at the age of many people in this part of the world because they live such difficult hard lives and they often appear to be much older than they are. This man looked as if he were at least 65 or 70 years old and very poor judging from what clothing I could see that he was wearing. But I quickly learned that he was intelligent He must have correctly guessed that neither of us spoke the language of the other, so he began to communicate with me through gestures and facial expressions in a way that I think I understood nearly everything he was communicating.

He pointed at me and then signaled for me to come to him. Then he pointed at me and then himself and turned to point over the crest of the hill indicating that he wanted me to go there with him. Then he formed an arch over his head with his arms as if to say there was shelter over the crest. The rain had suddenly diminished to just a drizzle, and as I peered beyond him I could see a trail of smoke rising skyward. Obviously, for a fire to be burning out there in that type of weather it had to be under some sort of shelter. He used both hands motioning again for me to come with him.

I shook my head, "No". He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face while raising both arms from his elbows with the palms of his hands opened upward, obviously asking me why I wouldn't go with him. I pointed behind me to the bed of the truck where all of our equipment, extra fuel, and the spare tire were. Then I opened the door window beside me about an inch or so and spoke the only word I thought I knew in his language, "klefty".

He scowled a bit as if he understood and was insulted, while shaking his head from side to side. He had a great vocabulary!

Then the old man pointed to me and put up one hand with his palm facing me, to indicate that I should stay where I was. Then he turned and disappeared over the crest of the hill.

Possibly a half hour or a bit more than that later he reappeared, walking up the hill followed by a half dozen or more males, some old, and some young. I braced for the worst and hoped for the best.

When the group got to the truck the old man came to my window and the rest of them stood slightly behind him. As I watched he went into what might be described as an elaborate game of charades. With gestures and facial expressions he conveyed to me that they would gather everything out of the truck bed and that I should go with them down the hillside to shelter. He ended his performance with an expression seeming to ask if I would go with them.

It was nearly dark by then and turning colder by the minute. I quickly decided that I would be in no more danger by going than I would be by sitting alone in the cold, so I nodded “yes”. He spoke to those with him and they began to unload everything from the bed of the truck except for the spare tire which was bolted securely to one sidewall of the bed.

I opened my door and stepped out of the truck and promptly slipped in the mud and fell flat onto my rear end. I got up and our procession began the short trek over the crest of the hill and down to the hovel the old man lived in which was no more than 75 yards from the road. When we arrived the old man directed the others to take all of our gear inside and then to leave, which they did. Then he ushered me inside his humble abode.

There was only one room which may have been about 20 feet square with a ceiling barely 6 feet above the floor. A kerosene lantern and the light from a fire in the open fireplace on one side of the room provided the only illumination. There was not a single stick of furniture to be seen. Pillows and folded up bedding were stacked along the walls and amazingly there was a carpet that covered nearly the entire floor. On one pillow sat a young boy who appeared to be around 6 years of age, and squatted in front of the fireplace sat a larger person who appeared to be cooking something in what looked like a rather large tin can of some sort that they must have scavenged from somewhere.

The old man picked up two large pillows and placed them at the edge of the carpet. Then he turned to me, looked at my mud-coated trousers, and motioned for me to take them off, which I thought rather odd momentarily until he pointed to the mud. I understood that I shouldn't sit on a pillow and make it muddy, so I took my pants off.

Then he spoke to the person in front of the fireplace who got up and turned toward us allowing me to see that it was a young woman who seemed to be no more than around 25 years old with a nice body (as well as I could tell under her clothing), a pretty unlined face, sparkling eyes, and a welcoming smile with a full mouth of teeth. I assumed that she was his young wife, but she could have been his daughter or grand daughter or anyone else.

He took my trousers from me and handed them to her and apparently instructed her what to do with them. She emptied my pockets and handed the contents to me, and then she squatted in front of the fire and held my pants up to let the fire dry them and the mud. As the mud dried she cleaned it off by holding the cloth in both hands and rubbing it back and forth, being careful to not let any of it fall in whatever was in the tin can. When the young lady finished "dry-cleaning" my pants she hung them on a peg on the wall at one side of the fireplace to finish drying completely.

Then the old man got up and removed his trousers and handed them to the lady so she could clean the mud off of the bottom part of them below his knees. He wore no underwear, but he didn't seem to be the least bit modest because he did this in plain view of everyone. Then he put on another pair of trousers and sat back down on his pillow beside me.

He conversed with the young lady and the boy but not with me. He knew I wouldn't understand him. I just sat and looked around while enjoying the warmth from the fire.

Not too long after the lady had finished cleaning the mud off of his pants, she got up and retrieved what appeared to be a table cloth from the items placed around the walls. She spread out the cloth on the carpet not far from the fireplace. Then she placed what looked like napkins in front of the old man and me, as well as a hand-carved wooden spoon for each of us. She then placed a rather large hand-carved wooden bowl in the center of the table cloth and poured the contents of the tin can she cooked in into the bowl. It appeared to be some sort of soup. Then she went and sat on a pillow along the wall next to the young boy. As it turned out, apparently women and children had to wait until the adult males had finished eating before the were allowed to eat.

The old man mumbled something....perhaps a blessing over the meal or a prayer. The next thing he did rather astonished me because I'd never seen anyone eat their napkin. He picked up what I thought was his napkin, twisted it a bit to make it less wide, and then dipped it into whatever was in that large bowl, and then ate the portion of it that was wet. He then indicated by gestures that I should do the same thing. When I did I assumed that instead of being napkins, they must be some type of home-made bread.

I believe anyone could make something that tastes and looks like that bread did if they would take a dozen or more sheets of some sort of thin paper......tissue wrapping paper or even pages from a newspaper......spread them out one at a time and sprinkle flour with some sand mixed in it over each sheet and then spray water on it, and continue that process until you have a stack of paper about 1/4 or 3/8 inches high. Then just take a sharp instrument and slice napkin-sized squares out of it.

Not to seem ungrateful and disrespectful to my host and his family I did as he did and gagged it down a mouthful at a time. Since he was slurping and saying something I took to be "Ummmmmmmm good" I did the same and the old man smiled at me. When the level of the contents of the bowl began to get low with just enough for the boy and the young lady to eat left in it the old man took his spoon and dipped something out from the bottom of the bowl, put it in his mouth and tried to chew whatever it was and then swallowed it. He indicated that I should do the same. I dipped something out, what I know not, put it in my mouth and tried to chew it. It had looked like some sort of peas and included what looked like bits of grass, but whatever it was it was hard as pebbles and un-chewable, so I just gagged it down, licked my lips, and tried to smile at the old man.

He seemed to appreciate that. We each then dipped a couple of more spoonfuls of whatever it was out of the bowl and ate it.

The old man then said something to the lady and the lad and they came over, sat on pillows, and ate their meal, emptying the bowl. Then the lady picked up everything on top of the table cloth and took them outside, possibly to wash them because I didn't see a sink or any water supply in the room.

Soon afterward, it was bedtime. Perhaps because of the peculiar and uncertain situation I found myself in my mind must not have been working right and I missed some observations I would normally have made. I hadn't thought about the change of clothing my friends and I had brought inside of our sleeping bags, or even of the sleeping bags which had been brought from the truck and had been placed somewhere in the room; not even when the young lady, realizing that I was cold sitting there in my tee shirt and boxer shorts, brought some material, probably some of their bedding, and wrapped it around me.

Nor had I noticed until the old man banked the embers in his fireplace and then covered them with clumps of coal that they were burning. How he got coal I have no idea, but it's good that he could because there was a scarcity of vegetation that might provide fuel in the area around his home.

After he prepared the fire for the night he spoke to the lady and she began to spread bedding material out on the floor in front of the fireplace. When she had it all arranged the old man indicated that I should take my place near one end of the bedding and that the lady, who had gone to a corner of the room behind a makeshift curtain and changed into whatever it was that she would wear to sleep in, should lie down next to me to my right, and then that the boy should lie down on the other side of her. Then he extinguished his lantern and crawled in on the other side of the boy. Everyone was ready to sleep.

Why the old man had designated the four of us to bed down with him and me on the outside of the lady and the boy is open to speculation. Perhaps he thought that having us on the outsides was the chivalrous thing to do as if we were giving some sort of protection to those between us. I doubt that he had ever heard of the old custom of bundling that was practiced in some cultures.

Within a very few minutes everyone was asleep. The night grew colder hour by hour and I must have wiggled around to get my head under the covers as I slept.

Some time in the early morning hours I was awakened when the lady rolled over on her side toward me and her right leg crossed over mine. I ignored it and dozed off again. Not long afterward I was awakened again when her right arm crossed my chest and she nuzzled up against me as if trying to get warmer.

I was glad the old man wasn't able to see us in that position for fear of what he might think and how he might react. It was warmer with the two of us so closely positioned and I soon drifted off to sleep again.

The next time I was awakened was when the lady began gently, for the lack of a better word, humping my thigh. My mind didn't know how to react to that, but my body did, and I involuntarily developed a rigid erection, but I steeled myself and just lay there and enjoyed the sensuousness of the moment, assuming that the lady was asleep and didn't realize what she was doing, or that she might be having an erotic dream that didn't even involve me.

Those thoughts were dispelled soon when her right hand moved up to my left cheek and turned my head toward her. Then she softly kissed my lips once followed by a more passionate kiss........and I responded. A few more passionate and more prolonged kisses followed. Then her hand moved slowly and tantalizingly down across my chest until it reached my erection which had protruded through the opening of my boxer shorts. She grasped it firmly for a few seconds, and then began to gently massage it and my testicles with her fingers until she could feel it pulsating with passion. She grasped it again and began to slowly stroke it up and down. When it began to throb in her hand she stroked it more quickly as she began kissing me again. After probably 15 minutes of that I found it impossible to control myself any longer and I had a volcanic ejaculation.

That's when I woke up. Everything since I went to sleep had just been a dream, and a very wet one it was.