The Vietnam War made me a Nerd: Bicycle Tour Continues

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Scott Smoot rides in Hanoi today, where the grandeur of ancient Vietnam blends with relics of French colonial rule. On Hanoi's busy streets, the only rule for cyclists and pedestrians seems to be "look out." I take the sidewalk whenever I can.

Hanoi was a world away from Chicago, where my family lived in 1968, but the Vietnam War was only a quarter-turn of the TV dial from super-powered characters I wanted to watch. To get to them, I had to pass through grainy footage of explosions and injured soldiers. I couldn't avoid radio news about the enemy in Hanoi.

That summer, the Vietnam War hit close to home, not even an hour's drive up Halstead Street, where police clubbed and gassed anti-war protesters. I lay awake nights, afraid that the Vietnamese would come to get us, or that I would be drafted to go over there. I was nine years old.

Mom told me that I wouldn't have to worry if I made good grades in school. "They don't draft students who have scholarships."

That sealed my future. Till then, I'd been pretty much a slacker. My third grade teacher Mrs. Lee observed that I was wrapped in fantasy while everyone else did their classwork. Even during recess, when the other little boys played sports, I was being the Joker or the Penguin.

But, seeking that college scholarship, I got straight A's in fourth grade. I got on student council. Mrs. Finkle exempted me from routine work so that I could teach reading and spelling to my classmate Glen from the trailer park -- an experience that made teaching my second-favorite career choice. (First choice was being a guest star on Bewitched.)

In the years that followed, I became an Honor Roll student at a prestigious school, recipient of the Angier B. Duke Scholarship, graduate with distinction in English, and teacher for 40 more years.

Hanoi is the latest stop on my virtual world-tour of places that have had an impact on my life. Since September 2025, I've biked 1200 miles on trails around Atlanta, the distance from the middle of India to Vietnam's capital.

Of related interest

• See my page Boomer Basement to find much more about Joker, Bewitched, and all the furniture of this Baby Boomer's inner world.
• My poetry blog includes a couple of poems that relate to that elementary school period. See Wingtips and Ghost Story.
• I found it hard NOT to put down a very uncomfortable but wonderful novel by an author whose family brought him here from Vietnam during the ignominious US withdrawal. See my reflection on The Sympathizer.

Miles YTD 760 || 2nd World Tour Total 21,851 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: Japan

←← | ← || Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day April 2026

Every morning I let my Forward Day by Day app read aloud the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by their quarterly print magazine Forward Day by Day, a different writer for each month. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

I didn't keep up notes in February or March, but in April I made up for that lapse with two envelopes covered with notes, front and back.

April 2026 - Reflections by Katie NakamaraNakamara is a priest in the Diocese of Alabama.

In some meditations, scripture reminds Nakamara of her involvement with people on the margins of life. Christ's call from the Cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" reminds her of many services she has led for unhoused people, especially memorials for those who died of overdoses and related problems. Her efforts to alleviate pain in that population were never enough. No happy reassurances, here, just that Christ's suffering, too, was not alleviated.

In Acts, Peter and John "look intently" into the face of a lame man at the gate called "Beautiful." They heal him. She recalls a difficult man in the psych ward who was pacified when someone engaged him one-on-one. He got to detox and came back full of gratitude. Nakamara concludes, "Simply seeing God's people as beautiful and worthy is what we're called to do. Miracles... can follow later."

Why are there two angels at Christ's tomb on the day of Resurrection? Nakamara thinks that sharing news is "inherently relational," whether it's good or bad.

Nakamara has a lighter side. She observes that movie heroes never eat on screen. She's right: Mr. Darcy? James Bond? Bruce Wayne? Sherlock Holmes? We don't want our heroes to be too human. But the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24 asks his apostles, "Have you anything to eat?" Awestruck, they watch him chew pan-seared fish. I love that. I imagine the only sound was his contented "Mmm-hmmm."

Like Nakamara, I'm always pained by the drowning of the Egyptians and their horses. A lot of dads, brothers, sons, and animals who have no choice but to pursue the Hebrews go on to perish in the Red Sea. According to Nakamara, the Talmud says that angels did NOT rejoice with the Israelites. Can we, too, hold both gratitude for triumph for "us" AND empathy for "them?"

She is intrigued by the past tense in Col 1.20: "God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things." At this time, as we feel estranged from earth, family, friends, even our own capacity to accept and give, it is a comfort that God already reconciled us. "The question," she asks, "is whether we can believe and trust this enough that we can go and be reconciled to one another, to the earth, and to ourselves?"

Nakamara finds something good in Psalm 119, the most tedious of the Psalms. It's verse 64, "The world is full of your love; instruct me in your statutes." The beginning of discipleship is to slow down to notice this ever-presence of God in all things and people."