Tagged: American Samoa

Pago Pago Postage Stamp 12

Samoan Post Office

The Samoan Islands are smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so pretty much everything but coconuts and bananas have to be shipped in from off-island. So when homesickness kicks in, the...

Monopoly Home History 8

No Place Like Home

When people ask me where I’m from, I never quite know what to say. I was born in St. Louis but I grew up in Illinois. I went to high school and college in...

U-Haul Ship 5

The Auction

When moving to the South Pacific, you can’t just load up a U-Haul truck and drive there. Everything’s got to go by plane or by boat. This gets expensive, so you have to learn...

UHT Milk 4

The Greatest Breakfast of My Life

The greatest breakfast of my life was at a Holiday Inn near Midway Airport in Chicago. It was a continental breakfast buffet, and it wasn’t the food that was so great. It was the...

No Street Names 4

Samoa Stories: Where the Streets Have No Names

In American Samoa, the streets have no names. Not officially, anyway. Sometimes people refer to “the main road”, which crosses the island, or “the airport road”, which leads to the airport. Sometimes roads are...

Samoan Eagle 2

Samoa Stories: Queen Mary 2

There wasn’t always a whole lot to do in American Samoa, so I found my entertainment where I could. One of my favorite things was trolling cruise ship passengers, like the time I went...

Fatumafuti Rock from beach 2

Samoa Stories: Palagi Beach

The sun was beating down on me as I rode in the bed of a pickup truck. The air was as hot and muggy as usual. I was wishing I had brought a lava-lava...

Centipede Spider 5

Samoa Stories: The Centipede

It was Saturday night in Lion’s Park. There was a party going on, and all of the palagis were in attendance. There weren’t that many mainlanders on-island, so we all tended to stick together....