When our son Tedd was at Wichita State, he worked for a roofing company in the summer. Next to him most of the time was a 26-year-old from Bangkok,Thailand.
Prasan Powthong was a WSU student too, but one with a degree in mechanical engineering from Bangkok University International. His parents, owners of a banana plantation, sent him to Wichita to learn English, to better serve his country when he came home.
Tedd and Prasan became close friends and decided the young engineer should become a member of our household, which consisted of Dorothy and me, our two daughters and Tedd.
We moved the girls into one room and Prasan took the third one. He quickly became a member of the family.
His English was coming along, but his Thai often returned with a vengeance. For example, once he and Dorothy were on our flat-roofed house with a gallon of bright yellow paint. No one remembers what needed to be painted yellow, but one of them dumped a gallon of it on the roof.
Prasan came down two rungs at a time, shouting all the way in Thai.
Once, we took him fishing with my uncle in Cottonwood Falls. Riding in the bow of the boat, he was unimpressed and wondered why we would waste all that time dragging a tiny lure through the water when there were nets that would catch bigger fish faster. And other methods as well.
“At home,” he said, “we just drop a couple of electric wires in the water and load the fish in the boat.”
One of Prasan’s traits that would have outweighed any problems he might have caused was his cooking.
His mother was a fantastic cook who taught all her recipes to Prasan, who sometimes cooked at home while other family members tended the bananas. Prasan cooked for us while he was with us and later became a chef at a Wichita country club. His specialty was stir fry, made with a Thai hot sauce hotter than any found in Central America.
Prasan couldn’t live without rice, and often visited a Vietnamese family to get a fix. Recently, I was thinking about him, looked him up on the internet and sadly, found his obituary. Wherever he is, I hope they have a good supply of rice and hot sauce.
Contact Ted at tblankenship218@gmail.com.
