Courtney Merrigan

by Dr. Iain Corness

Courtney Merrigan, the man who was a farm boy from Nebraska for his first 17 years, describes himself as a ‘contrarian’; a good word from someone who has made language the platform on which he could base his life. Even his coming to Asia was in some ways prompted by his reading of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, and there could be some parallels drawn between the book’s principal character Larry Darrell who was looking for happiness, and Courtney Merrigan himself.
Courtney (though he uses the contraction “Court”) was born in Montana but shifted to Nebraska as a toddler. His family had been involved on the land for generations, farming and ranching, and he grew up there, near a small town of 14,000 inhabitants.
His 82 year old grandfather still works the ranch, but the gene pool had dried up by the time Court was a young lad. He was expected to work the farm too, but he was not interested, so was consequently given the menial tasks, heightening his non-interest. There was also a non-verbal expectation that he would continue in the family tradition, but the contrarian thought otherwise.
He studied hard at school as he felt that good grades could free him from the farm. “I was motivated to get out of home. I didn’t want to be the 30 year old showing up at local football games.”
Already a wordsmith, he enrolled at university to study journalism but found he hated it from day one! He transferred to a Jesuit college where he studied Philosophy for four years, and avoided evening mass for the same period of time. Part of the reason that philosophy attracted him was its inherently nebulous nature. “The farm had turned me off practical things.” The other reason was an innate ‘need’ to avoid ‘selling out’ to the accepted cultural norm of the day: “The house in the suburbs, the wife and family and the nine to five daily grind.”
As his four year BA course, majoring in Philosophy, came to a close, he noticed a poster on campus for the Japanese English Teaching (JET) program and decided to look into it. Up till that time he had never been overseas and did not even have a passport. However, with his hot off the presses BA and travel documents he found himself flying business class to Japan. “I was 22 years old and felt like I’d won the lottery!”
The JET experience dropped him into the Japanese countryside, where nobody spoke English. This was total immersion for Court. He was the only foreigner and he had to pick up the basics or starve. He more than survived, and after two years decided that he should get some recognized qualifications in Japanese, to add to his BA, so spent the next two years in Tokyo taking a Masters degree in Japanese. As Tokyo is an expensive city, he continued part-time teaching to pay the bills. This was teaching for a yen, rather than a yen for teaching!
Now away from home for four years, or from America at least, he returned to the US. But he didn’t fit too well in Nebraska. Buying a car with the lump sum pension he received from Japan, he drifted around the US, but it was the same story. “I suppose I didn’t try too hard, but I didn’t adjust too well. I guess I wasn’t done going out and about and seeing things. I just wasn’t ready to go back.”
He had experience of Thailand, having spent some holidays here and he had several American friends who were living in the Kingdom. A return to Japan was ruled out as being too expensive a destination. “Japan’s great, but it is too hard to live there.” So with the encouragement from his friends, who had also decamped from Japan, he arrived in Bangkok. “I came over for a year tops, and that was three years ago.”
He had little money, and knew he had to find employment in the three month window that his visa offered, but found that teaching positions were easy to find. The irony of this was not lost on Court. “I got the job I rejected in the States. Wearing a tie and working nine to five.”
Wanting out of Bangkok, he took a teaching position with a technical school in Chonburi and settled into Bang Saen. He settled in more ways than one, meeting a young lady and seven months later he was married. “This was a contributory as to why I’m still here!”
After two years in the technical college he heard about the position coming up at the Marriott Resort and Spa in Pattaya. This was to be the manager of the Self Access Center (SAC), a resource facility in which the Marriott staff can improve their English. Being manager of the SAC has also taken Court into the fields of training and development and PR, and even overseeing the English language in the menus. This is turning out to be much more than a tie and nine to five. He is also fortunate in that the dress for the Marriott features Nehru collars and no tie!
In his spare time he writes short stories and hopes to publish these one day in the future. He also finds he enjoys driving through the countryside. He is discovering an affinity for the soil! The farm boy finally emerging?
If you would like to read some of Court’s short stories, just ‘google’ the name Court Merrigan, and you will get a representative sample. “About Ai” is an insightful piece written by Court about a young Japanese girl finding her own rebellious way within the rigid Japanese family culture. In some ways there are aspects that mirror the thoughts of the contrarian author. Court Merrigan will, however, make it ‘home’, something that Ai never did. All that remains is for Court Merrigan to find where that ‘home’ really is.