America's Big Weekend: Tanks roll on D.C. streets, Marines protect L.A. from old hippies carrying signs

Top part of an image posted by an old friend from L.A. I told the friend I wouldn't use his/her/their name due to the fact that it's not a great idea to name names right now. If U.S. Senators can get arrested and  cuffed for asking questions of Fuhrerin K. Noem, than none of us are safe. My name is on this blog and has been floating in Cyberspace for 20 years. I cropped this to remove the bottom part of the poster because it was more inflammatory than necessary, or so says the editor. Something about betrayal, what some of us are feeling as Trump sends Marines to L.A. to shoot protesters. He is holding his grand birthday parade in D.C. tomorrow. Wonder how close it will pass to the Vietnam War Memorial just off Constitution Avenue, or the World War II Memorial at the far end of the Reflecting Pool? Will you be able to see those monuments from the tanks clanking down the pavement? I need to mention the name JOLEA on the image. Anyone know who that is, an artist or maybe an organization's acronym?

"All the President's Men" meant one thing in the 1970s and an absurdly different one in 2025

I watched "All the President's Men" on TCM Monday night, and not for the first time. A fantastic political thriller in which the good guys win.

In 2025 Trumplandia, "All the President's Men" seems, well, how do I say this? Quaint? Outdated? Just more Boomer nostalgia?

Yet, the GOP's 1970s illegal activities against the Democrats were both real and disgusting. 

But when compared with Trump's 2025 crimes against America, well, the old depredation looks mild.

Nixon and pals took great pains to cover up their misdeeds. All the lying tied them in knots of denial. They couldn't keep it quiet because real journalists from real newspapers and networks kept doing their jobs. And elected Democrats AND especially Republicans remembered their oaths of office.

The difference with Trump and his MAGA minions? They tell us their misdeeds and do them openly. Trump and Musk brag about them. Their backers spent millions outlining their plans in Project 2025. It was all there for us to read. Journalists were not around to awaken the slumbering multitudes. The New York Times could not do it alone. The Washington Post was a lost cause. Metropolitan dailies had been run into the ground by hedge fund babies. And the GOP was not in thrall to "Fearless Leader."

I was a young man of 21 when the Watergate break-in happened. That November was the first time I voted in national elections at a little church on Boston's Beacon Hill. I voted for McGovern as did many in Massachusetts that day. 

Fat lot of good it did us. Draft-age men were turning out to vote for The Peace Candidate in the hopes that this rural Dem from the West would stop feeding us into the Vietnam meat-grinder. It was odd that this heroic World War 2 veteran would be the peacenik on the ticket but that was the case. Nixon served but he wasn't piloting a B-24 bomber dodging flak and Messerschmitts over Germany. In ATPM, the 1972 elections play out in the background on TV screens.  During that campaign, Nixon worked behind the scenes to manipulate the Paris Peace Talks. His skullduggery extended the war.

But Nixon and his henchmen came tumbling down, thanks to media and the actions of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This didn't cause us to run for Congress but it did cause many of us to go into journalism. Up-and-coming Woodwards and Bernsteins were everywhere. 

I was an English major during my years at UF but I did take a journalism course and worked for UF Information Services and The Independent Florida Alligator student paper. We knew that the truth could bring down warmongers and slimy political operatives

But America is a big place and soon we learned that the whims of the populace are unpredictable. And here we are now. Old, disabled, and stunned. That describes me. 

But Americans are waking up and speaking out. We donated to Josh Weil, the Democrat running for the House in Florida District 6, a post held previously by a Trump flunky. We donated to the Democratic Party's campaign to stymie Trump's Project 2025 rampage. 

I will not shop on Amazon on Feb. 28 because of Bezos's collaboration with Trump (damn I've spent a lot of money on Amazon). Other businesses are being boycotted for the day. Money is what MAGA understands so hit 'em where it hurts.

Remembering Paul Fussell’s great book on the Not-So-Great European War of 1914-1918

I subscribe to the New York Times Online. Because I now live in East Coast Florida, I could also have the print copy delivered. But I already get the Daytona Beach News-Journal delivered before dawn (usually) in a plastic bag at the end of my garage. I fetch it in my e-scooter, braving whatever elements might exist including niceness, wind, humidity, and – occasionally – rain. I pick up the paper with my handy grabber and roll back to the house. I read local news, the sports page, some national coverage. I read obits, especially on Sunday when there are pages of them.

But the NYT has the writers and global coverage that I need, now especially, as we try to survive assaults on reality by Trump, Musk, and their GOP bullies. Also, arts reviews, especially of new and some old books. A few months ago, I read about John Dufresne’s new novel, “My Darling Boy.”  It sounded so good and personally relevant that I bought the e-book on Kindle (and wrote my own review here). I read a Style-section article last June by Alyson Krueger about Miranda July and her “rethinking of marriage and family life.” It also took me to a review of her book. I bought and read it and indeed it is a more-than-spicy take on monogamy. I didn’t post a review on my blog but I did come across a finished piece in my blog files which I was too skittish to post.

This morning I read a Feb. 13 “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Dwight Garner about the 50^th anniversary of Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I read the book 40-some years ago and discovered the dirty truth about The Great War of 1914-1918. Fussell explored the war I the trenches through the eyes of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, two combatant-writers who wrote the truth about their war. Garner writes that it changed his view about how nonfiction should be written. It allowed me to find those voices that I barely knew. In high school, the only poem of the era I remember is “Rouge Bouquet” by Joyce Kilmer, poet best known for “Trees.” Kilmer died in combat and is remembered for his formal rhymes and is considered as one of the last poets of the Romantic era. He was swept away by the honesty and rage in works by Sassoon and Owen and other poets of the so-called Lost Generation.

Garner urges readers to return to Fussell’s book to find the real story of this war that is no longer a living memory but lives on in the work of so many powerful writers. My grandfather was a cavalry officer in France and my grandmother a nurse with Maryland 42^nd Field Hospital. The dismounted cavalry officer spent a limited time in the trenches and my grandmother repaired the wounds of tr5ench warfare. Neither recalled for us war’s horror. Neither did my World War 2 vet father, who saw action in France, Belgium, and Germany. They left that up to their children and grandchildren in wars-to-come. Those wars have given us great literature and have very little to do with stopping the slaughter.

For me, I have written two novels about the aftermath of the Great War in the U.S., mainly Colorado. I am publishing them myself. I know nothing of war except what I read and see in movies and what I conjure in my imagination. Draftees of Vietnam have done their best to tell it like it is. We read about the senseless slaughter of what Robert Stone called “a mistake 10,000 miles long.” Maybe we learn and maybe we don’t. But books such as Fussell’s can give us glimpses into humankind’s dirtiest business.

Breaking: Daytona Evening News 08/16/1972: All heck breaks out in Miami

Reading the Daytona Beach Evening News: City Final. Price 10 cents.

Some interesting headlines:

Youthful and Elderly Protesters Join in ‘Gripes’ on Nixon Policies

After Haggling Aplenty, Campsite Finally Slated to Open Thursday

Askew Orders 15 Pct. Increase in Welfare

Argentine Leftists Stage Wild Jailbreak-Hijacking

Speaking of Hijacks…Airlines Find Subject Less Than Amusing

Display ad placed by a consortium of local banks in bottom left corner has an illustration of a man reclining in an easy chair in front of a TV set. He is smoking a cigar and holding a highball. The text: 

Pro and college football, the World Series, coming up. This little guy has it made. How about you? We’ll finance your color TV. Fact is, we’ll finance the adjustable lounge chair. You finance the cool drink. Have a nice day – have a colorful fall.

Dateline: August 16, 1972

It’s going to be hot and sticky with a high temp of 88 and humidity at 82. Ocean temp: 78.

Welcome to Daytona Beach 53 years ago.

The newspaper is yellowed but you can still see the track marks on the margins from the printing press. It’s a big broadsheet, a size you no longer see. Newspapers have downsized and disappeared.

I was 21 and hitching across America with my girlfriend. We were in Utah or Colorado – I didn’t keep a journal then so I can’t be sure. Wherever I was, I probably wasn’t reading the morning or evening papers. I was reading “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck who wrote it to reconnect with America. “I did not know my own country,” he wrote.  I was aware that Republicans were conventioneering in Miami and there were protests going on. I didn’t know that Vietnam Veterans Against the War members were there and we would be hearing more from them later. I didn’t know that a gonzo reporter named Hunter S. Thompson was covering the fracas and would be famous for his “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”

As were so many others, I was out there looking for America. I found it too. It was wonderful and exciting. My favorite summer. I had no clue who Ron Kovic was and what he was experiencing in his heart and on the streets of Miami. I didn’t yet know the name of Scott Camil and the Gainesville Eight were not yet named the Gainesville Eight. I thought I knew a lot but I knew nothing but how much fun it was to be 21 and traveling with a beautiful woman and free of the Selective Service Draft. We met and partied with other young people on the road. It was glorious.

I did read part of this morning’s Daytona Beach News-Journal. I skipped the headlines because I didn’t want to see them. Yes, it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a day which I used to spend marching for Martin. It also is another day that I am ignoring. I would rather read above the cute Welsh Corgi named Taco that Palm Coast police take along as a therapy dog. Nice photo – one lovable dog. I did look at the weather. It’s going to be cold, folks, surprisingly cold for Florida. I looked up at my big TV. It’s a nice one, Roku HD4. I am not turning it on today. Not protesting in any park but I’ve done that many times. We put on some fine Inauguration Day protests in 2017 and 2018. More than 1,000 people came to our Jan. 21, 2017, Wyoming Women’s March protest in tiny Cheyenne, Wyoming. People I knew from Laramie and Casper and Fort Collins were there. I made my famous almost-salt-free chili for the post-protest feed. We plugged in so many crockpots at the Cheyenne Historic Depot that the power went out. Despite the downer reason for the protest, a fine time was had by all. Local TV and newspaper covered the event. Lots of photos on our cellphone cameras. I will share one with you if I can find it in my photo cache.

I’m returning to my newspaper. In 1972, Volusia County had six A&P stores and now there are none. In 1972, I could buy a loaf of white bread for 22 cents and a pound of coffee for 69 cents. A pack of frozen waffles was 10 cents and a big box of Sugar Frosted Flakes sold for 55 cents (Everyday Low Price!). No prices are listed for eggs but they were cheap, I know that, maybe as cheap as they’re going to be starting today. I can’t wait.

P.S.: You might wonder why I was reading a 1972 newspaper. It was included in a packet of stuff sent to me by my sister who is downsizing and cleaning decades of storage from her house. She knows I’m a history buff who writes about arcane stuff.

Malcolm Fraser flies with the angels at Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens

What makes a 49-year-old artist abandon his paints and go to war?

That’s the question I pondered when visiting the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens.

Malcolm Fraser was a Canada-born professional painter and illustrator who had graduated from the Sorbonne and attended Heidelberg University. In 1917, he left the U.S., steamed to Europe, and joined, after some intense training, the French “Blue Devils” unit at the Front. He was wounded five times and received France’s Croix de Guerre for his heroics. Later, he joined the A.E.F., was promoted to captain, and served with the American Red Cross on the front lines.

Fraser ended up spending most of his time in Ormond Beach. Toward the end of his life, he looked for a place to feature his artwork and one that was dedicated to veterans. A $10,000 endowment by Fraser in 1946 got the ball rolling and led to this impressive place.

Its priorities are clear when you leave handicapped parking and roll through the jungle. As Credence sang:

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Whoa, don’t look back and see.

I roll on my electric scooter and Chris walks. A beautiful space, and peaceful. I can barely hear the traffic zooming by on one of Ormond's busiest intersections. We enter the sheltered labyrinth and follow the lines on its painted multicolored surface decorated with butterflies and hummingbirds. It was designed by by Joan Baliker and the late Carol Bertrand and refreshed by Mack Sutton (artists must be named). This one is within a big gazebo and is a great play place for kids. I think about the outdoor stone labyrinth at my hometown Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, now covered with snow. 

Along the walkway is a monument by Mark Chew to veterans of the Korean War. Its streamlined silver surface reaches for the trees and beyond. It's the shape of a flame but cold as the Chosin Reservoir. Around the next turn is a bronze for Vietnam veterans by Gregory Johnson. On what looks like an old kitchen chair sits a helmet and canteen. Dog tags and a uniform shirt hang from the chair back. Its legs straddle beat-up combat boots.

I linger. This was my generation’s war, not mine physically, but it's lodged in the memories of any guy of draft age from that time (December 1968 passed Draft physical Jacksonville FL, high school deferment; December 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery #128; Navy ROTC midshipman 1969-71; two months served on USS John F. Kennedy as midshipman, summer 1970; released from the Draft on Jan. 1, 1972). I once read this about those times: "Vietnam sucked the soul out of an entire generation."

Memories remain. 

Johnson's statue is homey, I think, the things a grunt might leave behind when he changes into civvies. Or it could be a family's reminders of a GI whose psyche never made it back home. Think of war stories: Krebs in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” or Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Billy Lynn in Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (whatever happened to Ang Lee’s 2016 movie based on the book?).

We emerge from the jungle and its memories. The sun shines on a colorful "Can Do" sculpture by the late Seward Johnson, part of the public art display on Grenada by the Ormond Beach Arts District. Also on the ground is the "Embracing Peace" sculpture celebrating the famous Times Square kiss on VJ Day. Inside the museum, a bronze plaque lists more than 200 residents who served in WW2 (updated in 1999 to list African-American veterans) and one dedicated to WW1 veterans. A WW1 Doughboy helmet rests in a glass case by Malcolm Fraser’s photo and bio that greet visitors. This is a decorated soldier, and we are here to see his artwork.

(To be continued)

To the barricades – patiently, part one

Antiwar protests on college campuses are in the news and it’s no longer 1970. In the spring of 2024, young people are objecting to Israel’s handling of the war and the ensuing mass casualties. They also are upset that their universities may be funding Israel’s excesses through investments and other business ties. There are also protests by those who support Israel objecting to a 19-year-old getting involved in politics and saying bad things about Israel. It’s as ridiculous to say that criticism of Israel is antisemitic as its is if you decry Hamas you are Islamophobic.

You don’t have to know every single thing about this war to go out on the streets and check it out. Young people gather for events all of the time. It’s exciting. Their friends are there. The police look amazing in their U.S. Army castoff riot gear and their giant riot trucks once used to quell disturbances in Fallujah. That’s a lot of adrenaline surging through demonstrators’ bodies and things happen. Still, most protestors have been peaceful. I cannot say the same thing about NYC and Boston cops.  

I am a Baby Boomer who saw his first antiwar protest in the spring of 1970. I was a ROTC midshipman and I went to the demo instead of the annual Navy Ball. My dorm friends were going outfitted with gas masks and scarves to take the sting out of tear gas and pepper gas. I went with them to campus where all the action was going to be. Tear gas flew and the S.C. state cops rushed the demonstrators applying their batons to longhair’s heads.

We fled into the dorm complex and ended up in a restroom being used as a first aid station. Men and women were jammed in and those with even a tiny bit of first aid experience helped administer to those with cracked skulls, eyes blinded by gas, and asthmatics struggling to breathe. One guy had been a medic in Vietnam this time the year before. Others like me had been Boy Scouts and knew enough first aid to patch broken scalps.

An ambulance arrived outside and I was drafted (Hah – drafted) to pick up the wounded in makeshift stretchers and carry them outside. One was my buddy Pat who’d sliced off the top of his index finger when picking up a broken bottle to throw at the cops. Yes, there were young people on this night of nonviolent protest who threw broken bottles at cops and picked up tear gas canisters and threw them back.

We were demonstrators once, and young.

End of part one

"All Quiet on the Western Front" not the remake we expected

Some negative reviews have come in for Netflix's remake of  "All Quiet on the Western Front." They all say the same thing, that the movie is not loyal to the book. That's true -- it leaves out some crucial scenes and adds scenes between the German and French armistice-seekers on the war's closing days. Also, the ending. The famous butterfly ending of the 1930 movie vs. this version which takes its time settling Paul Baumer's life and the armistice. He dies and the camera lingers on his young face, so young and so dead. 

I read Erich Marie Remarque's novel in the sixth grade. It wasn't a class assignment. My father had a massive library and I had a library card as soon as I could walk. Dad's World War II collection was a doozy. "Guadalcanal Diary," Ernie Pyle's "Brave Men," Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe cartoons, "They Were Expendable," "PT109." He was a WWII veteran, an infantry radioman in France, Belgium, and Germany. He also had World War 1 books, probably because his mother and father both served in that war. I was entranced by the pilots of those rickety old airplanes. I was obsessed with the Lafayette Escadrille and the "The Red Baron" Richthofen's aerial battles. I read all Nordhoff and Hall books, as  both had been pilots in The Great War. I also read their Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy. Even now, I equate their "The Falcons of France" with "Mutiny on the Bounty." Adventure books. Boys' books. They made me yearn to be a fighter pilot and Fletcher Christian. Only in my imagination.

I was a kid and really had no idea what I was reading about any war. As bodies piled up in books, I viewed that as part of the adventure. My viewpoint has changed over the decades. I never went to war, the one of my generation in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. I was 18 when I graduated high school in 1969. I never served in the military although I was in the Navy ROTC program for 18 months. I felt guilty about my lack of service for a long time, especially in the 1980s when Reagan told us we had licked the Vietnam Syndrome. I had Viet Vet friends. I had peacenik friends. I read a lot of books about Vietnam. There always some nagging sense that I had missed out on something. How odd that seems now. 

I reread "All Quiet" prior to watching the Netflix movie. I also rewatched the 1930 movie, released just a year after talkies appeared. The book and the movie both cover Paul's recruitment and his leave when he confronts those who were so eager to send him to war. They are at the heart of the book. Paul was subject to "the old lie" in Wilfred Owens' poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est." After recounting the deadly effects of a gas attack, Owen ends his poem with this:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.

That sentiment appears in the new "All Quiet on the Western Front." It just doesn't get the starring role I expected.  

What comes next after the Jan. 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol?

We witnessed a coup attempt Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Trump and his goons incited other goons to storm the Capitol and disrupt the approval of electoral college votes. They ended up trashing the place and killing a policeman. The mayhem delayed the counting of the votes until 3 in the morning on Jan. 7.

My daughter watched some of that day's CNN reports with me. She asked questions and I had no answers. 

She left for school and my mind wandered. I had attended two Vietnam War protests in D.C., in 1970 and 1971. D.C. Police were everywhere. At the May Day 1971 protests, promoted as "Days of Rage," President Nixon called in the National Guard and 82nd Airborne. Helicopters filled the air. Buses were lined up in a cordon around the White House. Federal drug enforcement undercover cops tried to blend in with the crowd, ready to bust pot smokers but there were too many of us so they just studied the freaks and took detailed notes.

These were the preparations for a bunch of longhairs. We were angry but unarmed. Would some have rushed the White House or Capitol and trashed those places? Maybe. They were angry about Vietnam. But were we prepared to interfere with a lawful election? Hell no. Many young men were angry when Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972. We knew that it meant more Vietnam and a continuation, possibly forever, of the military draft. Most of us were there for peaceful protest.

Some Days of Rage protesters disrupted traffic and blocked the employee entrance to the U.S. Justice Department and engaged in various other acts of civil disobedience.

The police and military were more than ready for them. May 3 ended up being the biggest arrest cache ever in D.C. The jails overflowed and officials had to corral the longhairs at RFK Stadium (football season was long over). 

Where were these duly-appointed guardians of our democratic republic on Jan. 6, 2021? Nowhere to be seen. Until later in the day, after the worst was over.

This was an inside job and just the beginning of an old-fashioned coup. Are we ready for the next attack that may come on Jan. 17 or possibly Inauguration Day? 

We better be.

Part V: The Way Mike Worked -- Serving Fish 'n' Chips in Shrimp 'n' Grits Country

We called her Mom. She insisted. Never found out her real name. Her husband Tally called her "dear" or "hon" in the Southern way. She was younger than Tally by a decade or so, or so she seemed. Tally walked a limp that we thought came from the war, World War II, the one that all of our father's fought in. He said it came from a gunshot, a disagreement among bootleggers during Prohibition. We had no reason not to believe him.

We met at Long John Silver's Fish and Chips across from the University of South Carolina campus. Mom was the manager. She had replaced our first manager who had been skimming a bit off the top of the nightly deposit. One day he was our boss. And then he was gone.

In October of 1970, I was one of a half-dozen employees, mostly students, at this fast-food restaurant named for the fictional pirate in "Treasure Island." Color scheme was the brown of "a dead man's chest" and the gold of new doubloons. Everything was fried in vats of hot grease that was a shimmering gold when new and a dark brown when old and ready to be refreshed but it was almost quitting time and the day crew could do it. All of us wore grease-spatter splotches on our arms. Meals were served in cardboard replicas of a chest of gold. Sides were fries and hush puppies. Condiments were tartar sauce and malt vinegar that the Brits allegedly used on the fish and chips they bought at street corner vendors in London. My co-workers and I tried to cook up extra food at the end of the night so we could carry some home for late-night greasyspoon snacks.

Fish-and-chips were a new concept in the South. Some customers ordered and then wondered why they got fries instead of chips. We had to explain that in England, fries were called chips. The potatoes were a bit chunkier over there, not flat or curved or crispy, but they still were called chips.

After avoiding work and most of my classes my freshman year, I decided that I needed a job. I had premonitions of bad juju to come. I could read the tea leaves that we used in our sweet tea. I could divine the stars. I also could read the grade reports sent home by the university. I was on probation after a lackluster freshman year. I swore to the Navy ROTC unit's marine major that I was going to do better, really I was. He looked at my grades and the report of my lackluster performance on my first-year summer cruise. I had sailed to Guantanamo Bay and back on the USS John F. Kennedy. I had neglected my duties.

I did, however, distinguish myself during a 1970 Fourth of July weekend leave in D.C. when my BFF Pat and I rescued his younger sisters and grandmother from a stampeding crowd at the Honor America Day Concert at the Washington Monument. The riot wasn't a reaction to another sappy tune by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or another joke by Bob Hope. But a cloud of tear gas launched to disperse the Yippie-sponsored smoke-in at the monument. Pat's and my quick action didn't save any lives but we were proud of it nonetheless. Too bad that didn't show up in my midshipman record. I might have received a medal. "For valor in rescuing civilians threatened by a cloud of tear gas fired on pot-smoking hippies." Something like that. Later, Pat and I and his older brother Mike smoked a joint and talked about what a weird night it was.

When I returned to Norfolk, just before our ship sailed to Cuba, I called my girlfriend and she broke up with me.

I was looking for a new girlfriend when I returned to campus in the fall. I had a crush on one of my fish-and-chips coworkers. Kaley was pretty, blonde and had a wicked sense of humor. She also had a boyfriend, a Vietnam vet named Tim whose hair got longer and shaggier every time he came to pick Kaley up from work. The duo invited me to a party one night. I hung around Kaley and Tim as I didn't know anyone and my short haircut fueled my paranoia and everyone else's, or so it seemed. Tim broke out a syringe and prepared it, junkie-style. He shot up Kaley and then held up the syringe for me. I was almost stoned enough to say yes. But I didn't. Tim proceeded to minister to himself. They were soon in la-la land and didn't notice as I slipped out of the house and walked several miles back to my dorm.

The U.S. Navy revoked my scholarship in January and I was on my own. I could finally grow my hair and major in English. I kept working at Long John Silver's. When spring sprang, Mom and Tally asked me to come to their house and mow the lawn. Mom would feed me lunch. I agreed. It was the first of many trips to their house. By summer, the mowing of the lawn was an ordeal, with sweat streaming off of me and me pining for AC and a cold drink. One afternoon, stunned by Carolina heat, I went into the house. Heading for the bathroom, I opened the wrong door into a bedroom. It had a single bed, a shelf with photos and football trophies. The photos showed a young man in football uniform, in graduation gown, in army uniform.

"Our son Tom." Startled, I turned to see Mom in the doorway. She wore a sad face, unusual for her. She walked in and stood next to me. She picked up the photo of her son in uniform. "Missing in action. Vietnam. We kept his room ready for him but he hasn't come back. Three years now. Our only child." She replaced the photo. "Lunch is ready." She walked out and I followed. Mom and Tally were the same talkative duo they always were. Now that I am an old man, I recognize the relentless nature of sorrow. Sometimes, small talk over lemonade and sandwiches with tomatoes fresh from the garden are the only things for it.

A few weeks later, a traveling circus troupe came to town with a batch of purple haze fresh from the octopus's garden. We had a wonderful time. The circus people left town but I found my jacked-up self in the campus cafeteria babbling over breakfast to a group of exchange students from Hong Kong. They were very polite. And then I was at the university infirmary, knocked down by thorazine.

At the end of USC's summer session, I ended my college career and quit my job as a fish-and-chips wrangler. I left town. My plan was to live at my parents' house and surf until I got drafted.

Part IV: The Way Mike Worked -- This job stinks!

"This job stinks," I complained to Ronnie.

He looked at me over a pile of dirty laundry. Smoke from a Marlboro wreathed his face. He removed the cigarette and exhaled a big cloud. "Do what I do."

I stared. I was dense. "What?"

He unrolled the pack of cigs from his T-shirt sleeve and popped one out. He walked over to me, stuck the cigarette in my mouth and lit it with his Zippo. "Inhale," he said.

I inhaled. I'd smoked a few cigarettes before, usually late at night at a beer bash when anything seemed like a good idea: smoking cigarettes, skinny dipping in a gator pond, driving on sidewalks. In the summer of '69, I was a latecomer to nicotine. My parents smoked, as did most of their friends. Some of my buddies smoked. But I was a jock in high school and coach commanded that we not smoke. I wanted to do what coach said. 

"Watch me," Ronnie said in his Tennessee drawl. He gripped the end of the rolling container with its mound of laundry. You could almost see the fumes coming from the sheets and towels accumulated in 24 hours at the nursing home. "Let the smoke drift up into your nose -- that knocks out the smell." He pushed his cart out the laundry room doors and down the corridor, smoke trailing behind him. I followed with my load. Smoke rose from my mouth to my nose to my eyes. Within seconds, my eyes watered. I kept close to Ronnie, lest I run over one of the dazed oldsters wandering the halls. I was getting it -- the smoke blocked the smell. It also burned my nose and eyes, but it was a small price to pay for not smelling the smells of incontinent old people. I was 18, Ronnie my elder at 25. We were usually not burdened with inconvenient odors unless we let loose with a fart as we drove to our appointed rounds for the Acme Laundry (not its real name) of Holly Hill, Florida. But that was different. We were not old.

When we finally wheeled our loads up a ramp into the step van, our smokes were burned down to nubs. We tossed the butts on the ground as we returned to the truck cab. My eyes still watered as we continued on our rounds. Ronnie was already on another smoke. "See how easy?" he said. 

I just nodded.

I became Ronnie's assistant one hot Florida July afternoon. I worked in the laundry, loading washers and dryers with towels and sheets from old folks homes, beachside motels, and other businesses. I had left my job as bagboy at the Pantry Pride grocery store because I needed to make more money for my upcoming college expenses. The laundry doubled my salary. The work was tougher and sweatier than hauling housewives' groceries out to their station wagons. I hated the laundry, doubted I could make it to the end of August. One day, after Ronnie delivered a load to us peasants chained to our machines, he came over and introduced himself. He was a big guy with Elvis-style hair and tattoos. He looked like something out of 1955 instead of 1969. I probably did too, with my Howdy Doody face and short haircut. 

"My helper just quit," he said. "Want the job?"

"When do I start?"

"Tomorrow at 6."

"Six in the morning?"

He laughed. "See you then."

What a reprieve! Riding with Ronnie started an hour earlier but I didn't care. We hit the mainland businesses first as the laundry only started piling up in the late morning at the beach motels as the housekeeping staff worked their way through the rooms. Sometimes Ronnie picked me up in his muscle car as I had sold my own car as it was a POS after three years of hard use. We knocked off at 3 just as the world really heated up or burst into an afternoon thunderstorm. 

Ronnie just got out of the Navy the year before. He served a stint on a ship off of Vietnam and had accumulated some tattoos and a dose of the clap in the Philippines. He got a kick out of the fact that I was off to be a Navy ROTC student, someone who one day might be an officer giving orders to the likes of swabs like him. For now, he was the one giving orders. "You ain't no officer yet," he'd say if he caught me loafing. "Yes sir," I'd say. His response: "I ain't no sir -- I work for a living. That's what my chief used to say."

I think about my 18-year-old self. I was excited and scared to be off to college. I was sad to leave my girlfriend behind -- she was attending a school 300 miles from me. I loved her and I said so and she loved me, or so she said. What did we know? Our family home burned down that summer but all 11 of us survived. We lived in a small place while waiting to rebuild. Problem was, all the clothes I'd collected for college burnt up in the fire or were impregnated with smoke. Early in the summer my surfboard had been stolen and, for the first time in four years, I felt left out of the beach scene. 

About a week before I quit the laundry, Ronnie took me to his trailer for lunch. He wanted me to meet somebody. We got out of the step van and walked to the door. A woman answered. Ronnie introduced us.. 

"Hello ma'am," I said. 

The woman wore long gray hair pulled back in a braid, a pleasant face etched with tiny lines around the mouth and eyes. "Don't call me ma'am -- I'm Shirley."

"OK, Shirley." 

Ronnie planted a kiss on her lips and I suddenly realized this was his wife. I'd called her ma'am because I thought she was his mother. I was surprised and a bit embarrassed for me and for Ronnie. Shirley served us tomato and mayo sandwiches and lemonade. She as nice and had a good sense of humor. She wasn't really that old, maybe in her late 30s or 40s. Old enough to be my mother but not Ronnie's. As we ate at the trailer's tiny table, she asked about me, what I liked to do, my plans for the fall. 

"You got a girl?" She smiled.

"Yes ma'am..."

"Shirley."

"Shirley, I have a girlfriend."

"She's pretty, too," Ronnie said as he chewed. "Drives a Firebird."

"It's her dad's," I said.

"Your girl going to the same college?"

"No. We plan to see each other for football games, and during school breaks.,"

"That's good, hon," she said. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  She explained that she and Ronnie met at a Daytona bar after she left Georgia after a bad divorce.They hit it off and married after a few weeks. "Newlyweds," she said.

Earlier I had caught a glimpse of an unmade bed at the far end of the trailer. I imagined the two of them in that bed. I didn't want to but I couldn't help it. The trailer began to close in around me and I was relieved when Ronnie said it was time to get back to work. We said our farewells and that was the last time I saw Shirley. 

As we returned to our route, Ronnie, as if divining my thoughts, said, "She makes me happy." 

I just nodded. He drove the rest of the way in silence.

On my last day at work, Ronnie and I sat in the step van in a motel lot watching the waves break. A half-dozen surfers bobbed in the line-up.

"Those good waves?" he asked.

"Pretty good."

"We could have brought your surfboard with us on some of our runs. You could have done some surfing."

I told him that my board had been stolen. 

He nodded. Handed me his Zippo. On its side was a U.S. Navy emblem. "Going-away present."

"Thanks," I said. "I may try to give up smoking."

"No matter. You can light some of your marijuana cigarettes with it."

I laughed. "They're called joints, Ronnie."

"No matter. All you kids smoke it. My shipmates did. A lot of the guys in Vietnam. I tried it a few times. Just made me tired. I'll stick with beer and whiskey."

I thanked him again.That afternoon, I said my farewells to Ronnie and the laundry. My girlfriend picked me up. A week ;later, we said our own forlorn farewells during a last walk on the beach. 

Somewhere along the line, I lost the lighter and I lost my way. Shall I pin the blame on marijuana cigarettes? It's more complicated than that. 

Blogger's Note: I changed the names of the characters in this piece and the name of the laundry. I had to reconstruct the dialogue because it was 49 years ago and I wasn't taking notes. Most of the rest of the story is true. 

Another blogger's note: The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall season with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored by Wyoming Humanities, the exhibit "engages viewers with a history of work." It opens Sept. 22 and runs through Nov. 13. Grand opening is a "Hands-on History Expo" on Sept. 28 where you can "dial a rotary phone, draw water with a hand pump, enjoy old-fashioned refreshments (make your own ice cream!) and much more." You can see antique tractors, a wheat-washing machine and an old-fashioned library card catalog. I viewed the exhibit-in-progress yesterday. Great display of tools used to mine, log, and build railroads and dwellings in the West. I finally understood the difference between a dugout and a sod house or "soddie." One thing I know -- I would have gone stark-raving mad living in either one. 

It's "Heart of Darkness" all over again as U.S. war in Africa heats up

From CNN Online on Oct. 23:

Americans should anticipate more military operations in Africa as the war on terrorism continues to morph, Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Friday.

"This war is getting hot in places that it's been cool, and we've got to go where the enemy takes us," Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.

We are embarked on another military spree. It's best to bone up on the literature of Africa, lest we make the same ignorant mistakes we made in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Dakota Territory, and so on.

My first thought was "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. While a tad racist, it’s a magnificent cautionary tale for overseas adventurers with a terminal case of hubris. You know, Marlow and Kurtz, Willard and Kurtz. Francis Ford Coppola used the 1899 novel (and Michael Herr’s nonfiction “Dispatches”) as a blueprint for “Apocalypse Now.”

Four American Special Forces troops were killed in an ambush in Niger two weeks ago. Most of us didn’t know that the U.S. had troops in Niger. We had to look up the country on a map and practice our spelling and pronunciation of the country so as not to sound as stupid as Trump. It’s not Nigeria. Nijz-AIR, is as close as I can get. It’s near Chad and is poorer than that country, which is saying something. According to the Africa Guide, two-thirds of the country is desert and the northeastern part of the country is "mostly uninhabitable." Most Nigeriens live in the southern third of the country described as "savannah." That is where the U.S. has a base and where our troops were killed. 

We've got to go where the enemy takes us. 

Any Vietnam War novel should be instructive as Africa’s cold war gets hot. “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene is a good primer as it was written way back in 1955, long before our misadventure in French Indochina heated up in the 1960s. While Ken Burns PBS Vietnam War series has its flaws, special screenings should be held for Sen. Graham, President “My heel hurts and I can’t go to Vietnam” Trump, Mr. Tillerson, Gen, Mattis, and any other member of this passel of fools who hasn’t seen it. The PBS does an excellent job of following our descent into madness or, if you prefer, our own very special heart of darkness. Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History” is also an excellent historical account of the war.

Novels and poetry may be the best route into understanding how quagmires happen, and what the effects are on countries.

But Vietnam isn’t the only useful example. I have been researching World War I as background for a novel I am writing about the post-war years of 1919-1920 in my home state of Colorado. In the summer of 1914, the entire world lost its mind. Except for the U.S. – we waited until spring of 1917 to do so. A few nights ago, I watched most of the 1971 Brit film “Nicholas and Alexandra.” Nicky thought that dashing off vaguely friendly letters to his wife’s German relatives would keep Russia out of the war. Not only did Russia suffer millions of casualties, but the czar’s repressive policies fed right into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Decades of terror followed. And then the Soviets suffered their own Vietnam in Afghanistan. I have yet a read a novel about this war – I’m sure there are some good ones. We have our own novels coming out of the Afghan misadventures. It doesn’t end.

The best novel I’ve read to come out of the American Wars of the New Millennium is “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain. The juxtaposition of Billy Lynn’s shattered soul with the spectacle of the NFL Super Bowl took my breath away. It seems especially relevant now as we watch African-American players take a knee to bring attention to injustices wrought on the streets of the USA. And the critics say “Don’t mix politics with football.” Too late. America is all about these things: war and football and prejudice and spectacle and greed and cheerleaders in skimpy outfits.

I am woefully lacking in reading books by the writers of Africa. This is not a surprise, as English majors are woefully lacking in books outside those written in native English. I have read novels set in Africa by U.S. and British writers. Time to read a novel by an African author. A dedicated Ghanaian/American reader/blogger Darkowaa hosts a blog called African Book Addict! Go to her reading list at https://africanbookaddict.com/to-read-list/ It would help if you also read French, German, or a selection of African dialects. 

We've been in Africa before. "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden shows what happens when a country's military ventures into a place such as Mogadishu that it doesn't understand. The Horn of Africa can be a dangerous place. The U.S., once had military and naval bases in Ethiopia. Until it didn't. The Soviets moved in and Haile Salassie was a dead man. 

Maybe that’s the lesson of all of these works of art about wars past. It never ends. Humankind keeps making the same mistakes. We never learn.

We can keep reading. We will always have that. I hope we will.

A Baby Boomer boyhood was designed to prepare us for the USA's next war

In a July 26 post, I responded to President Trump's disturbing speech to the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.

There was a riotous Facebook debate about Trump's speech. Comments flew fast and furious. Someone brought up the fact that the Boy Scouts of America was a military style organization. Others objected, saying that the Boy Scouts have nothing to do with the military. It was pointed out that Eagle Scouts recruited into the military get a boost of two rating levels over non-Eagle Scouts. That means a lot, especially when you first join up and need all the bucks you can get.

As for official military connections, the BSA swears there are none.

I beg to differ. It's not a conspiracy by the MIC to recruit the flower of our youth into their plan for world domination. It's fun to think so. Who knows, an Oliver Stone film could be in the works to blow the lid off of this plot. We eagerly await it. We thrive on conspiracies.

A Baby Boomer boyhood prepared me for the military. The Scouts were an integral part of that.

My only military experience was an eighteen-month stint in Navy ROTC. I do have years of Boy Scout experience to draw on. I was a Cub Scout from the late-50s until I joined the Boy Scouts at 11. I served until 1965 when I got to high school. Because we lived in beachside Florida, I have all of the water-oriented merit badges offered at that time. I also have a few others. I learned flag etiquette and often served as an honor guard at Scout functions. I took my uniform seriously. I obeyed the Scout Law.

I look at the Scouts as a military training program. We wear uniforms. We salute. We respect our Scout leaders even when they don't deserve it. We go on survival hikes. We drilled on flag etiquette. And so on.

The Boy Scouts of the 1950s and 1960s were training grounds for Vietnam. We knew how to build shelters, start fires, survive in the outback, dress wounds, deal with snakebites, swim, paddle a boat. If you lived in Florida, as I did, you reconnoitered swamps and rivers. When you canoed Central Florida creeks, you watched out for snakes and gators in the red-brown waters stained by tannin from cypress trees.

Most of all, Boy Scouting taught us obeisance to other men in uniform, those with rank and seniority. Be prepared! Mostly, we were prepared to take orders.

Maybe that's why the chaos of the 1960s was such a shock. It upended all of those norms. Once we learned that our leaders, men in uniforms and men in dark suits, were trying to kill us, all bets were off. Nothing had prepared us for betrayal by the very institutions that trained us: the family, the church, the Scouts, the U.S.A.

We could have grokked this, if we were really paying attention.  Some of our elders tried to warn us. Writers and artists. Martin Luther King Jr. Folk singers. Clergy such as the Berrigan brothers. Veteran writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. One of the recurring themes of "Catch 22" is that Yossarian considers his own people as much a threat as the Nazi's Herman Goering Division. They are trying to get him killed.

Quote from Catch-22:

As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
"Who's they?" he wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?"
"Every one of them," Yossarian told him.
"Every one of whom?"
"Every one of whom do you think?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Then how do you know they aren't?"
"Because …" Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.

And this one:

"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."

Who was trying to kill you during the Vietnam era? You get three guesses and the first two don't count.

This betrayal continues. Maybe that's what led to the Dawning of the Trump Era. This long betrayal. If you were a "good Scout" in America's golden age, you didn't question the authority of the church or the family or the government. Our most trusted elders led us into the shitstorm and lied about about it. Democrats and Republicans. Nobody was exempt and nobody was spared.

I hope Ken Burns addresses this in his new PBS documentary on the Vietnam War that starts tonight. It was never just a battle between anti-war hippies and Viet vets. It was a generation coming to grips with betrayal. We never did. Now we have a man at the helm that represented all that was venal about the Baby Boomer generation, my generation. A know-it-all who knows nothing. A draft dodger who wants to blow up the world. But first, he wants to rake in more dough to be the richest bastard in creation. He lies. He cheats. He steals. Trump is the Vietnam War come home to roost.

What makes is especially sad is that serving military and veterans are among Trump's biggest supporters. Did they learn nothing? And why do they remain this way?

We (sort of) survived the Vietnam betrayal. We won't survive this one.

Republicans are aghast that anger rages in America

Republicans are aghast that someone would be so angry as to take a shot at Congressional reps practicing for a baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia.

I am aghast that they would be aghast at this turn of events.

Republicans and their Fox News mouthpiece have been stoking American anger for decades.  This led to the simmering stew of hatred that begat Trump.

A Republican rep says that America is "fraying around the edges" earlier this week on CBS This Morning. And who is responsible for that turn of events? A Bernie Sanders fan who was a little frayed around the edges, frayed enough to go shoot up a baseball field? He was angry. Many are angry. And they have guns.

What do these Republicans expect? They stoked grassroots anger for eight years during the Obama administration. And the recipients of this barrage of hate were not all Republicans. A fair number of Democrats and Independents watch Fox, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and voted for Trump.

So who's to blame? All of us. For inciting hatred and letting it slide -- or stoking it with snark. For not countering hatred with love and tolerance. For not doing something to make the world a better place.

I am as guilty as you are. I have been poking fun at conservatives online since 2005. For eight years, I assumed that we were a civilized nation with a minority of ignorant, regressive haters. I was smug. I made fun of those Obama haters who carried misspelled signs to Tea Party rallies. I even invented a character called Tea Party Slim, whom I imbued with the many TP utterings I heard at rallies and on the Internet.

All of that only stoked more hatred and resentment. Our leader, Barack Obama, provided an example for us to look up to. Meanwhile, he did little or nothing to stem the tide of resentment. Obama didn't fight hard enough for the America we wanted. Neither did I.

It's game on now. The enemy is obvious. Our government is trying to kill us and our planet. For the second time in my 66 years, I know who to fight. During Vietnam, my government wanted to kill all of its young men in pursuit of a rotten Cold War policy in Vietnam. Our government would rather kill its sons than admit it was wrong. That's why the trauma of Vietnam will never end. Let's hope Ken Burns informs us of the real reasons behind Vietnam this fall on PBS. I am not optimistic.

Now our government wants to maximize riches and marginalize the rest of us. We are on our way to be serfs, a return to the Dark Ages of Europe. Ironically, Europe is experiencing a golden age.

Response is to #Resist with the tools we have. We have wit and grit. #Resist on your own and with like-minded people. Marginalize those who urge violence. Many of those people are not our friends and may be insurgents in our midst. Now that an apparent anti-Trump person shot up a baseball field and some Republican reps, look for law enforcement to plant operatives in #Resist groups. It may have happened already. This sounds paranoid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't following you. Read some of the first-hand account of the antiwar and Civil Rights movements. They often were the targets of COINTELPRO units of the FBI. They were provocateurs who knew that to turn a protest violent invited a violent response from the police. No better way to discredit dirty hippies than to show them getting beat up by the police. The 1968 Police Riot in Chicago was caused by those dirty hippies (and Yippies) that were getting bloodied by Mayor Daley's Finest. At least that's how Middle America saw it and turned to Tricky Dick and Kissinger for a solution for Vietnam.

You saw how that worked out.

Angry Americans have now turned to a spoiled rich boy who gets his way because the Republicans in Congress have fallen into lockstep behind him. Shame on them. Shame on us for letting it happen.

#Resist

In memoriam: John Clark Pratt

I called him Dr. Pratt because it seemed appropriate. John Clark Pratt possessed a deep voice, military bearing, steely gaze. No surprise after 20 years in the Air Force, some of those in Vietnam (and neighboring countries), and then a stint teaching at the Air Force Academy.

At Colorado State University, he taught creative writing. He was the only writing prof hanging around the Eddy Building as I prowled around on a summer day in 1988. I dropped in. He gave me some of his time and, when I left, thought I had found the right place to get my M.F.A.

I was right. Dr. Pratt conducted one of my first writing workshops. He helped me fine-tune a sci-fi story that he thought was pretty good. You don't read too many sci-fi pieces in writing workshop. It's mostly dysfunctional family minimalism (DFM). No surprise, since most of the students are in their 20s and fresh out of their undergraduate experience and not too far away from their tormented youth. I was older, late 30s, fresh from a corporate PR gig and before that, years as a journalist and then a free-lance writer. If I had a tormented youth, it was way behind me.

I wasn't a better writer than my younger peers. I just wrote different stuff. I was used to being edited and revised and wasn't upset when others took a hand to it. So I published and kept writing, going through critiques, stopping to chat with Dr. Pratt along the way. He had published two great books about the Vietnam War, The Laotian Fragments and Vietnam Voices. In the latter book, he put together a pastiche of poets and writers, veterans and peaceniks. He had helped start the CSU Library's Vietnam War special collection. Nosing around in that collection, partitioned like a bunker in the basement of the old library, which in the late 1980s still had its card catalog and a new but rudimentary computerized system. While hanging out in the bunker, I discovered its future wars section. My first novel manuscript rests in that collection. It's the only way you can read it, if you're interested.

Dr. Pratt passed away Jan. 2 in Fort Collins after a long and gallant battle with cancer. We'd been in touch a few years ago when he was looking for a publisher for his new novel. Still writing, even as he battled the Big C. He wondered if my Denver publisher might be interested in the book. I asked. They were, but I don't think it worked out as the press vanished shortly thereafter. It felt good to do him this small favor. Then two weeks ago, I found out from a writer friend that Dr. Pratt had passed away.

Last week, I received a call from a woman whose club was preparing Dr. Pratt's household for an estate sale. She said she found in Dr. Pratt's library my business card and letter in a copy of my short story collection. She invited me to FoCo for a preview of the estate sale. I went.

It's too bad I no longer am accumulating books. My shelves are full, I have many boxes of books in the basement and I am retired. But I thought it might be a way to help in some way, maybe use it as a way to say farewell to Dr. Pratt.

My friend John met me there. He taught with Dr. Pratt and he too is retired. Linda showed us into the room containing Pratt's research books. The director of the Vietnam War collection had already been out to sort through the material. John and I found some collectible books that hadn't been priced as well as well as some wonderful early editions, especially of books from the 1960s. A row of Joseph Heller's books, including early hardcovers of Catch-22. John Updike, Ken Kesey, Kenn Babbs, Timothy Leary. Pratt knew them all, and was interested in all of the voices of the sixties. I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to have books that a mentor cared enough to keep?" The answer was yes. But I resisted. John and I found excellent copies of 1984 and Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, both of which we turned over to Linda for pricing. I found a first edition of James Burke's first novel,The Lost Get-Back Boogie. It was an LSU Press original and back before the author became Best-Selling NYT-Author James Lee Burke. English majors would like the fact that an excerpt of the book was first published in CutBank, University of Montana's excellent litmag. I found a big box of Vietnam War research material, including a Look Magazine cover with the header, "We're Winning in Vietnam." It was fall of 1967, just a few months before Tet.

I attended Dr. Pratt's funeral at Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church. His adult children recounted their memories and we had a few laughs. The Poudre River Irregulars, minus its banjo player, played a few tunes, closing out with "When Those Saints Go Marching in."

I am thankful that I had Dr. Pratt as a mentor. He saw things in my writing that I did not. He encouraged me when I needed encouraging. You never know what kind of impact people will have on you. It's important that you give them a chance and see what happens.

Which side are you on, boys?

I admired Len Edgerly's column Tuesday on Medium: "Dalton Trumbo: 'It will do you no good to search for heroes and villains.' " It's notable in its restraint, a parable for our times. It's about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the 2015 film that portrays his run-in with the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s. Len is a fine writer and someone I worked with in the arts for many years in Wyoming. His post includes excerpts from a speech Trumbo delivered in 1970 that looked back upon the blacklist era. It's notable that he delivered this speech during another time when young men were once again trying to sort heroes from villains.

The blacklist was a time of evil. And no one who survived it came through untouched by evil. Caught in a situation that had passed beyond control of mere individuals, each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to. 

It was a time of fear. And no one was exempt. Scores of people lost their homes. Their families disintegrated. They lost — and in some, some even lost their lives. 

But when you look back upon that dark time, as I think you should every now and then, it will do you no good to search for heroes or villains. There weren’t any. There were only victims. Victims, because each of us felt compelled to say or do things that we otherwise would not, to deliver or receive wounds which we truly did not wish to exchange. 

I look out to my family sitting there, and I realize what I’ve put them through. And it’s unfair. My wife, who somehow kept it all together, amazes me. And so what I say here tonight is not intended to be hurtful to anyone. It is intended to heal the hurt, to repair the wounds which for years have been inflicted upon each other and most egregiously upon ourselves.

I know a few things about Trumbo. He was born in Montrose, Colorado, grew up in Grand Junction, and went to school for two years at CU-Boulder where the "free speech fountain" is named after him. That namesake fountain sometimes inflames the passions of CU conservatives and, yes, conservatives are allowed into Boulder just as liberals are allowed to dwell in Cheyenne. For now, anyway.

Trumbo was a commie or at least a fellow traveler. Those terms were used to brand liberals or progressives during the Cold War. Baby Boomers know the sting of those labels. Most people didn't lose careers after being publicly branded a communist, as did Trumbo. He resurrected his career by using aliases, even earned two Academy Awards, one using a fake name and one using a "front." When he openly won scriptwriting Oscars for Spartacus and Exodus in 1960, the blacklist was officially over.

But he paid a price. Was he a hero? Maybe not. Hero, of course, is used indiscriminately these days and has lost its meaning. Ditto for villains. I volunteer for Cheyenne's Old-Fashioned Summer Melodrama. The plot is a fiction wherein the hero rides to the rescue and rescues the damsel in distress who has been tied to the railroad tracks by the mustachioed villain in the black cape. We cheer for the hero and boo the villain.

Were it only that simple.

Len and I and many others were college freshman in 1969 trying to sort friend from foe. My U.S. Navy ROTC commandant at the University of South Carolina was a Marine colonel whose son had been killed in Vietnam. He told me that the Viet Cong were the bad guys which was why us -- the good guys -- had to fight and possibly die in the jungles of Southeast Asia. President Nixon, my future commander-in-chief, said the same thing. So did the members of the "best and brightest" brain trust who designed the foolproof Vietnam War strategy. Many of them were Harvard grads.

The SDS, at Harvard and on my campus, said that the U.S. was waging an immoral and unjust war and soldiers were baby killers. Some young women on campus thought that we midshipmen looked dashing in our uniforms. Others would not give us the time of day. Some campus longhairs spurned us buzzcut guys. Others were happy to share a joint with us, even friendship.

Most of us felt we had to choose sides. That was difficult if you planned a military career. Your military leader said do this and you did it. Our civilian leaders said do this and you should do it but was it the right thing? Our fathers were all World War II veterans, guys that had saved us from the Nazis. These guys were our heroes. Wasn't it our turn next?

"Which side are you on?" That's a famous union organizing song by Florence Reece, wife of union organizer Sam Reece. The chorus asks a key question, one that many of us have been asked over the years. We may be asked again, here in 2017:

"Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on?"

If you were organizing for the union in 1931 in Harlan County, Kentucky, whose side would you be in? When mine owners sent the sheriff to arrest Sam Reece, he fled to the hills. Union organizers sometimes ended up dead in mysterious circumstances. Who were the good guys then? Many musicians have sung "Which Side Are You On?", including Pete Seeger and Billy Bragg. This rousing song urged audience to take a side, whether it was during a union battle, the civil rights struggle or the Vietnam War. Or now.

In his column, Len writes that his father sat him down and told him that he would cease to pay for college if his son became one of those campus protesters. My father, formerly a Democrat, had become a "Southern Strategy" Nixon man in 1968. That year, my father sat me down and informed me that he had lots of kids to feed (nine including me) and that I would have to figure out my own way to get to college. He urged me to go to Annapolis or get an ROTC scholarship to the university of my choice. Become an officer, said this former Army dogface, sail the ocean blue and stay far away from Vietnam.

I was only an alternate for the U.S. Naval Academy but my book smarts helped me land an ROTC scholarship. In January of 1971, the government took away my scholarship for some bad choices I had made. I could say I was the victim but that's not true. Several cultural waves broke over me and I got swept up in the currents. As a surfer, I should have known the dangers. Losing my scholarship would have forced me to drop out and instantly be eligible for the draft. My father, who'd just lost his job, borrowed a semester's worth of tuition from his parents. "No son of mine is going to Vietnam," he said.

I chose a side. My father chose a side. We all do. Even not choosing a side is making a choice.

Many years from now, someone might ask this grizzled old guy: Who were the good guys and bad guys during the chaos created by a Donald Trump presidency? My answer may be this: "It will do you no good to search for heroes and villains."

The questioner might persist: Which side were you on? Did you choose?

I chose.

Those long drawn-out arguments among Baby Boomers brought us Trump

"Wow, so disappointed in America right now."

That was my daughter Annie's reaction this morning on Facebook.

I said similar things during my 65 years, even before the arrival of social media. I said it in November 1972 after Nixon clobbered McGovern. I was 21 then, even younger than Annie. I lived in Massachusetts, a little bubble of Democratic blue among all the red. We thought McGovern would stop the war and make the U.S. a kinder and more peaceful place. I worked the graveyard shift at a Boston hospital. While all of us orderlies and nurses and techs walked around like zombies, one of the physicians made the rounds and said that Nixon is the one now, suckers, and all of you lefties are in trouble. We were, but somehow we made it through. Most of us anyway. More than 22,000 more Americans and another million Vietnamese died between November's election and the declared end of the war in April 1975. Many GIs returned with wounds to the body and the soul. The rest of us moved on, or thought we did.

Despite the election landslide, Nixon won by less than 1 percent of the popular vote. As always, it was the Electoral College who clinched the win. And the southern strategy, which counted on turning all of those white middle class Democrats into Republicans. He used their hatred of civil rights and college activists to stoke the flames of hatred. Fear and hatred can work, as we just rediscovered.

Nixon went to China. He resigned, which made us lefties all warm and fuzzy. Jimmy Carter won the election over Gerald Ford. Carter was a Southerner but we thought he had warm and fuzzy feelings about America. He would usher in a new progressive era. Instead, in 1980, we go the shining city on the hill with Reagan. I lost friends over that election. Many arguments with family members. Those arguments continued into the presidencies of both Bushes.

The arguments continue. It has been important to act, to be involved. It's a life's work, not something you do for a couple weeks every four years. It helps me get out of bed in the morning. I continue to live my life as the best possible human being I can be.

One thing is clear. The arguments of 1972 continue. They will continue as long as the cohort of Baby Boomers remain upright. The scared ones will continue to be fearful and to vote those fears. Liberals like me will keep open minds and welcome the new, including those children who make up the Millennials. We've left them in the lurch. Perhaps it was the argumentative nature of our generation, caught in the whirlwind of civil rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, and the changing demographics of immigration. We never quite resolved all of those differences. And now they have emerged again with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Presente! Keep on making trouble.

On Donald Trump's five draft deferments

Men of a certain age should read this in Monday's New York Times article: "Donald Trump's Draft Deferments: Four for College, One for Bad Feet."

Spoiler Alert: Trump didn't get drafted during Vietnam. A shame, really, since he could have advised Gen. Westmoreland and his brain trust on the proper way to conduct and win a war. Of course, the "best and the brightest" were already advising Lyndon Johnson and later, the dynamic duo of Nixon/Kissinger on "How the world's number one superpower can defeat tiny pajama-clad guys hiding in holes in the jungle." The addition of another brainiac from the Ivy League (Wharton School) might have tipped the balance in our favor.

But Trump took his 1-Y deferment (bone spurs in his feet) into the real estate business and made a bundle, facing many sacrifices along the way. The bone spurs eventually cleared up, allowing The Donald to jump up on stages and cut the fool from Flint to Fort Lauderdale.

Full disclosure: I also had five draft deferments. Two for education, one for ROTC, one the coveted 1-A and, finally, I was told by Selective Service that my presence wouldn't be needed except in times of national emergency. That day never arrived.

Trump didn't go to Vietnam. Neither did I. He had bone spurs and a high draft number. My number from the December 1969 Selective Service Lottery was 128. In 1970, the Selective Service called eligible men with numbers all of the way up to 300.

The difference is, I'm not running for president. I am not boasting that I will send young people to war against Radical Islamic Extremists. I am not buds with Russian oligarchs and Vladimir "Big V" Putin. I do not belittle sacrifices made by Gold Star families.

Trump feels "a little guilty" for not serving. So do I. I guess we have that in common too.

Some politicians float proposals about a return to the draft. Or at least a national service program for 18-25 year olds. Republicans don't like this idea as it would put the educated class in harm's way, the same way it does now for enlistees from Meeteetsee, Wyoming, and Itta Bena, Mississippi. Sacrifices would be made.

The draft wasn't fair. Random in its ways, never more so as when the lottery was in operation.

Trump has his story. I have mine. I will post it in installments over the next month.

History comes looking for you.

The Rolling Stones rock Havana today. The Western World's Capitalist Songsters in one of the last bastions of international communism. Unthinkable a year ago. The Leader of the Free World attends a baseball game in Havana. President Obama, the first black president in U.S. history, sits next to Raul Castro; they trade quips about on-base percentages and ERAs. The day before, they were debating Americanism vs. Cubano Communism. That was a course we had in high school in Florida -- Americanism vs. Communism. That usually meant the Soviet variety, but we were only too aware that Red Cuba was a threat just 90 miles from Florida. Mr. Muir taught eighth grade at Our Lady of Lourdes and we played basketball with his son. Mr. Muir, a respected teacher at a private school in Havana, fled Castro in 1959 and now teaching snotty-nosed Catholic Anglos in the same town that his honored former dictator Fulgencio Batista owned a house along the river. My father, who stashed supplies in our Wichita basement for the Apocalypse during the Cuban Missile Crisis three years before, now pointed out Batista's house whenever we drove by in the station wagon overloaded with his Catholic brood.

And a NROTC midshipman, 1970, I spent three weeks in Cuba. Gitmo, now the U.S. terror prison, a confused 19-year-old. We tried to pick up the teen daughters of Gitmo officers at the base pool. Barbed wire barriers threaded the border, guard towers manned by soldiers the only Reds we could actually see. Soviet spies followed in our ship's wake, Russian fishing trawlers the big joke, antennae crowding out the fishing nets on deck. At night at the officer's club, we heard pilots' stories about night raids against the commies of North Vietnam, of buddies lost to SAMs. "You'll be there soon enough," they said, "that war not ending anytime soon."

My vas pokhoronim! -- "We will bury you!"  said Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Fall 1956 -- I was five. My father buried nuclear missiles deep beneath the Colorado prairie.

Said Obama to the Cubans: “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.”

History comes looking for you.

Reading "In Country" in the aftermath of another set of wars

It only took me 31 years to get around to reading "In Country" by Bobbie Ann Mason.

Published in 1985, the book explores post-Vietnam War America, specifically the South of rural Kentucky. The struggles of local veterans are seen through the eyes of 18-year-old  Sam (Samantha) Hughes, whose father Dwayne was killed in the war before she was born. Sam lives with her Viet vet uncle, Emmett, and might go to school at the University of Kentucky or she might get a job and marry her boyfriend, Lonnie. She's rooted in a specific place but rootless, too, as are most 18-year-olds. She keeps asking questions about the war but nobody, especially the vets who meet with Emmett every morning for coffee, want to give her any answers.

In one passage, Sam ponders a photo of her "soldier boy" daddy who was about her age when he died:

She stared at the picture, squinting her eyes, as if she expected it to come to life. But Dwayne had died with his secrets. Emmett was walking around with his. Anyone who survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal and embarrassing. Granddad had said they were embarrassed that they were still alive. "I guess  you're not embarrassed," she said to the picture.

In the mid-1980s, the war years were fresh memories. Mason's epigraph is from Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," possibly one of the most misunderstood rock songs in American history.

I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to run

Springsteen's lyrics are sprinkled throughout the book, as are songs by the Beatles, Stones, Creedence -- all the oldies from the era. The soundtrack of the Vietnam War, as one author recently called those tunes. Pop culture references abound, as do mentions of Americana: Wal-Mart, strip malls, muscle cars, Budweiser, and so on. Writing teachers sometimes tell their charges to be sparing with contemporary references, as it might date their work. Bobbie Ann Mason uses these references in order to date her work from the mid-80s, when veterans and non-veterans alike were trying to make sense of a lost crusade that nearly ripped this country apart.   This style was sometimes referred to as K-Mart Realism. This style was at its zenith when I attended grad school 1988-1991. It was shorthand for all of those white folks who once populated rural Kentucky and wide-open-spaces Wyoming. Whether draftees or volunteers, these men went to "a foreign land to kill the yellow man." They returned hoping to marry their high school sweethearts and get a job in the mines or in the factories that powered the 1970s economy. Many disappointments awaited them. Their girlfriends and high school pals had moved on. They didn't want to hear about Vietnam. Neither did older vets, the Greatest Generation, fathers of the whiners and complainers who came back from Vietnam. "Get over it," So they only talked about it with other veterans oif they just dropped out, as did Emmett, who doesn't work and spends his time watching M*A*S*H and recycling cast-off goods, much as the VC used to re-purpose all of the material the GIs threw away.

By 1985, this economy had begun to disappear,  Mines and textile mills and factories were shuttered or moved overseas for cheaper labor. To Mexico, Indonesia and, ironically, a newly energized Vietnam. Reaganomics worked to destroy unions, the foundation of blue-collar America. Vietnam veterans tended to blame liberal elites for this reversal of fortune. They were the spoiled hippie college kids who caused us to lose the war. Their love for the spotted owl and pristine wilderness killed the logging and mining industries. Their political correctness have us everything from women's lib to gay rights to Barack Obama in 2008 to -- yes -- The Donald in 2016.

Mason's characters are wonderful. The book begins with Sam, Mamaw and Emmett driving from Kentucky to Washington, D.C., in a beat-up VW bug Sam just bought from Vietnam vet Tom. We then are transported back to Hopewell in the months leading up to the trip. The book ends at The Wall, no surprise since its presence looms large throughout the book, even though it's off-stage most of the time. This a a fitting remembrance to the Vietnam War. Remember that the memorial was referred to by one opponent as a "black gash of shame." It now is almost a sacred site for Vietnam vets, home to motorcycle rallies for wounded vets and pilgrimages by vets and their families, such as the Hughes clan of Kentucky.

I'm not spoiling "In Country" to tell my readers than it ends at The Wall. The reflective surface of The Wall often leads to eerie juxtapositions, as when Sam looks at her father's name and realizes that it's her name too and she can see his face in hers. Or in veteran writer Yusef Komunyakaa's 1988 poem "Facing It:"

I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.