It Happened One New Year's

As I have moseyed through life I was delighted to find that I was not the only dumb-ass ever born.

I should explain.

I have missed many “signs” in my life…signs in the form of “red flags” to warn me of people or situations I should’ve avoided, hints that I should have taken or signs that I just flat-out missed.

I don’t know how this happened, how I didn’t come equipped with something to see what the hell is actually going on.

I have offered up the excuse that I played by myself a lot as a child.

Maybe I'm just an idealist or i just don’t know what “normal” is. And then again, maybe I was supposed to learn this stuff as I went along.

Case in point: An encounter with a young woman at a New Year’s party at the dawn of 1976.

Some friends of mine and I had rented a huge function room at a hotel in the old hometown for “The Big Event.” Matter of fact that’s what we called it, “The Big Event.” We had even gotten rooms so we wouldn’t have to drive home that night. Friends I didn’t even know I had showed up for this big deal.

People strayed into our party dressed up for other parties in the hotel, they told me it looked like we were having more fun at our big bash. And they said the music was better. As usual I was the guy playing the music with a disc jockey setup.

Just after midnight this lovely young lady who was dressed in (what was to me) a dreamy Stevie Nicks-ish style came up to me.

Back then Stevie Nicks was the new lead singer for the band “Fleetwood Mac.” She arrived on the scene with an enchanting voice, winsome smile, dressed in shawls and flowy things and she danced round and round on the stage as the band played on.

She looked like she'd taken fashion hints from Stevie Nicks...

So here was this young lady at the New Year’s party and it looked like she had dressed for the occasion by taking some fashion hints from Stevie Nicks.

I mean I’d never seen her before and she was absolutely stunning.

To me, anyway.

After all I was a teenage boy and, at the time, thought all young women were stunning.

“Can I have the key to your room?” she said, looking me right in the eyes.

This was weird: why would she want the key to my room?

“Sure,” I said, “How come?”

“I…umm…need to use your bathroom,” she said, biting her lip, smiling slightly and looking off to the side.

“OK,” I said. So I gave her my key and she sauntered off.

Well, about a half hour passed by and I realized this girl had not returned with my key. I got my buddy Dax to take the DJ seat and I went up to my room.

The door was cracked open a bit and it was dark inside.

I pushed open the door and flipped on the light. And there…on my bed…in her clothes…lay this young lady. Obviously she had been waiting in my room in the dark.

“Hi, what’s up,” I asked.

She smiled at me, “I don’t feel like going anywhere tonight.”

With that she stretched out on the bed and put her arms back behind her head.

I guessed she was tired or something so I said, “Well, there are still plenty of rooms here in the hotel, they’re cheap tonight too…special rate.”

She sat bolt upright, looked at me and said, “I don’t believe it,” got up and left.

I watched her sashay down the hall.

“You really just wanted to use my bathroom?” I asked loudly.

She turned around and then was walking backward down the hall.

“You don’t look like a dumb-ass. I guess dumb-asses can look normal,” she said as she turned around and kept walking down the hall.

“You’re kinda weird,” I said loudly.

She stuck her hand in the air and flipped me the bird as she kept walking. It was a good bird too, knuckles forward, pointed at me.

I went back to the party to play some more tunes. Then by about 130 it was time to call it a night.

Afterward I was winding down, sitting around shootin’ the shit with my pals Dax and Dave.

“Man,” I said, “There was this weird chick…”

I then proceeded to tell them the tale of the girl in my room.

I finished the story.

My two pals just stared at me.

Then Dax started laughing, Dave was shaking his head.

“Dumb-ass,” said Dax, still laughing. “Does someone have to hold up a sign? She wanted to have sex…dumb-ass.”

“Man!” laughed Dave, “Offered up to you on a silver platter and you didn’t even realize it….MAN! I think she came to the party with Laura Whatshername. I think that was Laura’s cousin from around DC. You know I’ve heard about that. Chick comes up to you and asks for your room key you’re just supposed to KNOW, man.”

“Dumb-ass,” said Dax.

They stood up, still laughing, and walked on to their rooms.

I sat there for a few minutes by myself and thought about what I may have missed out on. I mean I MAY have missed out on a good time or I may have missed getting into trouble. I would never know.

I smiled…

It wasn’t the first time I’d missed out on “signs,” it wouldn’t be the last.

I don’t know if it’s a lot of people who miss hints, red flags and signs or just a few…

But since that New Year’s eve long ago I’ve found out at least I’m not the ONLY one.

-30-

*All names changed as a “cover my ass” maneuver…

The Best Christmas

To me, a good Christmas is about lifting your spirits.  A good Christmas is about smiles and sharing and stuff.  The presents, the food and all the other Christmasy things are just icing on the cake.

What was your “Best Christmas Ever”?

While I’ve had some great Christmases I’d have to say my best Christmas ever was 34 years ago. 

It was right after one of my famous trainwrecks.

Well, my trainwrecks aren’t exactly widespreadedly famous, just “famous” amongst my kin.

If life is like a river, well, I’ve paddled my canoe through some pleasant passages.  And then there were some treacherous stretches full of rapids and whitewater.  That “Best Christmas Ever” came at the end of a year where my li’l “canoe of life” had gone over a waterfall and all my supplies were lost, so to speak:  I had totaled my car in a wreck...taking a mountain curve at 60 mph when I shoulda took it at 30...went flying into a creek...ripped a hole in my butt cheek.  And because my gig was a traveling salesman I lost my job.  With no job I couldn’t pay my rent so I lost my apartment. 

.           I figured I could go home until I pulled things back together.

            Boy, was I wrong.

            I called my folks.  My mom answered the phone.

            “Hi mom,” I was smiling.  “Can I come home, I’m in a bit of a mess.”

            “Well,” she said, “you’ll need to talk to your father.”

            She put my dad on the line.

            “Hi dad, can I come live with y’all till I get on my feet?”

            “No, son.”

            Wow, I was amazed at how fast he answered me.  I think they knew I’d be calling.

            I was dumbfounded.  It took a few seconds to gather my thoughts.             I gave a nervous laugh.  “I-I thought that’s what home is for, dad.  A place to come back to when it all goes down the tubes.”

            “Well, son, we believe if you stay out there and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you’ll be a lot stronger.”

            Now that I look back on it I don’t think I would have let me come back home to live either. 

Things started looking better, though. 

Mom and Dad did let me come home for the weekend, the same weekend my aunt and uncle came to visit from Ohio.  They had stopped on the way and picked up a local paper from a couple of hundred miles up the road.  There was an ad in that paper for a job and the guy to contact was a dude I knew.

I called the guy and got the job over the phone.  Soon I was settled in to a new town and some new digs…the second floor of an old 1920’s house.  No fridge, no stove, no furnace, no furniture, no TV, but I had four big rooms, an enclosed second-story porch that faced the sunny south, a sleeping bag, a trunk, my stereo and all my record albums.  What more could anyone ask for?

The job didn’t pay much.  What I did make went for bills, rent and setting aside some bucks to get a car.  I cooked ramen noodles on a hot plate…lots and lots of ramen noodles.  And there was toast, lots of toast.  Nowadays, when I look at a pack of ramen noodles I get a queasy feeling.

Folks at work would be having burgers and fries and stuff for lunch...I wondered if a jury of my true hungry peers would convict me for attacking a co-worker for some fast food.

Winter came and my apartment turned into a fridge.  When I filled a tub for a bath the cold, cold porcelain would sap the heat from the water.  One room was so cold for a couple of weeks I could keep ice cream in it.  One subfreezing morning I even woke up with frost in my moustache.

Looking back on that time I realize I was just a step up from living on the street.

            Then I got a call…my folks were coming to see me for Christmas. 

Mom and Dad were taking me to dinner and they had a surprise.  It was a good feeling, knowing they were coming.  Plus I’d get something other than ramen noodles and toast to eat.  I was happy.

            Mom and dad took me to eat at one of the nicest places around.  We laughed, talked and I caught up on what the rest of the family was doing.  My folks brought presents too, new clothes; new shirts, new pants.  Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about my circumstances.  Before they left my dad told me not to feel so bad about having to start all over.

            “Yeah, but you’re not eating ramen noodles and toast every day,” I laughed.

            He had some other tidbits of wisdom to share before they left that day, including that it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t have a car.  He was right, plus I found the walk to and from work kind of relaxing.   

            My father wasn’t with us much longer after that visit, that’s another reason I remember that Christmas.

            The following February he started having trouble standing on his right leg.  A trip to the doctor revealed a big ol’ brain tumor in his head.  By August he had “gone on to Glory.”

I always remember that December get-together.  I can still see my dad smiling from the driver’s seat as he and mom were about to drive away.

            “Things are a little tough for you now, son,” I remember him saying, “But someday you’ll look back on all this and laugh, maybe even write about it.”

            And so I have.

-30-

True Tales From The Mountains

"He waited up in a tree with his rifle, waited for Ol' J.I. to get home..."

I find it strange how some folks don’t give a whit about their ancestors…what they did, how they lived, what they accomplished.

I once had a friend who had no idea of her ancestry or family tales of long ago and she didn’t care. I thought that was just sad.

When I think about “my people” who lived long ago…their genetic material still vibrates within us…I think how we are the culmination of those who have gone before. I believe we honor them by knowing a bit about them.

I learned a lot about some of my ancestors from my grandmother. My father’s mother was a great storyteller.

Grandma was one of seven children of an iron ore mining company manager that lived in the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia near the West Virginia border.

Grandma was a cigarette-smoking, Bible-quoting, stern yet fun Virginia mountain “girl.”

My folks shipped me off to live with my grandparents for my last couple of years of high school. That’s how I came to hear Grandma’s tales.

It being Christmastime I got to remembering my Grandma.

One Christmas when I was a teenager my brother and sister didn’t come home for Christmas. It was just going to be my mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather.

I woke up Christmas morning and things were strangely quiet, not noisy and busy like many Christmases before.

I walked downstairs and found my mother and father sitting at the table having breakfast like any other day.

“What’s going on? Where’s Christmas?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” said my father.

“There’s no noise, nothing’s cooking, there’s no smell of bacon or coffee,” I said.

“We’re waiting for your grandmother to get up. Why don’t you make a pot of coffee and take it in to her and wake her up?” said Mom.

So I made a pot of coffee, unplugged the percolator and walked into her bedroom where she was sound asleep.

My plan was to wave the spout of the coffee pot with teenage accuracy right underneath her nose thinking that the aroma would wake her up.

I waved the pot under her nose not remembering it was a pot full of hot coffee. I didn’t give it much thought because this was the first time I’d made a pot of coffee.

So the waving action brought hot coffee up and out the spout into her ear.

Grandma sat bolt upright in bed holding her ear and yelling.

Grandma was a storyteller. She would sit in her easy chair smoking her filter-less Raleigh cigarette, watching her soap operas and offering up stories and opinions during the commercial breaks.

“You’ve got a double cowlick on your head, boy,” she told me. “You’re going to be bald when you’re grown.”

You know what? She was absolutely right.

My Grandma also believed that the wild weather she saw in her last years was because of the rockets we sent into space.

“We’re poking holes in the sky and we’re messing things up,” she would say.

Grandma told me of her mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Hill. That’s what they called each other, he called her "Mrs. Hill” and she called him “Mr. Hill."

Grandma told the story of her youngest brother, Teddy, who died in an awful industrial accident in the mine.

“The day Teddy died, his dog sat out in the back yard and howled, nobody at home knew anything had happened but my daddy knew it was an omen. He heard that dog howl and he turned to my momma and said, “Mrs. Hill, I don’t believe our boy is coming home anymore.”

About that time the booming klaxon horn from the mine went off, telling everyone for miles around there had been an accident.

Grandma talked about meeting my grandfather when he came to work as a bookkeeper for the mine. She said when she saw him come she knew she was going to marry him. They were married Christmas Day 1912.

Grandma told the story about their big wedding day. After the ceremony they dashed out the door and hopped in their one-horse buggy.

Somewhere in the rush of things my grandfather dropped the reins and the horse took off with them. “I yelled and yelled at him all the way down the road,” said my grandma.

“What’d you yell?” I asked.

“It didn’t matter,” she said, blowing smoke in the air. “He deserved it.”

My grandma yelled at my granddaddy a lot, it might’ve been where I got the notion in my early years that yelling at each other is a perfectly normal part of marriage.

Well, that and my mom and dad were always arguing and yelling.

Grandma told more stories of life in a mining town in the 1910’s, how “the meanest man in the county,” a fellow named J. I. Jones, met his death in 1913. Word was that Jones had killed two men. The son of one of the men waited in a tree at Jones’ place for the man to return home and when he did he gunned him down.

The area around the mining town was full of immigrants from Europe who worked in the mine. Grandma told the story of the time that she and my grandfather were out for a leisurely afternoon in a rowboat on the James River and as they rounded a bend witnessed two men kill another man for his money.

There was the story of the time the town doctor was called to a miner’s home, the whole family was sick. He finally got around to asking them what they’d been eating when the wife went outside and came back in holding a dead “American chicken” by the legs: A turkey vulture.

Then came the flu epidemic of 1918. By that time my grandparents had two baby boys…one was my dad…who wasn’t quite a year old. Grandma said my dad and the town doctor were the only two people who didn’t get the flu. Grandma believed the town doctor didn’t catch the flu because he had a drinking problem and my dad didn’t catch it because he crawled around chewing on chunks of coal from the fireplace.

The doctor would walk up and down the streets of the town, yelling into houses, asking what folks needed. He’d come back later and walk down the town’s main street throwing a chicken in the open window of a house here, some cans of food in another house there and so on.

I suppose the point is that no matter how small a story might seem to someone it may be a gem to someone else. It fires the imagination. It puts relatives, ancestors in a more real light.

I find it sad when a person knows nothing about their ancestry. Oh, not the kind that requires research and such, that’s more of a hobby. Just to know a little about those who have gone before. Their journeys are a significant part of how we got here.





-30-

Mountain Stories My Grandma Told Me

My Grandma's home region...western Virginia

I find it strange how some folks don’t give a whit about their ancestors…what they did, how they lived, what they accomplished.

I once had a friend who had no idea of her ancestry or family tales of long ago and she didn’t care. I thought that was just sad.

When I think about “my people” who lived long ago…their genetic material still vibrates within us…I think how we are the culmination of those who have gone before. I believe we honor them by knowing a bit about them.

I learned a lot about some of my ancestors from my grandmother. My father’s mother was a great storyteller.

Grandma was one of seven children of an iron ore mining company manager that lived in the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia near the West Virginia border.

Grandma was a cigarette-smoking, Bible-quoting, stern yet fun Virginia mountain “girl.”

My folks shipped me off to live with my grandparents for my last couple of years of high school. That’s how I came to hear Grandma’s tales.

It being Christmastime I got to remembering my Grandma.

One Christmas when I was a teenager my brother and sister didn’t come home for Christmas. It was just going to be my mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather.

I woke up Christmas morning and things were strangely quiet, not noisy and busy like many Christmases before.

I walked downstairs and found my mother and father sitting at the table having breakfast like any other day.

“What’s going on? Where’s Christmas?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” said my father.

“There’s no noise, nothing’s cooking, there’s no smell of bacon or coffee,” I said.

“We’re waiting for your grandmother to get up. Why don’t you make a pot of coffee and take it in to her and wake her up?” said Mom.

So I made a pot of coffee, unplugged the percolator and walked into her bedroom where she was sound asleep.

My plan was to wave the spout of the coffee pot with teenage accuracy right underneath her nose thinking that the aroma would wake her up.

I waved the pot under her nose not remembering it was a pot full of hot coffee. I didn’t give it much thought because this was the first time I’d made a pot of coffee.

So the waving action brought hot coffee up and out the spout into her ear.

Grandma sat bolt upright in bed holding her ear and yelling.

Grandma was a storyteller. She would sit in her easy chair smoking her filter-less Raleigh cigarette, watching her soap operas and offering up stories and opinions during the commercial breaks.

“You’ve got a double cowlick on your head, boy,” she told me. “You’re going to be bald when you’re grown.”

You know what? She was absolutely right.

My Grandma also believed that the wild weather she saw in her last years was because of the rockets we sent into space.

“We’re poking holes in the sky and we’re messing things up,” she would say.

Grandma told me of her mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Hill. That’s what they called each other, he called her "Mrs. Hill” and she called him “Mr. Hill."

Grandma told the story of her youngest brother, Teddy, who died in an awful industrial accident in the mine.

“The day Teddy died, his dog sat out in the back yard and howled, nobody at home knew anything had happened but my daddy knew it was an omen. He heard that dog howl and he turned to my momma and said, “Mrs. Hill, I don’t believe our boy is coming home anymore.”

About that time the booming klaxon horn from the mine went off, telling everyone for miles around there had been an accident.

Grandma talked about meeting my grandfather when he came to work as a bookkeeper for the mine. She said when she saw him come she knew she was going to marry him. They were married Christmas Day 1912.

Grandma told the story about their big wedding day. After the ceremony they dashed out the door and hopped in their one-horse buggy.

Somewhere in the rush of things my grandfather dropped the reins and the horse took off with them. “I yelled and yelled at him all the way down the road,” said my grandma.

“What’d you yell?” I asked.

“It didn’t matter,” she said, blowing smoke in the air. “He deserved it.”

My grandma yelled at my granddaddy a lot, it might’ve been where I got the notion in my early years that yelling at each other is a perfectly normal part of marriage.

Well, that and my mom and dad were always arguing and yelling.

Grandma told more stories of life in a mining town in the 1910’s, how “the meanest man in the county,” a fellow named J. I. Jones, met his death in 1913. Word was that Jones had killed two men. The son of one of the men waited in a tree at Jones’ place for the man to return home and when he did he gunned him down. 

The area around the mining town was full of immigrants from Europe who worked in the mine. Grandma told the story of the time that she and my grandfather were out for a leisurely afternoon in a rowboat on the James River and as they rounded a bend witnessed two men kill another man for his money.

There was the story of the time the town doctor was called to a miner’s home, the whole family was sick. He finally got around to asking them what they’d been eating when the wife went outside and came back in holding a dead “American chicken” by the legs: A turkey vulture.

Then came the flu epidemic of 1918. By that time my grandparents had two baby boys…one was my dad…who wasn’t quite a year old. Grandma said my dad and the town doctor were the only two people who didn’t get the flu. Grandma believed the town doctor didn’t catch the flu because he had a drinking problem and my dad didn’t catch it because he crawled around chewing on chunks of coal from the fireplace.

The doctor would walk up and down the streets of the town, yelling into houses, asking what folks needed. He’d come back later and walk down the town’s main street throwing a chicken in the open window of a house here, some cans of food in another house there and so on.

I suppose the point is that no matter how small a story might seem to someone it may be a gem to someone else. It fires the imagination. It puts relatives, ancestors in a more real light.

I find it sad when a person knows nothing about their ancestry. Oh, not the kind that requires research and such, that’s more of a hobby. Just to know a little about those who have gone before. Their journeys are a significant part of how we got here.

-30-

The Best Job...

Mountain Lake Hotel, Giles County, Virginia

Dang, has it been 42 years?

Yes, it was 42 years ago, the summer of 1976, I was a desk clerk at Mountain Lake Hotel in western Virginia.

The probability is high that you’ve seen Mountain Lake Hotel. Most of the movie “Dirty Dancing’’ was filmed there. It’s a resort on the south shore of the highest natural lake east of the Mississippi. Here in the future the lake’s levels fluctuate wildly…for a bit a few years ago it was totally dry.

Mountain Lake wouldn’t be famous for “Dirty Dancing” until about 11 years in the future from the time I was there.

I had always wanted to work at the hotel from the first time I saw it. It was miles from anything and on the cool top of a mountain. For $66 a week I got place to live (I had to share a room with the bellhop), three meals a day and one day off a week.

The hotel was so rustic. The main building was made of native stone. There were wooden cabins scattered around the property. There was only one television in the place and it was in the drawing room off from the lobby.

I greeted guests, took reservations, sent out material on the hotel and ran the switchboard — an ancient wires and plugs affair.

My roommate was Chad the bellhop who spent his idle hours reading comic books. I spent mine wondering when I’d meet the girl of my dreams. We spent the summer having almost nightly parties with the rest of the staff. I worked from 3 in the afternoon until 11 at night when I’d get off duty, hop in my car, zip down the mountain, buy “party supplies” (read that as booze) and return. In the morning I’d wake up and swim in the lake.

On staff were a hippie or two, girls from the town at the foot of the mountain who were the hotel maids and an assorted cast of characters.

For instance there was Phil the Chef who was hired at minimum wage and prepared all of his meals step-by-step from a Betty Crocker Cookbook. Phil had told us that he had been in the Vietnam War and that he was supposedly legendary for his nightly bow-and-arrow raids on the Vietcong across enemy lines.

There was Karen the hostler…the horse handler. This was a big, strong woman, from Pennsylvania the likes of whom I had never seen before. She lead the guests on horseback rides. She often stunned my southern-born sensibilities by walking around with little if any clothing on.

There was the time I had fallen asleep on the boat dock after work and was awakened by Karen’s big toe in my ear. I opened my eyes and there was Karen standing there totally nude in the night…she was ready to go skinny dipping.

“Wanna join me?” she asked in her big voice.

I smiled back, “No, thanks, I’m kinda tired” and I was, so I started walking back up to the employee’s lodge. I may have missed some kind of significant life moment there but I was just flat-out tired.

It was a summer of lots of memorable moments like when Chad and I chased bats out of the lobby with badminton racquets, or working with a guy I called “The Bard of the Blue Ridge,” a fellow who had once lived a staid middle-class life, lost it all in a swindle and became a vagabond, a storyteller, a bullshitter. He worked at the hotel as gardener and maintenance man.

It was a great place to spend the summer…most days were mild on the mountaintop, not hot at all.

You know what “They” say, “All good things must end.” So it was with the best job I ever had.

I’d say about 95 percent of the people who came to Mountain Lake enjoyed it. That disgruntled 5 percent, ah, I let them ruin my summer with their mean-spiritedness.

I had been yelled at, cussed at, grabbed by the collar and subjected to obnoxious condescension.

I knew it was time to leave when a lawyer and his traveling party from outside Washington, D.C. came in one cloudy August afternoon. He had reservations and wanted to see his room before he checked in. He came back down and proceeded to tell me how awful the place was...going down some kind of mental list he had made up: That the hotel was like a “class C” roadside motel, there was no television in the room, the room was dingy, the window faced the mountainside, he expected he’d have rooms with a view of the lake because, after all, we should’ve known who he was and that he was worthy of the best rooms in the place.

I’d heard stuff like this all summer and had to put up with it with a smile and a “Yes sir”/”No sir.” But on this day I’d reached my limit. So in an uncharacteristically loud voice I looked Mr. Attorney right in the eyes and yelled, “LOOK ASSHOLE, IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT HERE WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THE HELL OFF THE MOUNTAIN!!!!!”

I composed myself and apologized for what was truly an uncharacteristic outburst.

I took a sheet of hotel stationary and a pen, presented it to Mr. Attorney and asked him if he’d like to write a note of complaint to my boss.

“Yes I would, young man,” he said. “And in it I will recommend that you should be terminated.”

“That’s your right, sir,” I said.

He finished his note and I called down the mountain to a nice motel with a golf course and made reservations for him and his party.

A couple of hours later the boss got back from his trip down the mountain.

“Something happened while you were in town,” I said and I handed him the note from the lawyer.

He stood there and read the note.

He laughed.

“Hell,” he said, “I might’ve done the same thing.”

He handed the note back to me.

“Just don’t do it again,” he said.

I felt bad after the incident though and two weeks later I packed up my stuff and left the mountaintop.

I liked that work…I even gave serious consideration to being a resort hotel worker, in the mountains in the summer and south Florida in the winter… “working the circuit” it was called back in the day.

I don’t even know if “the circuit” exists anymore.

And desk clerk jobs? I’ve been watching kids do that kind of work these days and “laid back” is not a term that comes to mind when I see them go about their work: They are far more tasked with multi-tasking than “back then” and they do that thing that I so don’t dig here in the future…trying to monetize every human interaction.

As the years would go by I’d call it the best job I ever had. Some would say that was because there were no responsibilities. Others would understand: The simplicity, the camaraderie, the mild summer days, the peace.

Isn’t it something how others can even mess that up.

-30-

*All names changed…

Me and Uncle Sam

  Back when I was a radio news guy I had to go cover a change of command ceremony at the nearby military outpost.
  All the airmen, the color guard, the honor guard, all in a top notch military performance standing ramrod straight and all that. It made me feel all patriotic and stuff…
  But I’m glad I didn’t join the armed forces.
  I’m a fidgety kind of guy and I’m sure I would’ve been run out of boot camp. I have an itch here, an uncomfortable muscle there, and   I’m sure someone would have come down hard on me for not being still.
  I remember in high school we were in an assembly purely to hear a talk from a Marine recruiter. He told us all about the horrors of what the Viet Cong were doing to the people of South Vietnam and that the US needed to be there to stop the advancement of communism.
  After the assembly the recruiter dude walked right up to me.
  “We’d like to have young men like you in the Corps,” he said.        “You’re tall.”
  I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say.
  But then…
  “I didn’t like what I saw on TV from Vietnam,” I said.
  “You’d probably get embassy duty somewhere else around the world,” he said. “We like to put tall guys out on guard duty, makes the people in other countries think we’re giants here in America.”
  He handed me his card.
  I thanked him and he went on his way.
  Needless to say I did not join the United States Marine Corps.
  Not long after that the USA was done with the Vietnam War.
  But…
  Once I got a taste of adult life I reconsidered the “joining the military thang.”
  It’s not that I didn’t start to “join up” in my lifetime. I started to join three times.
  The first time it was a spring day in what I didn’t know was my last year in college. I wasn’t doing so well in my third year at the university. I moseyed off campus to a Chinese restaurant and picked up a couple of egg rolls and a soda. It was a cloudy, cool Appalachian spring day. I sat on the curb across the street from the restaurant and I thought, “I could be eating egg rolls in Hong Kong if I was in the Navy.” I don’t know where that thought came from but I decided to act on it.
  I went back to my apartment and called the local Navy recruiter.    The next day I was in his office.
  “Have you ever smoked marijuana?” It was the first question he asked me as soon as I sat down.
  “Ah…” I said hesitantly.
  “No,” he said thumping his finger on the desk. “From now on if anyone asks you that question your IMMEDIATE answer is ‘NO.’
  “Okay,” I said.
  In no time Mr. Recruiter had set me up to take a series of tests, I believe they were called the ASVAB tests, the "armed services vocational aptitude battery.”
  I scored a 96.
  “With a score like that we’re going to put you in our nuclear program,” said Mr. Recruiter at our next meeting.
I smiled at Mr. Recruiter. Thoughts ran through my head. Me…a loopy, goofy part-hippie guy in charge of nuclear missiles on a submarine…I couldn’t see it. Besides, what if one of those things accidentally went off?
  “Your test shows that you have excellent math skills,” said Mr. Recruiter.
  I smiled again on the outside and thought on the inside, “You guys are really filling me with a lot of bunk.” I flunked Algebra the first time around in high school but aced it the next year, but I just couldn’t imagine I had mathematics aptitude. I wanted to be a Navy journalist but they were trying to make me a nuclear technician. So   I said good-bye to thoughts of eating authentic Chinese egg rolls in Hong Kong.
  The next time I started to join the military was right after I dropped out of college. I was living with my folks and working in radio. My brother came to visit that fall. He started doing a lobbying effort to get me to join the military.
  “Join the army,” he said. He had spent a few years in the ranks.      “You’ll get in there, they’ll teach you some discipline, give you a place to live, food, clothes, benefits, and you’ll see a lot of places. When you’re through if you save your pay and don’t blow it you’ll have a nice nest egg.”
  Brother’s logic was good. But he was talking to a young man with a girlfriend, and just like I told the Marine recruiter in high school, I had seen all the Vietnam footage while I was growing up. Plus I had spent my growing up years listening to my dad yell at me a lot and I wasn’t in the mood to expose myself to years more of that crap.
  I thought I’d give it a shot anyway, but I gotta tell you I just didn’t have my heart in it when I went down to the Army recruiter. I wowed ’em with my ASVAB score. They packed me up and shipped me off to the state capitol for a physical. I passed. They were ready for me, only they didn’t have any positions open for Army journalist.
  “Oh well, guys,” I said as I sat in the recruiter’s office, “thanks for the trip to Richmond.”
  As the years passed I began to see what my brother meant in his sales pitch to me to get into the Army. I often contrasted the supposed orderliness of military life against the perceived chaos of everyday civilian life.
  I had gotten too old for the Army so I marched down to the Navy recruiter and decided that I would just do it, just join. But I had waited too long. I got as far as the physical. They didn’t like a couple of medical conditions that had developed since I was in my early 20’s. They said I would have to get a medical waiver.
  The recruiter went on to say that in boot camp the young guys would probably have a time making fun of such an “old man” in their midst. I did get a kick out of the way they treated me during the physical. I guess it was my age or the way I carried myself, they thought I was an officer candidate I suppose and they kept calling me “sir.”
  Over the years I’ve come to realize that the military is not for everyone. It probably wasn’t for me. One thing that struck me about the peacetime military is that of the people I’ve met, like those I met in Arizona in the Army near Fort Huachuca, they seem to spend a lot of time gigging each other, hassling each other…captains hassling lieutenants, lieutenants coming down on sergeants and so on…like an aggravated office politics kind of situation. I don’t do too well with office politics.
  On the other hand, if I’d just joined in the 70’s just to eat egg rolls in Hong Kong I’d have been finished by now with a retirement check in the mail.
  Oh well.
  I always encourage folks in their late teens and early 20’s who have no idea where they’re going in life to try the military.
  At least give it a shot, eh?

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