October 1969 I returned home to a civilian life, in short order fell in love and by June of 1972 was married. I often expected to see my own name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall as evidence that I too had been kissed by a sniper’s bullet, or planted in the ground by a boobytrap, now just a lost soul walking the earth dreaming up a surreal life refusing to accept my own end. The war was a backdrop to firefights, snipers, mortar rounds and boobytraps, close calls with death, of which others – names long forgotten- were not so fortunate. I witnessed enough corruption, cruelty and racism while at Camp Pendleton. You want to know what Fascism is like, join the marines, bootcamp will kick the Democratic shit out of you. Work was hard labor and I saw no future on the horizon, the American Dream was in decline, so with abandonment I join the United States Marines. The Vietnam War was raging on, the draft was licking at my heels. Teachers were mediocre and school bored me, so I dropped out and went to work. The high school had its bullies and was self segregated by class and race. “Better” is relative, our house was bigger with room for all of us, but the schools were not much better. We were like the Jeffersons (for those of you too young to know, it is a reference to a Black Family television series) moving on up from the hood to better neighborhood. We lived in a two bedroom house and by the time I started high school we outgrew it. I was the oldest of six kids, three boys & three girls. Parents like my own were living the American Dream, struggling from poor working class renters to owning a home, a car and credit at the local grocery store. Teachers teach American Exceptionalism, Eurocentric history, our Country Right or Wrong while we stand at attention reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Whispers fade as children grow older, play is loud with laughter and screaming, then comes the concentration of radios, movies and television voices telling you how lucky you are to live in this great nation and the noise of the world like a mighty storm drowns out that now faint lesson of love. These motherly pronouncements were part of a moral fiber that kept this internal spark fueled just enough for it to smolder. Whispered cliches of “Love thy Neighbor as Thyself” and “Tho shalt not kill” tenets of Bibles, Torahs, Korans and plain common sense. It was more like an ember placed there by a mother’s love and embrace. #BELLINGHAM SCHOOL DISTRICT MINDUP CURRICULUM HOW TO#It didn’t happen suddenly like some epiphany, it was little by little, more like it revealed itself from something deep inside, something that was always there, but silent in its ignorance not knowing how to express itself. I don’t know when my opinion about war changed, there’s no date, time or place certain, it just happened.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |