Do You Remember Woodstock?

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It’s that time of year when some of us look back on August 13-18, 1969 and wish we’d had the presence of mind to head to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, NY that weekend.

It would have been so easy to stick my thumb out on the Mass Pike. Maybe with “Woodstock or Bust” on a piece of cardboard. But, no, it was almost time to go back to college in Amherst. I couldn’t bail on my waitress job—I needed the money for school.

I only know one person who was there, and all I seem to remember about his recollection is mud and more mud. I guess you had to be there.

Since I wasn’t there, I’m not going to rattle on about it except to say that this weekend The New Yorker has reprinted Ellen Willis’ August 29, 1969 coverage of “The Not-So-Groovy Side of Woodstock.”  (RIP Ellen Willis.)

It’s a very good read, and, to be fair, I’d rather you read it at the source.

To whet your appetite:

Willis told of Abbie Hoffman interrupting The Who’s set to berate the crowd re: listening to music when a Michigan activist had just been sentenced to a long prison term.

She said “Peter Townshend hit Hoffman with his guitar.”

(Yay, Pete!)

And for the list of performers, thank you, Wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_performances_and_events_at_Woodstock_Festival

Can you dig it?

Mama Told Me Not To Go

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Back in the day, my mother told me a slew of lies, but none worried me so much as the lie I divulge in Chapter 65 of my memoir, The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Fertilized Eggs

When I reflect on Kristen and the Saturday night dances, I remember that not dancing was OK with me. I don’t know what I would have done if someone had asked me to dance. I watched American Bandstand, but that was a far cry from dancing for real. I didn’t have the self-confidence that junior high dance classes would have provided.

Back in eighth grade, some of my classmates had attended ballroom dancing classes at the United Church of Christ. They began with the fox trot and waltz, so they knew the basics.

When I asked my mother if I could go, Mum said, “Absolutely not!”

“That’s how girls get pregnant, ” she added.

It was the first time my mother mentioned anything remotely related to sex, and I was baffled. After that, I pressed my nose to the window whenever our school bus took the corner on Main and Church. I wondered what could possibly go on behind the clean brick walls of the United Church of Christ that would result in pregnancy. My friends Irene and Susan attended the classes. The morning after, they constantly rattled on about dancing with this or that cute guy. They were having fun. They were learning to communicate with boys. And they weren’t getting pregnant.

I was so confused!

#

During the summer before sixth grade, Mum felt she had fulfilled her sex education duty by handing me a booklet called Growing Up and Liking It. The Modess Corporation, a manufacturer of sanitary napkins, published the slim little pamphlet.

“These are the ‘Facts of Life’,” she said, handing it over for my inspection.

I brought the booklet upstairs and plopped on my bed to see what these “Facts of Life” were all about.

There were illustrations of the female reproductive organs—the uterus, the ovaries on each side connected by fallopian tubes. There was even a vagina through which a lively sperm was wiggling its way along in search of eggs.

The writer described how, each month, the ovaries released eggs. The illustration looked like a pinball machine layout. If an egg were fertilized, you’d get pregnant, and­—Mamma Mia!—a baby would begin to grow inside you. The booklet neglected to explain how the egg got fertilized. I read it and re-read it. There was no explanation of how the sperm got in there, and there was no one with whom I could discuss this awkward topic. I thought it was damned poor editing on the part of the Modess Corporation.

It followed that every month, from age twelve until I was eighteen-and-a-half, I worried myself sick about getting pregnant. I marked my period on the free Hallmark pocket calendars we got at the pharmacy checkout counter. I drew a star for each bloody day and double stars for days of particularly heavy flow. During my period, I was relieved and buoyant. I was also in terrible discomfort since I was one of those unlucky ones who had to endure severe menstrual cramps aching all the way down my inner thighs, practically to my knees. I had curl-up-in-fetal-position pain, with eyes-shut and teeth-clenched pain.

“Mum, I have cramps, and aspirin isn’t helping,” I said.

“That’s the ‘Facts of Life’,” was all she said.

One month, I told my mother I was late.

“What have you been doing that you’re worried about your period being late?”  she said. Her words were staccato. Her eyes were alarmed.

“Nothing,” I said. This was certainly true. But later, when I was getting ready for a blind double date to the drive-in with my neighbor with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s friend, my mother confronted me again.

“Your father wants to make sure you know about the Facts of Life,” she said.

I assumed he meant my period and those enduring cramps. I didn’t know why he cared, but whatever.

“Yeah. I know.”

By the way, when I went to the drive-in, sitting in the back seat with the blind date, I was too shy to say a word during the entire night. Likewise, my blind date didn’t say a word. After the movie, they dropped me off in my driveway, and I fled into the house. Is that what dating was supposed to be like?

#

Around the time of the ballroom dancing classes—perhaps even instigated by my inquiry into the ballroom dancing classes—my mother confiscated my juvenile cotton underpants and replaced them with tight, white, nylon-spandex panty girdles. They were ghastly. I knew from the occasional gust of wind on the playground that other girls wore garter belts. The nylons Mum brought home were thigh-high with seams up the back and buttoned onto my panty girdles. Pantyhose hadn’t been invented yet.

Years later, my first real boyfriend slid his hand beneath my skirt. It was the summer after high school graduation. He was horrified.

“Are you wearing a girdle?”

He squinted through his Coke-bottle eyeglasses.

“Umm. Yes.”

This episode, by far, beat any other humiliation in my past. I felt the familiar heat of a blush rise to the tips of my ears. As soon as he asked, it dawned on me that maybe this was my mother’s idea of birth control. Those panty girdles weren’t for jiggle control! I didn’t have anything to jiggle! And who would consider having sex with her daughter if she wore an ugly panty girdle? Mum needn’t have worried about me having sex because I had no idea what sex was. Despite growing up on a farm in the midst of a couple of dozen cows who were frequently pregnant after being tended to by our resident bull, I had never seen fertilization in action—except for that one time when our German Shepherd, Lady, was bushwhacked in the garage by the neighbor’s mutt.

#

In high school, I had a few crushes, but no one ever asked me out until Bill, a good-looking young man who sat next to me in homeroom in tenth grade. He used to be “Billy” in elementary school. Still, high school has a way of giving young people the opportunity to modify their details. Bill invited me to a semi-formal dance during junior year’s start of football season. It was “Homecoming.” I wore an above-the-knee, seafoam green, shantung dress with white tights. Fabric rosettes decorated my brown patent-leather flats, and Bill brought me a wrist corsage of sweet-smelling gardenias. We both smiled awkwardly under the scrutiny of the hundred-watt ceiling light in my parents’ front hall.

This occasion was only the second time I had ever eaten in a sit-down restaurant, the first being that lunch with Mémère when I was nine. Bill and I had dinner at a steak house called Dante’s Inferno. I hoped I wouldn’t embarrass him with my lack of manners. If I had known it would be the only time I would ever be invited to a dinner and dance in high school, I would have paid more attention. That fall, we also went to museum openings, an occasional foreign film, and my first movie in a cinema—the new style of movie theater attached to the equally new malls.

We saw Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. It was my first non-Disney, non-Elvis movie. Of course, I didn’t know what Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson were up to when the camera framed Benjamin in the triangle of Mrs. Robinson’s shapely leg. (Fun fact. I know now that it wasn’t even Anne Bancroft’s leg in The Graduate poster. It was Linda Gray’s.)

Bill chuckled knowingly during the implied sex scenes while I was ill at ease. He occasionally gave me a chaste kiss good night. Once, we even experimented with what amounted to basic necking, pressing our lips onto each other’s lips without much enthusiasm. At the time, his lack of interest contributed to my deep-seated belief that I was unlovable. Decades later, I would learn that he was gay and that there had been no reflection on me.

#

A couple of months after the semi-formal dance, it was Christmas week. I put on that same seafoam green shantung dress and drove myself to Denholm’s Department Store in the city twenty miles away on a school night. As if proof of my emotional immaturity—and my hesitation to leave childhood far behind—I was on my way to fulfilling my childhood fantasy of having my picture taken with Santa Claus. I must have told Mum and Dad because I had to ask permission to borrow the car. If they thought it strange that a sixteen-year-old would be going to see a department store Santa, they didn’t say anything about it.

I stood in line with the little kids in my seafoam green shantung dress. It was the prettiest dress I have ever owned—bar none. Children and their mothers did not notice me, or maybe they did. I was nervous. I had my coat unbuttoned, ready to shed quickly as I got closer to Santa.

When it was my turn, I handed my coat to an elf. I stepped up to Santa and sat timidly on the edge of his lap, barely touching his red velvet thigh. I told him I wanted nothing except the photo and directed one of my rare smiles toward the elf with the camera. Santa didn’t say too much. Maybe he ho-ho-hoed. After the camera flashed, I stepped down from the Santa throne, and a few minutes later, my Polaroid snapshot was ready. Santa’s elf handed it to me in a Merry Christmas photo card.

I liked it. I did. I saw myself carefully seated on Santa’s thigh in my seafoam green, shantung dress with the white tights. My long, brown hair looked perfectly clean and shiny. I couldn’t find fault with anything about my appearance. I stared at the photo as I rode down the escalator and floated out the door to where it was snowing lightly—a scattering of fluffy flakes under the streetlights to top off this fairy-tale evening.

I drove home on autopilot, parked the car in the driveway, and before anyone had time to question me, I hung my coat in the closet and went upstairs to bed. I’ve never shared that experience with anyone before now. Maybe I’ve always been embarrassed at being so lonely and emotionally withdrawn, but having my photograph taken with Santa Claus at age sixteen made me happy.

#

My mother could have saved me eight years of anxiety about unexpected pregnancy if she had told me right up front or given me a book about actual sex, not a booklet pussyfooting around about some fertilized eggs. Suppose I had known the essential “Facts of Life”. In that case, I might have better disputed her claim about the United Church of Christ dance classes. I might have found a reason to smile at all those Saturday night dances.

And why, I wonder, did the topic of sex never come up when my girlfriends and I got together?

Peace

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I think we can all use a little Peace, and this video always calms my spirit. Enjoy!

The Reveal, May 8, 2022

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The long story short is that in 2013, I began writing my coming-of-age memoir, THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK AND BLUE DOLL, covering events from age 3 through 21.

For the past eight years, I’ve hidden my secret life—my memoir writing life—from my three younger siblings.

I had no way of knowing what their response would be, but five days ago, one year after Mummy’s death at 92, three of us were gathered at my youngest brother’s home in western Massachusetts, and I decided it was time to let them in on my secret.

To prepare for my reveal, I reminded myself of the inspiration and reassurance Cheryl Strayed’s words provided in my writer autograph journal in 2014.

“Dear Linda, I so enjoyed our conversation at my house. I hope you will always remember the spark that drove you the very first time you wrote with passion & delight. There are so many uncertainties in the literary business, but there is no doubt that what drives us forward as writers can’t be thwarted by anything. There is nothing that matters more than the truth you have to share on the page. Trust that above all. Good Luck! Cheryl Strayed“

By 2014, I had finished two drafts and began querying agents. BIG mistake.

Two drafts is at least four drafts too soon for querying. I received dozens of rejections. Most of them didn’t even send official rejections, they just let my query automatically age out of consideration at Querytracker’s 121 days. I did, however, receive one request for a full.

It was from a New York agent who said he loved it. “Talk soon!” he wrote. And then he ghosted me.

I learned my lesson.

After the fifth draft, I hired a developmental editor, who gave me brilliant, professional feedback. I wrote draft six and seven and sent off a handful of well-researched and personalized queries.

The next request for a full came from an agent I have tremendous respect for. She’s in Toronto and by then it was 2021.  She also rejected it. Note to self: Don’t ever think of any agent as “my dream agent”.

I haven’t queried in six months. During this time, I’ve taken four query classes from different writing teachers while further fine-tuning my manuscript. About ten days ago, I had a eureka moment that would dramatically improve the reading and comprehension of my story.

I made those changes, and in preparation for The Reveal, I had THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK AND BLUE DOLL printed and spiral bound for beta-reading. One copy for each of us siblings.

When I got to Gerry’s house, I carried in a tote bag bearing my secret life. I quickly tucked it in a corner of the dining room and joined two of my siblings and one sister-in-law with lots of hugs and kisses.

Frankly, I was a wreck. I wasn’t 100% convinced I’d be able to go through with it.

As soon as we were all settled at the dining room table, I said, “I have something to share with you, and I think this is a good time.”

Everyone looked a little shell-shocked, so I said, “Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad.”

Later in the afternoon, Sharon said her first thought had been “She can’t be pregnant!”

Right. I’m 72.

Gerry said his first thought was that I might be transitioning. Nope.

Over the next five hours, I shared when, how, and why I had finally become a writer. I mentioned that I’ve been encouraged in the last two years as awards, publications, and speaking engagements began to come in.

I was taking Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Body of the Book manuscript class in Portland OR when #MeToo gained traction following the exposure of widespread sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. I wrote my #MeToo chapter The Colombian that morning and read it to the class that night. It was published by Jennifer Pastiloff in The Manifest-Station.(Unfortunately, they misspelled “Colombian.” The typo: “Columbian.” I’ve made my share of typos, so I’ve ignored it.)

Some of my favorite experiences were being named 2021 Finalist for Best Unpublished Memoir by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association in Seattle, and being invited to address the Omaha Chapter, National League of American Pen Women at their March 2022 meeting.

I still don’t have an agent. I explained the query process to them and the much-desired “request for a full”.

As we were talking, frequently, Sharon would ask “Do you remember the time…?”

And I would respond, “YES, I have a chapter on that…  And wait— I’ll read it to you.”

It was So Much Fun and we all were so elated with our surprise afternoon’s entertainment.

Gerry said he was enlightened since my memoir includes a period of ten years before he was born.

Sharon said it was fascinating how each of us viewed same events from different perspectives.

Gerry added that he felt it’s great that I’ve reflected on my early life to consider if there’s been any influence on unfolding what he called The Life Experience.

My sister-in-law Robin said “I’m struggling with this. There are mixed emotions because I met your parents at a much later stage. It’s sad and weird for me because your story is a different experience.” Tears were shed.

Sharon added,  “As I read this, I’m just glad that you were able to write it down so eloquently.”

What I know now: My siblings are 100% supportive. That is, thus far, two out of three of them.

I realize my fears were totally unwarranted.

Sharon and I talked about things we’ve never spoken of.

It was the Best day Ever.

Immediately after all was said and done, and still with all of us at the dining room table, I checked my email.

Omigosh! There was an email from the author Paddy Eger, representing the EPIC Writers Group in Bellingham WA. I’m a member and she was asking me to call her at my earliest convenience. On a Sunday. On Mother’s Day!

 My fingers hit those numbers fast and furiously. She answered.

She wanted me to know that my Prose piece, Mr. Buchwald, which is Chapter 61 of THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK AND BLUE DOLL, had won the 2022 EPIC First Prize for Prose.

What timing!

This. In the dining room immediately after The Reveal. We were all mind-blown. What an affirmation.

Update: June 13, 2022

Gerry, Linda, Sharon
We laughed and laughed!

My other brother Richard (aka Dicky in the memoir) is now reading and approving of my story. He’s also been freaking us out with memories of his own!

Frank McCourt was my Inspiration

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About once a year, I do a Google search for Noah Adams’ NPR interview with Frank McCourt so I can hear McCourt’s lovely Irish voice and once again, be inspired.

Why was is Frank McCourt my inspiration?

  1. Because it was after hearing NPR’s 2009 interview with Frank McCourt, that I knew I wanted to write my own memoir.
  2. Because when Frank McCourt published his first book, Angela’s Ashes, at the age of 66, I thought maybe I could still be considered an “emerging” writer at my age.
  3. Because I loved the way he managed to write the dreadful conditions of his childhood in a comic manner.  Wikipedia calls it a “tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.”
  4. Because I had first-hand knowledge of a painful childhood.

No, I didn’t grow up in squalor. We lived on a 3-generation farm where we had plenty of food to eat, and a hundred acres to run around. Of course, the reason we had a hundred acres to run around was that my mother commonly locked us out of the house so she could watch “her stories” on television and smoke cigarettes. I was in charge of the younger kids and, for their entertainment, I led them over hill and dale, dodging cow patties, grazing on wild strawberries, and building stick forts until the cows came home.

When I heard the NPR interview, I was 59.  It took me more than a few years until I got started. I was naive enough to think that my memoir would be ready after two or three rounds of editing. Ha! It’s taken seven drafts to get it right.

But enough about me. My mother would always accuse me of “getting a big head” if I said anything positive about myself. 

I think I’ve managed to write some decent tragicomedy in my 371 pages of The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll. (McCourt’s has 369 pages. A coincidence.)

But I can’t match McCourt’s “we were so poor” story.

He told of how they were often without food.

One night he asked his uncle about food to eat and his uncle said there was none, so after the uncle went to bed, young Frank saw his uncle’s discarded fish and chip newspaper on the floor.  He retrieved it and began to lick the oil out of the newspaper pages.  Licking the obituaries and the sports pages and the headlines of World War II (and more!) until there was no more oil to lick.

I still think that fish and chip newspaper is the most tragicomic story I’ve ever read.  In my own memoir, the fish and chips were a bit more serious. Here’s the short version.

Like McCourt, we also were Catholics. One day when my mother had just put the Crisco on the stove to heat for the fish on Friday that she was going to cook, she got distracted. She heard the bread man toot his arrival in the driveway, and since Mummy was always very chatty, she and Norman always spoke at great length. The next thing she knew, Norman saw black smoke pouring out the screen door. A fire! The firetrucks, my baby brother being brought out to his carriage, my siblings and I running down the road from the school bus to discover the disaster. I saw my 10-year-old brother being flung horizontally from the front step by a fireman.

“Get outa here!” snarled the fireman.

“It’s my house!” screamed my brother.

That night as we sat around the kitchen table, my mother cried. Then, my father began to cry. I don’t know what we had for supper, but it wasn’t fish and chips.

And the next day? We went to school as usual. Dirty hair, smoky clothes. Sad.

I was in the girls’ room when I heard Sister Florentine’s voice, “Where’s Linda?”

That concerned me but I eventually came out of the stall and she ran to throw her arms around me. I remember her wooden cross pressing into my chest, her scratchy wool habit, and the feeling of being held like a baby.

It was my very first hug. I was in eighth grade.

Here’s a link to the NPR interview. Noah Adams reveals a great deal of the man in this 9-minute listen. Enjoy!

https://www.npr.org/1996/10/01/1045022/frank-mccourt-on-angelas-ashes

Christmases Past

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Following is a chapter from my—as yet unpublished—memoir, THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK AND BLUE DOLL. At this time of year, I think we all are drawn back to memories of Christmases Past.

Chapter Thirty-Three
One Christmas Morning

In contrast to the festivities at Mémère’s cottage, Christmas was pretty much nonexistent downstairs at Babci and Dziadzia’s. No Christmas tree, no decorations, no presents. It was never discussed. It was just an accepted fact that Daddy’s parents didn’t celebrate Christmas.

If it wasn’t for Mummy, there’d have been no Christmas upstairs either. Mummy saved all her tip money from the beauty shop to make Christmas special for us, the way her mother had done for her. Mummy may have had her shortcomings, but Christmas wasn’t one of them.

The year I was eight, Mummy was particularly excited because she had bought Daddy the latest trendy gift for Christmas—a Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera like her sisters had purchased for their husbands. The movie cameras had been advertised on TV for weeks as the it gift of the season. It was one of the few times I ever saw Mummy super excited. She bubbled over with happiness as she showed off the camera to us kids just before wrapping it up.

“Now Daddy will be able to take home movies of you, and when you grow up, you can show the movies to your kids!” she said with a smile as wide as wide could be.

It was going to be fun, she assured us. We watched as she attached a bow and a gift tag. “To John, From Doris.”

On Christmas morning, Daddy stayed in bed as usual while Mummy watched us open our presents and gathered up the wrapping-paper scraps. Daddy never participated in Christmas, but it never stopped Mummy from buying him a present. As soon as all of our gifts were open, we followed Mummy back to their bedroom where Daddy’s slumped form lay under the bedcovers facing the wall.

“Wait till Daddy sees what I got him!” Mummy whispered.

Mummy hurried to his side with the present held before her like the gift of the Magi. We stayed beyond the threshold in our pajamas and slippers, straining to look past the curtain and standing on tiptoes to see over the shoulder of her fuzzy chenille robe.

With a bit of coaxing, Daddy slowly emerged from the covers, mumbling something under his breath. He lifted up on one elbow. His hair was tousled, and he covered his bare chest with a corner of the blanket.

He tentatively pulled at the Scotch tape on one end of the present. We saw him rise up a little straighter and use both hands to finish the unwrapping, freeing the camera from its box. He remained expressionless. We watched as he cocked his arm back like a quarterback about to throw a football down the field.

The split-second interaction between Mummy and Daddy that followed became a Kodak moment scorched on my brain forever. As Mummy stood with her mouth just barely open, Daddy hurled the camera across the room with a force that caused us all to jump back. The black body of the camera hit the wall with a crack.

“A piece of junk!” he spat, and he rolled away from us.

We kids scurried like rats before the camera even hit the floor.

Mummy picked up the camera from where it landed at the foot of the bed. She retreated quietly without a single word to dispute Daddy’s declaration. No tears, no pleading, no attempts at explanation, no nothing. Dicky and Sharon looked at me with eyes wide. We were dumbstruck.

We quietly followed Mummy through the kitchen and into the parlor where we returned to sit on the carpet with our presents. Mummy sat on the couch.

The worst of it was that we were forced to watch our cousins’ home movies for the next few months of Sundays at Mémère’s. Daddy didn’t care. He sipped his highball indifferently while Mummy and Mémère ignored him.

Veterans Day 2021

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It’s Veterans Day, the federal holiday in the United States observed annually on November 11, to honor the military men and women who served in the United States Armed Forces.

I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes, trying to find the words to begin. I’ve decided to share a radio script I wrote and recorded earlier this year for the April 30th, 2021 commemoration of 26 years since the end of the Vietnam War.

We recently left Vashon Island WA for good, and I do mean “for good”. Let me be clear. When I say “for good”, I mean that this move will enable me to get additional help for my 100% disabled Vietnam vet husband at the VA here and also to get additional help for me, the caregiver. My sons live in this city. We’re in this together.

I’ve also included links to the songs I selected to play between paragraphs during the Vietnam radio program. Music was a soldier’s connection with home, and hopefully, it offered some relief.

A Vietnam Story / A Vietnam Playlist

My husband spends most of his waking hours watching television upstairs. I remain below. It’s true I’ve never mentioned his existence before today. But it’s finally time to peel the onion and I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

This account could be any soldier’s story, but it happens to be my husband’s story, pieced together from the bits and pieces he has shared with me.

“For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield

On November 15, 1969, three years before we met, I was hitchhiking from Massachusetts to Washington D.C. to march in the Moratorium against the Vietnam War. At the time, he was in Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, assembling and dissembling his M16 on his bunk. Fort Polk, LA was next. For AIT. Advanced Infantry Training. It had its own simulated Vietnam village called Tiger Land, 3 or 4 acres where a Vietnam-bound soldier could experience foxholes, bamboo stake defenses, watch duty, tunnels, and booby traps.

“The War Drags On,” Donovan

On December 7th, 1969, the Army deployed my husband to a cold, mean war in the hot, hostile place where the environment could eat you alive.

7th Squadron, 17th Cavalry, 1st Aviation Brigade. Pleiku, Central Highlands, Vietnam. Ankhe, Chu Lai, Ban Mê Thuột.

Light ‘em up if you got ’em. If you don’t, see your buddy.

This was the first song he heard in-country.

“Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival

First month in, my husband fought the heat, the humidity, the insects. All brutal as the enemy.  His spanking new grenade carrier vest held a half-dozen.

Hooah!* An acronym for “Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.” The Army battle cry. It’s also Vietnamese. The word spelled V as in Victor, A as in alpha, N as in November, G as in Golf in Vietnamese translates to “yes,” but it’s pronounced “u-ah.” Some used Hooah as a substitute for “okay” or “yes”. Similar to announcing your agreement with “Amen.”

He was infantry. He and the others followed their Lieutenants, their Sergeants… their Chain of Command.

Some soldiers seized on “Chain of Fools” as a reference to the chain of command.

“Chain of Fools,” Aretha Franklin

He was an Army grunt, driving a jeep in the dark with the headlights off. Stoned. An 18-year-old in search of the enemy with a 106mm M40 recoil-less rifle mounted on the jeep. That’s one mother of a gun. The jeep’s antenna snagged a low-hanging vine and a neon green bamboo viper dropped into the jeep. They had been warned it was a two-stepper. Two steps and you’re dead. Triangle head and you’re dead. Smoke-your-last-cigarette dead. No. Not true. Poisonous, but not necessarily The-End-Dead. That was a myth to keep the troops alert in the bush. Everyone promptly jumped out of the jeep.

Except my husband.

“Handsome Johnny,” Richie Havens

Mail came every other day, pretty much no matter where you were. Important to morale, it was the highlight of the day. He didn’t receive any “Dear John” letters.

“The Letter,” The Box Tops

My husband recalls sleeping on his back in the jungle during monsoon season wrapped in his mosquito net with his arms crossed on his chest under the cover of his poncho. Lying on the ground, he felt the torrents of rain pummeling the poncho as he listened to the noisy night where his sleep aid was exhaustion.

“Riders on the Storm,” The Doors

One night, a heavy creature landed on his chest with a thump, its bad breath in his face, four clawed footprints held tight to his chest, its long lizard tail, thick, hefty. Trailed down his thigh. My husband instinctively flung his arms wide and the creature jumped, landing a couple yards away, then scurried, smash, crash, branches rustling and snapping, it was gone. He was glad it was pitch black dark.

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” The Animals

Walking on patrol along the bottom of a ten-foot-deep trench. Looking out for Charlie. He held his breath as a Bengal tiger flew across the sky from one bank to the other above him, an elegant display of incongruous beauty in the midst of primeval fear.

“Time has Come Today,” The Chambers Brothers

In base camp, a cot, hot showers, deep sleep, a PX, Playboy magazines, beer, music, bags of the cleanest cannabis you ever saw. No twigs. Chopped. Ready to roll. Five bucks. Other stuff, too. Hanoi Hannah. Top 40s. You want it. You got it.

“Honky–Tonk Women,” The Rolling Stones

He saw his first tropical beach at Cam Ranh Bay. He recovered there for 30 days. Plasmodium falciparum. Malaria. He used to tell me how falciparum was dangerous—much worse than Plasmodium vivax—but if you beat it, you would never experience a relapse. True.

Till the Morning Comes

My husband realized his condition was perilous when he awoke to find that only his toes were visible before him. A priest in army fatigues with a purple stole draped around his neck was giving him the last rites. His entire body was packed in ice.

“May the Lord who frees you from sin,

save you and raise you up.”

He survived it.

“Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” Otis Redding

After recovering from falciparum, my husband was assigned to the skid of a Huey helicopter for the remaining six months of his tour. He rappelled into the jungle to clear LZs. Landing Zones. Breaking jungle with a machete eight hours a day. Fifteen days at a whack. Purple haze. Like the smoke bombs that guided helicopters into the LZs.

“Purple Haze,” Jimi Hendrix

Flying low over the jungle in the Huey, survival songs blasted M79 rocket-launch-loud. Heard easily over the pounding staccato of the rotor blades.

In Nam, the music provided a paradox of stimulation and relief. Hard-hitting and heavy, anti-war or not, it was volume to the max.  Always.

“Machine Gun,” Jimi Hendrix

After his year in Vietnam, my husband was stationed at Fort Benning, GA for the remainder of his duty. When he finally returned home, he saw no flag waving at the airport. No Welcome Home parades. Just Revolution. Everywhere. He threw away all his bars and medals. Overseas Bars, Vietnam Service Medals, Bronze Stars. Everything. Fuck it.

“Volunteers,” Jefferson Airplane

He grew his hair long. He drank too much. Dropped acid. Kept a tiny LSD notebook not much bigger than a matchbook with his trip notes. 50 trips. Dates, places, people.

“Truckin’,” The Grateful Dead

I was still in college then. Safe. Kent State stole the headlines.

“Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Later, in 1973, as a young teacher, I wore a nickel-plated bracelet engraved with the name of a POW soldier. Worn to honor and increase awareness of POW/MIA soldiers. I wore it until the soldier came home. Names of returning POWs were published in the newspapers daily. Amazingly, my POW returned only two weeks after I began wearing the bracelet. It seems to me, I mailed the bracelet back to the supporting organization and they sent it on to him.

“War,” Edwin Starr

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear my husband screaming. Nightmares. Fear. Anger. PTSD. This is new. In the forty-plus years that we shared a bed, I never heard a single nightmare.

“The Eve of Destruction,” Barry McGuire

These days bring visits to the VA Hospital, checking in at a kiosk on autopilot. Head-to-toe examinations, diagnoses, monitoring changes. His brothers are in the corridors, elevators, waiting rooms. White, black, red, yellow. Wheelchairs, missing limbs, prosthetics, tattoos. Young vets, old vets.

Mostly resigned to their fate. You can smell the sadness.

Just Dropped In

My husband survived Plasmodium Falciparum malaria. He survived jungle rot—where the skin on the bottom of your feet rots off and you eventually need to have the soles of your feet scraped. They used to call it Trench Foot.

Prevention is keeping your feet warm, dry, and clean. And changing socks three times a day.

In the bush? in monsoon season? Right.

He survived rain-drenched valleys soaked in blood.

He flew home—like a lot of soldiers didn’t.

His hometown buddy, the best man at our wedding, found heroin in Vietnam.

The Army dried him out in Hawaii on his way back to the States.

Another soldier, whose mother served them milk and cookies in her kitchen every day after school, has his name engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial in DC.

During the year after my husband returned home, the kid’s mother served my husband milk and cookies again. But now she was inconsolable. Crying with grief. Begging to know, “Why? Why my son?”

And my husband’s Very. Best. Army buddy?

The one who visited us umpteen times. The one who kept in touch with us for 42 years?

Tony.  He committed suicide ten years ago. I’ll never forget the sound of my husband’s wail when he got the call.

 “Hold On I’m Comin’,” Sam and Dave

Now my husband has Parkinson’s Disease from Agent Orange, the herbicide and defoliant used to reveal the enemy by stripping trees of their leaves. Dementia has arrived and it’s chasing him down.

I had to take away his car keys. Sometimes he experiences bouts of paranoia.

He says I took his VA ID card.

I remove his ID from his wallet and show him that the ID is there. Expiration, October 2024.

The ID photo shows him with short hair. It was before he grew his hair long again during COVID. Down to his breast pocket long.

I’ve been told to expect this sort of thing.

Ride My See–Saw

If I sometimes seem distracted, it’s the background noise of two lives crossing into unknown territory facing an unpredictable enemy.

I hike in the forest by myself. Lost. Not lost.

I escape. I travel to clear my head from time to time. Seeking sanity in wild places.

I love wild places. Correction. I respect and cherish wild places.

Now, that wild place is here.

“Find the Cost of Freedom,” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Hooah = Army.   —   Oorah = Marines.   —   Hooyah = Navy & Coast Guard.

The Peace Train

/in , , ,

Yesterday, in honor of International Peace Day, Yosef/Cat Stevens and Playing for Change, assembled a cast of musicians and singers from around the world.

If you haven’t watched it yet, prepare to be moved with Love and Hope.

  International Peace Day – Peace Train 2021

Time and Distance

/in

It’s been a long summer of hot weather and hot heads. Hot tomatoes in the garden. Hot, crispy lawns that are fighting back to go green again.

And now, 9/11. I almost feel embarrassed to post my trivial experiences from that day and the days following, but it’s like the Kennedy Assassination. We know where we were at the time.

On September 11, 2001, I was in the driveway of my sister’s home on Long Island NY,  placing my suitcase in the trunk of her car. We were just about to leave for Islip airport and my return flight home.

Instead, my sister came outside to say that a friend called her and told her to put on the TV. The first tower had been hit. Chaos everywhere. Clouds of thick smoke, to be followed by unimaginable death, pain, and suffering.

We drove to Islip to see if we could learn anything about arranging future flights. As if there would even be future flights in the days immediately following the attack.

The airport was closed so we circled back and returned to stand in front of the TV, not knowing what to think. The who, what, and why.

For the next 10 days, I awoke at 3 AM to call American Airlines. Every night it was the same. Busy signals or long, long wait times. I didn’t mind waiting, but at 4 AM each morning, I hung up and went back to bed, my calls unanswered. Finally, I got through to ticketing.

Two weeks after 9/11, I returned home. As the plane descended towards my home airport, I experienced a brief event of confusion and fear. I looked out over the landscape and didn’t recognize where I was. Not even the expanse of the huge lake on which we lived.

The wheel wells opened, the tarmac flew up to meet us, and then, we were home. Safe.

I have never been able to remember the year that 9/11 took place. I google it every year. 9/11 will forever remain an event to be recalled with sadness for those who lost their lives and awe that such a thing could even take place.

To all the survivors, to all those left behind. May you find solace and even joy. Life goes on.

Night Falls

/in , ,

I confess. I love to read in the hot tub after dark. I put my Kindle in a quart-size zip lock bag, lie back, and rest my “Kindle bag” on one of those inflatable bathtub pillows. Not jets, no light. All I want is the sky and the sounds of the night.

I read as the night falls around me.

Precisely at sundown, daylight dims, the gulls are gone and the Canada geese come honking like New York City traffic. First they arrive in pairs.

As dark descends, there are fours and sixes, until finally a great flock circles wide where the creek feeds the harbor. They fly low, continuing to honk.

“Here we are! Make way!” they announce, until finally the entire squad cruises to bed down for the night along the shore line.

Then the barred owl arrives, landing high up in a Douglas fir about seventy-five feet away. I only know he’s there because of his melodious call in the pitch black.

“Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?”

From somewhere around the Judd Creek bridge, I hear a muted response.

“Who-cooks-for-you?  Who-cooks-for-you?”

Next comes the moon, rising high against the velvet sky. I admire it through the silhouette of the blossoming cherry tree before me.

The tub is just hot enough to warm my weary bones and lull me to the edge of dozing off.

My dog Lily lies nearby on a cushion covered with her much-loved wool saddle blanket. She’s a Golden Retriever/Great Pyrenees mix, so the Pyrenees in her is here to love and protect. She’s never far from my side.

30 minutes later feels like an hour.

“C’mon Lily. Time to go in.”

She is as reluctant as I am.

Kindle in a quart bag.