My Alice's Restaurant

I wonder what is the subset of poor souls who read my blog but have not heard nor seen Alice's Restaurant? If by any chance you, by some freak of history, are such a person; I would strongly suggest you have missed one of the great culture experiences of our time, nay of any time and you should endeavor to hear and see AR as soon as possible. You may immediately hear a contemporary rendition with film clips by clicking on that there link. Doing so will delay your enjoyment of my words by about 18 minutes but will be well worth the journey. In the alternative you will, even without the clip, be able to follow my story below but perhaps not catch all of the whitful nuance. 

My story, much like the original is not about Alice's Restaurant, which is not the name of the restaurant anyway. No, my story is about the draft, which by no small coincidence is what Alice's Restaurant is about. You may remember this exchange from about midway in the song and the movie.

"Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna se blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies, I mean kill, Kill, Kill, Kill." And I started jumpin' up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin' up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, said, "You're our boy." 

Now that's not my favorite exchange in the tale, story, movie or song; no that comes much earlier and goes like this: Twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used in as evidence against us. But like I said this is a story about the draft, my personal story about being nearly drafted and not as you might have thought a story about Alice or the restaurant, so I should probably get to my story. But you can still chose to hear the whole original AR with that link up there or you could read the lyrics or even come back later and do both. In any case I should get on with My Alice's Restaurant Story. 

Back in the late fall of 1967 I dropped out of college. I left college on a Thursday, I remember this because on the following Wednesday, a mere six days later, I received a notice to report for my draft physical. Back in those days there was a lot of political pressure not to allow college students to avoid the draft my hanging around a campus without actually advancing towards a degree. Many college registrars felt compelled to vigorously inform the selective service of any change in student status and many recruiting centers acted with haste to fill their body quota.

So this is the story of one cold December 22nd, 1967; when I was selected to have my classifying pre-induction general physical and screening at the army's Fort Wayne facility in Detroit, Michigan. The bus was scheduled to leave the Ann Arbor bus station promptly at 7 a.m. on one amazingly cold winter morning. A snow storm two days before had left piles of now plowed snow all along the roads from my home nine miles away, the dark morning had shards of icy snow whipping on the wind.

Our bus was full but just as it started to roll there was a thump on the door, the driver let one more passenger/victim/future cannon fodder on and said:

"Find a seat somewhere, we're full up today."

The slight and clearly confused new arrival wore a huge winter parka with a wildly fur-lined hood. He took a quick glance down the four rows of faces and sat down on the steps by the door.

"Suit yourself," said the driver and we were off into the still dark morning heading for Detroit an hour away.

Slowly we all warmed up and woke up and conversations began. As it turned out only about half of the bus were there for our first physical. Others were being called back because they failed previously and as many as ten or twelve were there to actually be inducted into the military, they would not be returning with us to Ann Arbor that evening. No, they were off to war. Vietnam did come up in conversation and several of our crew were eager to get there, the dissenting opinion was not aired in the early morning light. Our last minute arrival stayed fully cocooned in his ginormous parka and did not participate in the chatter.

We arrived at Fort Wayne and entered under an newly installed archway that read: "Induction Center". I felt somehow that the day would not go well. Our busload was moved to a classroom to take a screening test prior to our physical. A sergeant stood at the podium and instructed each entering group to find seats and fill out the basic information on the form with the pencil provided. Then we were to color in the dots beneath the letters and numbers. These instructions were repeated each time a new group entered the room and a immediately dislikable private strode about the room in his pressed green uniform and checked our work.

I was in my second year of college, so under years of education I had put 14. The private glanced at my info. sheet and said:

"Fourteen, you know that means you've had two years of college."

I decided at that point I would go with silence as my default mode when dealing with anyone in uniform.

"What you couldn't keep your grades up even to avoid vietnam?"

Nope, I was going with silence. He moved on. Seated two seats in front of me was the parka wearing introvert and he was clearly struggling with the concept of coloring in the boxes under the letters of his name. The private prick in green pounced. He berated the kid and it became obvious fairly quickly the kid was not faking it. He either had taken one too many tabs of acid this morning or he was just not right in the head. In any case he was  a helpless target for the asshole in green and the sergeant, not twenty feet away, showed no interest in ending the torment.

I briefly considered intervening but we were in land of the military. We had already been told several times that they could keep us overnight for any reason at any time, we would be told that at least a dozen times during the course the day. I decided that hero was not the wisest course of action while inside of a military induction center. We took our test. The tests were immediately graded, the 90%+ who passed were moved out to begin our physicals and the remaining group, including parka boy, were told they would now take another test and if they were trying to fake a failing grade they would be discovered and kept overnight. The last I saw of parka boy, he was being taunted again by the evil green private.

The details of the next five hours spent in shoes, socks and underwear are a story for another time. I'll make a note to put that story in the queue, it's funny but distracting from todays Alice's Restaurant theme. You basically process through 22 physical stations and get a check mark at each one. Near the end your file gets reviewed and you are sent to a final guy who tells you your immediate fate. Mine was to get dressed and follow the signs.

I got dressed, checked the boarding board and discovered my bus was 1-2 hours from departure. So I followed the signs for the lunch room. I found myself walking down a long hallway, near the far end were a couple of people I could not make out until I got closer. Facing me was parka boy now moaning, crying and shaking violently; with his back to me was the same private prick still berating and taunting the kid. I look behind me and saw no one, I was alone in his massively long hallway with parka boy and the evil green military incarnate.

Now remember I am nineteen at this time and had just been poked, prodded, injected, selected and rejected for five hours. I made a somewhat irrational decision, I was now ten feet from the evil green tyrant, I raised my left arm to throw a forearm shiver at the private's head. I figured that between my arm and the concrete wall, he was going down and out. What would happen next, well I hadn't worked that part out. My adrenaline spiked and ...

At that moment a large dark green uniform pushed past me, I had not heard him coming and only had an instant to notice a lot of scrambled egg yellow on his shoulder. He spun the private around with one hand and with the other he grabbed his name tag and ripped it and half of the front of his shirt off. The major or general or whatever put his arm around parka boy and took him through a nearby door. The whole scene took less than twenty seconds.

I was now alone with the private who had turned as white as his cotton t-shirt that was exposed through the huge hole that the officer had torn in his shirt. He was using the wall for support or he would have been curled up in a ball on the floor. I leaned in close to his ear and whispered three syllables very slowly: Vi - et - nam.

Now that is a great finish to the story I know but there was one more scene. When our bus was finally loaded several hours later, as we pulled away from the induction center into the dark winter evening, I looked up to a second floor window and there brightly illuminated was parka boy standing on an exam table with three white coated doctors around him. He was waving his arms and jumping up and down; and although I couldn't hear him, I was was sure he was shouting: "I wanna kill! Kill! Kill!"

"You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant, excepting Alice."

Agent Orange

Thirty-five years after the United States pulled out of Vietnam, the toxic chemical Agent Orange continues to kill and maim citizens of that country and U.S. veterans of that war. Recently a joint panel of U.S. and Vietnamese scientists, citizens and governmental officials released a plan that urges the U.S. government and private corporations to provide $300 million over the next decade to clean up land and water sources still contaminated with dioxin, the chemical component of the defoliant Agent Orange.

The funds would also provide medical treatment to the tens of thousands of Vietnamese and their children suffering from disabilities and deformities linked to exposure to Agent Orange.  "The war is over but the wounds from the war still remain in many areas of Vietnam," Nguyen Van Son, national assembly member and panel participant. "Many Agent Orange victims have died, but many other victims, including children with disabilities, have been fighting diseases under extreme hardship and they are in dire need of treatment and support."

The Red Cross estimates up to 3 million Vietnamese have suffered health problems related to Agent Orange exposure. During the war the U.S. military used over 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on some 5.5 million acres of forest and crop land. The dioxin in these agents has been linked to cancers, birth defects and other serious health risks. Dioxin levels in soil, sediment and fish in some areas remains 400 times above international limits. Drinking water and consuming tainted fish and game still today transfers the dioxin and the health risks particularly to the rural population.

Matterhorn

There are days we will never forget where we were. Everyone in my generation knows exactly where they were when they heard: "... as the presidential motorcade moved through downtown Dallas." Lots of folks my age also know where they were when they heard Elvis had died, I don't. But I do know exactly where I was when Nixon resigned the presidency and I know where I was on April 30th 1975 -- the day the Vietnam War ended for us.

About ten years later, I picked up a tattered paperback in a used book store in West Hollywood and began a three year period where I read everything I could find on Vietnam. I finished that immersion with A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan published in 1988. I still believe that to be the best book ever written about the American involvement in Vietnam. 

Since 1988 I had not read another book about that war. Then a few months ago came the word of another great Vietnam book -- Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. I put my name on the waiting list at the Berkeley library and waited, I was 36th in the queue. In the meantime, I decided to reread A Bright Shining Lie. After several attempts I gave up. It wasn't the same book, I wasn't the same person, it wasn't 1988 or 1975.

Last week, my name rolled to the top of the wait list and I picked up Matterhorn. Six hundred pages read as fast as had the nine hundred of A Bright Shining Lie, which remains the best book ever written about that dirty little war.

As for Matterhorn -- well one of the jacket blurbs got it right for me:

"Never have we seen the particular horrors and challenges of Vietnam so richly explored, and never have we felt the tactile experience of the war depicted with such mesmerizing force. We see the big picture, but as with all great novels, it's the tiny details--the mud, the leeches, the adrenaline-drenched dread of combat, and the tender joy of comradeship--that lingers with the reader long after the story is over."

If you want to know why I and others rage against the United States' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, read these two books. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

A Hawk-Dove Conundrum

Part three of my anti-war series arises from another real life encounter that made me think about how we express our opinions on what is clearly an emotional subject for many.

I was in the Oakland airport doing a pick-up for an old friend. I was early, the flight was late, so I pulled my "killing time" book out of the trunk. I was sitting in the large pre-screening ticketing area when I heard an airport bell captain speaking in a loud, commanding voice for all to hear. I don't have the exact words but he was pointing out the six camouflaged, beret-wearing soldiers. I did catch: "On their way to serve their country." There was more than a smattering of applause, travelers at the doorstep of the escalator gave way to the soldiers with several pats on the shoulder. I don't use airports much these days but a few calls to friends who are frequent flyers told me that this was not an isolated occurrence.

What got my attention was a middle-aged man a few seats away from me. He was in the line of sight between my seat and the soldiers. He was not happy with the scene unfolding in front of us. Moments later he folded his newspaper and headed for a nearby bar, I followed him and took a seat just around the bend in the bar so he and I were close but not on top of each other. We both ordered drinks and I opened my book again. He hit his beer quickly and after a short time I put down the book and he asked if it was any good. The book just happened to be a poker biography (Doyle Brunson's) and it took me about three sentences to bring up the Matusow book and we were conversational buddies.

Halfway through his second Miller Lite, I took the plunge.

"I noticed that you were less than happy with the acknowledgment those soldiers were given."

The same dark face returned and he took a long drag on his beer. Then it spilled out:

"You remember Vietnam?"

"I do indeed."

"Well I was there. I was there at the end. We knew for months that we were going home, if we managed to stay alive until our orders came through. When I got back home there wasn't any of that baby-killer crap or being spit on or nothing like that. I think most of those stories are urban myths anyway."

He took another tug on the long-neck.

"I just hate it that those young fellows get some applause in an airport but we don't give them the training or equipment to be safe where we are sending them. Hell, I don't even know if I'm for or against these wars; if I try to read about them at all it takes me back to a place I just don't want to go."

Just then, as in all these airport vignettes, his flight got a PA boarding call.

"Damn, they said another hour, I gotta run."

As he shuffled for money with no bartender in sight I offered:

"Let me get that one, you gotta plane to catch."

"Thanks" he said. A couple a paces away he turned back and asked: "You weren't there, were you?"

"No, I was one of the long-hairs back here trying to stop it."

He thought for a moment and said: "Thanks for that too."

What an amazing difference forty years can make.

What Is It Good For?

War!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

Say it again.

-Edwin Starr

Several months ago I wrote a short piece voicing my opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The very first response I got to that post was: "Would you say more about your position?" This is the first of three or four posts on the subject of war, opposition to war and the dark reaches of the American psyche that still resonate from the war that nearly destroyed us -- Vietnam.

My first point is also my primary thesis for everything that follows on the subject. War as we know today flows from the experiences in the 20th century. History, in this case, is a horrible guide to current international relations. It matters not that General Patton studied the military tactics of the Romans and Greeks, this is not World War II. Today any serious reflection on the conduct of human relations must come to the contemporary conclusion that war as an instrument of national politics is obsolete.

War is obsolete.

Not that history is a useless guide but what we learn from and what we take with us into the future are critical decisions. My parochial school education taught me that for every christian martyred by the romans another three converted to the fledging sect of christianity. Today the madrasah that indoctrinate radical islamists find their young converts in backwash of western alliance military activities. Over seven years of occupation of Iraq simply provides too many opportunities for citizens of that country to turn against the U.S. Even if you hated Saddam and welcomed the liberation of 2003, over the ensuing years your neighbor is shot, your daughter is searched on the street by soldiers, your infrastructure is not rebuilt and foreign troops patrol your country. Your heart and your mind change.

I do not blame Barack Obama nor either George Bush. I blame history. I can only imagine, but I can imagine it vividly, the first time the joint chiefs of staff briefed the new president. The new president who spent 8 years in the Illinois legislature and 4 years in the U.S. Senate must have been overwhelmed at what the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was holding back. Hundreds of suicide bombers and dozens of dirty bomb plots hatched by Al-Qaeda were going to rain down on the west without a continuing war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Iraq perhaps is more a war of the western hubris that we can and should impose democracy on those backward middle-east countries and their oil reserves. 

In either case the problem is blindly following a failed course of history. War stopped Germany and war stopped Japan but since then no country has risen up to attempt to conquer the world. Terrorism cannot be defeated with historically warlike tactics. The western world should and must present a cultural shining example of what peace can mean in a post-industrial society. An vibrant example of what society can be is what will win the hearts and minds of those seeking freedom. Instead we use bullets and predator drones to kill those who with justification believe we are trying to conquer them for our gain.

Are they right? Well of course they are and of course they are not. There is no overarching governmental policy that drives those opposed to "Amerika". But we are the wealthiest, most successful nation in human history. We can have a clear, articulate policy towards the rest of the world, that policy should begin with the words: "We have made mistakes in the past." But we wish to change the course of our historical path and we invite others to join us in this historic opportunity to abandon war and embrace peace.

Of course not everyone will come along. Of course not everyone will forgive us for past transgressions but that is no reason to compound our historical mistakes and create even more enemies. Declare our current foreign policy bankrupt. Envision change -- c-h-a-n-g-e, where have we heard that before?

To those who find this proposal naive, to those who find the words: Give Peace a Chance absurd. I would like to ask: Just how long do you think you get to prove your path of death and destruction will win out? The lessons of history are clear, when it doesn't work you stop or your culture and your country will collapse. It takes some time to turn the ship of state away from a course founded in worn out principals, but we simply have to begin and no nation on earth can make these changes except the United States of America.

The first step -- bring all of the troops home now.

Memorial Day 2010

An Anniversary Unearned

30 April, 2010 HO CHI MINH CITY – Vietnam marked the 35th anniversary of the Communist victory in the Vietnam War with a grand military parade Friday through the former Saigon, with the government basking more in its economic achievements than its historic military defeat of the United States.


While this date is clinically the end of the Vietnam War, we were all aware it was over months even years before. Troops withdrawal had begun nearly three years prior to the ultimate surrender, which was an end only for the U.S. and not for the Vietnamese who had suffered under imperialists of one flag or another for decades.


So it might be hard to remember where you were on April 30th of 1975. It was a Wednesday, I was working the late shift at the pharmacy. We did see a shot of the U.S. embassy above on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, but there was little celebration. The anti-war movement had won but fifty-six thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese had died in the futile struggle for nothing more than a discredited foreign policy.


Nixon had already been run out of office in disgrace in '74. There was talk of healing the wounds of war but little was being done for the surviving veterans who still today carry the scars of this national hubris. All in all, not an anniversary to celebrate and apparently not a milestone from which the country has learned the lessons of attempting to impose democracy on other cultures.

Yesterday, Today and Jane Fonda

I mentioned that I was beginning a reading list for my planned trip to Vietnam in August. Today I discovered there is a new academic book about Jane Fonda and her actions and image as it was attached to the war back in the 70's. I will at least put my hands on this book, if not give it a thorough read. Written by a sociology professor, it takes on some rather obvious themes that one has to wonder about the contemporary need to explore yet again.

The author seeks to correct the myths around Fonda's anti-war activities and to view or review them in the light of a less politically charged atmosphere. He concludes that much of what passed for fact was actually politically motivated commentary from the right. This quote is from the review in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"The book argues that the demonization of Jane Fonda as the treacherous "Hanoi Jane" was a convenient way for the right to attribute American defeat in Vietnam to left-wing activists and to reassert an aggressive masculinity in American culture and politics."

Having not read the book yet, I can only speculate from the reviews that the author seems to miss the point about Ms. Fonda's actions and comments as, in fact, actually being politically motivated from the left. Seems many authors do not understand that the paintbrush works in both directions.

Whether this book will change anyone's mind or correct the historical record would seem to depend a lot less on facts then on human nature. The only comment on the first review I encountered forgivingly said: "She should have been shot as a traitor!" Hearts and Minds, we are seeking to change their Hearts and Minds.

Back in the fall of 1975, just months after the Vietnam War was over from an American point of view; Jane Fonda along with Daniel Ellsberg discloser of the Pentagon Papers and singer, songwriter, activist Holly Near were doing a 17 city peace caravan. The tour fed on the still wounded soul left by the 15 year long Vietnam War. One of my good friends was the local organizer in Ann Arbor and asked me if I would agree to be Jane's bodyguard for the day. My qualifications included being large and having long hair.

There are two images I remember from that day. First, I was to meet and pick-up Ms. Fonda at a late morning backyard brunch/fundraiser. When I arrived I spotted my friend the organizer and he waved me over, he was having a conversation with a woman and after I made my way across the yard, he introduced me to Jane Fonda. I had never before and have never since been speechless based on the striking physical beauty of a person. I was simply not prepared to meet someone who actually was beautiful. Sure I was much younger and more taken by superficials, but I can still vividly recall that feeling today.

In the evening there were speeches at the University of Michigan campus. We entered from the rear of the building and came up on stage via a spiral staircase from a level below. One of the columns on the stage hide the stairwell. The format following introductions was: Jane's speech, then Holly's talk and song; with Daniel finishing up. After her speech, while Holly was beginning Jane turned to me and asked if there was a bathroom down below. We went back down the spiral and when she came back she stood at the foot of the staircase and we had this conversation:

"Do you think I need to go right back up?"

"This is what? City 16 of 17 and you have heard those speeches many times already."

"Yes, it's hard to smile and respond to the same words and I'm just tired."

"Why don't you sit down and take a few minutes."

After sitting for a bit in silence, she looked up and asked:

"Do you think this will ever be over?'

Wiser then my years, I answered: "Not as long as their are human beings around to disagree."

She took a few more minutes and then we heard the applause following a Holly Near song, she rose and said:

"Well, I guess I should go back up."

I followed her up the small staircase. At the top before she pushed through the door, she paused with me one step below bringing us face-to-face in the tight, dim space. The sense of beauty from our morning meeting was long past, we were just two people, one of whom was clearly questioning her path.

"So, you think this is never going to end."

Again, much wiser than my years: "I think resisting war and advocating for peace will always be a worthy cause."

She gave a thankful non-Hollywood smile, touched me on the shoulder with her left hand and pushed open the door with her right. Thus endeth my Jane Fonda story.

Images of Another Time

We have embedded in our consciousness billions of bits of memories and motes of images. Some are pictures of good times, but like all humanoids we have a deep genetic link to the darkside. For those of you old enough to remember, just look at that camo-picture above and you will recognize two of the enduring publicity images from the Vietnam war.

I have mentioned before that I have never read a more compelling book on the Vietnam war than A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. The last time I referred to the book, I got an email pointing me to another Vietnam book, but I was just not in a place to engage with that particular slice of history back then. Now the New Times Review of Books has written about two new looks at the war. Apparently, it is time to once again converse with the ghosts of our collective past, at least for me. I will report back on my journey over the next several months.

Not only will I be reading and rereading some of the recent past history of Vietnam and the US involvement there, but I also need to familiarize myself with the current state of affairs in that corner of the planet. I have exceeded to some gentle but ever so compelling pressure and committed to making a journey to Vietnam late this summer.

I invite you to read along with my preparation and eventually the actualization of something I am not yet sure of.
---
art credit: nytimes patrick thomas

December 15th at the Wall

Today, Washington DC had the last mild day it can expect for many months. It was fifty degrees, overcast but beautifully mild for mid-December. After a couple of other stops near the National Mall, I walked over to the Vietnam Memorial -- "The Wall". This was my first visit, though the expectation was tempered by the many articles and programs I have seen and read over the years.

I found the name and location of the one person I knew personally who had died in the Vietnam war and I walked down the Eastern incline and up halfway West to panel twenty-five and found his name. I was surprised that the memorial did not affect me as I had anticipated. I stood for awhile, you can see your own image reflected in the black polish stone. On a cloudy day like today, the image is a washout, ghost-like. Eventually I drifted back down to the center and deepest part of the memorial. I watched my own reflection blur and fade as the sunlight weakened. My image reflected through the names of those lost over there.

After a time, I looked up the eastern ramp to my right, it was empty all the way to the top. I turned my head to see a couple leaving the western entrance... I was alone at the bottom of the Maya Lin's black monument. There was the moment I had anticipated for many years and yet there was no revelation, we all know the question that still lingers with our generation. What folly, what arrogance, what failing of national character was it that brought us to a black granite wall with fifty-eight thousand names carved upon it?

To question why can be the only responsible reaction, but we have failed to answer that simple question. Shall we begin plans now for the Afghanistan Memorial Wall. How many administrations will be brought low by that war and how many names will be hammered into another cold slab of rock.

And still we have not answered the question -- why?

A Stop Along the Way

There are certain times and places where the only appropriate action is simply to pause. Back in Michigan a few weeks ago I went to my parents graves with one of my brothers. I am not overly sentimental about final resting places or mortal remains. It seems improper to attach so much reverence and import to the material while obscuring the expansive nature of the spiritual, however you define it.

On the other hand, there are events of such life changing import that a commemoration of them seems necessary and of the highest importance; as they say: Less We Forget. For those of my generation such a time and such a place come together at the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington DC. I am headed there to honor those who died in Vietnam and those who served there and still suffer from the exposure. A black gash in the ground reminds us of the dark wound in our collective souls.

I always add when talking about the Vietnam War, should you not know or perhaps poorly remember, there is a singular book that remarkably captures what happened to us all back then. I cannot recommend another piece of literature more highly: A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.