I Walk the Street at Night
Remember that Guns n Roses song, "Patience" where at the end he starts in on the, "I've been walking the streets at night." Yeah me and the guys from my eighth grade class could sing the entire song word for word and those of us who could whistle had the intro down pat.
So anyway I went on 2 walks today. The first was really just a short trip. It was an excuse to walk down to the Cafe Luna and get me a Cafe Mocha. I haven't had a good one of those in a while and I was feeling the need. This reduced my total wealth from $25 to $ 20 well maybe twenty one I think. And I even through a buck in the tip jar even if I think paying the counter person extra for not screwing up your coffee is a form of extortion. I'm a tipper. I'd say that is all part of my neurotic need to make women happy, but I give dudes cash too, though rarely as much. Obvious sexist behavior I should probably be reported to NOW immediately. I don't see a contact us thing on their website but I'm sure if you're determined you will find it.
The second aspect of the first walk was to take pictures for Everyday Absurd I now have a folder full and can dole them out slowly. Mostly though the pictures are of Homes I'll never be able to afford. Million dollar homes just a couple blocks to the west. And you couldn't pay me enough to walk more than a couple blocks to the east. Weird how things like that work out.
My second walk, the evening constitutional so to speak, came after the presidential debate. I couldn't actually bring myself to watch the debate on the television but I did sit in the next room and listen to what was being said. (Both the parents are a bit hard of hearing it seems they blast the tube like nobodies business. I could have sat in my room upstairs and probably made out most of the debate.) I gotta say from a radio style standpoint it sounded like Kerry mopped the floor with the president. Towards the end of the debate you could hear that the president couldn't hold it together much longer and he kept pausing and stuttering and repeating nonsense phrases. The part of me that wants Kerry to win was happy about this. The part of me that says, "This man is currently the president of out country. How did this happen?" was somewhat terrified by the prospect of having him in charge even so long as the rest of this year.
So as I walked I thought about the debates and about the many different things I wanted to write about. I had run through about three different post / rants in my head before getting home (the walk was to long -- which is good for exercise but not for coming to a decision) and as I sit down at the good computer in the middle of the night to make my daily offering I've decided that my musing on national security can wait another day, October / autumn books can wait for October, my Mozilla plug can certainly be put on hold. I'm going to talk for a little bit about my father.
The old man was drafted into the army as a young man, much younger than I am now and he served in Vietnam. Now it's been my experience that most vets of that war don't talk about it overly much. They aren't usually the guy at the VFW reliving the glory of youth.
Over the years we have heard a story or two from the old man. Never anything about combat. The only combat story I heard from him was really the end of another story. A friend of his is a professor at Columbia university here in Chicago and every semester he teaches a history class on the Vietnam era. One day each semester (spring and fall only, he's tenured and doesn't need to mess with that summer stuff) the professor invites my father and eight other gentleman to speak before his class, to give his students an idea of the era from first hand accounts.
I had the opportunity to sit in one of these classes just prior to the start of the war in Iraq. All of the men had interesting to talk about. One of the men was a member of the south Vietnamese army and was in Saigon when it fell and barely got away with his life. All the men had very different styles of talking about Vietnam but I noticed few really described combat. It wasn't what they were there to talk about.
Now the old man started out very much like Tim O'Brien does in the title story of The Things They Carried and I know he has never read the book. He has never read a fiction based on the period of time or watched a movie about Vietnam (though he did watch the drill instructor part of the movie in full metal jacket). The old man talks about the items that he and every man with him had to carry with them through the jungle. He still knows all of the equipment and exactly how much everything weighed to the ounce. He wasn't alone in this knowledge. All the men on the stage would nod along with him as he listed the large number of tolls needed by a small number of men to effective live and survive in a hostile jungle.
The old man talks about sergeant school and how he didn't want to be a sergeant but he was told, "Uncle Sam wants you to be a sergeant." He talks how beautiful the country side was. He talks about his time aboard a hospital ship when he had malaria. He doesn't talk about the land mine he stepped on.
A student asked if as a young man he understood what he was getting into and that was when I heard the only combat story I ever heard from him. He talks about the helicopter landing in Vietnam his first day there. He talks about how just as he was getting off the man right next to him was shot in the arm. He let the student know just how much understanding comes with a moment like that. They bandaged the soldier up and threw em right back on the chopper.
The only time I ever saw my father cry was when the traveling version of the Vietnam memorial came through Chicago and he saw the names of old dead friends listed chronologically in place. He didn't have to search up and down the wall. For almost every year of the war and he could stop and look at a month or a couple of months and see names he hadn't thought of in years.
So anyway this is all a prelude to a post I'll do tomorrow about the boys of Schuyler county. Some ex soldiers I spent a lot of time with.
More Laters
So anyway I went on 2 walks today. The first was really just a short trip. It was an excuse to walk down to the Cafe Luna and get me a Cafe Mocha. I haven't had a good one of those in a while and I was feeling the need. This reduced my total wealth from $25 to $ 20 well maybe twenty one I think. And I even through a buck in the tip jar even if I think paying the counter person extra for not screwing up your coffee is a form of extortion. I'm a tipper. I'd say that is all part of my neurotic need to make women happy, but I give dudes cash too, though rarely as much. Obvious sexist behavior I should probably be reported to NOW immediately. I don't see a contact us thing on their website but I'm sure if you're determined you will find it.
The second aspect of the first walk was to take pictures for Everyday Absurd I now have a folder full and can dole them out slowly. Mostly though the pictures are of Homes I'll never be able to afford. Million dollar homes just a couple blocks to the west. And you couldn't pay me enough to walk more than a couple blocks to the east. Weird how things like that work out.
My second walk, the evening constitutional so to speak, came after the presidential debate. I couldn't actually bring myself to watch the debate on the television but I did sit in the next room and listen to what was being said. (Both the parents are a bit hard of hearing it seems they blast the tube like nobodies business. I could have sat in my room upstairs and probably made out most of the debate.) I gotta say from a radio style standpoint it sounded like Kerry mopped the floor with the president. Towards the end of the debate you could hear that the president couldn't hold it together much longer and he kept pausing and stuttering and repeating nonsense phrases. The part of me that wants Kerry to win was happy about this. The part of me that says, "This man is currently the president of out country. How did this happen?" was somewhat terrified by the prospect of having him in charge even so long as the rest of this year.
So as I walked I thought about the debates and about the many different things I wanted to write about. I had run through about three different post / rants in my head before getting home (the walk was to long -- which is good for exercise but not for coming to a decision) and as I sit down at the good computer in the middle of the night to make my daily offering I've decided that my musing on national security can wait another day, October / autumn books can wait for October, my Mozilla plug can certainly be put on hold. I'm going to talk for a little bit about my father.
The old man was drafted into the army as a young man, much younger than I am now and he served in Vietnam. Now it's been my experience that most vets of that war don't talk about it overly much. They aren't usually the guy at the VFW reliving the glory of youth.
Over the years we have heard a story or two from the old man. Never anything about combat. The only combat story I heard from him was really the end of another story. A friend of his is a professor at Columbia university here in Chicago and every semester he teaches a history class on the Vietnam era. One day each semester (spring and fall only, he's tenured and doesn't need to mess with that summer stuff) the professor invites my father and eight other gentleman to speak before his class, to give his students an idea of the era from first hand accounts.
I had the opportunity to sit in one of these classes just prior to the start of the war in Iraq. All of the men had interesting to talk about. One of the men was a member of the south Vietnamese army and was in Saigon when it fell and barely got away with his life. All the men had very different styles of talking about Vietnam but I noticed few really described combat. It wasn't what they were there to talk about.
Now the old man started out very much like Tim O'Brien does in the title story of The Things They Carried and I know he has never read the book. He has never read a fiction based on the period of time or watched a movie about Vietnam (though he did watch the drill instructor part of the movie in full metal jacket). The old man talks about the items that he and every man with him had to carry with them through the jungle. He still knows all of the equipment and exactly how much everything weighed to the ounce. He wasn't alone in this knowledge. All the men on the stage would nod along with him as he listed the large number of tolls needed by a small number of men to effective live and survive in a hostile jungle.
The old man talks about sergeant school and how he didn't want to be a sergeant but he was told, "Uncle Sam wants you to be a sergeant." He talks how beautiful the country side was. He talks about his time aboard a hospital ship when he had malaria. He doesn't talk about the land mine he stepped on.
A student asked if as a young man he understood what he was getting into and that was when I heard the only combat story I ever heard from him. He talks about the helicopter landing in Vietnam his first day there. He talks about how just as he was getting off the man right next to him was shot in the arm. He let the student know just how much understanding comes with a moment like that. They bandaged the soldier up and threw em right back on the chopper.
The only time I ever saw my father cry was when the traveling version of the Vietnam memorial came through Chicago and he saw the names of old dead friends listed chronologically in place. He didn't have to search up and down the wall. For almost every year of the war and he could stop and look at a month or a couple of months and see names he hadn't thought of in years.
So anyway this is all a prelude to a post I'll do tomorrow about the boys of Schuyler county. Some ex soldiers I spent a lot of time with.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 4:01 AM
4 Comments:
i'm looking forward to hearing about the boys of schuyler county.
my own father served in vietnam. i want to write out some of his stories but i cannot capture him--his voice-my father is an excellent story teller and he has much to tell -but everytime i try to write his stories down, it comes out all wrong.
i'd like to record him but i don't know how to go about doing that....i could just ask. but he doesn't talk about vietnam on a regular basis...just when something reminds him of something...which can be the way the rain is falling, pink icing on a cake, a smell, the way dirt from the garden is clinging onto his skin....
nice.
Yes, very nice indeed.
O think that's the way memory works. For me walking out ona cold winter day takes me right back to being a cubscout and at a klondike dearby. Hot chocolate and snow and the forest preserves.
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