MEMORY OF THE DAY: THE GOOD OLD DAYS, SOMETIMES

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I see a lot of social media posts recalling the good old days when everyone loved everyone else, and everyone was kind. There was some of that, particularly among people we loved. Unfortunately, people also fail to recall the bad times when reliving. This isn’t meant to be a social commentary, just a short story of some things that I remember.

In the early 1970s, our country was in as much turmoil as we are today. We were a country divided over many things, but the two biggest things were Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. I have thoughts on both, but again this isn’t a social commentary. It is just a story of how things really were then.

In the summer of 1971, I was a first lieutenant in the US Army and received orders for Vietnam. In those days they didn’t send full units over to replace the ones there, they sent individual replacements over to fill slots of soldiers who had completed their tours or had otherwise become incapacitate (KIA or WIA). Because I was an individual replacement my wife couldn’t stay in our quarters where we lived in Florida at the time. We decided that the best thing for her was to get her close to home so we found her an apartment in Monroe, LA. Monroe was 30 miles from her parents and 60 miles from my parents. She got a job at the university where I graduated 2 years earlier and where she had studied for two years.

We had to be careful because the Vietnam War was not a popular war and there were some people who might take advantage of my being in Vietnam to harass my wife. She maintained a low profile and never mentioned to anyone who didn’t already know where I was. The postman who delivered her mail every day knew where her husband was because he had seen those airmail envelopes with no stamp before, but he was always careful to not tell anyone. If he happened to see my wife in the parking lot, he would tell her that she had airmail letters today, or she didn’t get any airmail letters today and she would know what he was talking about. No one in our apartment complex knew where I was. She would sometimes invite her cousin over for dinner at the apartment and a couple of my friends would occasionally stop by. I am sure it caused some of the other tenants to wonder what all of these strange men were doing there.

Fortunately, where we lived people were not doing a lot of protesting and we didn’t really worry that much about her safety. She did have people she could call in an emergency, but thankfully she never had to. It wasn’t quite so calm in other parts of the country. I have written about how things were when I left Vietnam. I was at Bien Hoa Air Force Base sitting on an Air Force bus with RPG (rocket propelled grenade) screen on the windows waiting to race out to our airplane after the rocketing stopped. During a lull, while they reloaded, we raced out to the airplane and boarded as quickly as we could, As soon as the last soldier was aboard the doors were shut and the plane rushed down the runway. Rocketing started again as we heard the landing gear lock in place on the plane and we were on our way home. We flew on the first leg of our trip home to Tokyo to refuel. Then it was across the Pacific to Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco, CA. I was wearing my Army khakis when we landed at Travis. We processed through the center there and were told that we had to be in civilian clothes to leave the base. Five of us shared a cab to the airport.

When we arrived at the airport there were a few anti-war protestors walking around carrying signs, but none bothered us. Actually, none of us looked very military at the time anyway. I had about a 6 week growth of hair, just didn’t have time to get to the barber shop, and I had a handlebar mustache that had not been trimmed in 7 months.

I ran into the airport at San Francisco and to the Delta desk. I asked the clerk for a seat on the first plane he had going to Monroe, LA. He checked and told me there was one loading now and that it would be leaving in about 30 minutes. He said there were no seats available, but sold me a Military stand-by ticket anyway. He told me he couldn’t guarantee that I would get on that plane, but that if I did, I should try to get a seat as far in the back as I could and when they started asking for volunteers to take a later flight, to just sit quietly. I did as he suggested, and they took passengers off from further forward in the plane. I managed to get home that day. It was a long trip from Bien Hoa to Monroe, LA, but I managed to get home the day after I left Vietnam.

I remember a song from the era, actually it was 1966 the song was released, but the sentiment still carried in 1972. The song was “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. There are several lyrics that fit the mood of the day, but one I recall are these…

”Singing songs and  carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh)
They Mostly say, “Hooray for our side”

Seems to be still the way things are done. Guess the old days aren’t as far from us as we thought.

Ken’s Vietnam handlebar mustache