Читать книгу The Courage to Surrender - John Hayes W. - Страница 4

In the summer of 1965, before I packed to leave for college, I received a letter from my draft board requesting me to report to an induction center to be processed and added to the Selective Service pool of 18-year-old boys.

I boarded an old yellow school bus full of guys headed to the Army induction center for evaluation and classification. The center was some 70 miles to the south and, in spite of the bone jarring bumps and straight back seats, each of us tried to get comfortable while we stared out a window. Fear kept me in a zone with images of Army physicals.

The bus was as quiet as death row occupied with strangers, alone and scared. As I looked around at each face on the bus, my anxiety grew even deeper as I tried to guess who among us would be selected to go to war – and when.

Once off the bus, we were herded into a classroom for our mental testing. A drill sergeant stood in front of the packed room. “This is an easy test,” he barked. “And, if you fail, you will continue to take it until you pass!”

Next came the physical testing. I was pulled from the line before finishing. “Take your folder to see the Army doctor so he can check out your knee,” the sergeant told me.

“Sit up on the table,” said the doctor. “Your paperwork indicates your right knee has possible cartilage damage. What happened to it?”

I swallowed deeply before I described my bad knees. “I dislocated my right kneecap playing basketball as a sophomore. I wore a brace on that knee and continued to play high school football, basketball, and baseball until I graduated. During those years, I blew out my right knee four more times and my left knee once. I needed crutches after each occurrence.” It may have seemed like I belabored the point, but it was the truth. “During my senior football season, my family doctor drained my knee with a syringe each week, and wrapped it real tight so I could play in Saturday’s game.”

The Army doctor pulled, pushed, and twisted my knee. Then, he explained, “in addition to insufficient cartilage, you probably have damaged ligaments.” His evaluation concluded that my knee was unstable, so he checked the box “unqualified for military service.”

Uncle Sam put the fear of God in me at the induction center. Although my knee saved me, my half-hearted plan to go to college became a firm commitment. Before classes began, I received my second letter from the Selective Service with my draft card stamped “4F.” I had a medical deferment!

~ ~ ~

Throughout that summer, I joined Sam for our after-work regimen which included swimming in a nearby lake to feel refreshed, drinking beer to forget the day, and sharing joints to float through the night. He told me tales of his college exploits and, at the end of the day he reminded me, “No one cares what you do.”

My summer job as a draftsman gave me valuable civil engineering experience for my college major. I chose a community college which was close to home and less intimidating than the larger universities that had accepted me.

The weekend before classes began, we packed up the car and Dad and Mom drove me to my new home which was a room in a boarding house. As we unloaded, Dad appeared anxious to leave, Mom cried for both of us, and I felt claustrophobic in the little room waiting for my three roommates.

Civil Engineering courses were difficult and required a pile of work outside the classroom, so I was confined to our little room every night. Soon I dreaded studying, and became jealous of my roommates who had less homework and were able to go to the bars most nights.

“Hey, take a night off, you work too hard! Come on, we’re going out for a couple beers,” they’d say, but I would decline and put my head down to study, fearful of flunking out.

At times I wanted to quit school, but I felt trapped. “Where would I live? What would I do? What would Mom, Dad and Uncle Sam do to me for failing?”

After a few weeks of studying and getting poor grades, I decided to take a night off and went with my roomies to the College Tavern.

As was usually the case when I socialized, I felt shy and self-conscious. To escape my fear and insecurity, I used alcohol to gain enough confidence to ease into the crowds and enjoy myself. As I squeezed to the bar, I became engulfed in the joking, loud talking and friendly gestures. The excitement hit me like an adrenaline rush.

I felt a little tug and turned to see a pretty blonde coed in a booth next to me. “Have a seat,” she said. My sophomore roommate elbowed me into the booth next to her. We laughed as she topped my mug from the pitcher on the table. The cold draft beer went down smoothly, and each swallow gave me a craving to guzzle between taking breaths. The alcohol surged through my body which loosened my fear of letting life happen.

I was a people pleaser. I would usually compromise my life in order to be accepted. That night, I was admitted into the college drinking crowd, and it felt right. My need to fit in was satisfied. I had walked into the Tavern with two friends, and left with a dozen.

~ ~ ~

Drinking became my escape from reality, and then drugs would take me to a comfort zone away from the world as I knew it. I could stop thinking about my responsibilities and the expectations which ruled my life, and could let go of the pressure to achieve.

The coed said, “Let’s go to my place for a couple beers.” Without hesitation, I left with her to spend the night. As we left hand-in-hand laughing through the parking lot, I felt as though I was skipping like a little kid. I felt so loose it was like a wave of total freedom had been poured over me like a warm blanket.

I remembered that night as one of the best times of my life, but was unaware that I had taken yet another step into the maze of alcoholism.

The next morning, I woke up not knowing where I was or how I would get back to the house. Later in the morning while Sandra slept, there was a knock at the door. I did nothing until Rob, my sophomore roommate, yelled, “Hey, John, come on. I’ll take you back to the house.” Fortunately, he saw me leave with Sandra the night before and knew where she lived. This was the first of many mornings in my life when I awoke in a strange place not sure of what happened, where I was, or how I’d get home.

As we drove back to the house, I was in a panic. “Shit. I’m not prepared for classes today!”

I knew it would be humiliating because everyone always did their homework, every day. I felt like all the other kids in engineering must be smarter than me because they always knew what was going on, and I just barely understood that shit!

“I just can’t study more than I already do and, if I fall too far behind, I will never catch up,” I whined.

“Take it easy,” he calmly said. “Just cut the classes.”

That “cut classes” advice brought an end to my studying for that trimester, and I became a regular at the Tavern. Sam was right. No one really cared what I did.

On October 15 and 16, 1965, anti-war demonstrations were being held across the nation, fueled by people who were openly opposed to the Vietnam War. The peace movement didn’t slow the war machine but, instead, fractured the country based on views of the war. People were either Doves or Hawks and there was no middle ground. Vietnam could not be swept under the rug.

I did not participate in rallies, but I did listen to the messages of peace in the lyrics of protest songs and related to the anti-war movement in a big way.

My resentment toward the power people grew as they secretly ramped up our involvement in Vietnam, in spite of the slaughter of our teenage soldiers. Although I detested the war, I felt detached. I was preoccupied with my new life and secure with my “4F” classification.

As the war continued, I secretly questioned if I should go to `Nam. I waged an internal “fight or flight” battle within myself as I listened to guys who went to war wishing they hadn’t, and to others who hadn’t gone wondering if they should have.

In the final analysis, I assumed I would just be another dead soldier.

~ ~ ~

Throughout the first trimester, I cut classes frequently and fell deeper into the hole of academic failure. I kept sliding along with the predictable bad grades, and I became depressed and confused as to how I should proceed with my education.

I went home on weekends because I needed more drinking money than the weekly allowance that Dad was sending me for food. While I was home, I would spend my nights at the College Inn, my bar of choice. The Inn’s atmosphere was a magnet that attracted college kids from New York and Vermont, packing the place 365 days a year.

The more uncertain I was about my future, the more I drank. I pitied myself, since I had no one else to blame. I assumed everyone was looking down on me as a failure and did not accept me. The notion that I would only be accepted if I achieved good grades was carried from childhood when a hit in Little League made Dad proud, and a strike-out was deemed as failure.

Before the end of the fall trimester, I was flattered to receive an invitation to pledge the “cool fraternity” on campus. Being a brother meant I would be surrounded with a group of much-needed friends. I didn’t have the required 2.5 GPA, but grades didn’t seem to matter.

Before pledging began, I was introduced to my “big brother,” Alan, who was assigned to help me get through the pledging process. I confessed to him that I was failing out of engineering and asked for advice.

“Go to each professor,” he suggested. “Be honest about your situation and ask the professors to help you formally drop courses and take incompletes. Study your ass off to get good grades for the courses you can salvage. When you have done that, I will introduce you to the department chairman of mathematics and sciences. I know him, so he will let you back in school and set you up with a Math major and a Science minor.”

~ ~ ~

The pledge period lasted one month, with four nights of Hell. Each Monday, my pledge book of merits and demerits was balanced and for each demerit that was not offset by a merit, I would receive a smack on my bare ass with a paddle, or a “shot” as it was called.

I was told to strip naked, after which a brother would blindfold me. He held my arm loosely, as he guided me down a flight of rickety stairs and through a musty basement where my bare feet shuffled along a dirt floor scattered with concrete chips.

Suddenly, he released my arm and I sensed him disappearing. But after a second, he whispered, “Don’t move or you will fall and get hurt.”

The silence in the “hole” was broken by the swish of a paddle in flight as the “shot” was delivered to the pledge in the room next to me. The noise of a board hitting flesh made me cringe. Each time, my blindfold was removed just long enough for a pledge to pass in front of me after he had taken all his “shots.” He was usually bent over, sometimes whimpering, and always breathing heavily.

As intended, I also took a mental picture of the small candlelit room where the punishment was being dished out. Two brothers stood with paddles, wearing black hoods and black capes reminiscent of KKK outfits. They were called the “executioners” for obvious reasons.

Trips to the “hole” got progressively worse as did the sensitivity of my black and blue ass. Shots after the first Hell night sent enough pain through my body that my reflexes forced me to stand up. “Bend over and grab ’em,” They said, each time I stood.

Anyone on campus could identify us as pledges because we stood in the back of classrooms. It was too painful to sit.

On the night I became a brother, all was forgotten and I began a two-day party that included guys from other frats, sororities and girls from campus. Instantly, I was popular and people wanted to know me. I had fought through the fear and pain to belong to the frat. I was accepted for who I was, and assumed an identity that gave me respect on campus.

After the final exams, I lacked enough credit hours to be a full-time student. So, following Alan’s suggestions, I made an appointment with the chairman of the Math and Science Department. I pleaded my case for a second chance to begin as a full-time student.

“This is your first trimester course load,” he said. Later, I thanked Alan for his help.

Living in the frat house with nightly parties did not offer a quiet environment conducive to studying. If I tried to study in the house, my body would tense up after an hour or so. I needed my cocktail of beer and excitement.

Some nights I would walk a couple of miles to the campus library where I could do my homework without distraction. I had to get good grades this time, as I knew wouldn’t get a third chance.

~ ~ ~

I was never arrested for driving under the influence because that wasn’t a problem where I grew up. The worst-case scenario was being pulled over by a local cop for the customary verbal warning and ordered to get my ass home.

I drove drunk nearly every weekend for several years. I drank while driving, and occasionally raced against friends in their old man’s car from the Inn back to town.

Minor accidents happened, like one night in 1966 when I lost control of Mom’s car, missed the turn onto my street, and rammed into a 10-foot plowed snow bank. I freed the car to finish the trip home, only to miss the driveway as the car slid onto the lawn in a few inches of soft snow. The tires spun and, as I tried to extricate the car, the front door to the house flew open.

“Leave the goddamn car where it is and get in the house!” Dad yelled at me as he shivered in his pajamas.

“No blood, no foul,” was my attitude about accidents.

Still pissed the next morning, Dad and I awkwardly struggled to free the car. It was a time in our relationship when we could have worked together, but we were not close, and we never talked. The more I screwed up the more he disliked me.

Late one night in the spring of 1966, I was pulling out of the Inn to head home. As a car was pulling in, our front fenders collided. We were both drunk, so we examined the damage and went back into the bar to discuss the crash.

At some point I drove home, put the car in the garage and went to bed. The next thing I remember was Dad shaking me violently in my bed yelling, “What the hell did you do to the car?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said.

“The front left fender and hood are smashed,” he shouted from a couple feet away.

My denial began. “Someone must have hit it in the parking lot. I didn’t notice any damage when I drove home.”

My head was pounding and my mouth tasted like an ash tray, but I ignored the hangover as I followed Dad jogging through the house to the driveway.

He said, “Sit behind the steering wheel,” at which point I saw the fender twisted into the hood. It was hard to see the driveway in front of the car, and it scared me to think I drove about ten miles in the dark, over two-lane roads.

The truth was, I didn’t remember much about the drive home. I must have been in a blackout. I didn’t have many blackouts early in my drinking maybe because my body functions could dissolve and metabolize the alcohol quicker than I could drink. That’s just my convoluted theory.

My truth was mixed with lies, and my mind labored to distinguish fact from fiction. I deceived people to save face, avoid issues, and to blame others for my problems. I was losing self-respect as I continued my attempt to make things appear differently so that everyone would like me and not discover the truth.

I lost all common sense, as there was nothing common about how I lived. At times, my life didn’t make any sense at all. My alcoholic episodes exposed me as a self-centered alcoholic who could not be trusted.

I was embarrassing myself and my family with increased frequency, but was helpless to stop the repeated incidents. My judgments were immature, and I resolved life’s issues with short-sighted solutions.

I disliked myself for my actions, and demonstrated an unhealthy dose of “poor me” in order to escape the bad person I had become.

~ ~ ~

Early in 1966, I met Sally who was a girl from White Mountain College, located just over the state line in Vermont. I first noticed her long, blonde hair flowing through the crowd on the dance floor before I saw her well-developed bronze body.

We drank Miller High Life for 50 cents a bottle, as it was the beer of choice by most college kids. At the pace we drank, Sally and I were usually short of cash, but we would borrow from friends and get free beers from other friends who were bartenders.

Occasionally, all money sources were tapped and we worried about the next beer. One of our first bankruptcy nights, she told me to stay where I was and wait for her.

“I can get some money. I’ll be right back,” she said disappearing into the crowd. She returned with enough cash to continue drinking for the night, so I didn’t question where she got it and she didn’t offer to tell me.

After a couple more times of pulling money out of the air my curiosity got to me. “Where the hell are you getting all this money?” I asked.

“I just hit pocketbooks, take the money out of the purse in the girls’ room and return the pocketbook before anyone knows what happened.”

“Oh,” I said. Her stealing didn’t bother me.

We became close and spent nearly every weekend together, whether we slept in the back of my car, at the frat house, at my parents’ house or in a cheap motel.

It was fraternity weekend in the spring of 1966 and the only formal event of the year. The brothers wore jackets and ties while the girls wore some type of evening dress.

A dinner party was held at a restaurant with a full size swimming pool which was the attraction, along with a terrace for summer dining. We were drunk and, before the party was over, I saw Sally eyeing the pool just outside the glass wall from where people were eating. The pool was lit up as though it were swimming weather. She said she needed a swim to sober up.

“Please don’t strip naked,” I asked her and she replied, “I’m thinking more of a swan dive from the ten meter board.”

As usual, I couldn’t say no to friends and became entangled in her madness.

“After I dive, you have to follow me,” she said. I agreed, but made her promise to stay clothed. Anyway, I was fairly confident she would not be that stupid.

Everyone stared in awe at her perfect swan dive. Her long hair trailed like blond streamers and her formal dress caught the wind making the plunge into the pool look surreal.

She surfaced and said, “OK, your turn.”

I looked and felt like an idiot as I climbed to the ten meter board. I dove in wearing my madras sport coat, white shirt and pants. As I climbed the ladder out of the pool, the colors from my madras coat created an abstract stain on my white shirt. The jacket dripped tears of color everywhere until it bled out.

At that time of my life, my behavior was erratic. At times, I would follow people to the doors of Hell to be in their lives. Other times, I didn’t care what people thought because life was all about me.

I was too drunk to feel humiliated; however, as the owner of the restaurant came running at us, I felt out of control and full of shame. I had to run in order to dodge the consequences of acting like a stupid kid.

Sitting in the car soaking wet, we decided driving back to the frat house was too far. Since my parents’ home was only a 30-minute drive, we headed to see Mom and Dad.

Before we faced my family, we had to get straight and somehow dry our clothes. Once we were off the turnpike, we looked for a spot to park on an access road. It was pitch dark and tough to find an area big enough for a car, but I found a grassy spot and cautiously pulled over to park. We completely undressed and hung our clothes all over the car to dry. I passed out in the front seat while Sally curled up in the back.

Early the next morning I heard a tapping sound on the windshield, so I forced open my bloodshot eyes to peek at the noise.

“Can we play through?” I heard someone say.

I jumped up to a sitting position and my heart stopped when I realized I had parked on the first tee box at a private country club. The foursome stopped their practice swings, distracted by my girlfriend, waking up nude and disoriented.

Amidst their laughter and jokes, all I could say was, “Holy shit.” My only thought was to get out of there fast, but the car keys weren’t in the ignition. For some reason I must have pulled them from the ignition and put them in my pants pocket or coat, dropped them between the seats, or gave them to Sally. Panic arose in me as I looked at the disorganized piles of wet clothes hanging all over the car. The keys could have been anywhere.

“Get up and help me find the keys,” I shouted to her. She sat up to see the windows were full of faces staring at her. “What the hell is going on?” she asked.

Again I shouted, “Help me find the goddamn keys,” but her first priority was to hang clothes on the windows so no one could see us

I found the keys, started the car, carefully backed onto the road and sped away.

Still naked after driving a few miles, I saw a dirt road winding up to a farmhouse and turned sharply. I drove past a stand of trees and stomped on the brakes creating a cloud of dust. I was pissed at what happened in the past 24 hours, and hated what I was going through, trying to dress into wet clothes in the car while the morning sun shined on us. I was hung over and dreaded the certain embarrassment that we would face when we got home.

Mom and Dad were quiet as they looked at us, not able to comprehend what happened. Mom gave Sally some dry clothes. After I changed, we flew out of the house and hit the road. I drove to White Mountain College to drop her at the front desk before I continued on to the frat house. I didn’t know she hadn’t signed out for the weekend. She was expelled from school immediately and sent home that day.

The next weekend I went to pick her up, but the RA of her dorm told me she was no longer a student. I felt sick that they wouldn’t give me information to contact her, but I assumed she would call me.

I never heard from her again.

Although during the second trimester I went to several classes, studied more and got better grades, I still did not have enough credit hours to be a full-time student. I was convinced college was too tough for me, and dropped out of school before finals.

Before the third trimester began, a frat brother escorted me to the liberal arts department chairman and we discussed my academic future.

“Here’s the deal,” said the chairman, “You have a high IQ and good grades in math courses, so I will reinstate you in the liberal arts curriculum as a math major with a science minor.

He ended our little talk by saying, “This is your last chance at being a full-time student at this college. If you fail, you will flunk out because clearly you are not trying very hard. If you apply yourself, you will do fine. The choice is yours.”

Before the spring trimester ended, a frat brother assaulted a girl in the frat house. The college closed our house and took our Greek charter. I had to go home for the remaining trimester. For over a month, I commuted from home and managed to earn good grades while driving four hours each day.

When school ended, I continued to live at home for the summer. I didn’t adjust well to living under Dad’s roof and, the longer it lasted, the more rebellious I got. It was tough to live with rules after having experienced the freedom to live as I pleased.

During the summer of 1966, Sam and I frequented bars and smoked pot regularly. Drugs of any kind were tough to find, so I was glad when he brought a good sized stash from college. It lasted us most of the summer. I was hooked. Just seeing grass made me smile.

The euphoria from getting high allowed me to feel free from myself, relax my mind enough to see the world in a sort of slow motion and calmly look at the peaceful side of life.

Pot was a different escape than was drinking. Instead of getting excited to forget about life, I usually mellowed with a more subtle view of what was happening. I could stay ‘in the moment’ and appreciate the life that was all around me.

As is the case with most addicts, the euphoric feeling captivated me. I wanted to stay high and so I continued throughout life trying to maintain the ecstasy. I bought grass from Sam to smoke when he wasn’t around. My psychological addiction to drugs was quickly established, and I would do most anything to get high.

~ ~ ~

One mid-summer night, I was following Sam home from the Inn. As I rounded a sharp curve, I saw an oncoming car that was too close to the line in the middle of the road, so I pulled my car off to the right to avoid a head-on collision.

My car continued moving fast along the shoulder and, as I tried to gain control, I looked up and saw a concrete abutment directly in front of me. I cramped the wheel to the left and over-compensated, driving across the road and down an embankment.

As the car careened down the hill, I recall seeing fence posts flying at the windshield before I was thrown out of the driver seat. My unconscious body must have been thrown over the back seat before popping out the rear package shelf window.

When I came to, I found myself lying in a cow pasture without a scratch, as though someone had gently placed me there. Sam had been driving his Corvair Spider in front of me and saw my car roll over a couple of times, then finally flip end-over-end before it came to a stop. The headlamps lit up the car and the surrounding field, as the car lay on its roof with the wheels spinning.

I stood in shock and just looked at the car as he ran to me.

I was 5’ 10” and 175 pounds, and couldn’t imagine how I could’ve crawled through the rear window if I had tried, so flying through it and landing on the ground, unhurt, must have been a Divine intervention of sorts.

Sam and I threw away all the beer from my car and drove the Spider to a diner for coffee. We tried to create a story of what could have happened, but nothing made sense.

After a recap of the accident, Dad was understandably livid. I just sat on the couch and saw the anger in his eyes over the latest damage I had brought on the family. I was defenseless and listened with my head down. His words hit me harder than any punch he could have thrown

The one lesson I learned that night was that drinking coffee after drinking alcohol only makes for an alert drunk.

The next morning, I went with the wrecker to find my car. We pulled up to the cow pasture with a big hole in the fence and there was my car, several yards from the shoulder of the road. It looked like a huge dead animal, as it was still on its roof with four tires pointing toward the sky.

In the junkyard, mud and hay covered some of the twisted metal and broken plastic which added to the vision of destruction, and made me feel nauseous. It was difficult to comprehend how I could have lived, seeing the roof caved in flush on the top of the driver seat and the steering wheel pushed flat into the back of the driver seat. If I had worn a seatbelt, I would have been killed.

But, it clearly was not my time to die.

Embarrassment, lying, hurting people, stealing and cheating death had not yet shown me that I had a disease. I simply felt I was a bad person without the willpower to stop drinking.

I really didn’t want to stop, but my self-destruction began to scare me. I just wanted to drink for fun and go home without causing problems. My addictions were in total control of my life.

~ ~ ~

A few days after the accident, I received another notice from my draft board. During my first year in college, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War expanded, and warm bodies my age were being used to mask the government’s dreadful mistake.

Many of our country’s intellectuals spoke out about the futility of trying to win a war without a way to measure success. They realized that hard-fought battles did not gain ground, and all that happened was death. After our soldiers conquered a piece of land, it would be crawling with more Viet Cong as soon as we left.

It was a war of people killing people with no end in sight. Throwing more bodies at the problem seemed to be their strategy.

Understandably, the changes I made the prior college year left my records in disarray, so the school didn’t classify me as a full-time student. The Selective Service wanted me to undergo another physical.

At this physical, the Army doctor said my knee was OK, that I was fit for military service and qualified to be a soldier. I lost my “4F” medical classification and became “1A,” denoting I was fit to kill and be killed.

Physical standards for induction were gradually becoming more lenient and, although the U.S. troops seemed to always have a better kill ratio than the enemy, we were still dying at an alarming rate as the killing machine cranked away.

In August 1966, I got my draft notice to leave for boot camp. The time, date and location were printed in bold type, directing me to report. Greetings from Uncle Sam were to be taken seriously, and not reporting as directed meant jail time. Upon hearing the news, Mom lost it and cried non-stop. Even Dad was pissed at my situation.

All my options boiled down to a ‘fight or flight’ situation. I thought about leaving for Canada if I was backed into a corner.

The college administration had been working with me to unravel and resolve all the paper issues required to prove that was a full-time student worthy of a “2S” student deferment. I worried that I would need to decide about my future before the new paperwork reached my draft board.

I believed the war was wrong and plucking kids off the streets to fight was immoral, but I agonized over evading the Selective Service. The draft forced me to decide whether being a draft dodger and a criminal was preferable to taking a leap of faith to serve my country.

The only thing for certain was that I wouldn’t go to Vietnam.

Was living in a prison cell better than leaving everyone I cared about, knowing I would never be able to return to my country? How long would I be in prison? Could I start a new life in Canada? My head was spinning over what to do.

Living in a cell for any length of time would push me to suicide, so I decided to leave for Canada and wondered if I would be a fugitive for the rest of my days. With all fear-based thinking aside, I believed going to Vietnam was a death sentence.

About two weeks before I was to report to boot camp, I received a “2S” student deferment. Once again, I had dodged a huge bullet!

In my second year of school, I continued as a math major, carrying eight courses and 26 credit hours each trimester. My GPA was near 3.0, and I graduated on time.

I transferred to a state university to pursue a bachelor degree in mathematics and to stay one step ahead of my draft board.

Drinking became the friend that traveled with me so I wouldn’t be alone. Alcohol and drugs always took me to a safe place where I could shut down my feelings.

In the fall of 1967, I met the love of my life in the dining hall next to my dorm. I often stared at her while I ate, but I didn’t have the nerve to introduce myself. Finally, she came to my table one night at dinner. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think we have met until now,” I remarked, using her advance as a sign she was interested in me. “My name is John.”

“I’m Rachael.”

Love came quickly and we were together for the next 22 years.

~ ~ ~

The turmoil that characterized 1968 demoralized millions of baby boomers with the assassinations at home and the atrocities in Vietnam.

On Jan 31, 1968, Vietnam announced there would be a three-day cease-fire, during their Tết celebration. “How do you stop a war for a couple days?” I wondered.

The first day of Tết, a team of Viet Cong soldiers attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and other V.C. executed massive assaults against cities in South Vietnam. The Tết Offensive left the U.S. commanders psychologically on edge waiting for the next full-scale attack. The American public became more pessimistic about winning the war.

On April 4, 1968, a shot rang out at 6:01 p.m. and fate dealt the country another blow to peace and freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, lay sprawled on the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of jaw and neck.

A great man who had spent 13 years of his life dedicated to nonviolent protest had been felled by a bullet. Although James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder, future investigations opened questions concerning the actual shooting.

Did Ray have a clear shot at Dr. King from where he stood? A review of the angle the bullet would have traveled makes it doubtful the assassination could have happened the way it was accepted.

Two months later on June 5, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was making his way through the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to give a press conference after winning the California primary when, suddenly, a Palestinian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan, stepped forward and fired a .22 revolver at the senator. Although Sirhan was quickly subdued, the damage was done. He had gunned down Bobby Kennedy. Twenty-six hours later, the second Kennedy died for his beliefs and his plans to guide America toward peace.

Sirhan was arrested at the scene, and convicted of first degree murder. The investigation documented that Sen. Kennedy was killed by multiple bullets inflicted at angles that Sirhan could never have reached. The senator had several bullet wounds and Sirhan only fired two rounds.

The assassination ended the hopes of what Bobby could have done to end the nightmare 12,000 miles away.

~ ~ ~

As drugs were more plentiful during my senior year of college, I partied even more. I had more down time by skipping classes while trying to concentrate on computer programming.

The baby boomer population was taking shape, and with it the power to change. We needed to show people that we could not be stopped from acting out our minds.

“Listen to us,” was the call of our new generation. Consequences be damned, all that mattered was our attempt to show the world that we were free spirits and not a part of the established tight-ass generation where control was everything. We weren’t going to cower to empty authority nor let bullshit laws cloud our thinking. We protested whatever we thought was wrong.

Mainstream America fought our changes because of the messages we delivered and the unacceptable appearance of the messengers. In retrospect, it seems to some extent the rebellion of college kids in the ’60s converted our responsibility-driven lives to ideals that battered the rules of our parents’ generation.

College in the late ’60s rooted out a subset of the “boomers” that were identified by long hair, unorthodox clothing and a hip new language. A counter culture formed that was bonded by sex, drugs and rock music that wasn’t easy to dance to.

Some of the older generation called us “hippies,” or other derogatory names for baby boomers which included anyone with long hair, beards, beads, bell bottoms, “P” coats, boots, and other looks that said, “We are not your mother’s kids.”

Drugs and alcohol were catalysts that drove me away from the norm into a deeper way of thinking about the forces in my life. Getting high and dancing around black lights and strobe lights, grooving to “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze,” and an ever-growing number of rock bands gave me a glimpse where I was heading as I got in lock step with a new breed of people.

It was a time when social and moral barriers crumbled under the weight of the sexual revolution. The word was spread that sex was OK and free from responsibility, except those of us who created the “love children” to carry on our legacy. Having sexual intercourse and getting high became a rite of passage into some baby boomer circles, others tried communal living, and others lived by any variations thereof. It was a time when living conditions and personal practices were accepted by the whole.

Rachael and I got engaged in the fall of 1968 and planned a wedding after my graduation. We discovered in February 1969 that she was pregnant. We were confused and without many options.

Having a baby was one of the most life changing decisions a person could make, and we took it seriously. It was like we didn’t know where or how we were going to live after graduation, so our future was too unstable for a baby. At the time, aborting babies was dangerous, and pro-choice movements hadn’t gained the backing and exposure enough to help us, so she carried our daughter to full-term. I was excited to be a father, maybe in a naïve way, but I wanted the baby.

Our baby was truly a “love child” by any definition. Rachael and I were crazy about each other, and our love-making was passionate and usually unprotected.

After graduation my wife and I began the odyssey of our lives when we parted from everything familiar. We had our “love child” in the fall of 1969, so the three of us became a family, defining what our era was all about – love and peace.

All we had were ourselves in a strange city, but we had enough to be happy.

The events of my generation empowered me to follow my feelings of rebellion against the war and the establishment. I peacefully slipped below the radar and drifted farther away from everything my parent’s generation valued.