What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

Vietnam was the defining war of my generation. As much as rock and roll, sexual freedom, the role religion was going to play in my life and a host of other revelations, Vietnam was always there like background music.

I served in the U.S. Army from March, 1964 through March of 1966. Those two years were neither good nor bad. I did my time, always managed to have some kind of side hustle, followed the rules and kept my nose clean. I ended up a sergeant but had no desire to make the service a career. I have no regrets for time served and a lot of good, silly, memorable and poignant memories of my time in khaki.

This summer, I watched the Ken Burns documentary series on Vietnam for a third time. Each viewing was more revealing than the last time. It reminded me once again of how I dodged that bullet but left a cache of ‘what if’s’ and ‘only’ to fester in my mind for a lifetime.

While I was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco and looking for adventure, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. Fortunately, or unfortunately, at the time, the Army was getting more than 500 applications a month for that overseas duty. A week before my discharge in 1966, the Army pulled out that long since forgotten application and promised me that if I reenlisted, they would guarantee me a plane ride there within the month. I politely declined their invitation.

When I began my post-retirement career as a writer, I decided to recreate that chapter in my life when the pre-Vietnam / post-Army scenario played such an important part of my growth and development. While I never served in Vietnam, one of my first novels featured a protagonist who did serve time there and took me along for the experience.

Love in the AShau was a semi-autobiographical, fact and fictional account of my own experiences during that period of my life. I tried to capture in words the visceral and emotional journey it had been for me.

The story began when I dropped out of the University and immediately got my greetings from Uncle Sam. My next two years had been decided for me and I had no choice. After a cursory physical (and ignoring my flat feet) it meant gathering up at some federal building by the capitol and a good-bye to civilian life as I knew it.

Then just before dusk, began a long and monotonous bus ride from Minnesota down to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I could still feel those emotions welling up in the middle of the night as I thought about my sweetheart and all my friends safely ensconced in their beds, dreaming of their bright collegiate futures ahead of them. I had derailed my own college career and was tumbling into an abyss of the unknown.

What kept me going for two years was the illusion of that first romantic entanglement, harboring wonderful fantasies of our future together and then ultimately experiencing the painful realization that it was never meant to be.

Watching that Ken Burns documentary unearthed my journey in the military all over again. For reasons that gradually began building in my subconscious, I came to realize that writing that novel was an exhilarating as well as purging experience. It was a journey back in time that had become a soul-cleansing experience.

Then, sixty years after the fact, I returned to my old barracks at the Presidio of San Francisco. It was part of a journey arranged by Brian and Melanie to celebrate my eighty years of pondering life’s ‘what ifs?’ Our journey began where my military life was born and ended on the beaches of San Diego a week later.

Standing in front of the barracks with my two kids brought up a plethora of mixed emotions. I was still tramping around this planet; a lot of my barracks buddies had passed on. Some were brought down by the conflict overseas; others made their eventual escape back to civilian life and the rest simply disappeared.

Back then, we all slept in the rock-hard cots on the second floor. Some dreamed of home, of overseas duty and a few like myself imagined a storied adventure awaiting in Southeast Asia. Most of those dreams never came true except for the grunt from Minnesota who eventually made it to ‘The Nam’ and came home to write about it. The imagination is a wonderful tool for taking journeys like that.

That Was My War and I Missed it

Down through the ages, most generations have had a war or two occur in their lifetime. Some were called to duty, others volunteered for action, some watched it pass by and a few looked the other way.

In his outstanding book ‘Mekong First Light,’ about his involvement in the Vietnam War, Joseph W. Callaway, Jr. quotes the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said: “The search for truth is in one way hard, in another way easy. For it is evident that no one of us can ever master nor miss it wholly.” The truth is that war is bad but that perspective is often lost on youth.

Adolescence and competitive behavior often times run in parallel tracks. Many young men engage in high-risk behavior in order to satisfy their sense of self-worth.  This “rite of passage” can manifest itself in many ways; athletics, mountain climbing, fast cars, sexual activities and bar fights. If I were to think long and hard about it, that was probably my back story in the condensed version of my life.

I never really did anything ‘totally stupid’ in my youth but there were moments…

Volunteering for Vietnam was about on par with my failed attempt at grabbing a tramp steamer out of high school and sailing around the world and escaping to Europe after college to find myself. None of those events were thought-out, rational or goal-seeking. They were just ideas that came into my head one day and sounded ‘very cool’ at the time.

Vietnam could have been my war but, in the end, I only manned a typewriter instead of a hog (M60 machine gun) and sat behind a desk instead of in a foxhole. Two years of honing my journalism skills plus learning self-control and discipline was the best I could get out of the service. Mind you, I’m not complaining. It was a life-changing experience and I have only the greatest respect for those who wear the uniform of the United States of America. Truly spoken, unless you’ve lived in a barracks and marched the parade grounds, you really don’t understand what it means to ‘be in the service.’

Now, fifty-nine years later, I find myself somewhat ambivalent about my lack of combat experience. To be honest, the closest I ever got to bombs exploding nearby and bullets flying overhead was in basic training. It was reenacted in one of my first novels ‘Love in the A Shau.’ Fortunately, I was able to reimagine that as a cathartic experience of combat and translate it to the written page.

I wasn’t there; not really. Writing that novel was an exercise in purging my soul of a lack of real-life combat experience. In that vein, I tried very hard to be realistic and respectful of the brave men (and women) who did go through that special kind of hell. It must have worked. I’ve had several combat veterans compliment me on the ‘action sequences’ in the book so at least I got that part right.

In past blogs, I’ve rambled on about various sequences in my military experiences. Fort Leonard Wood was where I went through basic training. I had a chance to sign up for OCS (Officer Candidate School) but chose not to because of the additional four years commitment required. Good decision or not; I don’t know.

The Presidio of San Francisco is where I did volunteer for duty in Vietnam. But only because of the extra bonus pay; overseas duty and hazardous duty pay. A year and a half later, I was offered the opportunity to reenlist with a guaranteed transfer to Vietnam (they had kept my record of volunteering). I politely declined their offer.

While Army slang labeled the Presidio the ‘Country Club’ of the Army, it also pigeon-hoed Fort Polk in Fort Polk, Louisiana as a certain part of the human anatomy which, in fact, came close to describing the place in the hot, humid summer months I spent there.

Fort Lee, my last assignment, meant a promotion to sergeant (Spec 5), a nice desk job and weekends spent in D.C. Then it was an early-out and back to finish college.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be returning to the Presidio 58 years after I left there. My kids and I are going on an ‘On the Road’ venture to celebrate my eighty years of being around. We’ll start in San Francisco and then swing down the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to L.A. and then over to Palm Springs.

It should back some very strange memories and interesting feelings. It seems like a million years ago and relative to all that’s happened to me since, it probably was. I followed a different path instead of a jungle trail and now here I am. Life can take some interesting twists and turns. I’m so fortunate I got to experience them.

Three Strikes - I'm Getting Closer

Failure can wrap itself in a cloak of many different colors. Unexpected job loss and life-changing events can become pivotal points in one’s life. It’s that water-shed event where what was once present is now past and the future is nothing more than a dim hope or vapid expectation on the horizon.

In her new book entitled: ‘The Up Side of Down,’ author Megan McArdle says that: “Getting to the upside of down often means letting go of your instincts, ignoring conventional wisdom and leaping for something no one has done before.” It’s changing course in mid-stream and forging ahead despite the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.

Ed Catmull is one of the founders of Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In his new book ‘Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Catmull says that the ultimate goal here is to uncouple fear and failure. It’s changing that stigma that failure is bad and a sign of weakness. We must recognize that mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. Instead they are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. Echoing the mantra of many forward-thinking ventures: “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I’ve been there many times in my life; three in particular stand out. Yet in each instance I never knew just how fortuitous my failure would turn out to be. I never planned to fail so there was never some grand plan to deal with my stumble. Instead some innate survival instinct kicked in and pushed me forward. At the time I didn’t see it as a failure as much as a minor distraction like a toe-stumble off the starting line.

                                   

The first failure was running out of money at a private college and transferring to the University of Minnesota. While a large University may work for a lot of other students, it was an unmitigated disaster for me. Beginning with 2500 students in the Introduction to Psychology class to the smallest class of 300 in Economics, I was lost before I stepped foot on campus. I lasted two quarters and was politely asked to ‘take a break’ by the Admissions Office.

           

Two weeks after dropping out, I got my draft notice and spent the next two years in this man’s army. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was two years of learning to live on my own, continuing my focus on education, writing, travel and the beginning of collecting a lifetime of writing material (only I didn’t know it at the time.)

                                               

My second failure came in my boss’s office at precisely 8:34 a.m. on July 23^rd, 1993…but who’s counting. It began with the usual pleasantries and then quickly evolved into “…(blah-blah-blah)…so we’re going to have to let you go.” And with that non-descriptive lame-ass explanation I was out of my job of 13 years in public television.

Office politics aside, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. In reality it became a clean break from the old and mundane and political to a forced self-reliance on my own skills to survive in the marketplace. It made me focus on my business and real estate investments instead of five year forecasts just to satisfy my CFOs love of graphs and charts. And again I never looked back.

My third and final failure (thus far) came in the form of an obnoxious e-mail from an ego-inflated anal pretentious individual who didn’t like the video programs I was producing for local community television broadcast. His criticisms were ripe with subjective opinions and self-induced visions of grander. It was at that point that I declared to my computer that “I don’t need this _____ anymore” and with that eloquent announcement, I folded up my video production and distribution business and focused my energies on my writing.

Yet in retrospect each stumble, loss, rejection, distraction and life-changing event in my past has nudged me toward this stage of my life where storytelling in multiple disciplines has become my new passion. 

Catmull reminds us that: ‘we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.’

DenisJLacomb.com

Some folks are much quicker at failing their way to success. It took me fifty plus years and a life-time of learning just to get where I am now. Slow and steady with a couple of stumbles along the way…just like my writing. I’d love to say it’s all part of some grand plan but it’s not. Just one more attempt at doing what I love best and stumbling every couple of steps on the way to success.

Deposits and Withdrawals

When we were all young and dumb, the world was a rainbow landscape full of wonderful  adventures and opportunities. Each of us set out to become whatever we thought we should be…at the time. The world was our oyster and we meant to have it all.

It’s funny how reality evolves and our past lives and aspirations finally catch up with us. That winding road called ‘my life’ is either running smooth as asphalt or rough like gravel. And yet none of us want to get off the road even if the ride isn’t what we expected it to be after all these years. Something like my life in pictures.

It’s been forty or fifty years since we turned twenty-one and shed our cloak of anonymity to adorn ourselves with the costume of adulthood. Now we’re at a point in our lives where reflection is more than a glass of chardonnay framed within a sunset or a cold brew among high school buddies. And there is no going back as I learned in thecompany of old men.

Our current life style is an accumulation of habits born long before our birth. For some of us it was modeled after our parent’s pioneering excursion into life. For others, it was a process of discovery, loss, acceptance and rejection. And finally our life style became us on a daily basis and we weren’t even aware of it. It’s only now that the accumulation of excess and/or scarcity raises its hidden head.

Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying that life is like a bank account. How you use it is solely your determination. You can withdraw it in a hurry and live a very short life. Or you can be diligent with your withdrawals and live, hopefully, much longer.

We can always try to rectify some of our mistakes or enhance our positive steps but age and reticence to change are usually huge obstacles to overcome. We’ve let life’s ebb and flow (our gypsy muse) guide us in this rhythm of life. For most of us, the process was organic and without a lot of thought. The first apartment, the first job, first time camping overnight during a long Minnesota winter.

 

And now quite unexpectedly, we find ourselves both benefiting and/or suffering from past investments of our youth. The things we did to ourselves, the deposits we made on our bodies, our finances, our love life and our children. We’re now at the stage of making withdrawals from our youthful decisions and indiscretions.

The life investments have been made, squandered, lost, accumulated, divested and set aside. Some things worked out and some things didn’t. Now we have the residue of our wisdom or luck or mistakes to live with for the rest of our lives. And all those life steps are now just a memory.

A career was hatched, grown and nurtured or changed many times over. That part of our lives is over unless boredom and fear of retirement pushes us in a new direction.

We abused our body with youthful indiscretion or ignored it or kept the blood flowing by never stopping. Now that investment or abuse is either paying back dividends or punishing us with worn out body parts along with the inevitable aging process.

My bank account of friends isn’t the greatest. A reluctance to make an effort back then, despite the chiding by my wife, has left me lacking in that area. Yet what I do have in the vault is now priceless. One of my aspirations is to mine those rich veins of past friendships to see if I might unearth more nuggets there. Occasionally I’ll strike gold and rekindle a long lost almost forgotten friendship from the dusty archives of my past. It’s a blast. And immensely satisfying.

Those random discoveries got me thinking about other friendships; past and future, strong and vapid, present and omnipresent. I thought about the friends I’ve had over the years. Some of them shared isolated points in my life; high school, college and work. Some were but fleeting incisions in the tenderness of my youth. Others were shared experiences like the military; isolated, vacuous and destined to crash with each discharge celebration where inane behavior in the barracks seemed to make perfect sense back then.

Most of those memories are lost now in that vacuum called life experiences. A few were found again but most are just fragrant memories of a life well spent. Like separating wheat from the shaft, I’d love to rekindle a few of those friendships and nourish them back to the point of commonality we once shared. A kind of harvesting from my lost years.

The cliché that you can never have too many friends dissolves over the pages of Facebook where collecting friends can be a cyber-game for some folks, devoid of meaningful contact and concern. Having friends on Facebook isn’t the same as having real friends who care and share and actually want to be somebody in your life. Big difference there! For some folks it’s like grade school best friends.

I guess that’s why I want to continue seeking out old friends and acquaintances who might share my same values and interests.  Even if it’s an exercise in futility like looking for Susan’s house. The past can’t be replicated nor ignored. It can be accepted for what it was even if we couldn’t see it at the time. It’s all cloaked in that most evolving, translucent, vapid metaphor called relationships. Together they fill our thoughts and dreams and aspirations with dream-like illusions we’d like to believe in. It’s a game we play on a daily basis as we go about the business of living.

But there’s one group that isn’t into that game-playing. Children are the most transparent of all relationships. No pretense, no pretending. They haven’t learned those life lessons of pretend, illusion and facial facades. It’s all there in front of us and easy to recognize.

So it all comes down to friends and family and the most honest among those two groups.

I am in a good place in my life. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore! As an artist, I love creating stories in many different genres and I intend to continue writing until my pen dries up or I go blind. I’d like to take my true friends along on this journey of discovery of self and life and whatever else comes my way.