Where did it all begin?

I was born November 16, 1943 in Dillon, Montana (I've been back once as a child of 5 or 6). We were there at my birth because my father ("Bill") was the pastor of a 'pioneer' Assembly of God church in that town. The word 'pioneer' suggests that he was the founding pastor, or at least an early pastor, and that the survival of the church was an open question. The Assembly of God parishioners in the West, at that time and well into the '60's were society's undereducated, generally poor, agricultural, loggers and mill-workers, craft and non-craft blue-collar workers whose families had fled the impact of the Depression and the Dust-Bowl on the Midwest and Mid south of the U.S. for the promised land of the West.

Their heritage filled the the churches I attended with the soulful almost 'blue grass' music of guitars, banjo's and fiddles singing of a better day in the '...sweet by and by...' and triumphantly caroling the certain knowledge that 'I'll Fly Away!' There were potluck dinners 'on the ground' at least once a month during the Summers, and the pervasive myth of being God's latter-day saints, simple honest working people from rural roots living in a world of sin and oppression by the wealthy, whose only hope was to be rescued in the very near future by 'The Rapture' at which time all would be put right and the rich oppressors would get their comeuppance because 'wealthiness' was the opposite of Godliness. It was a simple black and white world, of evil and good, them and us...I often envy the clarity of those times, but only the clarity...the rest I can well do without, in particular the blind ignorance, and the pride that went with the identity..

My mother ('Goldie') became my mainstay and compass during the chaotic first 18 years of my life. 'Goldie', as I called her from about my 13th year on, was the most influential human in my early life, though I doubt she would have willingly claimed some of the lessons I learned from watching her; for example, I learned by watching her patient and longsuffering approach to life that there was no near term payoff for possession of virtues.  So if you doubt the existence of a future life after death, there is little virtue in these practices...they benefit only your tormenters here and now, and there will be no there and then in the sweet by and by.  She was intelligent and seemed somewhat guileless and naive about other people and their motives. Over time I came to understand that she was not ignorant of others' motives...it was mostly that she felt responsible only to live her own life in the Light, which included responding with grace to the guile around her. Like every little boy I have idealized my mother in my memory, still there are much worse flaws that men can have.

My sister ('Lois') was one month shy of 8 years old when I was born. There had been a prior conception, another child between Lois and me. 'It' came into the world as an unidentifiable mass of protoplasm, aborted at home by the Universe...perhaps on that small death hangs the chance for my own conception and birth.  Thank you "It" -- because of you I got the chance to "...contribute a verse..."

Lois and I agree that we were both 'only' children, that is, she was almost 8 years old when I was born, and I was 10 years old when she married and left home...leaving each of us with 8 years of sibling-free parental attention. Still I was 'the baby' so I know -- and remember -- that the parenting and discipline was not equitably applied during the years that Lois and I overlapped in the home.  More was expected of her simply because she was a female...I didn't mind that inequity then, and I'm still quite OK with it at the sibling level.  However at the societal level I've come to think of the gender inequities as "criminal” though I could argue that our biases run so deep as to be difficult to isolate.

I don't remember leaving Dillon...I was an infant, but the leaving foretold many more departures, from many more towns and cities in the future. I now know that these departures...at the time purported to be 'God's call' on my father to some place he was needed in the unknown Scheme of things...were in fact the continuation of my father's already lengthy history of avoiding adversity by fleeing the scene. Bill was a 'flight risk' all of his adult life -- starting as a 17 year old in trouble with the law in his hometown, continuing until age and immobility forced him to live in a fixed-community for the last decade plus of his 88 years of life.  We moved towns, states, and schools often.  Either God moved us, or the weather (in search of house-painting weather), or my Dad's allergies, or the illness or death of a relative in the Midwest but move we did...regularly, though not with any predictable pattern or duration, but with 100 percent certainty...at some point I began simultaneously arriving in new towns or schools while planning my defensive departure...preparing for inevitable loss of friends, roots, and context.  Still, there was no suffering in this...it was quite simply just the way it was.  The morning after I graduated from high school in Tucson, we locked our rented duplex, left the key under the mat, and departed Tucson.  This was June 3, 1962.  I would, coincidentally, return for a visit the week Kennedy was killed, in November 1963.

I joined the Navy in July 1962. While living with Lois and her family the summer after high school.  I tried to go to sea as a merchant sailor. I was then and still am taken with Joseph Conrad's stories of young men going to sea, and discovering themselves -- strengths and flaws alike -- during their adventures. Lord Jim is perhaps my favorite book, and amazingly a damned good movie. My merchant seaman effort was brief, less than a month, after which I settled for the Navy when my money ran out.  I was assigned to Radio 'A' School following boot-camp. During leave between boot-camp and radio school, Goldie and I documented every town we had lived in since my birth, in order to complete the application for a security clearance and the FBI background check which preceded any clearance.

In my family 'towns lived in' was a vague concept, punctuated by good intentions for staying, interrupted by some real or imagined inconvenience.  ‘Lived in’ could mean a week in an itinerant cabin-court; it could mean a month in a rental; it could mean two-plus years in a parsonage.  So the FBI background investigator ultimately settled for only the residences at which we received mail or had a monthly expense receipt, such as rent, lights or garbage collection...this parsed the list to just less than 40 towns and cities between November 1943 and June 1962. We decided to not confuse the investigators by trying to explain the several 3 and 4 month sojourns to Southern Mexico to '...save the Indians...' Saving the Indians was a persistent theme in my father's Cosmos, so I'll revisit that concept frequently over the coming months. At this point just let me say about travels, causes and adventures: To some degree 'Where you've been is who you are' though I wouldn't argue it in those simple terms, because 'When' you were Where may have equal importance, as well as 'Who you met When and Where.'  Turns out identity is complicated, particularly the environmental part, while DNA is pretty much set in stone, but with known and  unknown implications from environment.

I graduated 3rd in standing in my Radio 'A' class at San Diego Naval Training Center, and for that result was given the privilege -- within boundaries and limitations -- of choosing my future duty. I wanted to be at sea in the Pacific Fleet and I wanted that ship to be in Southeast Asia, preferably in and around Viet Nam. I got my wish and within a month of leaving Radio “A” school in San Diego was en route to Subic Bay in the Philippines where I was to rendezvous with the USS Ashtabula (AO51) which in less technical terms was an 'oiler.'  Oilers, are no longer built having been replaced by ships that do other things besides carrying JP5 and Av-Gas.  But, oilers carried fuel and supplies to other ships in and around SE Asia. My stay at Subic Bay extended to more than a full month in the transient barracks, as the Ashtabula's orders and arrivals were changed several times, diverting her to other ports. Ultimately, I caught up with her in June of 1963 in Yokasuka Japan.

I had three (3) simultaneous and diverse experiences in SE Asia: One experience was the news, as reported by our ever objective media; another was the Secret and Top Secret information available to me on a daily basis as a Radioman and Crypto Specialist, and Courier to the Captain of the vessels; the last my own personal firsthand experiences and those of my ship-mates. While Viet Nam may exist as nothing for modern America except a cautionary tale, there remain several hundred thousand of 'us' Americans, Canadians, Aussie's, New Zealanders, Koreans, and other SEATO nations who have been unable to comfortably put it to rest. I still keep the news texts and pictures of 'Hanoi Jane' (aka Lady Jayne Fonda) chronicling her visit to North Viet Nam on my computer.  I still carry the symptoms of exposure to Agent Orange. My guess is I'm unlikely to resolve the ambiguities of Viet Nam before I depart for good. Still some readers may find it interesting. One of the great things about written material is that you can sign out, or skip ahead.

Next: More about SE Asia