Basic Training was a rite of passage for thousands of young
men including this feckless fellow. The
Army or at least the Army Reserve version of same was a reprieve from a rocky
first year of college in which my budding career as a folk singer and established
career as a beer drinker kept my eye far from the academic ball. And that puts it mildly.
Anyway, Basic is a mythic hurdle for the callow and
immature. Just entering the presumed
depths of hell makes a boy’s knees quiver. In reality, it was easy if you played
the game of playing soldier and Basic was a lot like play. I really got into those manly
forced marches, shooting Expert with a WW ll era M1 and the wearing tailored and starched fatigues that had other
trainees saluting me until they got close enough to see there were no bars on
my lapels. Even got a bid to go to OSC (Officer Candidate School), heaven forbid. I can see it now, shave tail Second Lieutenent Steve Immel leading a squad of grunts in some rice paddy in Viet Nam. Or much, much worse.
Ted Newman, another folkie from Phoenix, was also at Fort
Ord. Ted, who was a couple of years older, had enjoyed a minor hit in 1959 called “Plaything.” Nick Todd, Pat Boone’s younger brother, also
covered the tune on Dot Records.
“Plaything that’s all I was to you.
Some tricks. Your little game is
through. Right now, stop knockin' at my
door? I'm not your plaything
anymore.” Pure poetry.
Ted and his Martin held court on Carmel's Main Beach every
Sunday and I followed suit; a Beach Blanket movie without Annette and Frankie. I don’t know if Ted was authorized to leave
the post. I know I wasn't but, hey, the south gate was
unmanned.
Ted became an Army helicopter pilot and an elementary school
teacher in Gilbert, Arizona and Nick became a social worker. I opened forty restaurants over forty years. That's forty opening nights. I win.
On the flip side the vacant hulks of the old barracks take a
mournful turn. They proffer an aching postmortem
for the fort and for the youthful energy that filled these spaces half a
century ago. The murals from that era
and the graffiti from this one compete for our attention. Abandoned and empty, the derelict
halls echo with the voices of raucous young soldiers and the billows of smoke that accompanied them. The words "Smoke 'em if you've got 'em." punctuated every idle moment in this man's Army in the summer of 1960.
2 comments:
Your writing is right up there with Hunter Thompson. With luck, there will be a Fort Ord book in the works, with your prose and photography. Given the Vietname War, the late 50s-early 70s were incredibly pivotal times, particularly for young men in America. The draft left very few untouched in some way. Kudos on this week's blog. The memories must be whirling.
Thanks Daryl. This one did have some emotional subtext though some of the images weren't up to the writing. I'm going to edit the last couple of posts to see if I can make them stronger/better through subtraction.
I was offered OSC (Officer Candidate School)while in Basic and shudder to think of the outcome, being a squad leader in some rice paddy in 'Nam. Fortunately, it was early enough that I had my honorable discharge in hand in 1966 before the shit really hit the fan in 1967.
As to a book, I need to do one about something to get it off my back if nothing more. Don't know why I don't just do it.
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