The Vietnam veteran and the returned Mormon missionary; the bicycle and the wrecked airplane
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 12:47PM ;)
Doubtless, regular readers are wondering what a man in my financial situation is doing dining out at Mat-Su Valley Restaurant for breakfast? Four nights have now passed since Margie went into Anchorage to stay and take care of baby Jobe and one more will pass until she returns to spend just two nights here before she goes back again.
As much as I love this house and the cats who wake with me, it feels awfully chilly and damn bleak in here in the mornings. Whereas, it will be warm at Family Restaurant. There will be smiling people there, waitresses who will serve me coffee and laugh even if I make an unfunny joke.
This is Jobina, doing just that.
I like the name, "Jobina." It's like a feminine version of Jobe.
;)
If I can, I always like to get this spot, because from here I have a good view not only of all the people sitting and moving around inside this busy, warm diner, scented with the aroma of breakfast cooking, but of those wandering to and fro outside.
My observations tell me that a very broad array of Wasilla life passes in and out of this diner, particularly at breakfast time.
Also, if I am very lucky and the train comes bye, I can often get a pretty good look at it from this window seat.
So I would rather be here in the midst of all this than all alone inside my chilly house. The melting snows did expose a fair amount of firewood that had been hidden in our yard, so I can always heat the house up, but, by the time it gets comfortable, I will be done with breakfast.
And even if I have no cash, I do have a credit card. So its off to Family I go.
Plus, to eat here is a sign of optimism, that things will soon get better and I will be able to pay all my bills.
;)
I took this picture for future reference and it had not been my intent to post it just yet. Many veterans come into Mat-Su Family, and I have a desire to know their stories to the extent that they would be willing to share - just as I would like to know the stories of so many who I see gathering at Family.
I have this idea in my head that as time progresses and I figure out how to fund this blog so that I can have the time to more effectively pursue my goal of finding the soul of Wasilla and to tell such stories, I will do just that. Seeing the hat, I thought this veteran might have a good story to tell, so I took the picture to remind me to look for him in the future, when that time comes.
As it happened, we wound up in line together at the cash register, so I asked if he had been a POW. No, he said, he had friends that had been and the experience had been hell for them. However bad combat might get, he said he had always kept a bullet in reserve for himself, just to make certain that he would never become a POW.
He served in Vietnam in the very early '70s, in what he described as the clean-up stages of the war, as the US was deciding to quit and pull out.
When I talk to such men, I am always self-conscious of the fact that they risked their lives in Vietnam and I did not. It had been my intent to go. When I was a senior at El Camino High School in a suburb of Sacramento, I decided that I would break with what had become the tradition in my family and what all of us males were expected to do. I would not go to Brigham Young University and I would not serve a two-year Mormon mission. I would enlist in the Army, and go for the Green Beret.
But I was in love with a red-headed girl who did decide to go to BYU. I knew that if I did not follow her there to protect my interests, she would marry a returned Mormon Missionary, as any good Mormon girl would.
So, at the last possible moment, I surrendered my plan to enlist, applied to BYU and was accepted. I followed the red-headed girl there and lived in misery as a returned Mormon missionary courted her. We would still get together to share an occasional lunch or movie or a concert and I took her motorcycle riding a couple of times. The the RM who courted her ordered her not to ride with me anymore, as it was just too damn dangerous.
I might crash and break her neck.
She did marry him, but by then I was in love with her best friend and was not troubled.
Vietnam was a very unpopular war and many people felt that the draft was being most unfairly applied. If you were wealthy, a college student, a Mormon missionary or fell into a number of other categories, you could get a deferment and most likely never be drafted to serve.
But if you did not fall into such a category and you were in good health, then you could pretty much count on being drafted.
This unfairness created such an uproar that a lottery system was instated in which each date of the year was drawn at random. If one's birthday came up number one, then, in theory, whether he was rich, a genious in college, a Mormon missionary or whatever, he was going to be drafted.
If one's birthday came up at #365, there was no chance in the world that he would be drafted.
My number came up 321. After that, the draft was not an issue for me anymore.
In the meantime, I found myself the object of a horrendous amount of social pressure, filled with exhortations that I repent, make my life right with God, yield to The Spirit, accept the call and go serve a mission. Worse yet, I looked into the eyes of my sweet mother and saw that if I did not go, I was going to break her heart. And there was no chance that the best friend would ever marry me if I didn't.
So I told everyone that The Spirit had come to me and so I had repented and was ready to go on a mission. No more weed for me. I had toked my last joint, taken my final hit off the hookah.
That's how I wound up not going to Vietnam. Instead I went to South Dakota, to teach the Lakota that they must never drink coffee. It was my mission to remake them, but they remade me. After two years, I returned to BYU - but found that I could not really return.
As to this gentleman, he remarked that Vietnam was an unpopular war and that when he returned, he found out what it felt like to feel the wrath of the people for whom he had served. He said that people sometimes ask him why served, did he believe in the war?
It was not a matter of whether or not he believed in the war, he told me, but rather that the fact that he had a duty to serve his country and so he did.
This is what passed between us as we paid our bills at Family Restaurant. It was a very brief visit, and I thought that I would wait until another time and then have him tell me more of his story. I would take a portrait to go along with the interview, and would then include this picture as well.
But what if that time never comes? What if I do not see him again at Family?
What if I forget I ever took this picture and it just slips away unseen into my archives, as do the vast majority of the pictures that I take, never to be seen by anyone?
So here it is, with this tiny fragment of the man's story along with one from my own.
I got lucky! The train came rumbling by!
;)
Yes, many veterans come to eat at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.
;)
When I came out, I saw this dog in the back of a truck. When I see such a dog, I find the urge to reach out and touch it to be...
...irresistible!
;)
Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #8881: Carmen and Tyler, who is ten and loves to play football - and me, too.
After I completed the study, Carmen caught the unmistakable scent of cologne wafting off Tyler. She teased him a little bit for that, as she now knew that he had interests even beyond football.
After driving away from Metro Cafe, I saw a man riding a motorcycle.
;)
And another sweeping the place where his driveway meets Church Road.
Some days I see Caleb and some days I don't. As he works all night and sleeps in the day, our waking paths seldom cross.
They crossed here, though - with me going one direction down our street and he the other. They also crossed when he stepped into my office to pay me a surprise visit.
"Dad," he said. "I patched your back tire. Your front tire was low, so I put air in that, too."
So I took my first bike ride of 2010. I am badly out of shape now and did not know far I should go. I decided to pedal the 1.5 miles to Church Road and see how I felt when I got there. If I felt good, I would turn right, go to the Little Susistna River and put my front wheel in the water.
If it felt like that might be overdoing it, that the return trip, largely uphill, would overstress my flaccid muscles and tear apart my weak lungs, then I would turn left and follow a shorter, flatter, more easy route.
The final approach to Church Road is all uphill, and I was a bit upset when I realized how it was taxing me. I deemed myself unfit to make the return from the Little Su and so concluded that I must turn left.
I turned right, anyway, and headed for the Little Su.
I did not put my front wheel in the water, though, because I felt that if I did, the under-cut ice might break beneath me and I would get my shoes, socks and pants wet. I wanted to keep them dry.
After I left the Little Su and neared the curve that leads to the biggest and steepest hill, I saw this guy ahead of me, cutting down the vegetation alongside the road before it can begin to grow.
No more snow plows for awhile.
;)
After I topped the first big hill, I pedaled along on a flat stretch toward the corner where I would turn back onto Church Road and then face the next set of up and down hills. At some point, I glanced behind me and saw another biker, who had just topped that hill. I pedaled a little further and then looked back again. It seemed he was gaining on me.
I did not want him to pass me, but I realized that he was almost certainly younger and stronger and in better shape, that he was going to pass me whether I wanted him to or not.
I reached Church Road, turned right, climbed up the first big hill, then began my descent towards the next upward grade.
As I coasted down, I glanced back and there he was - closer yet, I was certain.
Damn. He was going to pass me.
Oh well. I would take a picture of him as he pedaled by me.
I decided that I would take a series of pictures of him closing the gap, passing me, and then moving on. I began with this one.
I then climbed the next hill and then again coasted toward the bottom of the third. Again I looked back. I was surprised to see that my competitor was now further back than he had been.
I figured maybe it was because I was going downhill now and he had been going up. Now he would be going downhill and I would soon be going up. I was certain he would yet close the gap and pass.
But no, he never did - even though he turned left on Seldon just like I did and followed me all the way to my street. In fact, each time I looked back I found him to be a little further behind. It became pointless to take any more pictures, for he had become such a small dot, readers could not have even picked him out.
That's what he gets for deciding that he, being so young and strong was going to humiliate a much older man who hadn't pedaled a bike since early October.
Of course, he never came close enough for me to actually confirm age or sex for certain.
I supposed it is possible that he was actually an 87 year-old woman who was pretty damn pleased that, though she never caught him, she kept that young guy worried every pedal of the way that an old lady was going to smoke him.
Or maybe it could even have been Patty, out keeping her cancer at bay.
;)
When I got home, I parked my bike by the wreckage of my airplane, The Running Dog. I thought about the good days, when this dog and I flew together all over the main body of Alaska, up and down the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, through the valleys of the Alaska and Brooks Ranges, across Canada's Yukon Territory and into The Northwest Territories.
Why did I ever have to get cocky and crash the damn thing?
I can't stand it, being grounded like this. As I have said before, I dream about airplanes - usually this one, every night.
I have a friend in Cordova who says that if I really wanted another plane, I would have one by now. He cites himself as an example, pointing out how he wanted a big crab boat once, didn't have the money for it but got one anyway.
I'm glad for him, but he's 100 percent wrong about me. He is a bachelor and lives in a house that he inherited from his father and he simply has no idea what I face.
But he's right, too. To accomplish what I want to accomplish, I must get another airplane. Somehow, there is a way.
On this day, when I have no money to pay the simplest bill, when I owe the IRS, when I go to Family Restaurant only because I have a credit card and then I bring the leftovers and derive a second meal from them later and to Metro for coffee only because Margie has given me access to the bottles full or quarters that she has saved up over years, it seems utterly impossible.
But it's not impossible. It can be done. I must yet find the way.
A Pay Pal donation button to help with this blog isn't going to do it, but still, you who have urged me to put on on here have convinced me that I am not begging if I do, so I will.
Soon.
Reader Comments (12)
it's not begging, it's allowing your audience to show its appreciation! Wasn;t that an old English tradition in the pubs to pay the storyteller?
This post had so much to it! Loved it.
I'll contribute Bill, are you kidding? I love your blog!
You make me want to write you do it so well. As our former president said bring it on put the donate button on.
It's time to do it, rather than think about it. It won't be the answer to everything, but it will help.
loved your blog today...even if the pay pal button doesn't bring in a lot of money it will be an honor to at lest buy you a breakfast or two
Your storytelling inspires me. Thank you Bill!
Love Kathleen
And please put the donation button up asap.
I enjoy reading your blog, but it distresses me when you reference your plight and I would like to help even in a small way, buying you a cup of coffee or two. PLEASE don't delay in adding a donate button.
Hurrah for Paypal! Also, if you leave Squarespace, we will follow.
agreed. I will follow wherever you go or end up. I'd pay to read this blog. You had me at hello Mr. Hess.
One thing is for certain. If I ever make it to the illusive Wasilla from the warm beaches of Fairbanks, I will indeed go two places. The Family and Metro Cafe.. I have to now.. You've made them to irresistable.
happy thoughts and warm wishes to you.. I am praying I win the Nenana Ice Classic.. that's my hope to pay the bills.. how weak is that?
I would also be proud to contribute. Your blog is a book. I buy books. As a matter of fact, I have been trying to buy your book from Amazon, but it is out of print and they can't find even a used one. See? That is amazing that it is a 100% keeper! So, I will buy your blog-book, if you will. I will read and read and read.
I hope a plane comes to you. If I can ever help. I will. It was a goal of mine to buy Grandpa a plane - a goal which has long since faded into the past. I will replace it with helping you. You never know. Stranger things have happened.