Stealing A Notion From Hondo
Short preface: I’ve been solo in SW Florida for a bit over a month, I’ve been exploring the SnowBird approach. All that changes tomorrow with the arrival of my better half, but music has sustained me as much as METV. Just yesterday a neighbor was playing a CD that dropped this song by Johnny Wright in my lap. I’m posting a favorite version:
https://youtu.be/byaPHvBzD7A
Oddly apropos ain’t it? “America has heard the bugle call.” What bugle call? We are no longer able to point a finger at any enemy.
Just for fun I’m gonna add another old favorite – NSFW. Got back from ‘Nam in ’69 and went to Woodstock. Nubile young wimmin and all. I got to hear/see/feel this tune:
After being spit at and called a baby killer this one is also oddly apropos. BTW I didn’t sing along.
I figure many Vets will “get it” regardless of our particular experiences. If not… Just file this under crazy old fart and move on.
Category: Geezer Alert!, Politics
So watching video #2……pisspots look really clean from what I remember of the time…thousands without a clue. Just like know. 46 years after Woodstock, the Marine Corps is still at war and America is at the Mall….with “war fatigue” and thousands caliming to be Vets with lots of awards and decorations.
First video:
Electric Strawberry Shot Gunners. BTDT, except my time was with the 101 Airborne.
Second video:
Was not in NY for Woodstock. Spent that week baling hay in Indiana to get a few extra dollars for gas for my cruising the streets machine.
“I figure many Vets will “get it” regardless of our particular experiences. If not… Just file this under crazy old fart and move on.”
As a young buck of 39 I try to learn as much as I can from the crazy old farts. The key word being old, they’re old for a reason, even if luck played a part I figure they still know something I want to learn. Plus crazy can be a lot of fun if done right.
Just said goodbye this week to the neighbor I grew up next to until I left home. A Marine Grunt in Vietnam, he was very influential in my upbringing. Always my biggest supporter when I was out running trying to slim down to join the service. He flew the Marine Corps flag right below our nation’s flag every day until the big C ate him up so bad he had to be put in a home.
After my second tour to oif as a grunt with the 101st he played a key role in helping me maintain what was left of my sanity. Just spending a half hour with him on July 4th the summer of ’08 right after I got out will always be one of the times I’m most grateful for.
Thank you for this post. I almost never comment but I stop by here every day. The timing was perfect. BTW my first exposure to the first song was the movie Full Metal Jacket.
Unlike Vietnam, America is not war weary or war fatigued now at all. America has for too long been so disconnected from the military and what the military is and does, they cannot be weary. Ask your typical college student or “millennial” on the street what the military does, is doing now, where they are fighting currently and what they are fighting for. Sadly they cannot answer you. Laughing at their own ignorance they give answers like, “we are fighting the Vietnamese or the French or the British”. Really folks. Ask them who is threatening to wipe us off the face of the earth and they will answer, again in a laughing sign of ignorance at being asked something about which they have no clue, “Um the, um, the Russians?” “The Japanese”. I have heard this or I would not be writing it. History being taught has reduced WWI, WWII and Korea to footnotes. (Students do not know what footnotes are or how to follow them.) Vietnam is a passing paragraph at most. Terrorist threats are taught under the guise of “here is what we face because of misunderstood peoples and cultures”. I wish indeed there was enough current events knowledge in our young people for them to even be war weary, if they were so inclined. But they are not informed and worse, they do not want to be. Their instant everything culture has no time for details and the devil is always in the details. The devil of lies and the devil of the truth. If it is not about the latest on the Kardashians, pop culture, current favorite on I-Tunes downloads or any such nonsense, it is not even on their narrow band, low horizon radar they do not care. In fact Radar Online and that whole ilk of “info for the illiterate”, is their news outlet of choice. Anything as deep as Fox news, or even CNN is just too much for them to take the time to listen to and far too much to absorb and digest. I fear the time is coming when their… Read more »
Sparks,
You’re right, there is a lot these kids don’t know, and a lot they have been taught that isn’t true. The upside is that they are good hearted, and they are not stupid. They will work their way through their indoctrination, and reject it bit by bit.
Meanwhile, I don’t hesitate to school them, and you shouldn’t, either. Like I said, there is a lot of indoctrination, not to mention some nasty gaps, in their education. Be alert to those, fill them in, and see if it doesn’t change the way they see things.
Remember when that jerk Eason Jordan from CNN finally got caught by bloggers saying that US troops “targeted” journalists? One of my kids was all wound up about that, until I showed him side-by-side pictures of a person holding a TV camera and a shoulder mounted RPG launcher. His entire attitude did a 180.
Yep, Sparks, you got it head on. We live in a fucked up world corrupted with greed and arrogance. Probably wasn’t much different during RVN, but we did not know the truth at the time. This brought a few memories that had been tucked away neatly in a special corner of my mind. Some bad, some real bad; fortunately some that were good. Those are the ones I allow to conquer my daily thoughts. Grace Slick, yep, that was a real good one, especially with that mesmerizing voice. Life is good these days, best days are in the middle of the back 40 away from people. Group is a time for relaxing, looking forward to familiar faces of the largest gathering I wish to join. Nothing to share except the good memories of the past, and the good days of current. Fortunately I never had the indignity of someone spitting in my face or calling me a baby killer. Otherwise, I’d likely still be in the joint for creating the first KIA at an American airport. RVN meant a lot of different things for many of us, but none will ever be able to forget it all. Through the years I’ve fond the wisdom of aging directs one if he/she will just listen. Put it behind you, move on, and stay the fuck away from people. ESPECIALLY those who want to bring up the part that feeds flashbacks and restless nights. That includes staying away from the so-called “Welcome Home” celebrations that ring so hollow. Every so often I meet someone who was there and wore the T-shirt. With a few I can connect and have some interesting and enjoyable conversations.
Internal guilt over some of the things we did over there no longer haunt me. The kill or be killed attitude manifested itself with regularity, thanks to man’s wicked ways against mankind. This story and the videos were great reminders of times that slip the memory every so often. Thanks for sharing.
I’m fairly young (37 soon), but my tastes in music have gone from ’80s pop to classical to ’60s counterculture to The Doors, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Wu Tang Clan, GWAR, CW McCall, and far too many genres and artists to list. Both of those songs take me places. I shared the latter on Facebook during a particular drunken moment of angst a while back. Started with Roger Miller’s “One Dyin’ and a Buryin’, proceeded through a few others, and finally got it all out with the Fish Cheer.
As for MeTV, I’m watching Quincy, MD now. NCIS and its offspring are back on, but there’s nothing like the classics. Gonna watch another episode of Quincy…or Banachek, Rockford Files, MASH (not so fun when drinking sometimes), or Gunsmoke and drink a bit more Wild Turkey and Coke Zero before heading to bed.
How dare I? Quincy ME, not MD.
That sounds like an AWESOME evening, truly…especially the Wild Turkey part!