Chapter 13, Scared Sick

As I lay slumped back in my seat, I was starting to feel nauseated as it suddenly dawned on me what I had taken on. I was leaving home for the first time in my life. I was going into a situation of which I had no personal experience. I realized that I was scared to death.




Occasionally, Mom and Dad would talk in quiet conversation. A few times my father tried to lighten up the moment with his usual humor but with little effect. I was in the back seat in the midst of an anxiety attack, nothing new for me. I had learned to live with anxiety throughout my life. It was no fun.



Nauseated, I rolled down my window a little bit and took long slow breaths, fighting down the sickness. I closed my ears and tried to think of something else, anything else, but what I was about to do.



All at once my Dad slowed down the car and said something I didn’t catch.



“What?” I said.



“Look! …Adon, look at what is in the road ahead.”



As the car came to a stop in the early mist of dawn, I opened my eyes.



There standing in the road was the biggest whitetail buck deer I had ever seen in my life. He was just standing there looking at us, not fifty feet from the front of our car.



“Whoa! Look at the size of him, Dad." He must weigh 350 pounds at least. What’s the matter with him? He is just standing there!



Dad said, “I think he came to say goodbye to you, Adon”



Dad shut off the engine, parked at a dead stop, right in the road. As we watched this magnificent creature, he apparently decided that standing in middle of Route 1, the heavily traveled coastal route, might not be the safest place for a trophy buck to be standing. He slowly walked across the road and into the woods on the other side. All the while he still looked at us, at me, until at the last second as he disappeared out of sight.

My Dad started the car as we continued on to our destination. Soon I would be saying goodbye to the people closest to me. As I settled back into my seat, I sat in wonder at what had just happened. I had worn myself out for weeks looking for a deer just like that. And, he shows up on this day to wish me off on the greatest and scariest adventure of my life.



The anxiety attack was gone. The fear I had felt was gone. My Native American ancestors would have said that it was a good omen. The deer seemed to be showing me respect and wishing me well. Somehow I knew that I would be able to face all that I had before me, good or bad. And that somehow, sometime, I would be back here, to the greatest place on earth, my home.

Chapter 12, Sudden Awareness

I spent the three months from August through November enjoying everything that I could before my upcoming induction date of November 27, 1967. I spent a lot of time with my parents that summer. I know they were concerned about me eventually going to Vietnam and they wanted to be with me as much as they could before I left for basic training. Every night we would watch the progress of the War on the news. It was usually really graphic and I could see it really bothered them, especially Mom. It was probably torture for her. It didn’t seem to worry me much for some reason.




I kept myself busy. During the day I worked for some rich people mowing their lawns, gardening and keeping their cars clean and polished. From 3:30 in the afternoon to early evening I worked for my old Mormon friend on his farm. His son, one of my friends at church, was already in the Army going through Warrant Officer training, Jump School, and Helicopter Flight School. I had replaced him on the farm that season. I became quite the young farmer. I loved the time I spent with my old friend on his farm. He was a warm friendly man with a wonderful sense of humor. He taught me how to drive and after I got my drivers license he let me drive us in his new truck wherever we went. That meant a lot to me. My own father wouldn’t have done that for me.



My father did help me buy my first car though. It was a 1962 Ford Falcon Futura. It was white with red interior. I thought it was pretty cool with its bucket seats and console. My friends weren’t that impressed. They kept making remarks about it being a roller skate or sissy car. Today, kids would say it was gay. Maybe it was.

In November, preceding my induction into the Army, I spent as much time as I could hunting. It was deer season and I was brought up to be a hunter. I went hunting almost everyday in quest of the big buck. November 27th quickly arrived and although I saw a couple of deer, they were just glimpses and I ended up with nothing to show for my time except being in the woods that I loved. That big buck that I spent so much time hunting, was safe.

Eventually, induction day finally arrived. My parents and I got up early to make the trip to take me to the nearest induction center which was 60 mile away. There wasn’t much conversation during the trip. As we passed through the familiar towns and villages, I looked around and suddenly realized to my horror that I might not get to see any of this again. I quickly looked at Mom and Dad in the front seat. They were talking quietly and I realized how much I loved them. I had never been away from them or left home before. It would devastate them if anything bad were to happen to me.

What had I done?

Chapter 11, A Chosen Path

During the next three years of high school it seemed as though I had a split personality. I was alone, I was lost, confused and I was missing my best friend. I was missing the boy I loved, my friend David. I was also missing the part of me that I had just grown to realize existed. I became more socially aloof. I spent a lot of my time alone in my room reading and occasionally “jerking off”. As I would see my reflection in the mirror, I could almost see David in the image sitting beside me. I was a lonely, little, sexually confused kid with no one to talk to or play with. I never found any other boys like me at my school. There was no way to do so without exposing yourself to ridicule and I was too shy anyway.




I had two school friends that I spent a lot of time with. They were both apparently "normal" straight boys. I enjoyed the time I would spend with them and their families and then I would return home. When I was home I would go about as though everything was ok but I knew that it wasn’t. I think my parents were aware that I wasn’t myself and were concerned for me. I spent all my time with boys and I suspect that they may have wondered why I didn’t have any interest in girls. I never went to any school activities and never had a date. They knew I was extremely shy and they tried to encourage me. They used to ask me about it once in a while but what could I say?



During my freshman year at high school I joined the Mormon church along with my sister and parents. One of the positive influences outside of my immediate family was a special adult friend that seemed to recognize that I was different and needed a someone to talk to. He was a young married leader in my branch of the church who had; it seemed to me, way to many kids. (just kidding). He was a kind, gentle man with a sincere heart and a quiet manner. I never really confided in him but I knew he was there if I needed him. Looking back maybe I probably should have.



There was also an older man my father's age, also a Mormon, who gave me employment, who showed me how to work and trusted me with his expensive equipment. he had a great sense of humor. He taught me empathy and compassion for others. He and his family filled a void in my life and even today after he is gone, his children and grandchildren are like family to me.



When I was a senior in high school, there were some choices I needed to make. First, it is customary in the Mormon Church for boys 19 and older to serve proselyting missions for the church. That would mean that I would leave home for two years to teach about the beliefs of the. church. I need to tell you that I believe that this would have been good for me. My son served a mission when he was of age and I feel it blessed him in ways that you can’t imagine. I never went. My father never encouraged me to go. I think he may have known what was going on with me but he never confronted me directly. For my part, I was terrified at the prospect of knocking on the doors of strangers to teach them what I knew to be true. I was just too shy. And knowing what I know now, I would have probably ended up in the shower with one of my companions, to return home in disgrace.



The other choice was whether or not to enlist in the military. There was a new draft being implemented, the Selective Service Act of 1967. It was a “lottery”, where you were assigned a number according to your birth date. The Selective Service was to hold a drawing in what seemed at the time, the immediate future. I just felt in my heart that I was going to be drafted in the first round. I didn’t want to be drafted into the infantry. We all knew what happened to boys in the infantry. I decided to enlist before I got drafted and have some choice about my specialized training and where I might end up. My parents were concerned but I didn’t really care at this point. I felt that I had something to prove to myself. Was I a man or not? It was more preferable to me to face death in a vicious war, than to serve a nice safe church mission with the potential shame and failure. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?

In Remembrance

I cried again recently as I stood over his grave. Looking down at his headstone, I read the inscription, 1952-1991. It was shortly before his fortieth birthday when he died. I asked him out loud, “Oh, David. What happened?”




David’s gravesite is located on a high hill overlooking the town we grew up in. From where he is buried you can look out over the part of town where the schools are that he and I had walked to daily until that last summer. You can see the athletic fields where I used to help him put on his catchers gear when he played Little League. School is out for another summer and the late afternoon sun warmed the quiet neighborhoods. I could hear an occasional boy or girl's laugh or yell as it floated up from the homes below.



It was years later that I pieced together what took place following our leaving high school. After we graduated we both entered the U.S. Army. I was older than David and was in Vietnam when he was drafted. I went into the service to avoid the new draft, the “lottery” the Selective Service had instituted in 1967. I was home going to a technical college when he returned from his tour in Vietnam. He came home emotionally scarred and an alcoholic. I saw him a couple of times in the years that followed. Once, as he was walking by my home with his kids and once we ran into each other outside of Walmart. Both times, after we had talked, I walked away feeling empty inside.




I went to his funeral in 1991. He had at one time turned his alcoholic life around and had become a councilor of alcohol addiction at the local VA hospital. I remembered in our conversation outside of Walmart he said that he didn’t feel that there was much to look forward to in his life. He had seen what happens to some of the old alcoholic veterans and their never ending cycles.



He was divorced and living by himself. He used to call his widowed mother every day until one day he didn’t. She got worried and went over to his home. She found him sitting in his car, inside the closed up garage, with the car’s engine running. He was dead.



When we were kids, it seemed David was fearless outside of his home because he was away from his usually drunken and sullen parents. I was asked once, if I was afraid of David because of his fearless behavior. I wasn't afraid of him as much as afraid for him. I felt like I had to be watchful as his big brother. Looking back, I don't think he was sexually abused but I know he was abused physically and mentally. At home, he had to rely on his older sister or his own independent and inventive nature to cope with his home life. Although I was older than he, when we were together, he usually took the lead, with me holding back to protect him in any way I could. I felt powerless most of the time and in the end I was.