followed the Ten Commandments.
Every Tuesday, I had mandatory religious instruction at the church. I sat in the back pew with Derek and Pete most of the time, and didn’t pay much attention.
One afternoon I heard, “John, leave your seat and move to the front pew.” I said ‘OK’ and started walking up the aisle with my books, when the priest pushed me from behind.
“Stop pushing me – I am going to the front,” I said. As I gained my balance, he rushed toward me and pushed me even harder. This time, I stumbled and fell into the hard, wooden edge of a pew.
In half a second, I snapped, wheeled around, and punched him. He grabbed me and I wrestled him to the floor. In that same second, it dawned on me what I had done.
I pushed myself off him, and just stood for a second looking around at my friends who were in shock. It was surreal.
I picked up my stuff, left the church, and went home. When I walked in the house, Dad asked, “Why are you home so early?”
There was no easy way to say it, so I gave him the summary. “Father Drake kept pushing me, so I hit him and knocked him down.”
Quietly, Dad asked, “Did he hit you first?”
“Yes,” I answered, waiting for a tongue lashing at the very least.
Then, the strangest thing happened. Dad calmly put his paper down, slipped on his jacket, and began walking toward the church.
Derek later told me what had happened, “Your old man marched up the aisle in the middle of class, and stood in front of Father Drake.”
‘What happened with you and my son a few minutes ago?’ he asked.
Father Drake said ‘John was unruly, so I told him to move and he refused. He punched me when I approached him.’
Then, Derek told me what Dad had said to the priest:
“Whatever happened, keep your God damn hands off my kid or you will deal with me!”
It was the first time I could ever remember when my Dad stuck up for me. Maybe deep down he really did love me – or, possibly Father Drake’s reputation of punching God’s children had filtered into the church going elderly. I’ll never know.
I began calling myself a recovering Catholic.
~ ~ ~
In the spring of 1965, life as I knew it was coming to an end. I probably needed to talk with an adult about my future, but I had no one to go to, so I would just do what I thought was right. What the hell did I know about life?
I had three choices but wasn’t prepared to do any of them. I was a big fish in a small pond, successful and popular in an environment where self-respect was not a by-product for what I did, but rather about what the town’s people thought of Mom and Dad.
But inside, I didn’t always feel good about myself. I wondered how I would adapt to living in foreign places which, to me, was everywhere outside a 25-mile radius of where I lived. All I knew were blue-collar WASPs. I had never met a black person, and all that I’d heard about diversity was fear and bigotry.
My close friends were going to college, so I took the SAT tests and applied to colleges.
The easiest choice was to do nothing but, if I stayed in town, I’d have to ride on trains forever.
My second option was to join the Army before I got drafted. I only had a few images of the death and destruction of everyday life in the jungles of Vietnam where “kill or be killed” seemed to be the marching orders.
The war seemed closer than 12,000 miles, as guys I knew were being drafted, flown to Nam and went missing from my life. People were dying, but I didn’t know exactly why, or what our soldiers were doing over there? Hell, I didn’t even know if we were winning! But, more importantly for me, was how long I might have to stay.
All options considered, I backed into the unknown and decided to be the first in my family to leave the valley and head out to college like my friends. The idea of leaving home made me feel alone and insecure. I didn’t know anyone who left town and came back to tell me how to live on my own.
While Sam eagerly told me about the highlights of frat life, he neglected to let me know about how to live, study, and control my vices.
~ ~ ~
When I turned 17 I began to drink more often with my buddies, using false identification to bluff my way into bars. As a senior I drank into baseball season with my close friends on the team, as playing baseball didn’t require us to be in shape. All we had to do was just show up and play a game we’d played since our Little League days.
On weekends, I went with friends to the bars and blended into the atmosphere like the alcoholic I would become in the not too distant future. For reasons that are obvious to me now, I never noticed the guy in the last seat of the bar, drunk and still drinking. And, I never thought about drinking and driving, as it was ‘the norm’ for me.
When I got inside a bar, I could see enjoyment and friendship in the faces of people having a good time. It was fun holding a bottle of Miller High Life and pretending that I belonged. My heart raced with excitement as I assimilated into the crowd.
I didn’t know I was looking into the soul of my existence for the next three decades, and could not imagine that excitement would someday be replaced with desperation.
I turned 18 in June of 1965, and began going to the bars with increased frequency. The drinking age in New York State was 18, so we looked forward to legally doing what we had already been doing with false ID since we were 17.
The College Inn had an electric atmosphere, charged by all the kids drinking, laughing, and dancing. Live bands and a large sound system played music so loud it was hard to talk.
I began to ease away from my old life of socializing with my steady girlfriend to a drinking life with different friends. I embraced my alcoholism by drinking whenever I could. Unfortunately, I never knew when to stop, so I usually got drunk – sometimes by accident instead of intention.
Although the kids at the College Inn were having fun and Sam raved about college life, I hadn’t been tested, and my coping skills were home-schooled.
In the 18 years I lived in our little town, not much had changed. Each generation took over their family’s business and many lived in the same house. I had very few experiences in diversity, adversity, or significant life changes until I left for college.
I tucked my low self-esteem under my arm, and walked away from the only life I had known. It was time to discover the real me. I was full of anxiety about how I would care for myself in a world I didn’t understand.
I left my small town with a vague idea of my parents’ expectations for the better life they assumed would result from a college education. The reality of my college years was a deferment from Vietnam, a love for beer, and a taste for marijuana.
Chapter~2
1965 – 1969 Fight or Flight
In the summer of 1965, before I packed to leave for college, I received a letter from my draft board requesting me to report to an induction center to be processed and added to the Selective Service pool of 18-year-old boys.
I boarded an old yellow school bus full of guys headed to the Army induction center for evaluation and classification. The center was some 70 miles to the south and, in spite of the bone jarring bumps and straight back seats, each of us tried to get comfortable while we stared out a window. Fear kept me in a zone with images of Army physicals.
The bus was as quiet as death row occupied with strangers, alone and scared. As I looked around at each face on the bus, my anxiety grew even deeper as I tried to guess who among us would be selected to go to war – and when.
Once off the bus, we were herded into a classroom for our mental testing. A drill sergeant stood in front of the