back seat before popping out the rear package shelf window.
When I came to, I found myself lying in a cow pasture without a scratch, as though someone had gently placed me there. Sam had been driving his Corvair Spider in front of me and saw my car roll over a couple of times, then finally flip end-over-end before it came to a stop. The headlamps lit up the car and the surrounding field, as the car lay on its roof with the wheels spinning.
I stood in shock and just looked at the car as he ran to me.
I was 5’ 10” and 175 pounds, and couldn’t imagine how I could’ve crawled through the rear window if I had tried, so flying through it and landing on the ground, unhurt, must have been a Divine intervention of sorts.
Sam and I threw away all the beer from my car and drove the Spider to a diner for coffee. We tried to create a story of what could have happened, but nothing made sense.
After a recap of the accident, Dad was understandably livid. I just sat on the couch and saw the anger in his eyes over the latest damage I had brought on the family. I was defenseless and listened with my head down. His words hit me harder than any punch he could have thrown
The one lesson I learned that night was that drinking coffee after drinking alcohol only makes for an alert drunk.
The next morning, I went with the wrecker to find my car. We pulled up to the cow pasture with a big hole in the fence and there was my car, several yards from the shoulder of the road. It looked like a huge dead animal, as it was still on its roof with four tires pointing toward the sky.
In the junkyard, mud and hay covered some of the twisted metal and broken plastic which added to the vision of destruction, and made me feel nauseous. It was difficult to comprehend how I could have lived, seeing the roof caved in flush on the top of the driver seat and the steering wheel pushed flat into the back of the driver seat. If I had worn a seatbelt, I would have been killed.
But, it clearly was not my time to die.
Embarrassment, lying, hurting people, stealing and cheating death had not yet shown me that I had a disease. I simply felt I was a bad person without the willpower to stop drinking.
I really didn’t want to stop, but my self-destruction began to scare me. I just wanted to drink for fun and go home without causing problems. My addictions were in total control of my life.
~ ~ ~
A few days after the accident, I received another notice from my draft board. During my first year in college, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War expanded, and warm bodies my age were being used to mask the government’s dreadful mistake.
Many of our country’s intellectuals spoke out about the futility of trying to win a war without a way to measure success. They realized that hard-fought battles did not gain ground, and all that happened was death. After our soldiers conquered a piece of land, it would be crawling with more Viet Cong as soon as we left.
It was a war of people killing people with no end in sight. Throwing more bodies at the problem seemed to be their strategy.
Understandably, the changes I made the prior college year left my records in disarray, so the school didn’t classify me as a full-time student. The Selective Service wanted me to undergo another physical.
At this physical, the Army doctor said my knee was OK, that I was fit for military service and qualified to be a soldier. I lost my “4F” medical classification and became “1A,” denoting I was fit to kill and be killed.
Physical standards for induction were gradually becoming more lenient and, although the U.S. troops seemed to always have a better kill ratio than the enemy, we were still dying at an alarming rate as the killing machine cranked away.
In August 1966, I got my draft notice to leave for boot camp. The time, date and location were printed in bold type, directing me to report. Greetings from Uncle Sam were to be taken seriously, and not reporting as directed meant jail time. Upon hearing the news, Mom lost it and cried non-stop. Even Dad was pissed at my situation.
All my options boiled down to a ‘fight or flight’ situation. I thought about leaving for Canada if I was backed into a corner.
The college administration had been working with me to unravel and resolve all the paper issues required to prove that was a full-time student worthy of a “2S” student deferment. I worried that I would need to decide about my future before the new paperwork reached my draft board.
I believed the war was wrong and plucking kids off the streets to fight was immoral, but I agonized over evading the Selective Service. The draft forced me to decide whether being a draft dodger and a criminal was preferable to taking a leap of faith to serve my country.
The only thing for certain was that I wouldn’t go to Vietnam.
Was living in a prison cell better than leaving everyone I cared about, knowing I would never be able to return to my country? How long would I be in prison? Could I start a new life in Canada? My head was spinning over what to do.
Living in a cell for any length of time would push me to suicide, so I decided to leave for Canada and wondered if I would be a fugitive for the rest of my days. With all fear-based thinking aside, I believed going to Vietnam was a death sentence.
About two weeks before I was to report to boot camp, I received a “2S” student deferment. Once again, I had dodged a huge bullet!
In my second year of school, I continued as a math major, carrying eight courses and 26 credit hours each trimester. My GPA was near 3.0, and I graduated on time.
I transferred to a state university to pursue a bachelor degree in mathematics and to stay one step ahead of my draft board.
Drinking became the friend that traveled with me so I wouldn’t be alone. Alcohol and drugs always took me to a safe place where I could shut down my feelings.
In the fall of 1967, I met the love of my life in the dining hall next to my dorm. I often stared at her while I ate, but I didn’t have the nerve to introduce myself. Finally, she came to my table one night at dinner. “Do I know you?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think we have met until now,” I remarked, using her advance as a sign she was interested in me. “My name is John.”
“I’m Rachael.”
Love came quickly and we were together for the next 22 years.
~ ~ ~
The turmoil that characterized 1968 demoralized millions of baby boomers with the assassinations at home and the atrocities in Vietnam.
On Jan 31, 1968, Vietnam announced there would be a three-day cease-fire, during their Tết celebration. “How do you stop a war for a couple days?” I wondered.
The first day of Tết, a team of Viet Cong soldiers attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and other V.C. executed massive assaults against cities in South Vietnam. The Tết Offensive left the U.S. commanders psychologically on edge waiting for the next full-scale attack. The American public became more pessimistic about winning the war.
On April 4, 1968, a shot rang out at 6:01 p.m. and fate dealt the country another blow to peace and freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, lay sprawled on the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of jaw and neck.
A great man who had spent 13 years of his life dedicated to nonviolent protest had been felled by a bullet. Although James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder, future investigations opened questions concerning the actual shooting.
Did Ray have a clear shot at Dr. King from where he stood? A review of the angle the bullet would have traveled makes it doubtful the assassination could have happened the way it was accepted.
Two months later on June 5, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was making his way through the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to give a press conference after winning the California primary when, suddenly, a Palestinian