When Col. Harold Joseph O’Grady drove his only son downtown to register with the Selective Service System back in 1972 he may have been thinking, “This kid will last about as as long in Vietnam as an ice-cream cone.”
The old man brought some experience to bear, having done his bit in (and above) the jungle during World War II with the New Guinea-based 65th Squadron, 433rd Troop Carrier Group, Fifth Air Force.
Thirty years later, those halcyon days spent rocking a biscuit bomber out of New Guinea must have looked like R&R in Sydney compared to sharing quarters with a smart-ass peace creep/wanna-be hippie who favored Abbie and Jerry over Tricky Dick and Spiro; a hairy asthmatic nuisance who couldn’t mow the grass without wheezing but smoked acres of it without complaint and then ate everything in the house.
Well, now he was 18 and that’s Reveille you hear, son! Just ’cause you had the good fortune to be born into a career Air Force officer’s family doesn’t mean you get to skip your turn in the barrel. Especially with your GPA. Sign here, dismiss, and await your letter from the president.
Thus I duly registered with Selective Service as required; continued my cursory antiwar theatrics at college; and voted for a WWII B-24 pilot in November’s presidential contest.
Then, in December, the last induction call was issued, and the authority to induct expired in July 1973. They may have had my number, but they couldn’t put me in that barrel anymore, and I certainly wasn’t going to get in there by myself. I knew what the knothole was for.
What I don’t know, a half-century down my own long and winding road, is whether my opposition to the Vietnam war was a principled stand or a simple exercise of privilege. Peace for everyone, or just for me?
O, to be a sprat again, with no question weightier than what’s this interesting sticky bit up my nose? My only connection to that plump munchkin above is an unstable and unreliable continuity of memory; I had sinus problems then and I have them now.
When I finally graduated from college at age 23 — about the same age as my old man when he was matriculating at the Pacific Theater — my parents presented me with a used Japanese pickup. That’s was mom’s doing. I never saw the old man driving a Japanese anything. He wanted to buy me an Edsel.
Today, my hiking boots, running shoes, and more than a few of my shirts were made in Vietnam.
There’s a lesson here somewhere, and you’d think I’d have puzzled it out by now. I’ve never been smart, but I’ve often been lucky.
Mad Blog Media 
Hey there, hi there, ho there mi amigo! I’m not sure there is a lesson there. “Life’s a job you’re fired from, unless of course you quit” as Louden Wainwright said. We are along for the ride, something is steering the bus, and I never thought to quit. Now I look like shit.
I suspect the old man might’ve secretly longed for the old days in the NG jungle, if only because the Japanese weren’t playing Iron Butterfly at him day and night. (R.I.P., Doug Ingle.)
Parallel universe part 4:
Self with sister. 1954. Dad’s thumbs.
Rockville, MD. Approx 40 miles from Harundale, MD.
[image: JBS- STS 1954 web.jpg] á§
Hey, Julian, that link is banjaxed somehow. If you want to email it to me I’ll see if I can make it work. Either that or you could send the image itself.
I pulled a pretty high number in that last draft; I think in the low 300’s, so didn’t much worry about getting the letter from Uncle Sam. And then the war ended. At some point I read Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, and came away thinking we had no idea what the fuck we were doing over there except putting everything into a Cold War paradigm and blowing shit up. Fifty something dead GIs and a couple million dead Vietnamese? Oops. Sorry.
A friend of mine in college, much older (he was a Rochester city cop I worked with in the Security Dept of the U of R), had the pleasure of spending Christmas Day in Bastogne in 1944 courtesy of the 101st Airborne. He came back with a German submachine gun that he won in a firefight, yeah, one of those days when the other guy didn’t come back. My uncle was rebuilding railroad lines in Europe after we bombed them. I asked him one day if he ever saw action and he said, yeah, they had to occasionally hunker down from German artillery. And another good friend from college days came back from Vietnam with a pretty bad case of alcoholism.
Gotta remember to take down the flag before dusk. Least I can do, since I did so little in my youth.
“Fifty thousand something….” Sorry.
I think most of us that stroll into this saloon knew the number you meant Khal It’s funny I didn’t even think to correct you.
But the real number is too many.
Being a bookish military kid I read a ton about war, and when Vietnam appeared on my radar it seemed wrong, a world of difference from my old man’s war. We were the Brits and Uncle Ho was George Washington (or maybe Michael Collins). Tradition vs. improvisation. Westhisface vs. the Swamp Fox. Definitely felt like punching down.
“Would you rather fight them over there or over here?”
“Over here, for sure. We know the country here. Call me when they come ashore at Long Beach.”
I know people who did their tours, but no one who refused registration/induction. Tough call either way, and I’m just relieved that I never had to make it.
Speaking of antiwar songs.
Good heavens remember watching the lottery in a residence hall at CSU Ft Collins and when number 278 came up I went to the local 3.2 bar and drank my fill. My Father did WWII in Liberty ships in the South Pacific and Seattle, to Kiska after contracting Malaria. My first brand-new car was a Subaru Brat that was roundly and severely hated by my Father. Quote three and a half years fighting those bastards and you by that F$%king thing. I had a friend who did three combat tours in Vietnam as a Green Beret. Then four years as a Chicago cop including the 1968 Dem convention. Hunting camp was a true experience when the whiskey came out. Great guy who passed on six {6) years ago. That was a truly strange time till the orange dumpster fire showed up and it looks plumb tame now.
My dad was flexible when it came to shopping the Axis Powers. After mom’s clapped-out Anglia finally choked and croaked, he bought her a 1962 Mercedes-Benz 220S off a flyboy bound for Southeast Asia.
The old man was in personnel then, and I’m sure he heard things.
“Yeah, Bob’s off to ’Nam. I guess he’s looking to unload the Benz.”
“Y’don’t say? I gotta make a quick call. …”
The old fella drove Cadillacs early on, then devolved to lesser vehicles — Mercury Marquis station wagon, Ford Maverick, AMC Eagle — while mom traded the Benz for a Pinto, the fabled BBQ pit on the hoof. O, lawd, did that ever ruin my Saturday nights.
man did your post bring out some deep memories. My folks basically lived at the VFW halls. Even I at one time held a Son of A Legionare card. But curiously, my old man wasn’t very supportive of Nam and he only told Mom he hoped like hell I didn’t get drafted. I just missed the cutoff by a whisker but I had my eye on Canada anyway. Only had one buddy pull Nam duty and he was never the same after. No wonder…he was a medic.
We got to meet a few Vietnam vets at UNC in Greality. One dude looked like Rasputin and came back a socialist. Couple others were a bubble or two off plumb but good joes otherwise.
And as you age and move around you meet more people and it’s kind of astonishing how many did their bit over there. Gary Ziegler of Bear Basin Ranch outside Weirdcliffe pulled a couple of tours with Special Forces intelligence. He was and remains a very active, cheery fella.
In Bibleburg you could meet veterans of damn near every war in living memory. I drank a beer or two with a dude who was between tours of the desert and he definitely had The Look. Made pleasant conversation without shedding the situational awareness for a second. Told me he liked cycling into town from Fort Carson, just spinning those wheels.
I always thought Herb was a bubble or two off plumb. Talk about situational awareness, trying walking around Patrick’s garage. He knows where the good bits and pieces are, and when you get close he gets all twitchy.
Vietnam vets are just like regular folks. The experience shapes them in a thousand different ways. I run into some that seem to think it was the only thing important in their life and walk around with the hats, vests, bumper stickers, window decals, and you owe me attitude. It damn sure wasn’t the most important thing I did. Teaching Sandy to ride when she was 37 years old was. Playing the guitar and singing for people the first time with my two friends a runs a close second. Riding the Santa Fe century with Patrick, Khal, and Andy is right up there too.
Is it my imagination or does the kid in the onesie look like he’s puffing on something stronger than a binkie?
if memory serves me, Harundale is just outside Glen Burnie? Flashback to my 98 Rock days and they’re almost daily Glen Burnout jokes.
and proof that rock and also roll are actually good for you. 97 Rock introduced me to Bob Lopez, the first news person who sounded like he was talking to us and not at us.
I have an old photo album (as you can see) from the Before-Time, with photos arranged by date and location. Lots of shots from Harundale and Glen Burnie, but I was just a diaper with eyes back then and don’t remember much of those halcyon days. My awareness kicked in somewhere around Sleepy Hollow/Falls Church, Va. (Another famous resident of Falls Church was writer-cartoonist James Thurber, an early inspiration.)
I’m pretty sure it was in Falls Church that I used a pair of toy handcuffs to lock my mom in the bathroom and then took a bracing stroll around the ’hood in the altogether. Betcha Thurber never did that.
Pix or it didn’t happen?
Alas, there are no pix of the truly legendary bits. Mom was something of a shanachie and kept her focus on the tale-telling.
“What I don’t know, a half-century down my own long and winding road, is whether my opposition to the Vietnam war was a principled stand or a simple exercise of privilege. Peace for everyone, or just for me?”
Yeah, well said, PO’G.
Re our War Against the Vietnamese, I still think of the football-toting Ricky Watters line, “For who? For what?” as to why he went all alligator-arms on a crossing route when the game was already lost.
I won the biggest lottery of my life in 1969 with a 237. Never bothered playing after that.
Y’gotta quit winners. There’s only so much good fortune to be had in one lifetime.