It has been a hectic few days which is bound to happen from time to time. But I do want to honor my commitment to post every Tuesday, So this week is a story from my own lifetime that I wrote for the class I'm taking in writing memoir. If you can read this with just a bit of the rhythm of talking blues, you might find it a bit of fun . Please do let me know if you want me to include more posts from my own life and times or if you would prefer I continue to keep this more chronological.
You Can Get Anything You Want
The summer I turned 12 a little song was set loose on an unsuspecting world. It was about Alice (remember Alice?) and her restaurant. And her church beside the restaurant and “27 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.” It was an epic talking blues rendition by a son of legendary Woody Guthrie named Arlo. A hippy war protest song that my daddy could embrace. I memorized the whole dang thing and was called on to trot it out like a trick pony at random family gatherings or campfires.
Like the night around a campfire on the Kern River. It was a four day weekend, I can’t remember which one, and we were tenting it so my dad could fish and I could be bored out of my mind. The campfire that night was near the shore, and it seemed like half the campground had gathered round. My daddy brought his guitar. Marshmallows were roasted and drinks were passed.
If I close my eyes I can smell the wood smoke blending with the water and plant smells of the river only a few steps away. I hear the crickets and the rush of the water over the rocks as a backdrop to laughter, stories, and a song or two on the guitar. And then my dad calls on me to recite about Alice, and the words feel important. My brother isn’t there; he’s grown and working. Soon he will be having another physical.
Sam turned 18 in late 1966 and by the law he had registered for the draft. His first physical after Arlo’s record came out. He followed the advice and got “good and drunk the night before.” He figured he would be rejected because of his trick knee that would go out on him from time to time. Seems like when you run a VW bug off the road and jam your knee up under the dash so hard you break off the key, it can cause some long term damage. But the doctors never even examined his knee. They couldn’t get past his ingrown toenails. So every six months, Sam was called back to see if his toenails were still ingrown.
In 1968 those toenails started to bother Sam for the first time in his life and he had a bit of surgery to fix them. His next physical they looked at his toes and said “good to go.” They never even looked at his knee.
My brother got the notice to report for induction in early 1969. This was right at the time we lost our family home in a flood. The night before reporting for duty, he came to say goodbye. He stood with me in the dark night, under a canopy of stars and the nearly full moon. “Someday soon people are going to walk on that moon. I might never get the chance, but maybe you will.”
He put his Jeep in storage and left the Indian motorcycle he had rebuilt with a trusted friend. He took military leave from his job in aerospace and gave up his apartment. My dad drove him to report for duty. He didn’t realize there would be a final medical inspection. His toenails had grown back in. They were putting him back in the holding pattern.
The story goes that he was so frustrated he started pounding on the desk and shouting “just go ahead and take me already!” Some other guys thought he was reenacting Arlo in Alice’s Restaurant. And they all started jumping up and down and pounding on desks. And they “was all yelling.” and Sam got arrested for starting a riot at the induction center.
He had to come home, but home was condemned and hanging over the side of the hill. My mom and I slept in a tiny camper in our neighbors driveway. My dad and brother precariously camped on cots in the living room of a house that still hadn’t moved, but could at any moment. Slowly we began to put life back together. Later that year men did walk on the moon, but neither one of us ever had that chance.
One day my brother was working on his bike, and when he stomped down to try to start it up, his trick knee went out. The next time he got called in for a physical, he had a note from a doctor. They finally looked past his toenails and rejected him for good.
Life might not be like Alice’s Restaurant, you can’t get anything you want. I got a brother who was a bit of a hermit and would sometimes be out of touch for years at a time. When he died five years ago, I had said goodbye in my heart so many times I couldn’t even bring myself to go say it again. It hurts less to just remember him standing under the stars, dreaming of possibilities.
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