June 27, 2005 The Road Less Traveled By

June 27, 2005 The Road Less Traveled By

When I walked off the U.S. Navy Base at Treasure Island on November 25th 1966, I felt a great responsibility lifted from my shoulders. I had been discharged from active duty in the U.S. Navy and placed on inactive reserve for two years. I had just completed my military obligation to the United States as spelled out by the Selective Service System. I had called my high school friend RA who had promised to pick me up and put me up at his place until December 1st, the day after my 21st birthday. I was now free to do all the things I dreamt about doing while I was serving in the Navy. One of the first was to use the GI Bill to go through college. A second was to marry and start a family. I had had enough of the rootless life of a bachelor, drinking in bars with others like me, exploring new places with no one to share the experience with except that other person who inhabits my mind and converses with me continuously. He is someone to talk with when no one around you seems interesting.

RA and I celebrated my 21st birthday in a bar on South First Street in San Jose, California where West Reed Street T's into South First just north of the Interstate 280 overpass. For the past 30 years I've been driving by the bar, which surely must have changed hands countless times over the years. RA, his two roommates the three were sharing an apartment near San Jose State University on South Fourth Street, and me. We entered the bar right after midnight and asked to be served. I think I ordered a beer. The bartender carded us all and when he came to me, he looked at my driver's license then looked at the clock on the wall behind the bar, smiled and served us our drinks. Everyone got a great laugh out of the moment, watching a rite of passage achieving the milestone of 21 years on the face of the earth. I had been drinking in bars legally for the last two year I was in the Navy. In Japan, the bars all served me without questioning my age. Before that I lived for four months in New Hyde Park on Long Island while attending a school for the Navy. The drinking age in New York then was eighteen. Arriving at my 21st birthday, however, enfranchised me anywhere in the world to drink.

However, it wasn't about the right to drink in bars strange that the symbol of adulthood is going to a place where you can act like an adolescent. It was about the significance of crossing this personal Rubicon. There was no turning back. I was an adult, subject to all the responsibilities as well as the benefits that state of being confers the benefits I would have to wait to enjoy as I quickly found out after the night of celebrating my coming of age. Sitting drinking in that bar, my inner voice kept bringing up the fact that I had no job and, though going to college was a great idea, without financial resources intellectual pursuits would have to be put on hold. I had considered staying in California but had decided to take my travel allowance and return to El Paso. Being unable to go home all those years before left me with a desire to return. I had left to be away from the duties and responsibilities my position as oldest son placed on me. I had always felt a sense of guilt for leaving. It mixed with the homesickness everyone experiences being away from home the first time. I had to return to exorcise both before leaving for good.

When I returned home, I got a job at the Post Exchange on Ft Bliss Army Base, and completed my application to attend the University of Texas at El Paso in the spring 1967 semester. Being a resident of Texas, the tuition would be lower than anywhere else in the country. The campus had just opened on the campus of Texas Western University, a school devoted to teaching the discipline of mining. My high school friend HR had just graduated UTEP with a degree in Business Administration. He had applied for and received acceptance into the management program offered to the Army and Air Force Exchange Service the retail outlet that provide department store goods and services to active duty and retired military personnel at discount prices. At one time the discounts were considerably lower than available in stores off base. Now with huge retailers such as Walmart, Target, and others, the discounts are not nearly as large. HR was recommended by the branch manager in charge of the annex where HR and I both worked. His professional life seemed well on its way until he got the word from the selective service that his deferment was ended and he was en route to Viet Nam. With his college degree, HR would make a detour first to Officer Training School before deployment.

Thus as I was starting the journey to the place in life where HR had arrived, HR was beginning the sojourn I had just completed. Only his would be filled with far more danger than mine. I often thought of how I had envied HR getting a draft deferment and completing college. Now, as I saw the fate that awaited him I realized that my choice'to get my military obligation out of the way before thinking about the rest of my life had kept me out of harm's way. I've always felt that I was out of step with those around me. It was something that would characterize the rest of my life. Whenever I came upon a major decision in my life, I would recall the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken." I love the first line: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." Looking back over time, I can't remember how many divergent paths I've come upon and taken. Funny thing is I keep coming upon them. When I entered UTEP, I listed my major to be English. I would eventually graduate with a degree in economics. In between my freshman year at UTEP and acquiring my degree from the University of Texas at Arlington a suburb midway between Dallas and Ft Worth, I would have gotten married, worked a year in a suburb of Washington DC, and had two lovely daughters: starting a family and beginning a career at the same time, though officially the career began after receiving my degree in 1974, when we moved from Dallas to San Jose.

When I recall HR, I'm reminded of the Edward Arlington Robinson poem Richard Cory, not so much as a metaphor for what happened to HR, but rather the notion that you never truly know what goes on within the mind of those close to us.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I had known HR for half of my school years. Both our families had been and remain close to one another. Though HR was temperamental, no one thought him anything but normal. He was someone who excelled at what he undertook, in sports, school, and at work, the pillar of responsibility and level-headedness. But somewhere in Officer Training School, something broke inside him and he dropped out. Back then dropping out of OCS was a ticket to the front lines in Viet Nam, which is exactly where HR ended up.

Miraculously, HR survived Viet Nam and was discharged after serving his time. However, when he got out whatever emotional injury he received in OCS was made worse on the battlefield. He came back a head case unable to hold down a job. Eventually, he had an altercation at a gas station in Van Horne, Texas while returning to El Paso. He landed in jail and eventually into the Veteran Administration hospital in Waco, Texas. He was placed on a psychotic drug regime and told not to drink. He would periodically fall off the wagon and end up first in jail, then back in Waco. A life of promise turned into one without. HR went to Viet Nam and never came back, repeatedly living whatever nightmare he dreamt while there. I've spoken to him on occasion when I return home to visit my family. He lives nearby. I asked him what his days were like and he said watching a lot of TV and trying to keep from drinking. He has his group sessions where he meets others with the same problem and he's taken to attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And he's been on the wagon for the longest time I can remember. Maybe in the Autumn of his life, he'll find the peace that eluded through the other seasons.