It wouldn’t be seemly not to write about new years and new beginnings today. Everyone else is doing it, so why not? It’s colder than a pimp’s heart outside so there’s not much else to do. Here goes.

Two New Year’s Days stand out with me.

I have to start with January 1, 1940. That’s the day George and Mabel von Tungeln quit picking cotton and became grocers. They had been sharecropping and caring for a year-old daughter near the community of Ladd, Arkansas when Daddy went to town in their ancient panel truck one day and came back with a hog. There may have been a beer or two involved. They never said.

Long story short, they sharpened table knives that night, butchered the hog next day, and he began “peddling” meat in Pine Bluff to delighted customers who had bought from his father. One hog led to another and they saved enough to buy a small grocery on “The New Warren Road” leading south out of the city. They operated it until January 1, 1980.

As for me, I’ve tried to count, and I think I’ve been to three New Year’s celebrations in my life. Been up a few times, some by choice, some by orders from the military or greater authority. The most alarming must have been January 1, 1968 when I was pulling guard duty in a tower at Camp Tien Sha near Da Nang, Vietnam. It overlooked Tien Sha village where all was quiet then save the periodic scream of a baby. Guys said rats would bite them, but I don’t know. Behind me stretched row after row of barracks.

I carried an assault rifle. Security forces received one. I hadn’t been in-country long so I think I was still carrying an M-14. It was heavy, but I preferred it to the early M-16s for it would actually shoot if you pulled the trigger. Anyway, it was a support base, and very few others qualified to carry weapons. No problem for them. A person could hitchhike to a dismal settlement near the Da Nang Air Force Base, a dark and dangerous place nicknamed “Dogpatch” by the GIs. There, a serviceman could purchase near anything he wanted. Though not the hottest selling product therein, guns were available, courtesy of a holy triad consisting of the United States military, supply officers, and the Black Market.

If you didn’t want to make the trip, there was a guy in our company who would get you one.

Back to Camp Tien Sha. I had just come on the “mid-watch,” a miserable assignment designed to protect the base from midnight until 0600. That’s it: 0600. The Navy didn’t add “hours” like the lesser services do.

I relieved the post early for some reason. Maybe so the other guys could sneak a beer of two before “hitting the rack.” Maybe so I could get settled down for the transition. I expected some racket, but the combined imaginations of Jules Vern, Stan Lee, and J. K. Rowling couldn’t have prepared me for what came next.

Remembering back, I’m sure that every sailor on that base suddenly had a weapon in his hand firing away, some on full automatic. They were aiming at the village and not at me, but the bullets didn't know that, or care. The racket was awful, but not so awful that I couldn’t hear rounds zipping by me. That's when I detected an anomaly. Guard towers are designed to protect from frontal assault. The rears are open to provide access. Oh my.

What to do? A combination of alcohol, nostalgia, black-market weapons, pent-up anger, and an American serviceman’s natural penchant for irresponsibility had me trapped. I dropped to the floor of the tower and assumed a fetal position. To hell with heroic death postures.

There had been inklings of some sort of trouble in January, nothing to worry about we were assured. We had been issued flak jackets, though, and I positioned mine toward the tower’s opening. I thought about climbing over the front wall and clinging against the sandbags until the “celebration” was over. Then I thought about what a marvelous time this would have been for a surprise attack. Hundreds of drunk sailors firing at random, and at anything, would have done “the heavy lifting” and a few dozen VC could have simply strolled in past the bodies and rounded up the survivors.

It lasted a good while. The perpetrators didn’t have to account for their ammo. It had evaporated in the impenetrable dungeons of military accountability long ago. There were roving security guards, but they were bunched up at Headquarters and would have charged an NVA regiment rather than deal with the merry makers outside. Some of the old-timers later said it scared them as much as a mortar attack. Who knows?

I lived. To tell the truth, however, I’ve never been much of a gun nut since. It's fine if you are. But pardon me if I don’t care to hear about the latest addition to your semi-automatic rifle collection. Forgive me if I don’t appreciate the fact that your wife now has her own Glock, or that it is pink. Excuse me if I don’t care that your ten-year-old son just killed his first deer, or that you load your own shells. And I don’t particularly care how worried you are that somehow the federal government is going to take away your assault rifle.

They took away mine in 1968 and it was the happiest … no, the second happiest, day in my life.

Happier times: post Da Nang.