Saying goodbye ....

Finally said goodbye to the brother today. Time to move on. I let go of a lot of stuff, junk mostly. What I kept were some memories of the best times we ever had together.

It was back in 1970. When I left Vietnam, I wound up on a Navy ship in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the meanest cities to strangers in the U.S. at that time. Meantime, he had enlisted in the United State Marines for reasons known only to himself. After boot camp and schooling, he ended up at Camp Lejeune in southern North Carolina for some sort of advanced training. It was close enough to where my ship docked that we got together weekends when we could.

The people and police in Charleston hated blacks, servicemen, and people who had come there since 1680 in pretty much equal proportions. Scoring two out of three, I needed all the friendly faces I could find. So, brother and I spent some weekends there, often in the company of James Huddleston from Thayer, Missouri and/or Sidney Bussey from Douglas, Georgia. My brother had no civilian clothes, so we all wore uniforms, which meant that it was best for us to stay out of sight as best we could. We three sailors had seen what the local peacekeepers could do to one of our breed after seeing a few of them carried aboard the ship after exceeding some local rule or other.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, so we avoided the good people of Charleston as best we could.

It was enough for us simply to find an affordable motel room and spend time just watching TV, drinking beer, and lying around without being yelled at during a weekend, quite suitable for lonely men far from home. You had to be there. It lasted for several months before an incurable allergic reaction to combat-boot leather ended his career with an honorable discharge, a promotion to Lance Corporal, and orders to Westpac, i.e. Vietnam, laying on the Personnel Officer’s desk.

Once, just the two of us had a little extra money and landed in a pretty nice motel with a friendly bar next door. Too friendly I guess. I woke up the next morning with no memory of walking back. With that great smile of his, he explained it. I had made it fine until we reached the bottom of the stairs leading to our second-floor room. Thereupon, I needed help up, like a sinner being led to salvation.

He wasn’t a big man, my brother. But with muscles toned by the Marine Corps, he was making steady but noisy progress until we were halfway up the stairs. When the manager of the motel came out to check on the commotion, he asked if help was needed.

According to a now long-time family legend, the response was fast and firm. “He ain’t heavy mister. He’s my brother.” I have no proof that it happened that way, but, as they said in the John Wayne movie, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It's one of the stories he would tell until he died.

So I leave you with this. It’s a song about a wandering performer, but it made me think of my brother and, given his love for all things Jimmy Buffett, I choose it with which to say goodbye.

Some stories are worth telling.
Some may not be.