Out of the navy at last, and having dispensed with all the
greetings, I settled into my boyhood home to contemplate my future as a civilian.
Marrying Bridgette Bardot was probably out, as was making tryouts with the New
York Yankees.
One childhood dream remained, but, sadly, my thoughts of becoming a fireman (yeah fire “man,” this was 1970) had been sullied by the experience
of actually fighting fires as part of my job as a sailor in the United States
Navy. Real soot up your nose ain’t as romantic as it might seem.
Picking the guitar on the Grand Ole Opry was probably out as
well. I wasn’t that good at photography or writing and had minimal talent in architecture,
my college major.
Someone suggested that I file for unemployment while I studied
on things and used up all my “beer money.” I had nothing better to do, so I
went down and applied.
It was the most humiliating experience of my life other than
walking on stage in school play with my fly unzipped.
Silly me. I thought unemployment, which is paid for by
employers, was for those who were temporarily out of work due to no fault of
their own. Back then, those seeking the benefit were classified, at least in 1970s
Arkansas, as somewhere between Republicans and dope fiends, that is to say they
weren’t welcomed into polite society. After numerous trips waiting for hours in
a room with no chairs, a smug old bitch in frosted hair told me they didn’t pay
unemployment to veterans, particularly my type of veteran. When I asked what type
of veteran that was, she chose not to answer. She just arched her false eyebrows
and smiled.
But I knew. It was a response to which I had become accustomed.
There was just this weird and caged-up resentment for what we, my brothers and
I, had done on orders from our country. Maybe we acted smug, or expected to be
treated like folks had treated the WWll veterans when we were growing up. Maybe
one of us had insulted a member of the National Guard. Some regulars, never I
of course, did call them “Chicken-shit peckerheads.” Maybe a relative had been
killed and we were somehow held responsible because we were still alive. Maybe
they thought we directed the nation’s international relations policy and gave
orders to “Pencil-Dick” McNamara.
When I applied for work with AT&T®, this smirkey little bastard told me there were no
jobs, but even if there were, he would suggest mentioning neither my education,
nor my veteran status, as any jobs for people like me were for local laborers
who really deserved the work.
A lot of people had some bone to pick with us for some reason.
For many, it’s never gone away.
I’ll never know what the problem was, but goddam their eyes.
Anyway, the draft-dodgers had all the jobs, it seemed, and
my few humiliating experiences at trying to find employment gave me plenty of
ammunition to explain to Sainted Mother why I just thought maybe I’d head on back
to San Francisco. Besides, I had to go through the phase of learning to moderate
my speech patterns, or some such shit, people said. I knew they didn’t mind
intemperate speech that much in California.
As a Jack Nicholson character was to say in a move much later
on, “I was just inches from a clean getaway.”
Sainted Mother, for all her lack of formal education, though,
always had another ace up her sleeve.
She smiled that damned sweet little smile of hers. “You know
your cousin Troy?”
Hell, did I know my cousin Troy? He took me to the airport
when I was on my way to Vietnam. He half-raised me. We had spent all afternoon
drinking beer the day before she asked me the question.
I just nodded.
“He knows a man who runs the urban renewal department for
the city. He wants to take you to meet him tomorrow morning. You’ll do this one
last little thing for me, won’t you?” She framed her face the way mothers do
when they have just cut your legs off, in a metaphorical sense.
“Yes,” I said, “Yes I will, yes.”
My life was about to change in ways that I had never
imagined.
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| How the hell was I supposed to know? |
