Dr P rightly called this ‘cultural vandalism’ in his News-Sentinel article, but you’d never get the idea that anyone at the Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce recognized this as the punch in the face that it truly is.

And not for nothing, but in trading thoughts with my friends on staff at the Lincoln Museum, the corporate automaton was flatly lying when she said staff knew about these plans and have been working to implement them for months. To use the term one said to me - this was all a ‘horrific shock’ for them, too.

It would be too much to say racism lost it for him, but it surely played a key role. Much of that, around here, is age and era, but there’s plenty of Alan Jackson, truck drivin’, beer drinkin’, youthful racism too. Add in anxiety about all them ‘Spanics comin’ up here to take our construction jobs, and you’ve got no way for Obama to win.

Which no one wanted to talk about in the last few weeks.

You are quite the wordsmith!

Grace of God. When they ran the first lottery, a friend of mine from High School came up six. He was actually ROTC, so I guess the number wasn’t so threatening, but I wasn’t buying that shit. Nobody was taking my friend for something that stupid.

I’d been to Chicago for the convention. Gave some, took some. But this seemed more serious to me. Lord help me, I suppose I was anti-American if you looked at it in a Nixonian kind of way. This guy wasn’t really even my friend, in High School. Uber-Jock. A Wizard and true star. In college, I realized he was a really good guy.

Against all odds, the Student Center had a bowling alley in its basement. It was supposed to be a pool, God know’s what happened. So I’m sitting with this guy and I’m tripping, and he looks at the bowlers and says ‘Pyramus, New Jersey, make that spare.’ You had to be there. So, we’re UDHigh lettermen contemplating eternity, and I’m thinking ‘Shit, this is Joe Hart’. This guy played hoops lefty with a cast on his right wrist and crushed Brother Rice. (You have to know about Detroit high school to understand the importance.)

So, tripping my brains out, knowing about the bad lottery call, I said “Joe, you going?” He said, ‘Pyramus ,Nj, male that spare.’ Way cool. I was all-state in two sports, but this guy was a legend. I have to think, he could have done anything. Might have pulled some guy out of a river. That’s what Kerry did and that’s what the shortboaters denigrated. How the hell did these assholes get away with this? W flew security for the O-club, except they wouldn’t let him fly because he was cocaine-dependent.

So anyway, here’s my new-found friend, who actually lived in my dorm room the year before, and we’re UDHigh (it’s a Setroit thing, though they may have missed it in the Grosses) (We’re Catholic as opposed to Anglican).

And I can’t see Nixon sending this guy to war. In fact, I can’t see anybody being sacrificced for any war that scurvy brarded slome had promised to end but was still listening to Curtis LerMay.

This was just a few months abyer that ahole shot Bobby Kennedy, and I was in an upstart frame of mind.

I made up my mind that Joe Hart was my friend, and he was not going to get killed for no reason in VietNam.

So, I launched a tirade. I committed any number of physical acts of civil disobedience and I launched myself into the anti-war movement. It’s notable that there was a campus uprising at the same time that involved the Black Student Union. Clarence Thomas claims to have taken part, but I don’t thinkhe did.

This was at the College of the Holy Cross, an exceptional liberal arts school at the time, with one of the finest English Departments ever assembled. I managed decent grades. So the lottery came atround again and I was 115. Not good. But my draft board was Royal Oak, Fr. Coughlin’s territory. I dropped my student deferment because a friend of my dad’s on the draft board said volunteers would keep the number down. Reclassified 1H.

I have to say, Dexter, I don’t think I should have gone. I believed, and I believe now, for sure, it was just wrong. You did what you had no choice about. I wish you’d had a choice. I wish you hadn’t had to to go through that. I got beaten by Chicago police trying to stop the war. Beat some up too. All in all, we’re both still alive, against any sane odds. I guess that’s something.

Oh, and my pal Joe. Last play, last game, playing linebacker, and damn he was good. Trashed his knee making a tackle. Army had no use for his damaged ass. Isn’t that a perfect outcome.

the student Center

When I got back from VN, I tried to have sort of the opposite discussion with my philosophy prof at IUPUFW. I wanted to discuss his thoughts on my participation in that horrible war, that even though my job was to save lives ( I was a medic) , was I to hold myself responsible for participating in general, and being part of the killing machine?
He always brushed me off, always busy…wouldn’t give me the time.
So good for you, michaelj, for not going at all. I was drafted, was all set to just leave for Canada, but I was just out of high school a year and had no people in Canada, was not hooked up with any peace groups, and my family members were split in wanting me to obey the law and go, and leaving , just running away. Tough call for a 19 year old kid , working in a factory.
So I went, and age 21 I was a veteran of a foreign war.
Oh, that question that tormented me so? I dismissed it, finally, the same way we did in Viet Nam when we thought about why the hell we were there at all…it don’t mean nuthin’.