Chapter 1

It was sometime in 1966 that I started getting the strong feeling that my father was very disappointed in me for not joining one of the armed services. He didn't exactly say anything to me directly, but he had made several comments when I was around him, knowing that I had to have heard them. He had served in the Navy for twenty years, being loaned out to the Army for most of World War II and the Korean Conflict due to his photographic skills and experience as a combat photographer. He was proud of his military service, and had very little respect for the men who'd chosen to sit the War out and who had spent the War safely at home. With Viet Nam getting bigger and bigger, he couldn't understand why I wasn't just itching to get into the Navy or Marines, and get my share of the family glory. My father had been badly injured in World War II, and his brother, my Uncle Paul, had almost lost his leg when he got stitched with machine gun fire in the back of his right knee in Korea. Uncle Ray, my mom's brother, had died while in the service during the Second World War, in a freak, drunken accident. Uncle Donald and Uncle Sonny were both in the army and saw action in the second war too. I wasn't interested.

Ellen and I were visiting with Lenny and Clara one day when it all came to a head with my father. Of course, he'd been drinking before he stopped over to give my Aunt Betty a message from my mother. Seeing me there, I guess he was starting to worry that his comments about shirkers and draft dodgers had been too subtle for me. "Yutch, when in the hell are you going to step up like a man and enlist to fight for your country?" I just looked at him, not really wanting to get into it with him, but not content to just sit there and let him give vent to his displeasure at my lack of patriotism either.

"I figure you and Uncle Paul and Uncle Ray did enough for the family already, pop. I don't think I'll be signing up anytime soon."

"You think you're too damn good to serve your country? I've got two healthy sons, both of an age to serve, and neither one so inclined. I never thought I'd see the day when I had to wonder if I'd raised a couple cowards."

"I wanted to join up Uncle John, but mom and Clara said I couldn't. Because of my father and all." Lenny spoke up, hoping I think, to diffuse the tension that he could sense building between my father and I. Clara came over and put her hand on his shoulder, knowing that Lenny was sensitive to confrontations, and easily upset by them.

"Sure Lenny, I knew that you'd want to do the right thing, but you've got to take care of a wife and your children, not to mention your mother. Your cousins don't have any children to worry about, and their mother has me to take care of her."

"Pop, do you really think this is the right time and the right place to be getting into all this? I've never made any secret of the fact that I don't have any plans for joining up. I'm registered for the draft, so if they want me or need me, they know how to get in touch with me. I'm not going to volunteer though, no matter what you say."

"Yutch, I'm disappointed in you. Military service is a family tradition with us, on both sides of the family. In time of war, we serve. We don't wait to be drafted. We volunteer."

"John, my Ray was drafted, that's why he enlisted in the Navy, to avoid the Army. Sonny and Donald were drafted too. Didn't your brother get drafted too?" Aunt Betty had always resented losing her husband like she had. She was certainly no fan of military service for her son or nephews.

"Well, yes, Paul was drafted, but he was already planning on joining the Marines when he got his draft notice, so he went ahead and enlisted. Still, military service is a family tradition, drafted or enlisted. I expect both my sons to serve their country."

"I don't think they'd even take Ray, pop. Remember he lost his spleen that time? I think you've got to have all your body parts for them to take you. Maybe not your tonsils or appendix, but everything else. I think I'm classified as being in an essential industry too pop, so I don't think I'll be called up. If it makes you feel better going around calling people cowards, you go right ahead and do it. Of course, that name calling usually works both ways you know?"

"Are you saying that I'm a coward Yutch? Because if you are"

"No pop, you're certainly no coward, that's for sure. But you are something of a lush, and I'm sorry to see you getting all liquored up like you are right now, and then going around making an ass of yourself. As for me being a coward, well I don't think I am. I guess we'll just have to accept that we have a difference of opinion about that unless you want to continue calling me names and see where that leaves you?" Aunt Betty stepped between us right then, and Ellen and I left. I never was able to just disagree with my father. It always seemed to have to escalate upward until it finally boiled over into a mess. It was certainly as much my fault as it was his. I think it had to do with the bad memories I had about having to always back down and knuckle under to him when I was a kid. I don't remember there being any one specific time when I decided not to take any more abuse from him, but, by 1966, I was certainly in a low tolerance frame of mind about taking any more crap from him.

Ellen gave me a hard time for the entire drive back home. She held the opinion that I went out of my way to bait my father rather than ignore what he said and avoid getting him upset any further. I told her that my experiences had taught me that it would just keep escalating if I just ignored what he was saying. My father wasn't a man to back off when shown no resistance. Ellen's only frame of reference was her own father, a man who didn't like verbal arguments, let alone physical confrontations. She had never seen my father out of control before, so she didn't understand what was potentially involved with this latest fixation of my father's.

A few weeks later, Ray got his notice to appear for his draft physical. The timing seemed suspicious to me so I called Mr. Bennett about it and he told me that my father hadn't come to him about anything having to do with the local draft board. He told me that he could talk to a couple people and probably get Ray deferred if that was something that Ray wanted. I told him I'd let him know after I spoke again with my brother. I went over to see Ray and Sandy that night. Ray had already been visited by my father, and been ordered, in no uncertain terms, to do everything in his power to pass the physical and serve his country. In the end, my father pulled some strings and Ray was allowed to sign a waiver, giving the Army a hold harmless, releasing them of any responsibility for anything that might come out of him not having a spleen. It was the old boys network at it's finest, and in November, Ray raised his right arm and was sworn into the Army. He went to basic training in New Jersey and then went to a technical school to become a radio operator. In May of 1967 he shipped out to Viet Nam. My mother had somehow come across statistics concerning mortality rates for Army radio operators in Viet Nam right after Ray deployed, and she was very upset with my father.

Ray spent his whole tour in Viet Nam playing poker and trading in Kennedy half dollars and Levi's. He would have big boxes of small sizes of Levi's delivered from Travis AFB by military cargo plane and then he'd sell them in Saigon. He paid $3.80 per pair and sold them for $12 to $15 per pair. He did a brisk business in Kennedy half dollars too, selling them for $2.00 each. After he got back home, he would keep everybody laughing for hours with his outrageous tales of things he'd either done or seen in Viet Nam. He was attached to a rear echelon post near Saigon, working in a communications center. In spite of all the money he made in the Army, when he got discharged he was flat broke and in need of a job right away. I put him to work driving for me. I paid him more than my other drivers, even Lenny, because he needed more money. He was an operator, always on the lookout for a get rich quick scheme. Most of his schemes wound up costing him money for some reason. He worked as a driver for two years before he discovered something that he was good at and that would make him money.

Like my father, Ray had an eye for the ladies. The ladies also had an eye for Ray, also like my father. I'm sure that both of them had compartments of some kind that they kept separate from the rest of their life. Ninety per cent of the time Ray was a true blue, faithful husband. Ten per cent of the time he was pure alley cat. For some reason he always seemed to gravitate towards married women. One of these women, Alice Prescott, was a real estate broker in Groton. She was successful in her business too. It was 1971 when Ray started seeing her professionally as well as socially. Alice needed a dummy buyer for a property that she wanted to double escrow for herself. The land in question was a six acre parcel out west of Poquonnock on a dirt road. It didn't look like anything special, unless, and until, you knew that a major road was going to replace that dirt road within two years. Somehow, Alice was privy to that information, and chose Ray to be her dummy buyer. Ray's affair with Alice had been going on for about a year. They would manage to get away together about twice a month when Ray had one of his "overnight" deliveries. I never gave Ray an overnight delivery, and knew nothing about Alice or any of the rest of his little stable of married women.