CHAPTER 2
Sitting in a row of bleachers at the high school graduation on a hot June afternoon in 1966, the ex-spouses exchanged only the coolest of hellos while both breathed sighs of relief that Lindy’s rocky path had taken him this far. Seated in the same row, his siblings and grandparents silently recited their own inner thankfuls when he crossed the stage to accept his diploma.
“Whew, I’ve done it,” June thought. Two children fledged, one to go. Her older daughter married with children of her own had left home at 17, choosing not to bear up-close witness to the disintegration of her parents’ marriage. Now, Lindy, spoke vaguely of attending community college but refused to commit to a chosen path. Only plans to move in with a buddy, expand his hours cooking at his Sunset Boulevard steak house job, and partying were on his now school-less agenda. That left daily child-rearing responsibilities only to child #3. She glanced down the bench to see her easiest and last, cuddled against his adoring grandparents. “Maybe three’s the magic number to get the hang of parenting,” she silently hoped, fingers crossed.
After tassels were tossed and photos snapped, the family dispersed. June hugged her favorite middle child tightly, “I’m so proud of you. It’s early, wanna go to Stunt Road?”
Breathing his own sigh of relief, he melted into her arms and nodded.
Stunt Road was a let’s-get-out-to-the-country-as-fast-as-we-can destination. A refuge for bonding, Stunt Road is where June took her two male cubs for an immersion into a natural unhurried world. The twenty-minute drive from Woodland Hills, California, wound west through the Malibu foothills leading to the coast.
Cold Canyon Road, a twisty two laner, dotted with old clapboard ranch houses set in fields of rolling grasslands, elicited peaceful sighs, and emptied cluttered minds. It wandered across Mulholland Drive and then took a sharp turn, delivering to those fleeing the San Fernando Valley mayhem a delicious dose of solitude. June and her boys coveted the tranquility offered by the wispy path woven along a trickling creek, overgrown with chaparral and live oaks.
Trap door spiders thrived in this magical glen, a topic of great interest for a bug-loving mother and her sons. Indigenous yet elusive, spotting one became their sport.
“That’s one-nothing,” June teased the new graduate when she discovered a mud-doored underground spiders’ nest that post-graduation afternoon.
“I envy the way they just burrow underground instead of spinning webs,” Lindy commented, his hiking stick gently poking the heavy oak leaf mat underfoot. “I wish I could do that sometimes. You know, just crawl in a hole in the dark and close the door over top?”
“That’s kinda the way I feel right now,” his mother, a youthful looking beauty at 46, declared hesitatingly. “It’s like I’m in a dark hole, and while it does offer an element of safety and security, it doesn’t afford much of an adventure experience” She paused, stepping over a large boulder, then looked him straight in the eye. “And that’s what I need right now, an adventure.” Without waiting for him to form a response, she continued. “I want to go live on a tropical island. I’m thinking Hawaii,” adding, “I hope you don’t think I’m abandoning you.” Their eyes connected. “I need to do this.”
Lindy nodded knowingly. He’d seen her bullied by his father too. “Of course, you do, be happy. You’ve always looked great in a two-piece bathing suit,” he winked. “Don’t worry about old Lindy Ragamuffin,” as he referred to her special name for him. “And … Pop’s still here, I’m sure I can count on him if I need anything,” exaggerating a shoulder shrug. “Ha ha.”
June and her youngest son, Douglas, had been living on the Big Island of Hawaii for a few months when she received an overseas phone call from the estranged father of their children.
“Well, he’s done it now,” Gene blurted out as soon as she answered the phone.
Alarmed, she asked, “Is he okay?” shocked at the sound of his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, but he’s in jail,” his shaky voice barely suppressing rage.
“In jail? What happened?” she asked, sighing with relief it wasn’t worse. However a latent fear of hers surfaced. Had her most challenging, smartest, and neediest of children gotten himself in real trouble this time?
Putting on his official reporting voice Gene began, “So he was riding his bicycle to work when the chain came off or something, and when he reached down, while still moving, to check it out, he fell off.” Here he could be heard taking a big breath before continuing. “He landed hard on his stomach, I guess, and a passing policeman stopped to check him out. While helping him roll over, a couple of marijuana cigarettes fell from Lindy’s pocket, so he got hauled off to the clink.” Sounding defeated, “I can’t believe my good-for-nothing son is facing a drug felony and prison. Why couldn’t he have just joined the service where he would get a sense of direction and discipline?” Now his deep baritone inflection took on a nasty cruel tone. “See where all your coddling has taken him?”
June Blake, the accused, thought back to when she had brought Lindy home from the hospital. Non-stop screaming for his first three months had disrupted the whole household. Though he looked robust, he was actually quite frail. Plagued by colic and rashes so severe, she swaddled him in strips of cloth to keep him from scratching his flesh off. Desperate, she gave up breast feeding and sought out goat dairies in the hope a then considered “wakadoodle” theory was true. Could it be that goat milk enzymes could bring his small, tortured body some healing? It helped, but he always had extra needs, and Mother June, by necessity, attended to them. If not her, then who?
“Coddling, my ass,” she shot back, hanging up without as much as a “screw you.”
The next day, June ran to a ringing phone in hopes it would be a call from her wayward 19-year-old son. It was. Yes, she would accept the charges.
“Ma, I really messed up,” he confessed straight away. In a defeated tone he went on. “I don’t want to go to prison but that’s where I’m headed. It was only a couple of joints but unless I take a deal that Pop made with some lawyer friend of his that knows this judge, and…”
“Huh? Slow down, son,” she implored. “Your father called me. I know what happened. Does he think you have a way out of this?”
“Well, somehow Pop wheeled and dealed and can get me off the pot charge if I join the Army,” he told her, sounding incredulous. “He wants me to go fight the war in Vietnam. He wants me to join up and go kill people over there. Crap, I can’t do that!”
Only a week before the unfortunate bicycle debacle, Lindy crossed paths with his father in a local parking lot. Gene felt compelled to spew forth his latest outrage and confusion. It concerned his boxing hero, Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali. Could Lindy believe, he asked him, that the Heavyweight Champion of the World, who regularly beat the snot out of people for a living, refused to serve our country in the war against communism in Vietnam?
“All of a sudden he’s some kind of ‘Conscientious Objector’,” his tall raven-haired father ranted, throwing his arms wide in the air. “So, the government threatened to take away his title if he didn’t serve, and what did Cassius do?” his voice was booming by then.
Gene’s children learned early on to simply shrug and give vague expressions of encouragement, leading to a final summation of his pontifications. So, Lindy did.
“That son of a bitch joined the Muslim church, changed his name to Mohammad, and said he would give up his title, but he wasn’t going to war in Vietnam.” Nodding his head, Lindy understood the importance of silence. After Lindy’s bust, the memory of that conversation burned in his mind. His father would think him a coward and maybe a traitor if he didn’t fight in the war for his country that Lindy truly loved and appreciated. His father, not wanting a criminal for a son, didn’t want him going to prison for drug charges.
“Ma, what should I do? I’m really scared.”
After the forty-dollar trans-Pacific phone call, Lindy became encouraged by an idea his mother had. She suggested he offer himself up to the Army but in a noncombat position. Yes, he would serve, even in Vietnam, but only if his role excluded killing. Meanwhile, he would submit Conscientious Objector papers. With his back against the wall, for Lindy, it seemed a viable plan.
Negotiations were entered into. Both parties, the Army and Lindy, agreed he would attend Basic Training at Fort Ord, California, and then be sent to Virginia to attend baker’s training. Cooking, a proficient skill he already possessed, could contribute to his country he reasoned, and going at all would assuage his father’s wrath. With great trepidation, he signed his induction papers.
With Lindy’s donning of the drab green uniform and submittal to the rigors of boot camp at Fort Ord, Gene for the first time felt pride in his oldest son. So great was the relief that the turning point in his wayward son’s life was at hand, he stepped out of his comfort zone that always put himself first, turned his VW bug north and drove four hundred miles to the Army base north of Monterey California to attend Lindy’s graduation.
Satisfied that all seemed well, he sent out photos of his tall, handsome, blond, blue-eyed son, properly suited up, pants tucked in boots, standing in front of a set of barracks. When Carol, Lindy’s sister received a copy, she sighed, observing Lindy’s face that displayed a weak non-convincing smile. She could only wonder and wait.
With basic training under his belt, the military jet delivered him to Fort Virginia for baker school.
Being a prolific letter writer, letters sent to his mother and sister, were matter of factly filled with complaints of bland food and long hours, but were in no way regretful of the decision he had made to fulfill his obligation to his country. In the months to come, his letters would provide a vivid record of the horrific injustices he would suffer. But at the time, his relieved mother thanked the lucky stars that he hadn’t needed to compromise his nonviolent convictions or go to prison.
“I get a three-week leave before they send me to whatever kitchen needs me,” he wrote his mother in one of his frequent communications. “Can you fly to California in September and meet me before I ship out?”
“Count on it,” she gleefully air-mailed back.
The day before leaving Fort Virginia for the reunion, he got his orders. After his leave, he was to report for M-16 training. When he asked his commanding officer for an explanation, he was told the Army needed infantrymen more than cooks.
I’m hooked, Carol…can’t wait for chapter 3.