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This is Episode 3

Episodes: Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 (updated 6/23)

The next morning I awoke with a feeling of dread. Would today be another day that I reneged on a promise to myself? How many times had I said, as I had the day before, "This time I'll show Dad...," only to give up on my pledge the next morning?

My resolve only seemed to last as long as the effects the Alcohol. Last night it was gin, and now I felt it: splitting headache and terribly queasy. I felt weak, not like someone who would risk his life for his country.

"Damn it!" I thought to myself, "I can't keep doing this!" I lobbed myself out of bed and yanked the liquor cabinet open. My courage returned.

Soon I was in my red convertible Triumph heading north on I-91 to Westover Air Force Base--with a little bottle of JB between my legs. There were at least five hippies trying to hitch a ride on the ramp. Their care-free lifestyle used to attract me, but now I felt like spitting on them. "If it feels good, do it" I sneered.

Then a few miles up the highway there was another hitchhiker, and I picked this one up. His sign said, "Back from Hell."

He had a long beard and long hair, and was wearing a green, stained army jacket. He got into my car without saying a word and without looking at me. I paused for a second, waiting to see if he was going to tell me where he was going. But he just looked straight ahead.

He looked down at the JB. I offered him some. He almost sneered, and pulled out a massive joint, lit it, took a huge drag and passed it over to me. Then he spoke.

"You're signing up, aren't you," he said.

"Yes sir, I am," I said.

"You ready to kill people, boy? " he said.

I stuttered out some uncomfortable and meaningless response, which he ignored.

"You ready to see you buddies get blown to bits, boy?" he said.

I responded the same way again. Then he pulled his right hand out of his pocket--well, the stump of a hand--and said,

"You READY FOR IT ALL, boy?" I vomited out the side of the Triumph while struggling to pull over without hitting anything. The GI slowly opened the door, walked up the highway and put his sign back up for another ride.

By the time I got to the base and found my way to right office, I must have looked shaken. And I most certainly wreaked of whisky. The man that Dad told me to meet looked vaguely familiar. He got that, "I knew you when..." look in his eye, which quickly transformed into the "My god, you're stinking drunk!" look.

"I think we better skip the physical today, son. Let's just go fill out the forms." Even that was a challenge in my state. But somehow I managed. Then I came to the last question. "Do you volunteer for overseas duty?" or to put it another way: "Do you want to go to Vietnam?"

My hand shook. My life passed before my eyes as I considered signing it away. I thought of all the good times. My eyes teared up as I thought of all the sex and all the drugs my friends would have while I would be fighting for survival in the jungle. "Why do people kill one another," I asked myself, "when there's so much to live for?"
Then I checked the YES box. I was going to Vietnam. ------

Tune in Thursday for the continuing story of a Bush who's gone to the Bush.