The Understanding

I spent about 3 years, 9 months, 2 days, 47 minutes and 32 seconds in the service of my country during the Vietnam War. Too many months had been spent in places where killing was regarded as natural as breathing and some had to choose the difference. Good friends, brothers, were lost and I didn't know what for when I returned-that is, my physical being returned, but my mind was still back there. You will find some writings I accomplished on this blog for the next 2-3 days; the first time they have ever been out of the dark box stored in for 30 years or so. A breakthrough, perhaps, or just another form of anger wishing to inform and educate many about the agonies returning from Iraq...

Enjoy the writing and let me know what you think-THANKS!!
_________________________

The Understanding
©2005 C.R. Hovey all rights reserved

Several things were on my mind as I navigated a new Triumph Spitfire beneath snow-filled clouds along a Nebraska intersate highway. This January day in 1970 was gray; weather which most midwesterners learned to be wary of. Fine snow was falling upon the highway and the wind swirled the powder, preventing an impression. Barely visible center stripes flew by while my mind was preoccupied with friends still in the Nam, an Iowa home and Denny Ferris. It had been a long drive from California and now home was so close. A truck stop was up ahead and I pulled in to avoid the inevitable blizzard. Sippping coffee on a cold winter day and being near friendlies was something unaccustomed to after the war zone. I stared out the big window and thought of Tet 68, the farm, Denny Ferris, the summer of 1965 and my own lost innocence.

Central Iowa is beautiful during the spring as the winter meltoff belends into the plush green of early summer. The soft rolling hills, cornfields swaying in tyhe wind and freshly mown alfalfa fragrance revive even the lowest of spirits. Our farm was located in a beautiful valley a mile and a half west of LaMoille and seven miles east of State Center. When you live in a maze of secondary gravel roads, the easiest solution was imply to say you were from Marshalltown, fourteen miles due east of us-it was on the map.

The 1960s are only a memory now, but those days still stand out for many reasons. Two rites of passage were celebrated in 1965-high school graduation from a small Iowa school district; and registering for the military draft. Both were meant to symbolize a transition from adolescent confusion to stabilized adulthood or so the myth went. Neither my eighteenth birthday nor these two rites seemed particularly important until I witnessed the transformatin of Denny Ferris.

My cousin, Dick, lived in nearby Marshalltown and spent a great deal of time at our farm near LaMoille. Occasionally he would bring friends with him on the fourteen mile drive to the farm. On one particular early summer day, a slight built young man sporting wavy brown hair and fiery green eyes stempped out of the 1950 Ford two door sedan. His name was Denny Ferris, and Grandma, as usual made a fuss with both to stay for dinner. She loved to cook for guests and would go out of her way to make people stay-guilt, subtlety, gentle intimidation and her well-known manipulation, "you don't like my cooking" remark-a guaranteed result getter. Denny was a guest and naturally he would stay to peacefully stuff himself. He did and endeared himself forever to my grandmother. He was now no longer an outside, but a bonafide family member-another "stray" Grandma collected, loved and always opened her door to. He spent a great deal of time on our farm before leaving for the US Marine Corps.

Dick and Denny had graduated from Marshalltown High School the year before and I was just finishing at West Marshall in nearby State Center. Both had skirted the draft and Denny had just decided to volunteer for the Marines. The summer of 1965, unknown to me, was his fling at innocence for the last time. Denny lived with an abandon I marveled at. He had style with the ladies, was outgoing and recognized as the perennial jokester. I envied his qualities and wondered if this was what adulthood was really about.

One warm August evening I asked Denny why he was joining the Marines and he said there was a war on and someone had to save the country from boredom! It sounded sensible to me, but then Rocky the Flying Squirrel made more sense than Bob Hope or President Lyndon Baines Johnson. There was this feeling that adulthood was rapidly encroaching upon us and could not be avoided. My draft physical was passed successfully and even a college deferment did not necessarily mean you were safe. Vietnam was invadng my consciousness and I was struggling to understand the meaning of adulthood, responsibility and killing in the military. In my naive innocence, I could not help, but feel Denny was opting for the easy way out.

A fews weeks later I drove him to Des Moines where he had to report to the Armed Forces Entry and Examination Station for military induction. He was quiet while I marveled at the splendor of incoming Indian summer. The change of seasons somewho meant more than I could comprehend-a see change for both of us. His quiet thoughtfulness, Vietnam, the Marines, and coffins coming home seemed to upset my equilibrium. I wasn't particularly talkative either, as even the landscape outside fought to survive the ongoing ravages of cold weather. Denny would look at me and then whistle softly, almost as if he was accept the inevitable. The last few miles went rapidly and finally I was attempting to negotiate the small streets of historic Fort Des Moines. He pointed to an archaic building and said that was the place. Military buildings always seem to be overly neat on the outside to cover the dinginess within. I parked the car in front of the building, got out and went to the passenger side to open the door. What happened next will always be treasured-he was mooning me while doing his best Gomer Pyle impersonation. I told him how ingenious we Americans are in utilizing our abilities in such a short period of time. We laughed so hard, but that didn't change the goodbyes that had to be said. Denny shook my hand, thanked me and walked away doing his best imitation of James Dean. That was how I remembered him in late September, 1965.

Vietnam was now a major concern to me even thought my college plans were solid. I attended Marshalltown Community College during the academic year and witnessed so many contradictions. Draft cards were being burnt at Iowa State University, in nearby Ames, by young men protesting the war while the United States went on the offensive in Vietnam. The draft board check my grades every few weeks, but they were good ensuring my college deferment until summer. Summer months meant days of agonizing while you were 1-1, eligible of induction, until the doors of school opened again. Vietnam was still far away, but beautiful Iowa late summer nights remained. I told myself this, but somehow something had changed or perhaps it was me.

One evening that next summer, 1966, Dick called to tell me Denny Ferris had been discharged from the Marines and was back in town. He had written to us occasionally, but the letters had stopped after a couple of months. Grandma wrung her hands with worry while threatening to "ring his little neck" when he came home. Apparently, Dick said, he had been wounded severely, but seemed to be all right now. There was hesitation in his voice as if he were holding something back. He wanted me to meet both of them in Marshalltown at the nearby drive-in theater, affectionately dubbed as the "passion pit" the next evening. I was excited at the chance to see Denny again, hear about the Corps, the John Wayne stories and be the way we once were. Reality has a way of sidestepping hope at times, or is it the other way around?

Denny was sitting in his old Chevy convertible in the usual spot that next evening near the concession stand, but far enough away for privacy. I pulled up in the row behind him and slowly walked up the incline until I was right beside the Chevy's door. He face was gaunt and that twinkle once in his eyes was strangely absent. He turned, smiled, called me a few choice names in customary tradition to gain a smile from me and then extended an inviation to come in. I noticed the open vodka bottle while walking to the other side, but dismissed it as an earned right of military service.

To this day, I cannot remember the movie on that evening, but recall vividly Denny Ferris. He was slightly drunk and alternated between indifference and caring. At times, Denny was far away and then would come back pleading with me to stay in college to avoid the military. There was so much pain in his eyes that I could not comprehend. There was no use in attempting to discuss Vietnam with him. He would cry, say things I couldn't understand and then suddenly stop as if this were the summer innocence of 65 again. He then looked at me and said he needed some fresh air, a drive on the highway. His last words were someday I would understand as I stood there in the middle of the drive-in watching him back out and away to the main exit. I felt confused and concern for him on one hand while a foreboding for my own future consumed the other half of my thoughts.

That was four years ago and the last time I saw Denny. Now I am sitting in a roadside diner on a snowy day in January, 1970, wondering if I really want to go home. Two years had been spent in Vietnam and now I understand the tears, frustration, agony and gut-wrenching fear-fear not only of the war zone, but of returning to a nation that was hesitant to understand its own war, much less the people sent to fight it.

It didn't take too long to drive home on the interstate and suddenly I was standing in our yard at 2AM. Home after four years of service and two years of killing, dying and lost realities. The below-zero weather made me shiver after being accustomed to the high, humid tropical temperatures. Lower temperatures was not difficult to accept, adjustment would come in time, but I groped for the warmth not only of the body, but of the soul-the glow of dreams and youth left far behind in an Asiatic land. I had come to understand what Denny Ferris had meant.

A few days later I went to Marshalltown to find him. Dick said Denny was around; in fact, numerous friends said he was around, a descrption I wondered might possibly apply to me in a few weeks. Finally, a police office know and respected by my family told me Denny frequented a downtown bar, the Elvo Room, a lot. I walked the few blocks to the bar and stood outside wondering if I should go in. I had numerous instances of self-doubt with people and places once felt welcomed.

I opened the door and walked in. No one really paid any attention to me and the bartender asked what my drink was. Told him a draft in my now at home and worldy wise resonance. Somehow, I do not believe even Wayne Newton would have been impressed. The dim light affected my vision, but as everything came into focus there was Denny Ferris. He was sitting at a round table at the far end of the bar staring into his beer. I paid for the beer and began walking towards him slowly. He paid scant attention until I was only a few feet away and then looked up with the same pain-filled eyes. I looked down at him, reflecting his own sould and he motioned for me to sit.

No words were spoken, at first reminding me of the Fort Des Moines drive years ago, but then he smiled, shook his head in acknowledgement of understanding; somewhere I found a smile to answer. I then knew what he meant and felt so many years ago in that drive-in theater. We spent a lot of time in that spot at the end of the bar over the next few weeks, not really saying much, but it became our haven of understanding from a society gone mad. As time progressed, more people came to join us with the same pain-filled eyes. All remembered their own summers of 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 and 70. Three months later, Denny Ferris mooned me in the Elbo Room while simultaneously doing his patented Gomer Pyle impersonation and I knew we would both be all right for awhile. Grandma was proud of her boys-her boys were finally coming home.