Shuffling through online newspapers yesterday, I came across a “yesteryear” headline from the Grand Forks Herald dated April 1, 1968. It read, “LBJ WON’T BE CANDIDATE.”
I remembered that day. So after reading that story yesterday, I sat back in my chair and let my mind drift back. It was, after all, a long, long time ago. Almost 60 years. But there are some memories that don’t go away, in spite of my advanced age.
That day in the Spring of 1968 I saw a glimmer of hope in my mind. LBJ’s going away. Maybe the Vietnam War will end. That was pretty important to me that day, because I was just a month away from getting into it. The Vietnam War. Yes, me, personally, getting ready to go off to war. In one month. But wait. Maybe I won’t have to if LBJ goes away. Let me backtrack a bit. To the fall of 1967.
I started my junior year at Dickinson State College (now University) in September of 1967. We were on the quarter system in those days. Remember them, old timers? The Fall Quarter ran out about Thanksgiving. So did my money. I had spent the last of my grandmother’s small inheritance on my Fall Quarter tuition. I was working at The Dickinson Press afternoons and evenings, putting out the sports page six days a week (no Monday paper—they gave us Sundays off. I worked about 6 hours the other six days of the week).
But my newspaper salary was just enough to pay my rent and food and gas and beer bills, and I wasn’t saving anything. I didn’t want to borrow money, although I should have. I couldn’t ask my dad, because he was paying my sister’s tuition and feeding five more kids at home. So, I decided to take a quarter off from school and work longer hours and save enough for Spring Quarter tuition. Mistake.
The quarter ended Thanksgiving weekend. My Student Draft Deferment went away the next week, when the Winter Quarter began and I wasn’t enrolled. I got my draft notice in the mail on Christmas Eve.
Well, I thought long and hard about that. I had to report for a physical in late January. I spent that Christmas with my family, then headed back to Dickinson to my job at The Press. I kept thinking. I don’t remember much about that month, January 1968, except that I didn’t go. I didn’t report for my physical.
I came from a Navy family. My dad was a WWII Navy veteran. His brother, Carlyle James, also a Sailor and my namesake (yes, my middle name is Carlyle), had died in that war. I didn’t want to suffer his fate. So I just ignored all that and kept on working, waiting to see what would happen.
Here’s what happened. One day in early February I was sitting at my desk at The Press and looked up to see the Adams County Sheriff, Don Hewson, walking through the door.
He came to my desk, greeted me, and said something like “Jim, we’ve got a problem. You were supposed to be in Fargo for your physical and induction a couple weeks ago. The Draft Board sent me up here to get that fixed.”
Don was a friend of the family and a friend of my dad’s, and he had told my dad he was coming to see me. My dad had said that we’re a Navy family, and asked Don if he would tell me to join the Navy.
I didn’t have much to say. He then said that I had two choices. I could join the Navy, or go to Canada. He said if I went to Canada (essentially he was saying he’d go away and tell the draft board he couldn’t find me, but I had to leave immediately), I could never come home. If I joined the Navy, I could come home in four years. He said he hoped I would join the Navy. I said okay. He said, “Come with me.”
We went out and got in his sheriff’s car and he drove me to the Navy recruiter’s office, located in a corner of the shopping mall in North Dickinson. He and I went in. The recruiter was available. Don stood beside me while I enlisted for a four year term in the United States Navy.
The recruiter sad they had a “90 day delay” policy to give new enlistees a chance to wrap things up at home. I was to report for duty on May 8, 1968. I did.
But in between there came LBJ’s announcement, reported in the newspapers April 1, 1968. I hoped it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. It wasn’t. I thought that if George McGovern or Hubert Humphrey got elected president that fall, they’d end the war, and maybe I wouldn’t have to spend all four years in the Navy. Or at least I wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam.
Well, Richard Nixon foiled that plan.
I did spend three years and nine months in the Navy (I got a three months “early out” to go back to college in February 1972) and the closest I got to Vietnam was floating around in the Gulf of Tonkin for 14 months on an aircraft carrier, although I learned much later we were often within a dozen miles of the shoreline.
So after thinking about all that for a while, last night I turned on the TV and Donald Trump came on, and babbled for 10 or 15 minutes about the Iran War and how we were winning it. I’ve been saying for the last month that I’m afraid Iran is another Vietnam, and watching Trump and recalling my morning thoughts about Vietnam just gave me the shivers.
I don’t want to put Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump in the same category, because LBJ did a lot of really, really good things. But he didn’t end the Vietnam War, and I’m not sure Trump can end the Iran war. I hope I’m wrong. Wars are much more dangerous these days, and have much more serious consequences, things I don’t even want to think about. I’m pretty worried about this one.
But y’know what? A really, really, good thing happened yesterday.
WE’RE GOING BACK TO THE MOON!
During my time in the Navy we went to the Moon about half a dozen times. And unlike this launch yesterday, we didn’t just circle the Moon. We landed on it! I hope we do that again.
So today, as soon as I’m done writing this, I’m going to just think about the Moon, and forget about Donald Trump and LBJ. Right now four astronauts are circling the earth after last night’s blastoff, getting ready to head north and fly around the Moon. Television technology today is so much more sophisticated than it was 50 years ago, so I’m going to probably glue myself to the TV while it snows and snows and snows outside. And watch us fly around the Moon.
The Prairie Blog 