F. Aylsworth
Moscow, ID, USA

I have never known a day before Vietnam. I am twenty-eight years old.

My father would not fight that fight. He stayed at home. He wouldn¹t fight scabs for his union, he wouldn¹t fight for his country, he wouldn¹t fight for his god. His god had asked him not to. I know my father as a proud man who wouldn¹t war.

I grew up with men around that had killed. The first and last time I went hunting was with a slightly rounding, large, man who made his money in orthodentia. We were poor hunters. He was a medic and had used a rifle and had seen the jungle. He disappeared for a couple of weeks every now and then. The last time he did, they found him outside of Las Vegas.

I knew other men that had been to war. My grandfather, who eked out a poor living building delicate dollhouses, ornate furniture, and reshaping black metal on vehicles that were used to harvest the forest, lived a life of rough joy, replete with potatoe salad, vehicles constantly in need of repair, and extended camping trips. He was a frog-man in the Pacific in World War II.

Then there¹s Scarey Jerry, the local bogey-man of Libby, Montana. It was known that he carried many guns in his aged pick-up truck. He was a Vietnam Vet, that always meant a lot of things. One day he drove his truck through town while it was on fire. They shot him.

During war games that boys play, we often used a celuloid blueprint. Rambo and Chuck Norris spent a lot of time killing bad guys in black pajamas with AK-47¹s. They were called gooks, and they were usually the minions of the cheif bad guy, a commie.

I don¹t know the bad guys of boy¹s games anymore. Neither do I know the bad guys of the big games. We seem to have lost them. We¹re using money instead of bodies.

Lately, I see fewer pictures of Americans at war overseas. Sometimes I see photos of armor-clad warriors on a street, or surrounding someone¹s house, or in a firefight. That usually turns out to be within our borders. I didn¹t learn about Kent State until I was in my mid-teens.

I¹m not sure how Vietnam has specifically affected my life. It made a big splash in our country, the ripples are still spreading.

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