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 wouldn't fight scabs for his union, he wouldn't fight for his country, he wouldn't fight for his god. His god had asked him not to. I know my father as a proud man who wouldn't 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 there's 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-47's. They were called gooks, and they were usually the minions of the cheif bad guy, a commie.

I don't know the bad guys of boy's games anymore. Neither do I know the bad guys of the big games. We seem to have lost them. We're 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 someone's house, or in a firefight. That usually turns out to be within our borders. I didn't learn about Kent State until I was in my mid-teens.

I'm 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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