A Visit from the Preacher

(Excerpts from Their War: Experiences of an American Conscript in the Vietnam War

Copyright 1985)

When I was discharged from the Marine Corps in May, 1970, I was given the GI Bill – and the finger. I used the GI Bill to go to graduate school and probe toward re-entering my life that had been suspended for 28 months while I had trained for, and engaged-in, mass homicide in Vietnam. 

I had anticipated my discharge from the Marines and had applied for, and gotten accepted into the University of Oklahoma (OU) School of Journalism in June, 1970. Other officers around me who were caught off-guard by the “early out for Nam veterans,” were eagerly applying for positions with predator corporations, particularly Proctor & Gamble that was hiring them in droves for junior executive slots.  

Discharged and sitting in graduate school seminars, I found the academic culture of the J-School almost indiscernible -- but very critical at the lived, student/teacher level as awkward, almost timid protests against the Vietnam War permeated the classrooms. In those terse sessions,  I was immediately cast as a person who had “killed old men, women and babies in Viet Nam.” While I agreed with almost all of the political criticism of the war, I was taken aback by being almost invisible, and mostly on trial.  The instructors remained conspicuously silent as I became the subject of repeated attacks -- even when I offered rational evidence opposing the war: I was not heard because I had “been there” and was guilty-by-association.

By contrast, I later found that a two-year “time-out” in the OU School of Fine Arts let me revisit the creative side of my mind -- with some peaceful souls as crazy as me, in a totally non-judgmental environment. This came after the war was over and I had worked a bland, PR job for two years with a conservative state agency in Oklahoma City that recruited high school students for jobs in heath careers. Like many returning vets, I no longer wanted to work for “the man.” The GI Bill let me return to the Ivory Tower once more and a school where I made a lot of art and friends and slowly reengaged with my life.

But the $400-per-month GI Bill ended as I graduated from purgatory: I then migrated with my wife, Judy; our 1-year-old daughter, Xan, and another daughter-on-the-way, to a dilapidated farmhouse north of Milburn, Oklahoma, a mile from my parent’s farm where I grew up. On the peaceful farm at the curve of a gravel road,  we picked at ways to make a living. 

The struggle was hard because our acquired skills only partially fit the local, landlord/peasant economy. Judy, a music teacher, and I started arts classes at nearby towns and had no problems recruiting and stimulating students. I also worked as a farm laborer and drove a brush-hog for $4 per hour. Those did not provide enough income but we managed to pay the $75-per-month rent and utilities and to eat. We celebrated Christmas with our infant daughters as Judy’s peaceful brother, Kinney, played “Jolly,” a recast Santa’s helper.

But on a bleak, February evening, the local Baptist preacher came out to visit and invite us to join his congregation at his church in Milburn. He knew that Judy was baptized there and leaned hard on her to “return to the fold.” I told him that Judy could do as she pleased but I was uninterested. When I asked how his powerful God could sponsor atrocities like Vietnam, he replied that it was “Just God testing us.” I replied that his ”God could take his test and stick it up his sadistic ass.” The preacher his two deacons never came back: We never went to his church.

Meanwhile, my concerned parents pressed me to look for work  elsewhere and felt that we could find no place in the area where our education and skills would fit. My father offered some very awkward examples of local, semi-skilled people who operated backhoes or other machinery: they had no choices and “had to stay here.”

I dutifully listened to his advice and agreed to travel to Austin, Texas where we had friends and see what I could find there. Meanwhile, mother sewed a gray, double-knit suit for me, complete with vest, that she surmised would help land me a job. (Mama was eventually right about the suit – twice.)  I called the suit my “interview britches.”

I soon drove our ’67 VW bug over to the state employment office in the county seat  in Tishomingo. I had never been to one of those places and assumed I could only apply for unemployment benefits -- but the intake clerk asked me if I wanted to work? Surprised, I said “Sure.” She said she had six, temporary positions at the Emmerson Electric Plant in Durant; $4.50 per hour. I pledged to report for work at 8 a.m. the following Monday.

Life at Emmerson Electric

When I checked at the Emmerson Plant at 8 a.m., I was told I was an hour late and that the shifts ran from 7 – 4. I clocked-in and the supervisor told me the temps had been hired to prepare for an inspection by “corporate.” I was given a broom and told to sweep the area around a row of lathes where men drilled into cast-iron housings that would become electric motors. The place smelled like burned oil and the dull roar was occasionally pierced by the shriek of a protesting drill or a shout from a worker calling from more housings.

They took a 10-minute break at 9:30 and when I when to the men’s room I observed several machinists pull whiskey flasks from their coats and take long draws. Everyone seemed sullen and did not speak. The same ritual occurred at 11 when they took a 20-minute lunch and then again at a 2 p.m., 10-minute break. At 4 p.m. they left the building and jumped into pickups that had been backed into parking slots so as to make for quick getaways. Morale was as low as it could get at this plant.

In the morning one of the temps did not show up. One had been assigned to paint the wall of a meeting room and worked alone. The rest of us “birds” were sent to the yard to sort various unmachined parts onto pallets. Two of the temps found places to hide from the supervisor and smoke, while another, Carl, and myself continued to sort parts in the cold winter sun. When we all took breaks, the three talked of other hourly work they’d done, particularly loading bags of cattle feed onto a semi at a local feed mill. All of them drank heavily a every opportunity. 

The next day only Carl and I showed up. We again worked in the parts yard. At one point, I asked the supervisor if he wanted up to separate the broken housings out into a separate pile: They could not be machined and would only mess up his inventory. He seemed surprised at my suggestion and agreed. 

On Friday Carl and I were the only “birds” left and they let Carl go at noon. I had occasionally chatted with several of the other parts workers, particularly a folk lift operator who hailed from Arizona and “could not wait to get back home.” 

At 3:45 the supervisor called the four of us together and told me that his inventory clerk was quitting and his job, which paid $12 and hour would be open. He said if I would apply for it, he would recommend me. I told him I appreciated the offer and I would think about it. As I clocked out and walked down the sidewalk by the personnel office where I could apply for the position, I could feel all the eyes of the parts crew on my back. I continued walking passed the office; out into the parking lot, and got into my VW -- that I had backed-into a slot ​earlier that morning.

Oklahoma Hills, Revisited

(To the tune of Oklahoma Hills)

Banished to your planet and force-fed life

I came-to at 29 to an estranged wife

A note at the bank and a kid on each knee

A job on the swing-shift at the county factory

Chorus:

In them Oklahoma Hills

The governor calls home

You can vote your choice of hawks

Where the buffalo roamed.

I live in a trailer house on top of the hill

On the five-acre tract Daddy left me in his will

I got a satellite dish and a colored-TV

I pay for the Playboy Channel but the rest are free.

(Chorus)

They say I’m doing’ fine

And that I’m my own man

Then they ask if I’d care 

To invest in a van?

You can get away from all this

in your sleet RV

That comes with a radar range

And colored-TV!

(Chorus)

Brother works at Uniroyal

And sister at Sam’s

Our other brother, Clovis

He was killed in Vietnam

We get together every Christmas

And we talk about old times

And how sad it was the Commies

Killed Clovis in his prime

(Chorus)

When I’m dead, I’m can hear my boss say

“Too bad he didn’t live to work another day”

Fill my veins with STP

Seal my gums with Form-A-Gasket

And lay me down to rest in a Tupperware casket

(Chorus)

Coda ( ideally with dogs howling): O-k-l-a-h-o-l-e-m-a!

Copyright 1978

Bo McCarver

From Greater Wapanucka

July 2020