By Dan Valentine
Dear Hattip:
Call me anti-American.
When I was in high school, I entered an essay contest, sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, called Voice of Democracy. I wrote about socialism, communism, and capitalism, and how all three were good systems. With a hundred-or-so people! Add five or ten more folks to the mix and all three tend to get corrupted. All three have little or nothing to do with democracy. I was awarded a prize.
Call me anti-American.
I joined the Navy to avoid going to Vietnam. My three good friends at the time joined the Army. They were sent to New Jersey. The Almighty, She’s got a sense of humor. I was sent to ‘Nam.
After boot camp, I caught a flight to Guam to catch my assigned ship, the USS Tanner, a survey ship. It was at sea at the time, steaming from Pearl Harbor. I caught pneumonia, killing time, in a sudden downpour on Gab-Gab Beach waiting for it. Sent to the Naval Hospital to recoup. The wards were filled with Marines, soldiers, sailors, and the like, with major combat wounds. Some missing an arm; others, a leg. Pneumonia or not, I was well enough to swing a mop. So I was given the duty to sweep, swab, and buff the corridors and rooms. The least I could do.
Call me anti-American.
I recovered, caught my ship. To Vietnam. Assigned to deck force. Hell on earth, in small quarters. If there’s a Devil, he or she taught boatswain mates all he or she knows. And then some.
“Just out of boot camp?” There were a handful of us. “Welcome to the fleet!” Initiation time. One seaman apprentice, while chipping, sanding, and painting the side of the ship, was repeatedly lowered by chortling boatswain mates, down and up, down and up, repeatedly, into the water below, swarming with barracudas. From that day forward, he was called Screamin’ Wiley. Another was stripped naked and smeared with butter all over his exposed body, private parts included. He was forever-after called Butterball.
I was assigned to stand mid-watch in the crow’s nest. In a wind-storm. I’m afraid of heights. How did they know? Their kind always knows. Clouds fast-approaching were grumbling, lightning streaks flashing. I was scared to death. When the winds got to be too much, they brought me down. I planted my feet firmly on the deck, smiling, happy as hell. From then on, I was known as Smiley Face. When I was first learning to man the helm (it was part of our duties, among others), a boatswain mate would stand nearby and kick me in the butt with his boot–wham!–whenever I went off course the slightest. “Keep it on course, Smiley Face.” Wham! You soon learn to keep on course.
Call me anti-American.
I served two tours in Vietnam. I was there the night the Tet Offensive began. Tracer rounds flying. One night I was standing the starboard or port watch when I thought I saw a swimmer in the water getting closer and closer to the ship. With explosives? General quarters! Boats were lowered and percussion bombs were tossed all night long. They never found a body. If there was a swimmer, I like to think he or she is escorting American tourists around, telling them war stories, just as Americans in his or her shoes would.
Call me anti-American.
Another time I was on day-watch when a Vietnamese junk approached. The Officer of the Deck, bullhorn in hand, warned those on aboard the junk to turn away. I was told, if need be, to shoot the fellow at the helm, dead, on command. The junk turned around. To this day, I don’t know if I could have carried out the order.
Call me anti-American.
In Vietnam I wrote a book of short essays in my off-hours called Military Moods. (Moments of Truth; Ports of Call; Christmas: The Loneliest Day of the Year; etc. One was: Love Letter to a Country.)
Call me anti-American.
When the Tanner was decommissioned–my book of essays my ticket “outta here!”–I got assigned to the USS Canopus, a submarine tender, which supplied nuclear attack submarines with nuclear missiles to attack with.
I met the ship in Bremerton, WA, and we sailed to GITMO for a month-long series of sea exercises, preparing for future possible attacks, both chemical and nuclear. As the ship’s journalist, with no duties other than to put out the ship’s newspaper, cruise book, and hometown news releases, I was assigned to save the Old Glory from radiation or chemical exposure. Officers timed us with a clock-watch. Drill after drill, I was killed, and I told myself if there ever was an attack, I was not going to die retrieving a piece of cloth. But, being young at the time, I probably would have. That’s why they draft nineteen-year olds. When there is a draft.
Call me anti-American.
In the 80s, I worked for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), in Washington, D.C., for half a decade. Whenever there was a speech to be written “from the heart” (Flag Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veterans Day, both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays, I was the one called upon to write it.
When a Senate colleague died, Republican or Democrat, I was the one called upon to write the floor statement “from the heart”. The New York Times picked up one and reprinted parts of it, saying, “Such eloquence is seldom heard on the Chamber floor.”
Call me anti-American.
In the 90s, when my dad died and, later, when my mom died, I had their sealed-ashes placed in Arlington National Cemetery. My dad–he was wounded on Guadalcanal–would have liked that.
Call me anti-American.
I was in Salt Lake when 9/11 happened. I had canceled my flight back to New York to see a touring musical at the Capitol Theatre, or I would have been there when it happened. When I did return, a week later, it just so happened to be the first day the subways were running again. I caught one into town from the airport. Dead silence all the way. No one spoke a word. Everyone was stunned.
I had moved up to the Upper West Side, two blocks from Lincoln Center, a couple of blocks to Central Park. My New York ID, though, still listed my first home address there. On Duane Street in Tribeca, only a stone’s throw away from the Towers.
I showed an armed National Guardsman my ID and walked to where the Towers once stood. On the way, I stopped to take a look at my former residence. There was a National Guardsman standing close by the entrance, armed and ready.
Across the street was a firehouse. The firefighters there were the first to be called to the scene after the first plane hit the first building. They were lucky. They didn’t lose a single man or woman.
Further down the street, by Ground Zero, women were having their photos taken, hugging firemen, the nation’s new heroes.
The next day, I seriously thought about going to see an eye doctor. I could barely see. It was due to the debris in the air.
One day, shortly after, I paused on a street corner before crossing and motioned for a cabbie, speeding to catch the light before it turned, to continue on by. He put his foot on the brake and motioned for me to cross. I motioned for him to drive by. He motioned for me cross. Etc. He was mid-eastern.
Call me anti-American.
Such courtesy between strangers and nationalities lasted, I’d say, less than a week.
Later on, one evening, I stopped for a drink at the Russian Tea Room. Took a seat at the bar by a couple, sitting speechless and stunned, as everyone in town was. The two paid their tab and left. The bartender said, “That was Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.” Elbow to elbow and I hadn’t even noticed.
Now paying some attention, I glanced around to see two older ladies at the end of the bar, enjoying themselves, laughing, drinking champagne. They looked rather bedraggled. But lots of folks did that first week or so. That, and you never know who’s got money and who doesn’t in New York. They could very well have been ga-zillionaires.
They weren’t.
They didn’t have a dime on ’em. When they began to depart, without paying, a cocktail waitress blocked their path. The bartender called the cops. Two were there just like that! There was a battle of wills. Both women started kicking and scratching. One of the cops had to physically throw one to the floor, cuffing her hands behind her. He came over to me and asked if he could have my drink. Sure! He poured the contents on the scratches on his arm.
Call me anti-American.
March or April, 2010. In Houston at an ATM drive-thru. My dearest friend and I. Waiting behind a souped-up pick-up with dark tinted windows. On the back bumper, a sticker that read: f-Obama.
I told my friend, Quick, get a pic of it, along with the license plate, on her cell camera, so we could call some city or county or state or federal agency. But the vehicle zoomed off. Scary stuff. I fear for Obama’s life.
Call me anti-American.
Call me a little twerp, too. Childish, self-hating, revolting, juvenile, and beyond shame.
I’ve been called worse. When my son was four or so, he called me a bastard. Out of the blue. He’d heard it from his mother’s mum. A truer statement has probably never been said about me. I’ve done some terrible things in my life, looking back. One or two beyond shame. A good many of us, by the time we reach our 60s, have.
My dearest friend’s step-dad once called me “the stupidest person” he had “ever known” in his “entire life”, glaring at me with pure hatred from across a table at an International Pancake House one morning near NASA. He was so mad I could see he wanted to take me by the neck and strangle me to death right then and there. If Bin Laden had been eating pancakes in the booth next to us, her step-dead would have killed me first. We were talking politics. He’s a Republican.
But enough already.
Hattip, I wish you well.
Call me anti-American.
[Editor’s note: View Hattip’s comment here.]
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 