underdogishere

Last week I was driving home from work, scanning the local radio stations, and on one of the talk stations the DJs were discussing Dumbya's escalation of the war in Iraq, when they suddenly broke into a somewhat disjointed on-air rendition of an old Vietnam anti-War song that I used to sing -- we all used to sing -- when I was a kid: Country Joe McDonald's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag:


When we were kids, we thought this song was great. Especially since it allowed us (all Catholic school students) to legitimately (I mean, it was in the song, wasn't it?) say the word "damn." This is the chorus:


We used to sing it all the time, but by the time I heard it last week I hadn't heard it for decades, and in fact hadn't even thought about it for decades. I don't think it ever gets airplay. As far as I know, everyone who reads this blog (possibly excepting my brother) is too young to remember the Vietnam War. Have any of you ever heard it? It was, in its day, the most popular anti-war song on the radio:


Looking back from my perspective today, my most powerful memory from the Vietnam era was the day the war ended. Or rather, the day the peace treaty was signed. I came home from... wherever. School, maybe. And my mother was standing in the living room of our house, watching the TV and crying. On the TV screen I saw men in suits seated around a big table and passing papers to one another. "The war is over," said my mother, through her tears. "It's over."


To be honest, I was callow and careless as a teenager. I didn't ask my mother why she was crying. I didn't care why she was crying. I went on with my teenager life. But, today, I know why she was crying. It was because I was less than two years from being old enough for the draft. I never asked her about it, and she never spoke to me about it, but now I see that as the war dragged on, and the years passed, and I got closer and closer to draft age, she grew secretly more and more distressed by the thought that I would be forced to go to Vietnam and I would be killed there. What mother wouldn't worry about something like this?


My mother's tears that day were tears of otherwise inexpressible relief. When I see pictures in the news, today, of the tears on the faces of families grieving for their dead coming home from Iraq, I remember my mother's tears, how much alike they looked, and for how different reasons they were shed.

Why do I bring this up today? Because I think you're interested in my memories? Hardly. I bring it because of two things that recently, coincidentally, crossed my path: The first was those DJs on the talk radio show singing that old Vietnam-era song by Country Joe and the Fish, and bringing back those memories of that time.

The second reason is a piece of mail I received last week. It was an advertisement from a cruise line, for a twenty-one day trans-Pacific cruise, originating in Vancouver and ending in Beijing. But what struck me was that two of the ports of call on this cruise will be in... Vietnam. A country where we fought and lost a stupid and futile war, a war I came within a couple of years of perhaps having to fight in. And now, thirty years later, a country to which I can sail on a luxurious American cruise ship and, you know, see all the sights! As I sat here, in 2007, fuming about Dumbya and the American men and women he's murdering in Iraq and the tens of thousands of Iraqis he's murdering and... and... I got myself so worked up... and then I heard that protest song from so long ago, and I looked at this beautiful four-color brochure inviting me to cruise to what was once the land of our enemies and our shame, and suddenly I was comforted by the realization of this one truth:

Nothing can endure the passage of time. Nothing. Not even stupidity.

Labels: Dubya, Musing, My Family