1 - Beginnings
If I've got to start somewhere, it might as well be here.
Last December, Marilyn & I released an album. There were no grand illusions about forming a band or going on tour - you don't "break in" on much of anything in your fifties. Sure, it would be fun to play at a release party. But I can't fathom how we'd get all the musicians on stage, let alone find a venue that would want us or an audience that would be interested. (Heck, I don't even know how many friends and family will listen once, much less again and again). I'd say we are pretty realistic about our lack of musical prospects.
There's a story here, though, and I think it's worth telling.
So. We got the chance to record our music, and we took it.
We did it for us - to chronicle our journey and capture this music that has carried us, as best we can, while we can, so that we can remember in years to come. And perhaps it will help others to remember as well.
We recorded 10 original songs, written (for the most part) over the last 10 years. But we also created 24 pages of liner notes, with lyrics and photos. The first half contains pictures from my childhood; the second half consists of photos taken while raising my own family. Together, the pictures and the music form a narrative of sorts (maybe several narratives). So I think it might be helpful to provide some backstory.
It's a story of grief and pain, but also of joy and hope. It's the story of our family (Marilyn, myself, our 3 kids), full of twists and turns and surprises. But it's also the story of my family (the one I grew up in), full of wonder and beauty, followed by shotgun blasts of trauma that reverberate to this day. Through it all, there were mountains, trout, and epic adventures. But also storms, near misses, and three great eucatastrophes (more on that later).
It's the story of our lives. And the pictures keep me from forgetting. That's why they're in there. Because I'm still trying to make sense of it all.
If you have a copy of our CD, you've already seen some of the images:
- There's the shot of me and Mom, sitting on the tailgate of Dad's beat up Ford. (That's the truck that lost its brakes on the way down from Hellroaring Plateau; I've never been so scared in all my life). There I am, hoisting a mess of trout that I caught myself in the afternoon sun on the shore of West Rosebud, just below Mystic. I can still remember it. I'm wearing that faded old red sweatshirt that smelled like hog feed. The world is brimming with potential. All I have to do is go catch it.
- There's that shot of me and Jake, a few years earlier, in the back of the same Ford. We are sitting there with Molly, my first friend and one of the best yellow labs ever. We were still living on the farm back then. You can just see our old Datsun station wagon there in the background. Fallon is where my memories start in earnest. It's where the world came alive.
- There's the shot of Nori, asleep at the table after dinner (we lived in a trailer on the pig farm); of me and Jake scarfing down hot bacon (there are advantages to living on a pig farm) while Nori smiles in the background on that cold-but-sunny May morning in a campground just below Emerald Lake;
- And then there's that shot of me, right after the plane crash in Sun Valley, right before our lives crashed and my world turned upside down forever.
These images in the liner notes just scratch the surface. For nearly twenty years now, I've kept a folder on every computer I've owned - 118 photos, taken in the mid to late 70s, of me and my family, before the divorce.
These pictures of my childhood take me back to my beginnings.
There's a shot of me getting my hair cut. There's another of me in the buff, covered in calamine that time I had the chicken pox (it's probably safe to post online, but just barely). We lived in Cherry Point, North Carolina at the time. It was 1973, right after my dad came back from Vietnam. I turned 4 that year.
Cherry Point is where I learned to ride a bike. I remember practicing in front of our house - back and forth, back and forth - then suddenly, when no one was looking, I raced off down the street and pedaled around the block. It was glorious. I was free. I was fast. It couldn't have taken more than three or four minutes before I was back home again. But that was enough time for Mom to walk back out front and find me missing. I was so busted.
North Carolina is also where I caught my first (and only) snapping turtle.
We lived right on the edge of a swamp, or at least that's how I remember it. There was a little stream that wound through the neighborhood. It couldn't have been more than thirty yards from the house. I discovered that most days, if I snuck up real quietly and peeked over the ditch bank, there was a gigantic bullfrog sitting just a few feet away. But I never managed to catch him. The slightest movement and he was in the water and away.
One day I peeked over the edge to see a large turtle sitting in the bullfrog's place. Unlike the bullfrog, that turtle didn't budge. He just sat there looking mean. But even a 4 year old knows turtles are slow. I figured that gave me an advantage. So I hatched a plan. (How on earth did 4 year old me figure that turtles have a blind spot - e.g. directly behind them? I have no idea. But I guessed it. And I was right.)
I eased away from the ditch bank, and scampered on back to our house, where I slipped into the garage and retrieved my dad's fishing net. Dad grew up in twin Falls, Idaho, so this was one those nets for landing big trout in swift rivers. It had a rugged aluminum rim and tough braided green webbing.
It wasn't huge, but it was big enough for a largish turtle.
Once I had procured my secret weapon, I crept back to the stream, where I slowly but surely eased my way down the ditch bank, directly behind the turtle. And that big 'ol turtle never even blinked. Not until I plunked the net right down on top of him. Then he just lurched ahead (deeper into my net) where I scooped him up (like the dumb 'ol turtle he was), threw him over my shoulder, and started marching triumphantly back to the house. Wait till Dad saw what I had caught!
I made it about ten yards before the turtle fell out of the net. Which wasn't really a problem, since I had a net after all. I just scooped him up again and kept marching. Five yards later, he fell out a second time. I scooped him up once more, but this time he fell out immediately. That's when I started to wonder if maybe something was wrong with my plan. I took a good hard look and realized he had completely shredded Dad's favorite net.
So much for secret weapons.
At this point, that dumb 'ol turtle was looking a lot more like a pissed off 'ol turtle. So I figured I'd better back off and focus on how to break the news to Dad about his net. And that big 'ol turtle just crawled on back to that bullfrog's spot on the bank. That was the last I saw of either of them.
It's funny what we remember, and what we forget.
I remember landing in Fallon, Montana when I was 5.
Landing might be a bit of an overstatement. We got there in the aforementioned blue Ford pickup, which is more like a boat than an airplane. "There" was just a pig farm / cattle ranch / wheat operation out in the middle of nowhere. You had to do a little bit of everything to make it in a place like Fallon.
The closest airport was 30 miles away in Glendive. But the rancher did own a couple of airplanes. Why on earth would you need multiple aircraft on a pig farm in eastern Montana? I have no idea. I remember watching them do "touch and goes" in the stubble field on the other side of our garden next to the trailer that became our home. And one of those planes plays a part in my story a bit further down the road. But for now, we were just landing in Fallon.
My dad was fresh out of the Marines, and he needed a job to support his family. In the mid 1970s, work was hard to come by - you had to take what you could get. Maybe that rancher hired my dad because they both loved flying. Or maybe he just felt sorry for him. Either way, my dad went from leading men in combat to feeding pigs on a ranch. It doesn't sound like much of a storyline. But it's hard to judge before you see how it ends.
My mom and dad met at the University of Idaho, where he got a degree in forestry and she just got pregnant. That was during their senior year, back before Roe v. Wade (or morning-after pills), in the Fall of '68.
Mom did the respectable thing (for the time) and dropped out of school to have me; Dad also did the respectable thing (for the time) and finished his education and married her. And I was born in May, 1969. For my part, I'm glad it happened. They seem to look happy in the old photos I've seen. But Dad was in ROTC on a fast track for Vietnam, and Mom always resented being forced to drop out of school. But that was over fifty years ago, now. I wonder how they remember it?
Somewhere in those early years Mom had her first affair.
(This is hard for me to write about. I was too young to know or remember. Mom never mentioned it, but I only lived with her for the first 10 years of my life. Dad discussed it with me just once. So what will she think if she reads this? Will she admit it? Deny it? Say there are two sides to every story? I have never been brave enough to ask.)
Dad responded (again) by doing the respectable thing: he took out a life insurance policy (to make sure his kid would be taken care of), then shipped off to Vietnam where he promptly volunteered for every mission. He was flying CH-46s, first off the USS Okinawa, then later off the USS Iwo Jima. A military press release from July 20, 1972 describes a typical day:
On a clear day with high broken and scattered clouds, the rumble of Navy gunfire in the background, and Army Cobra gunships flying cover, U.S. Marine CH-46 and 53 helos from Marine Medium Squadron 164 operating from the amphibious assualt ship USS Okinawa, lifted a battalion of South Vietnemese marines into two landing zones behind enemy lines some seven miles north and east of Quang Tri City...
My dad was in that operation. They flew 76 of those "hot" missions that year. Dad recalls dropping soldiers off in combat zones, picking them back up in body bags. He has some amazing stories. But he rarely talks about them.
I suspect he did not intend to make it back. It would have been an honorable way to go. (But again, these are my words, not his; I have assembled this narrative from bits and pieces, passing comments over the years. How would he tell it? How would she?). It's hard to imagine anyone doing anything like that these days.
The HMM-164th pioneered the concept of Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU), which would become the standard model for Marine corps fighting tactics still in use today. The 164th was honored as the #1 aviation unit in the entire USMC that year (not just helicopters). They commemorated their success with a custom design for their helmets. And Dad was the only pilot in his squadron who never took a direct hit. By the end of his tour, everyone wanted to ride with him.
Somewhere in the midst of all that - being shot at, surviving, even while many of those around you didn't, then waking up each day to do it all over again - somewhere in there, he became a born-again Christian. But that's his story to tell.
So Dad survived Vietnam. He and Mom managed to patch things up (for a while). They had a few more kids, and the whole family headed West... to a pig farm in Fallon, Montana.
It was 1974. Things were about to get interesting...
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