Wine Time, Anytime

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The meaning of Altered States brings to mind a drug familiarization lecture I once attended, presented by a DEA Agent. To gauge our beginning level of knowledge, he asked a few questions of the group.  One was, “What is a narcotic?”  Several answers were shouted out, all met with a short explanation of why they were wrong.  The best was by one who opined that a narcotic was something that “altered one’s level of consciousness”.  The answer here was, “No.  I can do that with a Louisville Slugger!” (a baseball bat for the unfamiliar).

As a pre-teenager I saw an article in Life magazine on Heroin addicts in New York City. A quote in that article has always affected any desire to engage in drug experimentation.  Under a photo of a woman, severely decimated by her self-admitted drug use was her admonishment that, “Heroin is so good don’t try it, even once.”  I was, from then on, wary of trying any of those drugs that so famously are associated with the 1960’s.  Including even the softer drugs like Marijuana which I may or may not tried and if I did I may or may not have inhaled!

By the time drugs were becoming common place I was married and busy with other things. I was aware of, and you might say exposed to, the drug culture via a few friends and relatives some of whom were able to handle it and others whose indulgence ruined their lives, in a couple cases even ending them.  For that I am both happy and thankful I avoided any of those troubles whether by choice or mere happenstance.

Thankfully, I never read any such warning relating to alcohol usage. So, whenever I need to change my attitude or otherwise alter my current state it is wine time!  And that, thankfully, can be at anytime because, as they say, it is 4:00 p.m. somewhere!

 

 

 

Trips

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In 1967, I was one year out of college and living in Berkeley. The new wild world was all around me–long hair on everyone, patchouli scent emanating from every doorway, student protests and sidewalk jewelry shops on Telegraph Avenue, and always in the background (sometimes the foreground), rock ‘n roll, sex, and drugs. I was thrilled by all this, but wary, more of an observer than a participant. I’d made a terrible mistake and cut my hair short just at the wrong moment, so I didn’t fit in, fashion-wise. I was too shy and reserved to throw myself into the free sex scene. But I did manage to give the drugs a try.

I had friends who put on pot parties. You’d sit on the floor of their living room and a joint would be passed around. Someone would be reading Magister Ludi. Indian sitar music would be playing. I was not a smoker, so inhaling smoke scorched my throat, but I persisted; the water pipe helped. I waited to be transported to the dreamy land where everyone else seemed to have gone. There was no conversation. People swayed back and forth and stared at the carpet or the air. Nothing much happened to me. I got bored fairly soon and left early.

A few more times during those years, I tried to get high, but it just didn’t work for me, not even the brownies, and I gave it up. It wasn’t until more than twenty years later that I had my first and only good trip. I was in a boat on a lake in the Sierras with a friend who’d brought along what she insisted was really good stuff. We smoked; we talked; we gazed out at the water, which had diamonds all over it. My friend, when I looked sideways at her, was transformed into a teenage cheerleader, a total delight. We laughed like crazy. It was great, but I was content to leave the drug experience behind after that. When I want to alter my consciousness, I just have a glass of wine.

One Toke Over the Line

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I was a goodie-two-shoes, as straight as they come. I never tried drugs during high school, though I dated a “druggie” Junior year. He came over on my birthday, high as a kite and sang “Happy Birthday” while hopping on one foot. I was amused; my mother didn’t get it. He visited once when I came home Freshman year from college. He was experimenting with heroin. He died very young.

Most girls in my Freshman dorm at Brandeis (known for being very liberal, even radical in 1970) were smoking weed. My roommate was a tough chick from Brooklyn who thought I was a real square. She organized a group of girls whose mission was to “get Betsy high”. We sat in a circle and passed around a joint. Being a singer, I had never even smoked a cigarette. I didn’t take too kindly to this peer pressure either and, of course, I didn’t feel a thing. By the end of the evening, they gave up on me.

Gordon

I was vaguely dating a Junior. He was tall, red-haired with broad shoulders. He played folk guitar. He used to challenge me…”are you cool?” I dunno. I wanted to be.

A group of us would meet in a Senior’s single in a different dorm in my quad. He also played guitar and we’d all sing. Soon the group was passing a hash pipe. Hash is MUCH more powerful than weed. I toked with the rest of them, sang, felt mellow at first. But increasingly, the buzz was uncomfortable. I became uncertain if my bladder muscles were voluntary or involuntary. In fact, I was sure I could no longer control my bladder; I was wetting myself and EVERYONE KNEW THAT I WAS WETTING MYSELF. I couldn’t stand being that out of control. I asked red-haired Gordon to escort me back to my dorm room. Of course I had not peed in my pants, slept off the paranoid high, and vowed never to get that high again.

I never did.

 

How soccer saved me from the draft

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I was too short to play basketball. I wasn’t that great at baseball, although I love the game. Our little high school couldn’t afford a football team. Then along came soccer. Soccer was affordable and — so they thought — less dangerous than football.

Soccer was perfect for me. I swam in summer and skied in the winter. My body would change with the New England seasons from smooth-muscled swimmer to gnarled, hard-muscled skier. Soccer would be a perfect way to get in shape for racing — or so I thought.

So, I joined the new soccer team, coached by one of our most amazing teachers, Karl Lindquist. He was a great geometry teacher and was kinda bohemian in those days of conformity. I later found out that Lindquist had been drafted out of an idyllic life on Nantucket at eighteen, had landed at Normandy on D-day and served as a forward scout (life expectancy two or three days) all the way across France to Berlin.

Mister Lindquist never talked about his war experiences but was a decorated soldier who later wrote a memoir of his battle days called Youth Interrupted, certainly an appropriate title that describes the plight of so many young men and women who are snatched up by the jaws of war. But I digress…

*

Our soccer field was surrounded on three sides by a hardwood forest that burst into autumn reds, yellows, and oranges as soccer season swung into October. I still have vivid recollections of jogging warm up laps around the playing field surrounded by that explosion of color, the still, sun-warm afternoon air smelling of distant burning leaves and up-close sweat and lineament.

The first game of the first soccer season approached. I had been chosen to play first-string defense. It was appropriate: although I was low to the ground, I had powerful legs and a chunky body, could clear the ball well past mid-field and block the opposition’s speedy but lightweight forwards. In short, I was a stocky obstacle with a slingshot return. Bravo.

For our first match, we were slated to play the Cambridge School in Weston, a classy prep school that had been playing soccer since, say, the Civil War. We didn’t stand a chance but everybody was game. The basketball cheerleaders suited up to urge us on, a bouncy phalanx of blue-and-white clad motivators. A big opening-day crowd showed up, the whistle blew, and the match commenced to begin.

Cambridge scored countless goals in the first half. They had a W-shaped squadron of giants who would appear out of the chaos of our defense and launch a nasty cross-goal offense, usually instigated by a large, blond young gentleman who had obviously charged many a fullback before.

I tired of watching him — almost relaxed — arc into my territory and hook the ball across the goal with perfect timing for the center or the right forward to punch through our bewildered goalie.

A few repeats of this maddening assault and I became… let’s just call it ‘frustrated.’ I began to anticipate him and devised a move that would swing me behind his frontal attack to arrive at the point where he usually cleared the ball. Hah!

There I was, hooking behind and then ahead of the towering son of a bitch. I looped around behind him and Wham! slammed the ball out of his path. Ha!

The young gentleman’s high-velocity kick arrived where the ball had been a millisecond earlier. Instead of finding his mark, his boot found my left foot, leg fully extended, muscles still taut from my clearing kick.

A funny, mushy vibration swam up my leg as he ran past. I looked down to see my left boot, with foot inside of course, turned past 90 degrees away from the direction my body was facing. I decided I’d better sit down.

Being driven off the field in an ambulance didn’t do much for soccer’s reputation at my high school. My lower left leg was a mess — spiral fractures of both tibia and fibula, an internal reduction that enabled the doctors to wrap the splintered bone in cuffs replete with screws. So much for skiing that year, although by spring, I was able to ski on one leg with my sock-encased cast lifted off the snow.

There were upsides to the adventure: People treated me like a war hero. I learned how to walk down the entire school corridor on my crutches without ever putting my feet down. Ha ha. I was also introduced to morphine. Wow. During all the years that ensued, I survived the onus of that ecstatic, first-one’s-free experience by never injecting anything under my skin. But now, dear reader, it’s time to substantiate my title’s claim.

*

Yes, soccer saved me from the draft. As described in an earlier Retrospect post, I had argued myself into a conscientious objector’s I-0 draft classification after my student exemption, the precious 2-S, ran out.

Two years later, the Vietnam juggernaut had run too many young American boys through the meat grinder. General Westmoreland wanted more troops for his disastrous body-count war of attrition. The Tet Offensive threw everyone off guard. America’s cities were on fire. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned President Johnson that he could not guarantee national security if Westmoreland took more troops out of America. In short, the warmongers were running out of fodder.

The Selective Service issued a recall bigger than anything General Motors could have anticipated. Every exempt young man was ordered to report to the nearest military induction center for a second physical.

We were all angry. We’d already been through this hell before. I had fought hard for my conscientious objector’s 1-0 status. Fuck the Army! But the recall included a threat of warrented arrest, so I showed up at the induction center. I hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t showered for a week, and reeked of alcohol.

The input officer, an African-American vet with a facial expression like a clenched fist, was not impressed by my Fuck-the-Army threats. Growling and cursing, I was shoved down the line, and ordered to strip. There’s nothing quite as awkward, homely, and unhappy as a bunch of naked shivering draftees. My mind was whirling — should I just bolt out the door naked? Should I urinate on the nearest officer? Stage a nervous breakdown? What?

We all endured the clichéd “bend over, grab your ankles” directive and submitted. We all passed, whatever that meant. After a short ritual of poking and prodding in less sensitive areas, we were ordered to pull up our pants and move along. A new bored and annoyed white coat entered. “Anybody with broken limbs. Step forward.”

Yikes! Of course! I could not believe my naiveté. I’d emerged victorious from my draft board tribunal, a proud bearer of a conscientious objector’s classification, only to realize that the metal in my leg — acquired so painfully but now well-healed — rendered me useless as a functioning, government-issue (G.I.) asset.

Another G.I. stamped my paper with a large, smeared 4-F, nullifying my hard-won, principled 1-O status. “Follow the yellow line,” he said. It led down the corridor to a door. I was outta there, bleary, blinking, too numb to feel relief, still shaking with rage, trepidation, and paranoia.

I patted the lumps beneath the skin of my lower left leg. I could feel each screw the edges of the metal cuffs, embedded close to the surface of my shin. It hurt.

These days, my soccer injury has begun to remind me again of the damage done. There is nothing to regret but an injury of that nature lasts a lifetime. Still…

That’s how soccer saved me from the draft.

# # #

Rodeo Rider

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.    When anyone asked about my bowed legs, I told them that I grew up on the back of a horse and had done some bronc riding on the fair circuit in California.  When they asked about going into the pros I told them I wasn’t good enough.

Those questions were asked often while I was in the Navy. My answer usually depended on who was asking. Once in a while I would tell them it was a genetic thing, my brothers and sisters were just as bowlegged as I was. I finally settled on a story that seemed to satisfy everyone’s curiosity.

It was my story, so I could go anywhere I wanted with it. At times my imagination astounded me, and since no one ever questioned me, I got in deeper and deeper.  I should have realized that sooner or later the truth catches up with   you.

I was stationed on a floating dry dock in San Diego. I had been in the Navy about three years and every weekend my buddy George Dotson, and I would be looking for a place to go. Some weekends we went to Merced to see my family, and once we went to Salt Lake City for the weekend to see his family. We hitch-hiked everywhere, so our travels were cheap. Tom Mason, one of the guys stationed with us lived in western New Mexico. Tom was going on leave for two weeks and invited George and me to come out for the weekend. It sounded like a great idea, so a few days after Tom left; we took off a little early on Friday and headed for New Mexico.

We made pretty good time hitch-hiking but we had to get a cab from the last little town out to the ranch, because there was no one on the road. Tom hadn’t said much about their ranch, so we didn’t know what to expect. It was a bigger ranch than I was expecting. They had several thousand acres, and ran a lot of registered Herefords.

We met Tom’s dad the next morning.  He was also a Tom and I think of them now as Tom and Big Tom, even though they were about the same size.

As we were eating breakfast, Tom’s dad said, “Burl I hear you are quite a horseman.”

I checked to see if he was serious, but couldn’t tell from the expression on his face. I decided to go along with it, what could it hurt?

I told him I had been around horses most of my life, but I didn’t say that most of them had been work horses.

“I’ve got a horse out in the barn that gets a little crazy. I’d appreciate it if you’d take him for a ride and see what you can do with him.”

My heart almost stopped right there. But to say no meant that I would have to admit to stretching the truth, about a mile or so!

I said “Sure, I’d be glad to take him out for a ride.” I felt like a fool pretending to be some hotshot cowboy, but I couldn’t think of a graceful way to get out of riding that horse. I was thinking maybe all four of us would be going on a little ride around the ranch, but not knowing what kind of animal I was about to get on, had me scared to death.

“I’ll go on out to the barn and get the horses ready, and you boys can come on out when you finish your coffee.”  

Tom and his Dad were both in the barn when George and I moseyed in a little later. Evidently they’d seen us coming, because they had this big ‘black’ saddled and Tom’s dad had his jacket over the horse’s head. He seemed to have one of the horse’s ears in his mouth. Oh Shoot! I had seen this in the movies. They bite down on the horse’s ear and it hurts so bad the horse just freezes. Then when they turn that ear loose the horse explodes. Man, I wanted to run all the way back to California. I sure didn’t want any part of that horse.

Tom, standing along side of the horse, said, “Come on, I’m not sure how long Dad can hold him.”

I looked at George and he was waiting for me to show him a trick or two. I sucked it up and stepped up to the horse. As soon as I was in the saddle Tom asked, “Are you ready?”

I was so scared I couldn’t make a sound. I was sure it would just come out as a whimper anyway. I just nodded my head like the bull riders do on television.

Tom’s dad jerked his jacket off of the ‘black’s’ head; turning loose of his ear, at the same time. Tom hit the horse in the ass with his hat and let out a war whoop. That horse hunkered down and then went for the open door. He never bucked once but picked up speed with every jump. As we raced through the open doors I heard Tom yell something about a field. We cut through the back yard and around the house, I mean we’re flying. Rounding the house I could see the shaded lane, leading out to the main road about a half a mile away. At this rate I figured we would be there in about ten seconds. I was wondering which way to turn when we hit the main road, when I noticed the plowed field off to my left. I had a good hold on the saddle horn and had been easing back on the reins when I saw the plowed field. I realized what Tom had said as we left the barn. Evidently he had seen that I was out of my class and gave me a way out. I turned the ‘black’ into the plowed field.

Within about a hundred yards the horse was winded and had slowed down to an easy trot. When we got back to the barn Tom’s Dad was waiting.

“Hey Cowboy, you handled him pretty good. He gets a little feisty sometime.”

“Thanks for letting me take him out. You ever think of entering him in the races?”

We all got a chuckle out of that. I was just glad to be able to get off of that horse with my skin and pride half way intact.

Needless to say, that was the end of my made up horse stories. Neither Tom nor his Dad said anything about my riding skills. Truthfully, I think they had set me up. That horse wasn’t wild and Tom’s Dad wasn’t biting its ear either. But it was a good way to show a guy that he needs to be careful who he tells his wild stories to.

 

 

 

Running on Empty

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I had never been much of a runner.  In high school PE classes, when told to run laps around the baseball field I would hide behind the backboard until the last lap then re-join the group to cross the finish line trying to look tired so the coach wouldn’t catch on.  In boot camp we ran wearing heavy boots in a freezing cold Texas winter – I swore I would never run again.  Before a training academy at Quantico, Virginia it was suggested I do some pre-conditioning.  I forced myself to run a few laps on the local track but it made my legs so sore I could barely walk for days so, no more pre-training.

But during 16 weeks of running at the academy, I got in shape and came to enjoy it.  From then on jogging was my exercise of choice.  My wife and I regularly ran 2 to 4 miles several times a week for the next 25 years including several 10K races – a distance of 6.2 miles.

In our early 50s we decided to run a half marathon.  We chose one in Davis, California because it was level and near our hometown.  My sister-in-law agreed run with us and so training began.  Over the next several months my wife and I increased our long-distance training runs to 9 miles.  We felt we were ready.

The night before the race we stayed at my mother-in-law’s house in Sacramento.  We planned a dinner of pasta and fish to “carb-load” for long-lasting energy during the run.  My wife had read somewhere, or heard, or maybe just dreamed it, that it was best to run “empty”.  By “empty”, she explained, it was necessary to clean our systems through the use an enema.  It was never clear to me how that would improve the endurance of my legs and lungs.  Regardless, my brother-in-law and I were dispatched to buy three Fleet-brand enemas.  Now, truly, I’ve never had a problem buying my wife’s “feminine products”.  But, standing in line at the CVS, I began to squirm over what the elderly customers surrounding us might be thinking of two middle-aged men buying three enemas in the early evening hours of a Date-Night-Friday (not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that).

Back at the house, we enjoyed our family dinner then suffered the humiliation of “emptying” our systems as instructed.  Then it was off to bed for an early morning trek to Davis.

On race day we shivered in the morning chill along with the other runners as we stretched and jogged in place to limber up.  As is typical of these fun runs, the participants ranged from young, lithe, zero-body fat runners to the over-weight, over-aged and under-trained.  We considered ourselves to be somewhere in the middle.  The start time approached so a last trip to the Porta-potties then we were off.

For the first mile or two we worked out the kinks, warming up, getting loose and finding our pace and stride.  Caught up in the excitement of the run I realized we were running faster than our normal pace.  I slowed to the pace we’d trained at.  That’s when I became aware of my wife right behind me, just off my left shoulder.  If I sped up she was there, if I slowed down she was there.  Shift left – there; shift right – still there.  She was always there and it began to play on my feeble mind.  I know she was just letting me set the pace but it began to feel like I was pulling her, dragging her along, and it was wearing me out!  At a water table I grabbed a cup of water and slice of orange then ran off trying to disconnect, to no avail.

I ran up behind an “old guy” – the ancient age of 60 or so (I was 53) – and decided to pace him a while then pass him.  I don’t remember even seeing him again and I don’t know who passed who but we were well into the race by then, over half way, and I was starting to have other issues.

The route crisscrossed town, so we periodically saw runners on different parts of the course.  Being unfamiliar with the course and missing the mile markers I had no sense of where I was or how far I’d gone or how much farther I had to go.  At one point, I ran under a bridge covered with runners going 90 degrees to me.  Who the heck were they?  And how long before I got to be up there?  Or, had I already been there and didn’t remember it?  The end had to be near, but it seemed like forever before I got to cross that bridge.  Not knowing the distances made it seem so much longer.  By the 10th mile I realized we had not had long enough training runs.  Finally, mercifully, I crossed the finish line barely able to smile for the picture my mother-in-law was taking of our grand finishes.

We ended with decent times given our age and level of training.  I wasn’t especially tired and I didn’t get sore but my desire to run was gone and we have not run much since.  Why?  My heart just wasn’t in it anymore.  I think it was either that the increase from 9 to 13 miles was too large an increase or, whether it helped or not, just like Pavlov’s dogs, thinking of jogging reminds me of that damned enema!