In my short story collection Tales of the Late Twentieth Century is one entitled “Point Arena”. It is written in a somewhat fragmented, episodic, almost collage-like style that mirrors (at least, in my own mind) what it was like being a young soldier stationed at a very remote and isolated Northern-California radar station in the 1970s; knowing that at any moment you could be the first American to witness that dark and terrifying line of Soviet nuclear missiles approaching from over the western horizon on your radar screen. The Cold War was in full swing then and the fate of the planet hung, then as now, upon the Doctor Strangelove precepts of the weakest link in the world-leaders’ chain. As I recall, we never really talked about it much among ourselves. Perhaps the prospect of a sudden and near complete annihilation of our civilization was too grim to ponder over a late-afternoon Rainier beer.
Instead, we talked about other things. Usually, music and girls, and movies and girls, and cars and girls, and, most likely, girls. Because of the rotating shifts we worked—two swings, two days, two mids—we were always in a sort of sleep-deprived, zombie-esque twilight zone anyway. Light or darkness had no real meaning or importance for us, except perhaps to help pinpoint what part of “the zone” we were moving at the moment. And because we were such an eclectic bunch, pooling our individual talents for our shared support and survival, we approached our common, selective-service fate in a variety of manners. Since music was our lifeblood, there were the electronic wizards among us who would drive down to San Francisco, purchase expensive stereo components, bring them back (“up the hill”), and then tear them down and rebuild them into these absolute Frankenstein’s-monster systems: gleaming, stainless-steel towers of row upon row of wavering and blinking lights that had Pink Floyd and Keith Richards sending us fan letters.
Others were the early computer nerds, with the World Wide Web already hardwired into their ecosphere, even though our computers were big as doughnut shops, and had the eerie, late-night propensity of arguing back at you in irritating, HAL-9000 whispers: “What’s wrong with you, Dave? Why are you giving me that particular command, Dave?” Meanwhile, others were munitions and weapons gurus; while others could blueprint and build a big-block Chevy engine in their sleep; and then there were those that could lead you safely through the veritable minefields of the worldwide, interlinked operations systems we managed. We were sort of a Magic-Bus version of the Dirty Dozen, but without all the Hollywood glam and haute-cuisine catering services. We all had our slot in our shared, existential egg carton; our importance to the group as a whole. Which was critical, because there was a war going on (Vietnam), and the entire world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket real quick, while our unique little tribe was simultaneously about as cut off from that world as you could be, while, in reality, positioned front and center of the whole damn mess. So it was important that everyone had their place and did their job. And everyone did. That is, except for me. At least, in the beginning.
When I first arrived on site, it wasn’t long before it became obvious I was the 13th egg in the carton. Very quickly I was weighed and measured and found wanting. “What do you do, Snyder? What CAN you do?” No one actually asked me this, but it was inferred, I recall, to an obvious and uncomfortable degree. No one there had time to deal with this shit, this straight-line newbie, still sporting his tech-school buzz-cut, and with no apparent specialties the group needed or wanted. And, at first, I was surrounded by some very pissed-off eggs, having to move from one slot to the next to make room for me. Actually, at first, the only thing different about me they could surmise was this battered, Navajo-brown, Smith-Corona carrying case that sat on my barracks-room desk like some shaman’s forgotten tote-bag. Then there was the further mystery of the clickity-clacking noise emanating from my room in the wee hours of dawn.
Someone banged on my door early one morning: “What the hell are you doing in there, Snyder?”
“Typing.”
“Typing what?”
“Stuff.”
“Oh.”
To be fair, when they finally did figure out I was some kind of writer the consensus was that this was pretty cool. Useless as tits on a boar, but cool. Then I got in trouble with the First Sergeant, and that changed everything.
The truth is I was never your model soldier. Don’t get me wrong, I always did my job and did it well. But I was never your spit-and-polish, follow-the-rules-without-hesitation type that gives military brass their morning hard-on. Or, for that matter, not so much the American-hero, GI Joe, take-one-for-the-team type either. I became a soldier because America was at war, and my father was not a senator, and therefore you had three choices at the time: be drafted and go to Nam, enlist and take your chances, or hightail it for the Canadian border. Since heading north was never an option for me, and after I attended the funeral of my latest high-school buddy to come home from the war in a jelly jar, I knew pretty much which way my wind was blowing. I certainly didn’t have a problem serving my country. But after reading the headlines and stories about that particular faraway conflict for some time, I still couldn’t figure it out. I just didn’t get the whole falling-dominoes thing. Something didn’t add up, and although I argued with myself that my young mind was probably not yet mature enough to understand the complexities of what all these so-called experts were saying about it, my gut was saying something else. So one fine day in May I hitched a ride down to the Oakland Induction Center, raised my right hand, and suddenly found myself a soldier.
As it happened, at the time I enlisted I was sporting a nice beard. I was doing some acting then, in high school and college and the local Napa Valley community theater called Pretender’s Playhouse. I forget which play I was trying out for (I think it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), but I recall I’d grown the beard to make me look older. Any event, call to duty came before casting, and I flew off to basic training at Amarillo, Texas with my full beard. In addition to this, at the time I also had something of an attitude problem, which might work to your benefit on stage, when you’re standing there beneath the bright lights, pouring out your guts to a sea of dark faces, but doesn’t translate as well with the military. The military, I learned, did not like guys with attitude problems. They hated them almost as much as they hated guys with beards.
Now jump some months ahead again to my first duty assignment—again, deep inside those Northern-California mountains, surrounded by dense forests of tall fir and medded-to-the-eyeballs coastal hippies, enraged that we were even there among them in their own private Eden, doing God only knows what kind of Black-Ops shenanigans—where I’d just had my first run-in with the First Sergeant, or First Shirt, as he was known among the troops. It wasn’t a big deal. I think I was ordered to police (pick up trash) an area of the compound, which I did, then went back to my barracks room and took a nap. Again, we were all always exhausted, and sleep was a precious commodity, whether given or stolen. Regardless, the First Shirt soon burst into my room, found me snoozing, and the rest, as they say, is official record. I received a Letter of Reprimand, and, being the wannabe wordsmith I was working hard at becoming, promptly wrote a rebuttal, explaining why I thought the LOR was a bit over the top, and why the First Shirt should have just cooled it about the whole thing, brought it down a notch, for the sake of everyone just getting along.
I can’t remember now everything that took place immediately after that. But I do remember it happened very quickly, like a short fuse sizzling its way down to sudden conclusion on a long stick of dynamite. I recall being pulled into offices and people yelling at me; then there was the nice conversation with the site commander, a soft-spoken major who, I think, was mostly just curious what kind of fool would volunteer to be a soldier, and then actually believe he had the right to discuss the specifics of the arrangement; mostly I recall my brief, though very public one-on-one with the First Shirt, whom, it was obvious, everyone there hated as only one can hate another who has their scrotum in his cupped palm, with little or nothing they can do about it. Of course, I was repeatedly disciplined, spending my leisure time scraping ancient stalactites from the undersides of forgotten urinals; painting the frozen exteriors of various mountainside structures in the middle of winter; and, of course, the time-honored duty of shoveling clean snow atop dirty snow for the endless site inspections and VIP visits we were accustomed.
Finally, one of the old zebras (a sergeant with a lot of stripes) there came to my rescue. He pulled me aside and told me, “You know, son, I was once one of those rebel-without-a-cause types just like you. Fighting back at everything that didn’t go my way. Until one day someone pulled me aside, just like I’m pulling you aside, and told me that maybe I should pull my head out of my ass long enough to realize I was temporarily living in someone else’s house. And while I was there, being fed and clothed and sheltered and instructed, the honorable thing to do might be to abide by their rules. I didn’t have to like them. But, well, maybe I should consider the honorable thing, instead, for my country’s sake, and not my own.”
Things quieted down after that. I completed my tour, got my E-4 promotion and finally my orders for Germany. But the odd thing I remember is that after this dust-up I was no longer the 13th egg. I was taken into the group fairly pronto, I recall, and that was that. No one ever told me why. Because the truth was I still had nothing to offer them—this tribe of ersatz twilight survivors, living always on the edge of sudden annihilation, while trying to maintain some manner of perspective about it all—except that I tinkered around with words, on my ratty little portable, at all hours of the day and night. Which everyone still agreed was useless as tits on a boar.