FREEDOM SINGS: JAILHOUSE ROCK FROM CELL BLOCK D

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Was Kris Kristofferson right?

Nothing left to lose is the same as freedom? Ask someone who lost everything in 1969 what they think. It might go like this:

“How did you lose everything?”

“I got drafted.”

“Drafted?”

“Yes. Conscripted into the United States Army.”

“I see.”

“Were you drafted, too?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think you see.”

Richie Havens explained things at Woodstock. He said he felt like a motherless child a long, long, long, way from home.

He sang to half a million people a long way from home. In what’s been called a counterculture revolution of peace, love, and understanding, some people never went back home.

Instead, they made a new home, a new family, more in line with their ideas of family values.

Kids who grew up in a culture of “Don’t speak unless spoken to” found their voices and had lots to say.

People my age were in eighth grade in 1969. We got caught up a little later.

If you read this blog, you know the story.

The Vietnam draft ran from 1964-1973.

Of the 2.5 million enlisted men who served during Vietnam, 80 percent came from poor or working-class families, and the same ratio only had a high school education. According to Christian Appy in Working-Class War, “most of the Americans who fought in Vietnam were powerless, working-class teenagers sent to fight an undeclared war by presidents for whom they were not even eligible to vote.”     

Sound familiar to anyone after watching the events of Jan 6, 2021?

Join The All-Volunteer Army For Freedom

I signed up in 1974 with a buddy on the Buddy Plan, which lasted all of two days after we showed up together in Fort Ord.

Hey, Gary.

What’s it like to move from North Bend to the Army instead of returning for sophomore year in college with an athletic scholarship?

It felt like a time warp.

When I left I told my mom she’d hear back from me in two years, like I was going to another planet.

She said something like, “If I don’t hear from you for two years, don’t bother.” That changed my mind.

On my first call back home I told my dad I wasn’t going to stay, that the Army had a path to get out of the enlistment contract if we weren’t ‘happy.’

He said something like, “Do you ever want to come home again? Do what you signed up for.”

My old man carried a Silver Star and Purple Heart from his Marine Corps days in Korea. He was an outstanding Marine. That changed my mind.

I joined up with the plan of making the All-Army Wrestling Team, then return to college as a thumper instead of a thumpee.

I got a try-out, got thumped, and never looked back. That’s when I started the writer dream. I did two years and came back home, but instead of my old school as a PE major, I enrolled at UofO as an English major.

What Did I Learn

In the Army there’s no such thing as freedom. I learned that right away. I wanted my freedom back, the small things, like putting my hands in my pockets whenever I wanted.

I processed out with a guy who said he got his release because the Army decided he’d be better off helping his family back home.

After checking with those who knew, he was being discharged as unfit for service. It made me glad I stuck it out.

I came out with an aversion to joining anything associated with uniforms. Also a low regard for draft dodger military historians.

One guy I met at work made a point or dressing in the military drag of other nations and talking in the cadence of a seasoned officer. He kept his hair high and tight along with Adolf Eichmann glasses. He was a real piece of work with a big fat roll on the back of his neck.

We weren’t friends.

A Personal Plea From BoomerPdx

If you, or those you know, are making plans to visit your state capitol this weekend, please don’t.

Don’t put your freedom in the hands of those with no idea who you are or how you live.

This is America, brothers and sisters, home of the brave and land of the free. Be who you want to be, but don’t give it up to five-time draft dodgers more interested in what he sees in the mirror than what’s happening on the street.

Move away from a man who called the White House a real dump.

Instead of arriving at what looks like a disaster in the making, review the video of the men and women law enforcement checked for their activities in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Then organize letter writing and appointments and get a better understanding of how government works.

Here’s how prison works, based on an interview with a twice convicted man who entered prison boot camp to shorten his sentence in Oregon:

“I was arrested and sentenced, but before I went to the state penitentiary I had to wait in county.

“What I learned is how to earn respect. I waited my turn for a phone call and another prisoner cut the line and hung my call up.

“It was my first test, and I failed. What I was supposed to do was attack him and fight until one of us was unconscious, or clubbed unconscious by guards.

“That’s what happened the next time.

“After I was transported to state prison I heard the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life: The outside door closing behind me.”

He lost his freedom. Twice. Be better, a better steward of your own freedom. Don’t give it up for anyone.

We’re Americans, we adapt. Help others by reaching out to them to stay away from the state capitols. No one you know wants you to go to jail.

This isn’t the Army, it’s free choice. Use it wisely. Please.

The warden threw a party in the county jail
The prison band was there, and they began to wail
The band was jumpin’, and the joint began to swing
You should’ve heard them knocked out jailbirds sing

That’s not how prison works.