I was very young when I started to think about leaving home. In fact, I was barely in grade school. I remember waking up late at night while everyone else was asleep, tiptoeing through the dark hallway, and positioning myself backwards on what seemed to me at the time to be an enormous muddy colored couch so that I could look out of our front window. I would pull back the thick gray curtains to expose the empty street outside, and the cold light of the street lamps that gave me no sense of safety. But I wanted that danger. I wanted to be out there in the world; free of the structured, boring, and everyday life I now lived.
I wanted to experience everything for myself. I didn’t want to be told how the world worked. I wanted to experience all that the world had to offer and I wanted to do it by myself.
As life went on and my family moved from one place to another my nightly views changed also. This time my view was from a kitchen window and it was much more interesting. I would still get up for my nightly excursions but instead of an empty, dark street I had a view of half of the lower east side of the city.
There were lights everywhere. I could see the headlights from the cars moving along the freeway. I could see lights from houses, street lamps, and parking lots. But the most distant of all those lights was what caught my eye. It was off by itself. It was a bright orange glow kind of like the glow of a large street lamp in the parking lot of a market. I would stand at that kitchen window and wonder what was out there. Could it be an empty parking lot or maybe a farmer’s market? Was there someone, some shady character standing underneath that light? What was going on out there on the outskirts of town? I wanted to find out.
When I was finally old enough to drive I knew I would find the source of that orange glow. Late one night I left my parents house and headed for that side of town. I drove out of the “good” side of town and across the railroad tracks to the “scary” side of town. It really was scary. There were strange men standing next to the road glaring at me as I passed them by. As I drove with the window open I noticed even the air smelled strange there. It smelled like a busted sewer line.
I made it to the southernmost part of town and found the orange lights at last. But I was disappointed to say the least. It was just an old dilapidated truck stop. The outside was painted white, but the paint had long since faded and peeled away in some places. There was a gas station, but it too looked like it had been there since the early fifties. I left disappointed, but I learned an important lesson that night about life. It just took me another ten years to understand what that was.
When high school was over I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer, so I joined the Navy. I wanted to be free of my parents, free of my friends, and free of that town. I can still remember the day I left. I remember the tears on my mother’s cheeks as she drove me to the recruiter’s office. I remember the soldier who drove me to the bus station. His crisp, clean navy blue uniform with the colored bars decorating his left chest showed a sense of pride and honor in his chosen profession. I wanted that same sense of pride.
After I’d been in a little while I learned what military service was really like. It was hiding in muddy ditches for days at a time waiting for an attack. It was climbing through barbed wire in the pitch black dark. It was wearing thick, sweaty gear and a suffocating mask to keep out the tear gas that the higher ups thought was necessary for training. It was working for three days straight without sleep to repair a busted water main. I remember how tired and muddy I was after that. My job was to take a wheelbarrow full of concrete down into a ditch to cover up the repaired pipe. What I had to do to accomplish this was to kind of take the wheelbarrow with both hands and sort of slide down the side of the ditch with it. When I reached the pipe I would use my feet as breaks and then let go of the wheelbarrow. Needless to say I was quite a mess when I finally finished my job.
Then there was my time in Spain. I learned a lot from that experience about how things really weren’t what they seemed. Spain is a beautiful country if you don’t look too close. When you get down into the alleyways and streets right outside of the American base it isn’t too pretty. That’s where it all happens. That’s where the soldiers get drunk and wander into questionable tattoo parlors. That’s where soldiers cheat on their wives back home with seedy prostitutes. That’s where they pass out in the streets and have to be carried back home. The streets there are filled with dreck and waste.
That’s what I really thought of Spain once I had been there. It was just like that truck stop back home. In fact, my whole experience with the military was just like that truck stop. I’m not saying that I’m not proud of my service, but behind that crisp navy blue uniform with all the shiny medals and ribbons is a filthy camouflage blouse.
Contributor’s Note: I am currently a full time student at Cerro Coso Community College. I mostly like to paint, but I also like to write quite a bit now and then.
No comments:
Post a Comment