Q: What year was this? 1957?

A: It was the Class of '57. I enlisted 21 December 1956.

Q: And if you didn't enlist you would be drafted?

A: Yes.

If you were drafted, you had to serve in the Army for two years.

You could enlist in the Army for three years and get your choice of MOS.

If you enlisted in any of the other branches it was four years. But you could ask for an MOS, and if you were qualified, and they had an opening, you would get it.

To be in the band you had to pass an audition.

But when you passed the audition you were already a five-level.

Q: Did you audition for the band?

A: Yes. I failed the audition. I didn't know the drum rudiments and I couldn't sight-read very well.

Q: So you enlisted in the Air Force and took pot luck on a tech school?

A: Yes. I didn't want to be drafted, and be an infantryman.

I thought the Air Force would send me to tech school.

Computers. Missiles. Jet aircraft engines.

Q: If you didn't enlist you would be drafted. Into the Army.

A: Yes. It was something all men faced, growing up.

At least, in 1956.

Later, if you went to college you were given a deferment.

Vice President Cheney got several deferments.

President Bush joined the Air National Guard.

During Vietnam, joining the Air National Guard was a way to stay out of Vietnam. But it was hard to get into.

Your father had to pull strings for you.

Q: Would your father have pulled strings for you?

A: Quite the opposite.

If I broke the law, he thought I should pay, like anybody else.

He thought avoiding military service, in time of war, was unconscionable.

Q: Did you think so?

A: Yes.

I went.

I served.

Q: Not in combat.

A: No.

I would have gone. I was not sent. I am a Vietnam era veteran.

Not all Vietnam-era veterans served in Vietnam.

And Vietnam was my second hitch.

I reenlisted to get the GI Bill.

The GI Bill was the only way I could afford to go to college.

I could have been sent. I wasn't.

And all during the Cold War there were little flare-up conflicts. We were in a constant state of readiness. We were training to be ready.

We thought that without a strong military to defend us the aggressors would attack.

Q: Who's we, in we thought?

A: The culture.

The culture thought.

It was the zeitgeist.

It's what people thought.

One thought it.

One was socialized to think it.

I thought it.

Why would I think otherwise?

I didn't have any other experience to evaluate my knowledge against. When I went in the Air Force I was 17 years old. My head was filled with propaganda from the military-industrial complex. Then I was indoctrinated by a cadre of professional career military personnel. I didn't have contrary evidence. Direct, firsthand experience. All I had was the zeitgeist.

Before Vietnam and after Vietnam were different. In America.

An innocence was lost, in Vietnam, and Watergate, and the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), the White House plumbers, G. Gordon Liddy and his crazed schemes that were too bizarre even for John Mitchell.

A faith in the common good was lost, the social contract, the shared burden.

The shared sacrifice.

In Vietnam, some sacrificed, some took advantage.

Now, the men who took advantage are running things.

The government, and corporations.

Q: The men and the women who wanted to play the lead in the class play.

A: Yes.

They would step on somebody else's throat to get what they wanted.

Maybe it was always that way.

But now, they aren't even ashamed of themselves.

The business schools, and law school, teach them how.

It's dog eat dog. Eat or be eaten.

Q: And you think it wasn't that way during McCarthyism.

A: It wasn't that way at our house.

Sure it was that way.

My father said, "Don't you be that way."

And he lived the sermon in his life. Not with his lips.