Reflections

By William H. White

Reflections represents the third book by William White and could very well be his best literary work of the three. Those readers who have enjoyed his past two writings about lost treasures and adventures will not be disappointed with this book; at least from the adventure story point of view that is. The reader will find this book easy to read and extremely entertaining with pages filled with adventure similar to True Stories of the Southwest and Tales of the Caballos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479707157

William H. White

Author William White refers to himself as a blatant curmudgeon much like his protagonist in "Genie." His many years as a humanist celebrant or counselor may indicate otherwise. For example, officiating at weddings, memorials, hole-in-one ceremonies, and other important Homo sapiens rituals. He and wife, Isabel (Bell), have resided in North Florida for four decades. Also like Darrell Manning, with some adjustment difficulties he hopes to overcome eventually. "Hope's Fool," an earlier work by White, was written as the millennium rolled in, and he's quick to comment that it could have been written last week. Events flash by in a blur, he says, and people tend to leave heel marks across the pages of time. In "Genie" he's spun a tale reflecting this strength and vulnerability.

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Copyright © 2012 by William H. White.

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-4797-0715-7

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowlegements

An American CreedBy Dean Alfange

Boonville

Farmersville

Freddie Steele

The Lettuce Patch

Colorado

Route 66

Hawaii

Vietnam

Marine Corps Justice

The Bible And The Bullet

Harry Mosian

America After 9-11

The Final Curtain

Binge Drinking

Truth Or Consequences

FOREWORD

This book is composed of a selected group of stories ranging from childhood events of interest as well as some needful stories of the Vietnam Experience. For those of you looking for tales of combat, this may not be the type of book you will enjoy. This writing contains stories dealing with the events of the times leading up to the Vietnam War from the point of view of those of us subject to the draft. It was a time of great brutality inflicted upon the American Youth as well as a time of double standards applied to those children of wealth and privilege who were able to honorably side step this conflict, then move on with their lives as if they had done their honest share in the defense of America.

This is not a depressing book of gloom and doom but rather a collection of stories about a youth growing up in the fifties and sixties in rural America. The Vietnam stories are a minor part of this work but the effect of this conflict upon yours truly and many others like myself, make these stories an integral part of this writing. It is my sincere wish that those of you who read this work will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recalling most of those events of long ago and committing them to text.

Sincerely,

William H. White

Author

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

To all of you who encouraged me commit these accounts to manuscript at a time when many of these stories were painful to remember, I thank you. It should be mentioned here that there are many other narratives included in this writing that were joyous in their remembrance and they more than offset the lingering pain of those events of forty two years past. No one should dwell in the past, as it is both self-destructive and inwardly retreating to all who tarry there too long. By telling these stories of the Vietnam Experience I have resurrected them and given them a proper burial and more importantly, a last farewell.

It is never too late to begin life anew as this sixty four year old senior citizen can attest. What began as a means of conveying those feelings and emotions shared by the majority of the American Youth in the sixties and seventies has come full circle and become a new vocation for yours truly and for that I am humbly grateful. To those with too many names to remember individually, who gave me the emotional energy to complete these stories, this book is dedicated to all of you.

Lastly and most importantly, to all of those kindred spirits who have traveled life’s journey while seldom taking the high road, this book is especially for you.

The Author

AN AMERICAN CREED

By Dean Alfange

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon, if I can. I seek opportunity . . . not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenge of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stable calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence or my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself; enjoy the benefits of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, This I have done. All this is what it means to be an American.

BOONVILLE

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There is a community by this name in Northern California near Mendocino to the west and Ukiah to the east in a valley named Anderson. It is in the heart of those Coastal Redwood Forests that flourish with such great profusion in that region of California. It was here that I began school in the first grade. There is not a lot I remember about this place other than at first, I could not understand my fellow classmates due to a local language barrier that existed here. Those clever residents of Boonville had devised a language of their own for the purpose of speaking to one another without their children or strangers knowing what they were talking about. The bad news about this was that their children soon picked up this garble and began using it with the same frequency as their parents. Fortunately, the local schoolteacher did not share this affliction and that is perhaps the only thing that saved me from illiteracy back then. I was just six years old and with the resilience of youth, I soon cracked their code and was garbling Boonville Speak with the best of them. My older sister and brother were also immersed in this new language, until our mother and father stamped their collective feet and forbade the use of this Pigeon English language at home. However, that did not prevent us from using this speaking code while out of earshot of those two big meanies. I must confess that I could not remember a word of that stuff today and I am still amazed that it existed at all in 1949. With mass communication and global news casting, one can be assured that not only does this colloquial language no longer exist but the peculiar accent of those residents of Boonville has vanished as well. In my younger days I could tell almost to the county that one hailed from by their unusual voice inflections but that is no longer true. This country is becoming truly homogenous thanks once again to the mass media.

I would make one observation about those schools of Boonville in 1949. When we were learning to write we used inkwells and ink pens that needed to be dipped into the ink well for additional ink while writing our letters. I am not making this up, that is what we had to work with in 1949 and we thought nothing of it at the time. Later on in school, we would use pencils and disposable ink pens similar to those in use today.

I can also assure the reader that regardless of what they may have heard or have been told by their parents, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I know this from personal experience. While in the first grade in Boonville, California, I had the opportunity to investigate one of those rainbows that happened to end on the school playground. I can assure all of you that there is simply no truth in this pot of gold rumor. This was a revelation to me who, up to this point, thought that older people always told the truth. This was to be a life lesson that I would never forget. Only an Irishman could have thought up something as barmy as this rainbow and pot of gold story.

Our entire family caught Polio while living in Boonville, California. It was much like a terrible case of flu with high fevers, diarrhea and vomiting. It lasted for the better part of two weeks and the recovery time was very slow for everyone. My older brother needed to be hospitalized due to this misfortune and was gone for six months or so, to one of the many children’s hospitals available then. When he came home, I noticed that he had not grown during this time and I was now taller than him. This was only a temporary thing as he immediately began to play catch-up and was soon restored to his normal height and weight. I, on the other hand had received a hidden malady from that Polio bout that would cause much pain and discomfort later on in life. My left leg would be a full half-inch shorter than my right one. This was a condition that went unnoticed until I eventually obtained my full height. This circumstance also caused me to walk on the side of my foot and roll my toes with each step taken. It also was responsible for my appearance of being bowl-legged, a condition that I accepted as an accident of birth until the true cause was finally revealed. In later years as my weight increased, the bones in my foot were no longer able to continue unaffected by this condition. Inflammation and pain became continuous at that stage of my life but like so many other maladies, I have learned to live with it in order to be able to move around and function normally.

Anderson Valley was a picturesque place that has surely been discovered by those Bay Area New Rich, and the logging industry that flourished there before, has no doubt been long since terminated by those granola-crunching environmentalists of California. I am only guessing, but if previous history of those rural venues of California are true to form, property values will be so high now in Boonville, California, that only the very rich can afford to live there. What a pity. The less fortunate members of our society are soon forced to move elsewhere, but just where is elsewhere to be found? This author has no answer for this Twenty-First Century blight over the land. The locusts of money and privilege have been indulging in a hedonistic feeding frenzy while stripping the land bare of affordable housing. Not just in California but everywhere across America, this is happening and where or when it will finally end is anybody’s guess. The question comes to mind: Just how long will conscientious Americans allow this trend to continue at the expense of those vanishing rural residents? This author is merely an observer, not a magician although sometimes it would be nice to be a magician, if just for a little while.

FARMERSVILLE

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My family moved to this community when I was in the fourth grade of grammar school and I would actually remain there until eventually graduating from the eighth grade. I say this because up to this time in my life our family was constantly on the move, never staying in one place for any extended period of time. Being in the fourth grade, I had not yet come to resent the constant moving as my older siblings did. I remember well that first day of school when I was amazed to find that it was permissible to come to school barefooted. Up to this point, in my experience, coming to school without wearing shoes was simply not done. It would be several years later when a satisfactory explanation for this anomaly was finally given to me. The community of Farmersville, California, was then primarily a settlement of Dust Bowl Migrants from Oklahoma, Arkansas or Texas with a dusting of Hispanics from Old Mexico. This community was a haven for the poor, whose children had no shoes, or perhaps just one pair, which would only be worn on Sundays or other special occasions. I enjoyed this new freedom immensely and it never occurred to me that shoes were a luxury that not everyone could afford. There was no school bus service in Farmersville and all the children walked to and from school, sometimes several miles each way. Both of my big toes were continually scabbed over from the constant stubbing that went on during these walks to and from school.

There were two schools in this community with Hester Elementary School having grades first through fourth, then G L Snowden Elementary School with grades fifth through eighth. The schooling was excellent in Farmersville and it was here that I gained mastery over the English language as well as basic Mathematics. All of those abilities I acquired in grammar school have served me well throughout the years and I can still clearly see the image of my eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Mills, in my mind’s eye. It was a time when fundamental communication skills were taught in the public schools without all the special programs and new teaching theories that exist today. Phonics was still taught throughout most of the backward schools then and everyone fortunate enough to be taught using this method learned to read, write and spell with proficiency. Penmanship was also emphasized and unreadable writing, like misspelled words, was simply never tolerated.

I was too young to notice anything different about my fellow students and in retrospect, perhaps there was no difference. My background was equally as humble as those classmates of mine and in some respects even humbler. My father had spent a goodly part of his younger life on an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma, and then eventually migrated to California on a freight train when he was just eighteen years old. My mother, on the other hand, was raised on a farm near Corcoran, California, although I could not tell the reader just where that farm was located.

The thing I remember most about my early years in Farmersville was that it was always dangerous to be out by one’s self when the older children were on the prowl. There was a meanness abiding in the majority of these older street urchins, in that they could seldom pass up an opportunity to inflict bodily harm to those smaller than themselves. I suppose that this was normal for the times, but my experience was that the older children took special delight in the distress of the younger ones much like a sadist would enjoy torturing his victims. Why this was so, who can say? Perhaps it was the upbringing of this migrant population that encouraged this type of behavior. If children were beaten by their parents or older siblings, this could become a blueprint for aberrant behavior when away from their homes and parental supervision. There was seldom any punishment given for this sadistic conduct, which served to encourage this activity even more.

At an early age I learned the rules of this community well. It was always flight or fight and this Oakie boy was never noted for his running speed. I gained a reputation early on for fighting and I discovered that I was actually quite good at it. We all like to do those things that we do exceptionally well but my claim to fame was dubious at best. I took no pleasure in the beating of helpless human beings but neither could I pass up the opportunity to engage in a contest of physical skill when it was offered. I practiced this talent regularly and continually increased my bag of tricks through personal experience or observation of others. In Farmersville, California, this was acceptable behavior in the 1950’s and it was not uncommon to see two adults having a go at each other in the middle of the street. This would normally attract a large crowd of spectators if it were a protracted engagement, with the winner going home and the loser receiving medical treatment as needed, then also going home. As a rule, no one called the police but if the police actually were called, there were seldom any arrests made provided that there were no deadly weapons used and no significant