Cannon Fodder

By Steve Burton

Cannon Fodder is a true story of a young crippled boy from
a small town in Utah, who ended
up a victim of false arrest and
imprisonment by his own country.
It speaks to some of the excesses
of the U.S. government during the
war in America that coincided with
the war in Vietnam. Stories and
observations made while playing
drums in a rock and roll band in the
fifties and sixties for the beatniks
and hippies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462898688

Steve Burton

Steve obtained an attorney when he got back to Utah and pursued a claim against the Army for false imprisonment and false arrest. A final review of this action by a former Supreme Court justice for the State of Utah revealed that the government has sovereign immunity in these types of cases. Had Steve resisted the haircut at Fort Carson and been beaten with the billy clubs, he would have had a case. Steve went to work for the government, in lieu of joining the Weathermen, in order to try to change the system from within. He continued to play music, helping to form a group in Utah called Back Home. Back Home eventually toured all over the western U.S., Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Alaska, finally coming to rest in the San Francisco Bay area. Steve lived in the Silicon Valley for twenty years, where he worked for the government for twenty years. He followed his grand kids to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2000. He has written two books, “Cannon Fodder” and “Back Home”. Steve continues working as a Construction Inspector for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service at four Refuges within 100 miles of Las Vegas and plays music when he can.

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Copyright © 2011 by Steve Burton.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4628-9867-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-9868-8

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Contents

Prologue

Cannon Fodder

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From Websters New World Dictionary

Glossary

(The Truth About The Party In The Desert)

Follow-Up

PROLOGUE

About 120 miles South of Salt Lake City, Utah is the City of Price, Utah. It lies in the center of Carbon County, a bastard county in the center of the theocracy, which is the State of Utah. This occurred because of the coal mines, which brought immigrants from all over the world to mine the coal. The rest of Utah was settled by the Mormon pioneers, and the religion dominated, but not in Carbon County. That is the setting in which this story begins.

CANNON FODDER

1950—Price Utah

Stephen, what’s wrong with your leg—why are you limping?

I don’t know mom, it just hurts when I walk.

I was six years old and would be starting school that year. I was looking forward to that event because my Aunt May had been preparing me for that day for a long time. She was the world’s best first grade teacher. She had given me my first dictionary, an animal book, a golden book encyclopedia and a bible. I had played with flash cards at her home for as long as I could remember and I knew all of the safety songs like let the ball roll and walk up to the kind policeman, which we had sung together as she played the piano. She had explained that she probably would not be my teacher at school because of potential conflict of interest, although she used different words to explain it.

(Harry Truman authorized the first ten million dollars to begin the U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese civil war, as requested by France, who had lost face there)

I was far removed from the important events of the day like the people who were blacklisted by the house unamerican activities committee, the atomic bomb testing grounds near Las Vegas, Nevada and the people getting rich from the uranium frenzy running rampant throughout southeastern Utah. These were big ticket items. Almost all of the families in Carbon and Emery counties spent their weekends on the desert looking for uranium with gieger counters. My dad and my uncle turned out to be fairly successful prospectors. However, when it came time to put up the money to develop their claims, my dad bailed out and signed over his interests to my uncle. I remember my cousin and I playing with all of the pretty yellow rocks which my Uncle would bring home after his excursions into the desert.

Now something was wrong with my leg and we needed to find out what it was. I had learned to ski the winter before at the age of five and had no health problems, except for flat feet, for which I had to do marble excersizes (walking around barefoot with marbles gripped in your toes). The first thing that the doctor’s checked for was polio-this was before vacinne, but that was not the problem. The diagnosis was finally made as perthes disease. Leg perthes occurs primarily in young boys between the ages of six and eight and at that time neither the cause nor the cure was known. In my case, the top of the left thigh bone which rests within the hip socket had begun to dissolve away, leaving an empty space where it had been.

I was fitted with a long straight iron brace for the left leg, which allowed it to hang in suspension and a big shoe for the right leg to make up the difference. This was how I reported to school for my first day as the crippled boy. I still didn’t get to have Aunt May for my teacher, but she did pick me up most mornings and drive me to school and I could have lunch with her most days. She had a great ant farm in her classroom and it was fun to watch the industrious ants do their thing. I usually had a box of wild cherry cough drops in my pocket and with those I could buy rides on the back of this enormous girl named Sherry Peterson at recess. One cough drop was good for one ride around the school grounds. All of the other boys were busy playing king of bunker hill, which could get pretty rough.

Then in the third grade there came another milestone event in my life—the Virginia Reel. The class was to put on a show for the parents and the other classes and it was decided that this would be a square dance complete with costumes and a caller. Guess who got to be the caller? This was my first venture into show business and I rose to the occasion and got over mike fright at the age of eight.

2

What happened that next summer was a bona fide miracle. All during these three years I had been traveling to Salt Lake City periodically to be checked out by Doctor Pemberton. His office was in the Boston building in downtown Salt Lake. This was the tallest building I had ever seen and what’s more, it had elevator’s. There was nothing like this in Price at all. All Carbon County had was coal mines and dinosaurs. Usually after my checkups we would visit Liberty Park or the State Capitol Building and then stop by and visit with my mom’s friend Selma. On the way to Selma’s house we had to drive by the old Utah State Prison—boy, that was a scary place! It looked like a medival castle with armed guards looking down at you from the turrets. On each of these office visits I would have X-rays of my hip and we would put them up on the screen and discuss what we saw. I had watched the top half of my thigh bone completely disappear and slowly turn around and start to grow back, all the while diligently keeping the weight off by using the brace or sometimes crutches. I had also turned into the hopskotch champion of my school. Suddenly on this visit, Dr. Pemberton told me to remove the brace and walk toward him holding on to the hand rails in his office. Then he had me do it again without the hand rails. I did this and he told me to go home and throw the brace away because I didn’t need it any more.

Fortunately my parents had foreseen this miracle. I had spent practically every day at the City swimming pool from the time it opened in the spring until it closed in the fall. I would go on my crutches and then leave them at the edge of the pool. I would stay in the water for hours; because in there I was equal to everyone else. It was only later, when I became a working parent myself, that I understood my father’s dedication and belief in the miracle. He came home from work every night, lay me on the bed and worked out the muscles in my leg. Somehow he knew that the bone would heal. He knew that the muscles would atrophy if not kept in shape and ready to resume their activity.

We didn’t wait until we got home to throw away the brace. We left the Boston Building and went immediately to a shoe store and purchased my first pair of low top shoes. I had to learn to walk all over again. Before we left Salt Lake City, we went to a park in the center of town called Liberty Park. My grandmother was with us along with a young lady who she was caring for named Dorothy. At the park, Dorothy and I were allowed to get into a row boat and row out into the lake—she was older so she manned the oars and I sat in the bow. Well she managed to lose both of the oars and there we were adrift on the lake without a paddle (variation on a well-known phrase). My parents and my grandmother were on the shore shouting instructions and jumping up and down and I sat calmly in the boat enjoying the new adventure. After all, this was the first day of the rest of my life as a two-legged person. Needless to say I had been rather protected up to this point. A couple of guys in another boat came to our rescue and pushed us to the island in the center of the lake so we could get out of the boat. They then went to retrieve the oars and brought them and my dad to the island so he could row us back. Then it was time to return to Price. That brace, big shoe and crutches hung in our garage for a long time before we finally threw them out.

The other thing that happened that summer was Moose. Moose was the little league baseball team that accepted this former crippled kid into their ranks as a rookie right fielder. I usually got to play during the last inning when we were either winning big or losing big—no close games. My coach was a young guy named Jerry Leonard and the assistant coach was Mario Lopez. Jerry was also a drummer and Mario was a sax player. The importance of those facts will become clear later. Jerry had broken his leg during a football game in high school or college, I forget which, and because it had not healed correctly, had his leg amputated. He developed leukemia that summer and died. So at eight years old I attended my first funeral. The entire team sat across the front row of the Price 4th ward in uniform and told him goodbye—Mario sat with us and we all cried our eyes out.

3

Not only did I have new legs but I was entering a new school that fall—the Harding half of Harding-Central Elementary. This is where the big kids went and now I could also play king of bunker-hill, though I seldom won. I also played kick ball and dodge ball and violin. Yes, violin!

Aunt May took piano lessons from Apollo Hansen, who looked like Beethoven, and she and my dad encouraged me to sign up for violin lessons in the fourth grade. Here was the deal. If you play violin for three years then you can choose whatever instrument you want when you reach Junior High. My violin teacher was none other than Apollo Hansen and I hated all three years of it, except for the girls. All of my fellow violin and cello students were the prettiest girls in school and even then I was beginning to notice. The other boys tended to play band instruments rather than orchestra and weren’t considered to be refined. They also didn’t get to spend their time with girls, unless you count the ugly ones who played clarinet.

I remember walking with the girls along leaf-laden streets carrying our violins on our way to augment the Junior High orchestra because they didn’t have enough players. I practiced for hours to master the art of holding my bow just above the strings and bowing like mad without making a sound so I wouldn’t interrupt the serious players. Apollo would smile down at me playing away on the front row and I would smile back, all the while glancing sideways into the audience for the beaming faces of Aunt May and my mom and dad. This was during performances. At rehearsal, it was well known that I was too shy to play anything by myself, but Apollo assured my benefactors that I was doing well because the proof was in the performances. I pulled this off for three years.

Then one day a guy I knew from school, Jerry Jensen, asked me if I wanted to carry his drum home for him. He lived past my neighborhood on a farm at the outskirts of town in an area called Carbonville. He carried my violin and I strapped on his snare drum. He showed me how to hold the sticks and I played that drum all the way to his house; then after some milk and cookies, I walked back to town with my violin. This became a fairly regular pattern for us and the next year, when I entered Junior High, I announced my choice of instruments to dad and Aunt May. Even though they were somewhat shocked, the deal was honored. Aunt May purchased a white pearl snare drum and case, complete with stand, and my dad talked to Jimmy Dart.

The Jimmy Dart Orchestra was the best band in town and usually played for all of the Junior High and High School dances as well as most of the Gold and Green Balls. Jimmy Dart worked with my father at Redd Motor Co. and he was married to the boss’s daughter, Ruth. Ruth also played in the Jimmy Dart Orchestra most of the time and she was the piano player. Jimmy Dart is the best drummer that I’ve ever seen, including me. The story was told about Jimmy, that he won a national drumming contest as a young man and was invited to join some of the biggest names in the business. He is also a good Mormon and felt that the life of a professional musician was in conflict with his religion. That was good news for me because now I needed a teacher. My dad talked to Jimmy about me and he agreed to meet with me to discuss it.

This was 1957 and Elvis was fresh, the Everly Brothers were great and the Beatles hadn’t happened yet. The Ventures and Duane Eddy were playing strictly instrumentals and Topsy Part I & II gave way to Sandy Nelson’s Drums Are My Beat.

Jimmy explained to me that he had given up on teaching drums to young people because they usually took one or two lessons from him and then got together in a garage with their friends and thought that they were making music instead of noise. He made me a deal. If I would listen to what he told me and practiced diligently, using only a practice pad, until he decided that I was ready for a drum kit; then he would teach me for no charge. Any time that I showed up for my weekly lesson and he could tell that I hadn’t practiced, I would be charged for the lesson. He started me off with the Gene Krupa Drum Method and three years later I still had not been charged for a lesson.

I’ll always remember the final night at his home. I arrived for my regular lesson and Jimmy said that he had a surprise for me. We went to his basement and there was his drum kit all set up and ready to play. Jimmy was also a hi-fi aficionado and had a great system built into his house. He had placed microphones around the drum kit and was set up to record. He said that the time had come and that I was going to play his kit that night. He showed me a few basics and instructed me on what to do with my feet. Jimmy said that he had now taught me everything that he knew and that he didn’t believe in teaching how to play a kit. The key was now to take the basics and develop a playing style unique to me, separate and apart from either Gene Krupa or Jimmy Dart.

4

In choosing to play drums instead of violin, I had also replaced Apollo Hansen with Alvin Wardle. Alvin Wardle was the band instructor at the junior high and the high school and my introduction to him was rather precarious. There was a second cousin of mine, who had come up before me in school, named Phillip Burton. Phillip had not endeared himself to Mr. Wardle and his first question to me was to inquire as to my relationship to Phillip. I had to work doubly hard to overcome Phillip’s reputation. As my drumming skills developed, through Jimmy’s lesson’s, I became more and more accepted by Mr. Wardle.

In the summers he would have a