My Summer Working in the Connecticut Tobacco Fields: And Other Commentaries

By John Veteran

This book contains a collection of four memoirs by Dalton Henson, who was the protagonist in John Veteran's three novels, along with some miscellaneous "nonsense and trivia." John Veteran is the pen name of an author who wishes to remain anonymous. Now 78 years old, the author recently retired from a 49-year career as reporter/photographer/editor for small weekly newspapers in the Southern USA. Prior to that, at the age of 24, he was drafted into the U.S. Army during LBJ's "Vietnam buildup" in September 1966. He served for two years, including the second year in Vietnam. After being discharged, he worked on a novel for a year. Unable to find an agent or publisher, he began his newspaper career. His previous books (all self-published) include three novels--The Friendly Stranger + Lead Me, My Shepherd; A Would-Be Adventurist's Quest for Combat; and Three Novels by Dalton Henson--and a book of political, philosophical; and social commentaries, The Downside of Eternal Life and Other Commentaries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664133426

John Veteran

Author Bio: Coming Soon

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Copyright © 2020 by John Veteran.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

The front cover photo is of the author working as a dragger in a tobacco field in Connecticut during the summer of 1957. The reason his hair is curled is that the tobacco plants emitted a sticky substance which produced that result. It could not even be washed out with soap and water.

Rev. date: 09/28/2021

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CONTENTS

I My Summer at a Tobacco Work Camp in Connecticut

II How I Overcame Odds of Billions-to-One To Exist

III March 27, 1954 Was, Arguably, the Best Day of My Life

IV The Prospect of Boloing Terrified Fort Benning Trainees

V Band Played an Inappropriate Song During UDC Convention

VI Some Miscellaneous Nonsense and Trivia

VII The Sad Fate of the Kham Duc Airstrip

VIII A Scenic but Bumpy Ride to Kontum

IX A Technology-Impaired Reporter’s Struggles with Computerphobia

X Why Not an Alternate-Universe ‘Titanic’ with a Happy Ending?

XI Midnight Meditations: How Can My Mind Surprise Itself?

XII Penny Change Was a Nuisance For Young 1950s Movie-Goers

XIII Winter Trip to Binghamton Was a Foot-Numbing Ordeal

XIV My Lifelong Mystery, as Yet Unsolved: Who Are Dodie and Beal?

XV Memories of Baseball’s ‘Golden Age’—1950-1969

I

My Summer at a Tobacco Work

Camp in Connecticut

By Dalton Henson

In the latter part of my freshman year at Bentley High School in central Florida in 1957, a friend of mine, George, told me he was going to spend the summer in Connecticut at a camp where the campers worked in shade tobacco fields. His mother had gotten a job as a cook at the camp, which recruited teenagers from Florida to attend. He asked me if I would like to join him, and gave me a camp brochure to look over.

Although the prospect of attending the camp otherwise instilled a feeling of dread in me, there was one thing in the brochure that caught my attention in a positive way: The camp would have a basketball team which would play games against other camps on the weekends. At age 14, I was 6 feet 2 inches tall, and playing basketball was my number-one passion. Thus, I agreed to attend the camp, despite my misgivings.

We were scheduled to leave around mid June, and as the date approached, my feelings would alternate between being excited about playing on the camp basketball team (I didn’t have any doubt that I would be good enough to be a star player), and dread about working in the tobacco fields and having to meet and associate with new people.

I need to explain here that I was a very emotionally disturbed adolescent, after having been a very emotionally disturbed child. I was severely affected by what today would likely be called social anxiety. I always felt tense and ashamed when associating with anyone outside of my small circle of friends.

I have extensively self-psychoanalyzed myself, trying to understand why I was that way, but will only give a brief summary here. When I was born on July 30, 1942, my father was with the Seabees in the Pacific Theater. My mother was living in an apartment in Savannah with her oldest sister and brother-in-law. I never saw my father until I was three years and four months old, when he returned home from the war, and by then I had developed an intense loving relationship with my mother, and I resented his intrusion on that relationship.

We moved to Bentley, Florida, where my parents had lived before the war. I never felt any love for my father, and would always feel tense in his presence, despite his efforts to try to make me like him. In later years, I might add, I came to greatly admire and respect him. But still, I never felt any love. Thus, I attributed my social anxiety to my weak relationship with my father.

I was an only child, by the way.

At any rate, at the age of 14, as I was waiting to go to Connecticut, I had never had a girlfriend or been on a date. Although I liked—or had a crush on—various girls as I was growing up, I lacked the self-confidence to ever ask one to go out with me.

When I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade, my mother and the mothers of my friends decided it was the proper time for us to start dancing, and I was often invited to dances. However, the thought of dancing caused me to feel very tense and ashamed, and I refused to go, even though Mama would try her best to persuade me to—even telling me that if I didn’t start going to dances, and such things, people would begin to think that I was not right.

We were going to travel to Connecticut on a Greyhound bus, which would start out in Tampa, where the vast majority of the campers lived. The bus would not stop in Bentley, so my parents had to drive me to Brookston, twenty miles to the south, to get on it. Night was falling when we arrived. George and his mother were there, and also one more boy from Bentley, who was a year older than us.

The bus was nearly filled to capacity with teenage boys and girls from Tampa, but George and I found two adjacent empty seats where we sat together. It was brightly lit, and there was a lot of talking and laughing. The campers were ages 14-18, so George and I were the youngest age.

The bus set out again, and after a few minutes a boy sneezed—or pretended to sneeze: Ah, shit! The camp director, Mrs. Howell, sitting at the front of the bus, stood up and turned around and asked, Who sneezed a bad word? No one responded, and Mrs. Howell sternly warned that there would be dire consequences for anyone caught doing such as that.

We passed through Bentley and I realized we were really on our way. I was wishing I was back home watching television.

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Our destination was the town of Melrose, Connecticut, on the outskirts of which our camp, Camp Melhurst, was located next to a two-lane road. The camp was also near the town of Broad Brook, which was about two miles from Melrose.

As I write this account in 2020, at the age of 78, I have the luxury of being able to search the internet and find that the distance between Brookston, Florida (our departure point) and Melrose, Connecticut is 1,225 miles, and the estimated driving time is 18 hours and 26 minutes. Of course there were no interstate highways in 1957, so I would think perhaps we made the trip in about 20 hours. We left Brookston at about 8 p.m., so that would mean we arrived at the camp at about 4 p.m. the next day.

I only recall two things about our trip. The first was our stop at the bus station in Washington, D.C. There was a lunch counter with stools, and my friend George sat on a stool to order something. As he was waiting, a black man sat on the stool next to him.

Having been raised in the segregated South, I was shocked. I supposed George was uneasy about that development, so I walked over to him and said, Hey, George! Come here a minute, like I had something important to show him.

He got up and we walked away together. He said, Thanks for rescuing me.

Like I say, such was the mentality of someone raised in the segregated South.

The other thing I remember was when we passed by New York City. We were quite a long distance away but could see the skyscrapers in the distance. It was a fascinating site.

Before proceeding any further, I need to explain a little physical problem (or maybe it was more of a psychological