Classes of Travel: Things I Learned and Taught Along the Way

By Edward August Schack

The memoir begins with Schack in semi-retirement working as a receptionist at the U.S. Department of State controlling access to the department headquarters during which he interacts with foreign diplomats and people of note. Schack then takes the reader back to his beginnings in the Detroit, Michigan area where he struggles in school but finds escape in theatrical and musical performances and early experimentation with recreational drugs. He is one of the last of the pre-lottery inductees into the Army and after training is assigned as a chaplain's assistant stateside during the height of the war in Vietnam. The G.I. Bill facilitates his undergraduate studies at the university where he excels and receives appointments as a graduate assistant and teaching fellow. Degrees in hand, the author is deployed with the Peace Corps to Thailand where he spends a year teaching English at a secondary school in Chiang Rai and then a second year training teachers in the four predominantly Muslim provinces in the far south of the country. After leisurely travel home through Burma, Nepal, India, Rome and London, the author moves to Washington State to teach English to newly arrived Indochinese refugees and to work for the state government. He next takes a job teaching English and basic electronics to Saudi military personnel at a military base in Taif, Saudi Arabia. The author accepts an offer of a graduate assistantship and fellowships to study International Affairs at Ohio University and The University of Michigan during which time he meets his future wife. He moves to Washington, DC to live with her and takes a job as Santa Claus at a downtown department store where he has some humorous experiences described in the memoir. He follows this mythical gig with a job as an English as a Second Language Department head and teacher at a business college while applying for federal government positions. He is hired as a Customs Inspector in San Francisco where he eventually becomes a member of the contraband enforcement team where his great success in interdicting drug smugglers led to his assignment as an international training team leader training border law enforcement personnel all around the world. His memoir describes in detail his work and other adventures in far flung parts of the world. He followed those years with some time working on bilateral issues with the governments of Mexico and Canada before leaving Customs to join his wife on her foreign service officer assignment in Thailand. The author describes his family's time there where he also starts his work with the State Department. He returns to counternarcotics work overseeing law enforcement foreign assistance to the Former Soviet Union and then is assigned to the embassy in Armenia to manage law enforcement assistance in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. This is followed by a frustrating assignment working on development of the National Police in war-torn Afghanistan. The author returns to the U.S. and to Customs under the Department of Homeland Security to develop training before transitioning back to the State Department for work at the embassy in Croatia. The memoir describes his life there and a few years later when he returns to the Balkans. The author completed his government career as an inspector for the State Department Inspector General.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350933727

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Classes of Travel

© 2023 Edward August Schack

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 979-8-35093-371-0

eBook ISBN 979-8-35093-372-7

Contents

California

Canada

Toronto, Canada

Toledo, Ohio

Fort Knox, Kentucky

Fort Huachuca, Arizona

Nogales, Mexico

Missouri

Illinois

Ypsilanti, Michigan

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

In the meantime in 1977:

Charleston, South Carolina

1978 California

Hong Kong

Bangkok, Thailand

Suphan Buri, Thailand

Sri Racha, Thailand

Chonburi, Thailand

Chiang Rai, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Cha Am, Thailand

1979

Penang, Malaysia

Lake Toba, Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

Yala, Thailand

Pattani, Thailand

Koh Samui, Thailand

1980

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Burma

Kathmandu, Nepal

New Delhi, India

Agra, India

Bombay, India

Rome, Italy

London, England

America

Washington State

1981

1982

Tampa, Florida

Charleston, South Carolina

Saudi Arabia

London, England

Taif, Saudi Arabia

Thailand

Penang, Malaysia

Phuket, Thailand

1983

Athens, Ohio

1984

1985

Ann Arbor, Michigan

1986

Washington, DC

1987

Takoma Park, Maryland

1988

Washington State

San Francisco, California

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

Oakland, California

1989

Burlingame, California

1990

Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand

1991 Calexico, California

Long Beach, California

1992

Puerto Rico

Reno, Nevada

Nevada, Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois and Michigan

Washington, DC

Hungary

San Jose, Costa Rica

Managua, Nicaragua

Beijing, China

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Michigan

1993

Miami, Florida

Costa Rica

Washington State

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC)

Malaysia

Beijing, China

Qingdao, China

Lincoln Park, Michigan

Moscow, Russia

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Istanbul, Turkey

Uzbekistan

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Athens, Greece

Jakarta, Indonesia

1994 Bolivia

China

Cambodia

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Singapore

Indonesia

Bali, Indonesia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Bangkok, Thailand

Guangzhou, China

Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Front Royal, Virginia

Japan

Detroit, Michigan

Nairobi, Kenya

Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire

Benin

Michigan

1995

Bangkok, Thailand

Laos

Bangkok, Thailand

Kenya

Tanzania

London, England

Benin

France

Vientiane, Laos

Hanoi, Vietnam

Lang Son, Vietnam

Haiphong, Vietnam

Yangon, Burma

Bangkok, Thailand

Hanoi, Vietnam

Haiphong, Vietnam

Bangkok, Thailand

Argentina

Brasilia, Brazil

Sao Paulo and Santos, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Asuncion, Paraguay

Guayaquil, Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador

1996 Benin

Ghana

Amsterdam

Accra, Ghana

Amsterdam

Michigan

Ecuador

Benin

Paris, France

Lake Michigan

Lithuania

Miami, Florida

1997 Tyler, Texas

Lake Michigan

Ottawa, Canada

Columbus, Georgia

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Denver, Colorado

Buffalo, New York

1998 Ottawa, Canada

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

Piedras Negras, Mexico

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico

Fort Worth, Texas

Nashville, Indiana

Lake Michigan

Tucson, Arizona

Seattle, Washington

Y2K

Delray Beach, Florida

Ottawa, Canada

San Diego, California

Montreal, Canada

El Paso, Texas

McAllen, Texas

1999 Fort Worth, Texas

San Francisco, California

Brownsville, Texas

New Orleans, Louisiana

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Venice Beach, California

Thailand

Ayutthaya, Thailand

2000 Chiang Mai, Thailand

Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Michigan

Maryland

Tokyo, Japan

Thailand

Beijing, China

Hanoi, Vietnam

Sukhothai, Thailand

2001

Phimai

Hua Hin, Thailand

Yerevan, Armenia

Frankfurt, Germany

Ukraine

Frankfurt, Germany

Northampton, Massachusetts

2002 Tbilisi, Georgia

Mtskheta, Georgia

Baku, Azerbaijan

Washington State

Ukraine

Germany

Monterey, California

Michigan

Michigan

2003

Michigan

Northampton, Massachusetts

Yerevan, Armenia

Tbilisi, Georgia

Baku, Azerbaijan

Michigan and Washington, DC

Tbilisi Georgia

Baku, Azerbaijan

2004 Tbilisi, Georgia

Baku, Azerbaijan

Tbilisi, Georgia

Southern Armenia

Washington DC; Michigan; and Northampton, Massachusetts

London, England

Yerevan, Armenia

Georgia and Azerbaijan

Baku, Azerbaijan

Bangkok, Thailand

Egypt

2005

Tbilisi, Georgia

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

Vienna, Austria

Michigan and Washington, DC

Vienna, Austria

Thailand

2006 London, England

Washington, DC

London, England

London, England

Washington, DC

Michigan

Kabul, Afghanistan

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Dubai and Armenia

Kabul, Afghanistan

Thailand

2007 Kabul, Afghanistan

Yerevan, Armenia

America

Yerevan, Armenia

2008

El Paso, Texas

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Roswell, New Mexico

2009 Charleston, South Carolina

Lexington, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; Roswell, Georgia; Orlando, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Southport, North Carolina

Michigan

Customs and Border Protection Attaché Jobs and Age Discrimination Complaint

Meanwhile back in 2009:

2010

2011

Niagara Falls, Canada

Sudbury, Ontario, Canada; and Sault Ste. Marie, Munising, Marquette and Traverse City, Michigan

2012

Michigan

Walla Walla, Washington

Zagreb, Croatia

Aviano and Venice, Italy

Krapina, Croatia

2013

Opatija, Croatia

Trieste, Italy

Split, Croatia

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Omiš, Croatia

Michigan

Zadar and Pag Island, Croatia

Frankfurt, Germany

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Budapest, Hungary

Istanbul, Turkey

Bangkok, Thailand

Koh Samui, Thailand

2014 Chiang Mai, Thailand

Istanbul, Turkey

Sarajevo, Bosnia

Zurich, Switzerland

Michigan

Zagreb, Croatia

2015

Aviano, Italy

Motovun, Porec, Novigrad and Pula, Croatia

Michigan

Greenville, North Carolina

2016

Michigan

Wauseon, Ohio

Athens, Ohio

2017

Williamsburg, Virginia

Michigan

2018

St. Mary’s County, Maryland

Burlington, Vermont

Washington State

2019

Michigan

Washington State

2020

2021

Belgrade, Serbia

Zagreb, Croatia

Berlin, Germany

Prague, Czech Republic

Opatija, Croatia

Zlatibor, Serbia

Pristina Kosovo

North Macedonia

Barcelona, Spain

Zagreb, Croatia

2022

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia

Timisoara, Romania

North Macedonia

Thessaloniki, Greece

Sofia, Bulgaria

Michigan

2023

As I begin this, I spend three days a week as a receptionist at the U.S. Department of State greeting visitors and providing badges to allow them access to the building. I see and sometimes chat a bit with famous or infamous people, mostly from past or present government administrations. Of late, it seems the ghosts of President Reagan have been hovering with his Secretary of Education William Bennett in for lunch with Secretary of State Pompeo one day, and Bennett’s Undersecretary Gary Bauer, another ultra-conservative who ran for President in 2000, another day. I chatted with Bauer a bit and asked his opinion of the Secretary of Education and Bauer’s friend, Betsy DeVos, and he said she is a lightning rod. I watched the Saudi Foreign Minister as he was interviewed after a ministerial meeting on ISIS. When I was checking in an activist, Rania Kisar, Christine Legarde, then Head of the International Monetary Fund (shortly thereafter President of the European Central Bank), appeared and the activist ran toward her, saying she knew her; fortunately, she did. This was the same day that Callista Gingrich appeared in the lobby, and my elderly colleague said she hated her because she slept with a married man (whom she later married: Newt). A fellow named Abramowitz appeared before me, so I asked if he was related to the Ambassador Abramowitz I met as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, and he said Mort is his uncle. On June 5, Neil Bush, the brother and son of presidents, came up to the C Street reception desk with Louis Freeh, the Director of the FBI during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. We had trouble finding their contacts in the building, so I chatted at length with both of them. They asked about my career and thanked me for my service. Bush reached over the counter to shake my hand. Freeh told me about his early days as an FBI Agent in New York before becoming a prosecutor and judge. Earlier that day the son of Ambassador Charles Twining appeared, and I told him how much I appreciated his father from my time with him in Cambodia.

Before my time on this receptionist perch and before my time at all, there were those from whom I descended.

My mother’s father, Albert Carl Skarjune, was born in Detroit in 1895, and died of cancer at the Allen Park, Michigan Veterans Hospital in 1939 at the age of 44 when my mother was just 10 years old. My grandfather received an honorable discharge from the Army after serving only from October 4, 1918 until January 1, 1919 and this apparently made him eligible for veterans’ medical benefits. Albert’s father was Fred Skarjune, who was born in Germany in 1863 and his mother was Anna Sepull, who was born in Prussia in 1855.

Albert’s brother, Frederick Adolph Skarjune, was born in Essen, Germany in 1882, so the family must have emigrated to Detroit between then and when Albert was born. Frederick Adolph had 14 children with two wives. One of Frederick Adolph’s children, Otto, is notable or perhaps ignoble for his military service. He was a U.S. Army infantry private who shipped from New York to Tientsin, China in 1929. Sixty-four years later I would be just about 300 miles southeast from there in Qingdao, also on the Yellow Sea, on the second of my five trips to China. He must have been a member of the Tientsin Garrison, the only U.S. Army forces stationed on foreign soil from 1912 to 1938. He then shipped from Ft. McDowell California to the Philippines in 1930 and was apparently among the troops sent from there to Shanghai in 1932. He was a military prisoner shipped from Chinwangtao, China to San Francisco in 1932. Otto might have been involved in the Shanghai Incident, a conflict between China and the Emperor of Japan that occurred from January 28 to March 3, 1932, during which he must have misbehaved to become a prisoner. His ship left Chinwangtao on March 10, 1932.

My mother’s mother was born Margarete Branstetter in Austria in 1891. Margarete’s father was Frank Branstetter and her mother was Anna Stelman. If Anna Stelman was Jewish, I could claim to be Jewish as a matrilineal descendent.

My mother, Dorothy Margaret Skarjune, had four brothers, one of whom, Edward Skarjune, was killed as a U.S. Marine on Guadalcanal in 1942 at the age of 19, and two sisters. Dorothy was born in 1928. She was in sightsaving classes for the years of her schooling. At that time it was thought that those with poor vision needed to be treated differently to preserve their remaining sight. I think she only completed somewhere between fifth and eighth grade. In addition to raising four sons, Dorothy had some low-paying jobs including working for a candy company filling boxes of chocolates. Her last jobs were as a security guard for her next-door neighbor, retired Wayne County Sheriff Don Megge’s security company. Dorothy and some other late-middle-aged friends of hers manned the doors at Cobo Hall in Detroit for various shows, and she was proud that she was able to keep vendors and Teamsters from entering at the wrong place. She crocheted large, colorful afghans and throw rugs and painted kitschy ceramics including porcelain dolls. She was always paranoid of people she didn’t know coming to the door of our house, and would have all of us kids hide away from the windows instead of answering the knock or bell.

My father’s father, August Schack, was born in 1884 and arrived in Baltimore from Bremen, Germany in 1902. August’s World War I registration of September 12, 1918 says on the line if not a citizen of the U.S. of what nation are you a citizen or subject, Suwalke, Russia was written. August became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1938. The 1940 census says that August completed sixth grade of elementary school. August’s registration for the draft in World War II lists his birthplace as Poland. His father’s name was Andrew and his mother was Mary Berger. August was a self-employed metalworker who designed and built railings and fences and reputedly ran a speakeasy in his basement during Prohibition.

August’s brother, Matthew Schack, was born in 1873 and died in 1919 from a fractured skull due to fall from scaffold. Matthew worked as a laborer at Great Lakes Engineering Company. Matthew was the father of four children, one of whom, Edward, was the minister at Mount Hope Lutheran Church where he baptized me and conducted the marriages of my parents and members of my extended family. Edward had begun his ministerial work as a missionary in Saskatchewan, Canada. August also had three sisters.

My father’s mother was Anna Brandt. She was born in Poland in 1888, and died in 1926 when she was run over by a car when my father was three years old. Anna’s parents were Ferdinand Brandt and Marianne (Mary) Neubacher/Brandt. Mary’s father (my great-great grandfather) was August Juan Christian Neubacher, who was born in 1828 in Kaliningrad, Russia. Mary’s mother (my great great grandmother) was Christine/Krystina Balbach Neubacher, who was born in 1835 in Szillenen (Szillen/Schillen), East Prussia.

My father had two brothers. The first, Edward, was born in 1909 and died of diphtheria in 1912, eleven years before my father was born. My father had four sisters, three of whom married during the Great Depression.

My father was born in 1923. He graduated from Western High School in Detroit and reported to the military immediately after. He served in the Army in the infantry during World War II in France at, I think, St. Lo at perhaps the Battle of the Hedgerows (he once told me a story of shooting from behind bushes at the enemy behind other bushes), which occurred from July 7 to 19, 1944. My father’s battles and campaigns listed were Northern France, Normandy and Rhineland. He was a member of Company G of the 134th Infantry Regiment. He earned two purple hearts for war injuries, and other medals. He was wounded on September 10, 1944, in Nancy, France, during the Battle of Nancy which ran from September 5 to 15, 1944 and liberated the city from the Nazis; and on December 31, 1944 in Belgium. He reached the rank of Private First Class. His Army report of separation shows that he entered the Army on January 28, 1943 and got out on October 11, 1945 (24 years and 2 days before I reported to the Army) at Camp Polk, Louisiana. Ted’s civilian occupation was listed as ornamental iron worker apprentice. Ted first worked with his father’s welding business. His employment was inconsistent in the 1950s with lack of tenure and layoffs. To keep the family fed between regular jobs, Ted unloaded trucks across the street from our house on Beard, for which he had to join the Teamsters Union. His brother-in-law Billy Ewing finally got my father employed by the Chevrolet Spring and Bumper plant in Livonia, Michigan, where he stayed for 30 years. He became a tool and die maker there. My father was a religious man and he read the church – provided Portals of Prayer which was a Bible reading and prayer for the day.

My parents married in 1946 when my mother was about 17 years and 4 months old, and my father two months shy of 23.

I came along in 1950, and I would go from there to a life working in 36 countries, visiting an additional 22 countries, and working in 20 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and still counting.

The 1950 census shows that I was living in my grandfather August Schack’s house at 7035 Whittaker in Detroit, with my father, who was working as an assembler at an auto factory; my mother who wasn’t working; my brother Randy; and my father’s 25-year-old sister Emma who was working as a restaurant waitress and her 44-year-old husband Elmer Roussain. My mother’s mother and all of her surviving siblings were living 300 feet down Whittaker at number 7103. My earliest memories are, however, from the time we lived at 2225 Beard Street in Detroit in a house owned by my grandfather.

In January of 1955, two months short of my fifth birthday, I began kindergarten at Harms Elementary School. This was the same elementary school that my father attended, and it is still in use today almost a century after his time there. Around this time, I was run over by a bicyclist on Whittaker Street and broke my collar bone. For that I had to wear some kind of harness over my chest and around my arms. I suffered most of the childhood diseases of the time, including chicken pox and mumps. Most seriously, I caught the measles and whooping cough at the same time and the fever apparently caused hallucinations, which was found out when I began describing a cowboy show that I was seeing on the greenish screen of the turned-off television. My mother heard me in the adjoining room and came to investigate because she knew the TV wasn’t turned on. I was hospitalized for a short time.

Another memory from around 1955 was my finding a sharp triangle of sheet metal in the alley near my house, which I brandished at a black boy about my age who was headed to Ronnie’s party store with three empty pop bottles to cash in for two cents apiece. The boy dropped the bottles and one of them broke, after which he ran home. I took the remaining unbroken bottles to Ronnie’s and bought four cents worth of candy, one of which was probably licorice tape wrapped around a hard candy ball. When I passed back through the alley on my way home, I was met by my robbery victim, who IDed me to the woman, probably his mother, who was with him and she called me white trash.

This alley was also where we would throw rocks to try to knock off objects perched on stumps or ledges. One of my rocks went through the window of an auto repair shop which backed up on that alley. We had little sports equipment, except for my father’s old baseball mitts that had no pockets; and our sports were not organized.

My paternal grandfather continued to live just around the corner on Whittaker Street with my father’s younger sister, Emma and her next husband, Billy Ewing the boxer. Billy taught me a bit of boxing on the punching bags in their house and he took me to the gym with him to watch him spar and afterwards into the locker room where I saw naked men for the first time.

Milk was delivered from the Wayne Creamery Company by a man who drove a yellow wagon drawn by a horse. The milk man would give us kids chunks of ice to suck on. One day his horse was spooked, probably by a car backfiring, and the cart fell over and empty glass milk bottles shattered on the street. Another horse-drawn cart collected broken furniture and such put out by the residents. My mother called the man driving that cart the sheeny man and she threatened to give me to him when I misbehaved.

I had my tonsils removed and remember being told to count backwards while the ether was administered through a mask. I looked forward to the promised reward of ice cream and Vernors Ginger Ale.

I was the ring bearer at the wedding of my Aunt Margie Skarjune and Armon Ialungo when I was six years old. Here I am with the flower girl.

I was offered pizza at a restaurant the evening before the wedding, and would only eat the crust, not understanding the pie covered in tomato and cheese.

The next-door neighbor on Beard Street was a lonely man named Sonny who would give me prizes that came in his cereal boxes. I particularly remember a miniature license plate with my name Eddie on it. We would meet at the backyard fence for the exchanges.

In 1957, we moved to Lincoln Park, Michigan. My father’s brother Al sold the house to my father for $12,500. I don’t know if the changing demographics of the City of Detroit influenced my father’s decision to move us to a then all-white suburb or if he finally had the means to buy his own house and his brother’s house became available.

I was in the middle of second grade when I started school at Max Paun Elementary, where my brother Randy would later spend most of his custodian career. I apparently so impressed the teachers with my intelligence that they proposed double promoting me to have me move ahead a year, but my mother vetoed the idea.

Randy joined a Little League baseball team and broke all of the batting records. We all played sports, especially baseball, in Rosedale Park a few blocks away in Allen Park. I played on two Little League baseball teams sponsored by local businesses, but wasn’t among the best players. We also played tackle football without any protective equipment and hockey on a pond that was created in the park in the winter.

My friends and I shoplifted candy and cigarettes from local stores in our preteen years. Most of the time I just encouraged others to steal and share the loot with me.

California

In the summer of 1959, my 36-year-old father, 30-year-old mother, 11-year-old brother Randy, 9-year-old me and 4-year-old brother Gary took the train to Los Angeles to visit my father’s sister Edna and her husband Don Judson and their children and grandchildren. I spent some of the two-and-a-half travel days thinking about the Dodgers baseball team that had moved to L.A. two years earlier taking some of my favorite players west from Brooklyn. We slept on reclining seats. A young man who may have been a transiting soldier gave me a paperback book he had finished reading but I think my mother took it away because the cover was a bit racy. Edna and Don lived in a trailer camp in El Monte. During our stay in California we visited Disneyland which had opened a few years earlier in 1955, and Knotts Berry Farm, which had a replica of a ghost town and other Western attractions and amusement rides.

Canada

Other years my father would devote about one week of his vacation from work to doing things with the family. A few years we rented a cottage on Island Lake near Ann Arbor from friends of my parents. Many years we spent a day at the Michigan State Fair and another day at Boblo Island Amusement Park. We got to Boblo on the Boblo boat that we boarded at Bishop Park in Wyandotte. Boblo Island was in Canada at the mouth of the Detroit River, so it was there where I first traveled internationally.

I would ride my bike down Southfield Road to the Detroit River with a fishing pole and some worms dug up in my backyard to fish some early mornings. On a few occasions I sold the few fish I caught to another fisher for a quarter.

I was a member of the Max Paun Elementary School Safety Patrol in fifth and sixth grades, and was named safety boy of the year one year, which garnered me a trophy of a boy holding his arm up and was saddened when I knocked the trophy off its perch, severing the extended arm. I kept this amputee around for a while but it was eventually discarded. I took pride in scrubbing my canvas belt spotless, properly rolling it, and wearing it across my chest.

My Saturdays when I was 13 and 14 were partially taken up by catechism classes at Mount Hope Lutheran Church where my father’s cousin, Reverend Ed, had previously presided. Pastor Buuck was pastor and Mr. Fuhrman was the catechism teacher. I helped Fuhrman with the catechism classes when I was 15 and had already been confirmed. My role was mostly to help the class members memorize the long meanings of the commandments that they were expected to recite without error. I enjoyed a vacation bible school or two during those years, and went to the front of an evangelical revival to be further saved. I think my father hoped I would become a minister, which I think he had once aspired to become.

I had my first job at 13 or 14 delivering the Shopping News twice a week. This was a free paper that was nothing but advertising and most people didn’t want it delivered to their houses. On at least a few occasions I burned all of the papers in a barrel in my backyard to avoid having people tell me not to deliver it to their houses. This took more time than it would have to deliver the papers.

In 1965 I convinced my father to pay for guitar lessons for me. I wanted to play rock and roll, but the teacher was teaching me very basic folk songs with simple chords and strums. I probably had six or ten lessons before I gave up. I joined Mark Wolfe, Rick Campau and Mike Daraban to form the band The Marauders. Mark and Rick were better guitarists than I was, so I bought a bass guitar, Rick played rhythm guitar, Mark was the lead guitarist and lead singer and Mike played the drums.

The band members other than Mike and me changed at some point, with Bob Zakrzewski playing rhythm, Ken Corbin as lead guitarist and singer, and Billy May on keyboards for a short time. This second iteration of the band auditioned in my parents’ basement to be the band at a high school dance, and we were selected and played one dance. It was exciting playing in front of my schoolmates. We also played at an Elks Club, where we were asked repeatedly to turn down the volume until I eventually turned my electric bass off completely.

I got a Detroit Free Press paper route when I was 15 or 16. My route included the block of Mill Street where I lived and the streets on both sides of Mill. I had around 90 customers. I would deliver the paper before breakfast and school during the week. I always made less money than I should have, because customers would ask, when I went to them to collect, to let them pay the next week and then they would deny they hadn’t paid me for the previous week or weeks. Bob Athey, a friend who will reappear throughout this work, also had a Free Press route and he and I would sometimes go to the White Castle restaurant for morning burgers after delivering our papers on the weekends. One morning I borrowed the car my father had bought for my mother (which she never drove after having one scary stall in an intersection when she first got her license) to deliver my papers and fell asleep at the wheel and rolled part way up a parked car, totaling my mother’s car.

I was a very poor student in high school and failed many classes including English. I went from the college prep courses to General English, where we just wrote anything in a journal to fill pages and I think we were graded only on the volume and not the substance, which the teacher probably didn’t even read. And I failed even this class in the second semester of eleventh grade when I also failed gym (with 18 recorded absences during which I snuck out of school to play pinball). The drama and speech classes I took and enjoyed kept me going.

I was on the stage crew for the high school production of My Fair Lady with Ginger Myers, a future Miss Michigan, as Eliza Doolittle; had a few minor roles in Our Town and had a singing and dancing role as a cardplayer in the production of Fiorello.

The high school drama teacher, Jerre Harding, had me act in a scene from The Matchmaker for her stage direction class at Wayne State University.

I also acted in the group first known as the Huff Drama Club and later the Lincoln Park Festival Players run by my former junior high school English teacher, Lee Slazinski. Lee had studied at the University of Detroit and Catholic University. As a child he had appeared on the radio as a singer. He was dedicated to introducing young people in his orbit to culture and led trips to Stratford, Ontario and the Hillberry Theatre at Wayne State University to see productions of Shakespeare plays. He would provide alcohol to young people, mostly boys, who visited him at his various homes. I particularly remember enjoying daiquiris and Rhine wine. He also introduced me to foods including snails. Lee had been married and had a son, David. His ex-wife committed suicide by carbon monoxide in a car in a garage. I had some communication with David when he responded on his father’s behalf to a letter I wrote to Lee and David later informed me of his father’s death.

The first planned production I was involved in was to be staged in July of 1967. I had the title role in the one-act play The American Dream by Edward Albee and had a role in another one – act play. The production was cancelled by the race riots in Detroit. Lee Slazinski drove me home one evening during the riots and my father was waiting on the porch probably wondering where I was since there was a curfew in effect. My father made some angry remark, apparently worried that Lee was corrupting me.

It was through this group that I met Ellen Anderson, another recurring character in my life, who was another of the actors. Ellen became a playwright and worked at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

I met Jan Bohannon somewhere around this time, and the first time she took me to her house I was shocked to hear her screaming obscenities at her mother. One day she and another girl took me down into her basement where I had intercourse for the first time. Jan became a Bahai and expressed remorse for having corrupted me.

I competed in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)-sponsored Voice of Democracy speech contest and placed second, for which I was awarded a savings bond. I was the only contestant who was there without any supporters or coach.

After I graduated from high school, I got a job at the Lincoln Park Sears store in the automobile parts warehouse where we mostly loaded tires onto stationary racks and fetched them to throw down a chute to the garage. I enjoyed the physical challenge of tossing heavy tires up to my colleagues hanging on the racks or catching them. We also handled the exhaust system parts, which required carrying long, odd-shaped exhaust pipes down a narrow set of winding stairs. Everyone stole items that would show up in the warehouse, and most of my colleagues were eventually brought in by store security and fired. I also worked a while in the ceiling lighting department and my duties included installing floor samples of the fixtures in the ceiling of the department. I was shocked once or twice when I turned off the wrong circuit.

In the spring of 1968, I was in the cast of Feather Top, based on a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Wedding, by Anton Chekhov, the latter with Zora Vlcko and Nancy Hackmeier. Zora’s father was Peter Vlcko, a Slovak General who helped save Jews from the Holocaust and who wrote the autobiographical novel In the Shadow of Tyranny. Peter had me try slivovitz one day, a taste I long remembered. Nancy married a grandson of the actor Walter Slezak and taught for several years in the Ann Arbor public school system before attending law school and becoming an assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, Michigan. My parents and Aunt Wilma came to the show, which was in the round with the front row of the audience at the edge of the stage. I looked down at my father’s shoes during one of my scenes. My father paid me one of the few compliments I can remember from him when after the show he said, Nice job.

I was also in a production of You Can’t Take It With You, in which I was cast as Paul Sycamore with performances on May 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1968.

Sometime around then I bought a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. It had a manual transmission and I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, so I had someone drive it from the dealership to my house. I drove it repeatedly around the block until I learned how to use the clutch and shift gears. I drove it once to Saginaw to visit my then-girlfriend Cathy Kuster; she was disappointed I hadn’t bought something sexier. I think it was the last time I tried to see her. I had to give the car up when I went in the Army, and my father sold it for less than I still owed on it.

I started taking a few classes at Henry Ford Community College in the evenings, but found that my full-time work at Sears and my long hours constructing scenery and rehearsing my roles for the theatre group required me to abandon something and college was chosen.

I started hanging out with Al Shamie, and would drive to Ann Arbor to see his brother Ralph and others, where I was introduced to marijuana. One visit was to an apartment with a massive collection of LPs. I think a member or two of the band the MC5 lived there. The band members were originally from Lincoln Park and gained some fame for their recordings and concerts. I surprised some in Lincoln Park when I would roll joints at parties. I also took my first hallucinogenic trips then.

I wore a POW/MIA bracelet in those days with the name of Captain Martin Neuens and the date 8-12-66 on it. That was the day he was captured by the Vietnamese. In 2020, I finally did a computer search to see what had become of him. I first looked to see if his name had been added to the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, and it hadn’t. I then found several items about him that showed he had been a prisoner until 1969 and had retired from the Air Force as a colonel after 28 years.

Toronto, Canada

At the end of 1968, Bob Athey and I drove to Toronto, Canada to celebrate the changing of the year eating French onion soup and wandering down Yonge Street.

When my brother Randy was scheduled to return home from Vietnam, I went to Detroit Metro Airport to greet him. He hadn’t told us what flight he would be on, so I hung around checking all likely flights from the West Coast. He was surprised to see me when he got off the plane. We smoked a joint on the way to the house.

Toledo, Ohio

A few days later my mother told me I needed to go to Toledo, Ohio, to get Randy out of jail. He had been arrested when his drinking companion decided to drive the car they were in through a Toledo park. At the jail, I was told Randy needed to sober up before he would be released so I went outside thinking I would wait in my car. I apparently exited the building from a different place than I had entered, and couldn’t find my car where I thought it would be. After searching around the area for a while, I went back to the jail and reported the car stolen. I checked again on Randy and appealed to the officials there to let him go because he had just returned from Vietnam. They released him and we left out of the correct exit and drove off. I realized on the way home that I hadn’t unreported the theft of my car but nothing ever came of it.

In the summer of 1969, I worked for the City of Lincoln Park, Michigan as a general laborer doing odd jobs like emptying the heavy trash drums in the parks and building a container for mulch, which allowed me to operate a front loader to lift the rail ties into place.

I received a Selective Service draft notice saying I was to report to the military in October of 1969. After the summer job with the city ended, I was unemployed and wasn’t looking for work assuming I would soon be drafted, since I was 19 ½ years old and classified 1-A. But the draft call was suddenly cancelled for October, November and December because the draft lottery was to begin with the first numbers drawing in December. I was given the choice of waiting to see what my number would be in the lottery or reporting in October. I chose to report in October instead of waiting, probably jobless, assuming that I would have a low enough lottery number to eventually be called. The number for my birthdate in that first lottery was 122 out of 365, and those with numbers from 1 to 195 were drafted so I would have had to go but not for some months. I didn’t think the war would be ending any time soon, since there were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam at that time. This was the lottery for men born between 1944 and 1950 so it included Donald Trump whose number was 356; Bill Clinton, 311; and George W. Bush, 327. Trump had avoided the draft until that time by getting a doctor to say he had bone spurs; Clinton had a college deferment; and Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard. Joe Biden, who was born in 1942, was not included in the lottery but had previously avoided the draft with student deferments and he was later reclassified 1-Y because of his asthma during his teen years.

The war in Vietnam was very personal for most of the young men in my neighborhood. In addition to having my older brother recently back from Vietnam and still in uniform, two of my close neighbors had already been killed in action. Twenty-year-old Navy Hospital Corpsman Richard Allen Nelson died while providing medical aid to a wounded marine on November 14, 1967. I mostly remember Rick as the kid on the block who practiced piano while most of the rest of us played sports in the parks. Twenty-year-old Army Corporal Thomas Johnson Bradford was killed on May 2, 1968. Tom had skirmishes with the law as a teenager. I was a schoolmate of his twin sisters Jeanette and Paulette. Most of the other eligible boys on and around Mill Street were in or on their way to the war zone and I certainly expected the same destiny. But as will be seen, it was another 25 years before I was to set foot for the first of several visits to Vietnam.

Fort Knox, Kentucky

My father drove me to the Fort Wayne Army induction center in Detroit on October 13, 1969. The Marines were also at the induction center that day to select from the inductees. Someone there pulled me out and took me to another room to stuff envelopes and I was told that they had done this so I wouldn’t be available for the Marine choosers. I guess my longish hair and attitude indicated I wouldn’t be a good fit for the Marines. I flew later that day to Fort Knox, Kentucky, my first ever flight.

In my first days, I helped distribute an issue of the Fort Knox underground newspaper, FTA. Wikipedia says, " In July 1968 four soldiers from the Fort Knox army post began producing and distributing an underground newspaper for GIs called Fun Travel Adventure (FTA, which everyone in the army knows has another meaning)."

One of the Fort Knox inception center staff sold me some hits of LSD, which I shared with a few of my enlightened barracks mates.

I did well enough in basic training, earning an M-14 sharpshooter badge and an M-16 expert badge, though I think I was put on KP a few extra times for minor indiscretions. I enjoyed marching to the cadence of the drum, which I was allowed to tap on an occasion or two and to chant I want to be an airborne ranger, I want to go to Vietnam, I want to be an airborne ranger, I want to kill some Charlie Cong, stripping and cleaning my rifle till the barrel shone and shuffling with the floor buffer waxing the barracks tile.

My brother Randy and I were both in uniform that Christmas. Here we are with our maternal grandmother.

Fort Huachuca, Arizona

After Christmas leave, I reported to my advanced training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to become a supply clerk. Most of the training involved learning how to manually fill out forms to record the issuance of uniforms and equipment.

Nogales, Mexico

I went with a few other soldiers down to Nogales, Mexico, got drunk and patronized a prostitute. We hitched a ride back across the border with some members of the Air Force.

Missouri

When the post-training assignments were announced, many of my classmates were going to Vietnam or elsewhere overseas and I was disappointed to hear that I was being sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I was assigned to the 4th Brigade Headquarters Detachment. When I arrived there, I was told that instead of a supply clerk job, I was going to be an aide to a colonel. When I met the colonel and heard his gung ho attitude, I knew we weren’t going to get along. I was whining about him in the barracks when the chaplain’s assistant Ronald Weeks suggested that I see a chaplain about my concerns. I met with the Brigade Chaplain Major Marion Pember (who years later wrote the book God in a Box, which I read and reviewed at his request). Pember asked if I would like to be on his staff because he was looking for someone to spearhead a project to develop coffeehouses on base for soldiers to have a place to unwind. Pember asked that I provide a letter from my hometown church attesting that I was a Christian in good standing. Mount Hope Lutheran Church provided this letter and I was reassigned as a chaplain’s assistant.

Among my jobs was to drive the chaplains around. My jeep was often in the shop for repairs or would go missing so I qualified to drive other vehicles. It was fortunate that I knew how to drive a stick shift. My other regular job duties were to assist in preparing for and conducting the Sunday church services, which included helping to serve communion. The chapel had a reversible cross with a crucifix on one side which was shown for the Catholic mass and a plain cross on the other side for the Protestants. I would reverse the cross between services. There was also a Russian Orthodox service at my chapel.

During the week I would informally counsel and screen soldiers who came in to see a chaplain, type, cut and paste the bulletin for the upcoming church service and, a couple of days a week, I would staff the coffee house that I helped design which included putting on the music, popping popcorn and preparing a batch of soft drinks. I pulled occasional duty as the post-wide assistant on the overnight suicide help line. I also served as a witness for some weddings for soldiers needing or wanting to get married before leaving for the war.

In the summer of 1970 my barracks mate Richard Rooker had me meet Lynn Szymoniak, a girlfriend he was trying to shed since he had fallen for someone else. I started spending time with Lynn at her apartment in Kansas City. She was spending the summer there to be near a friend of hers while on break from school at Bryn Mawr. Her friend was the future wife of Emanuel Cleaver, who was then working for the YMCA in Kansas City and later became that city’s mayor before becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he has been representing Kansas City since 2005. Cleaver, the ladies and I once got roaring drunk on MD20/20 while playing cards in a motel room.

Lynn Szymoniak became a successful lawyer and won $18 million as her part of a settlement. She gathered evidence central to the federal government’s recovery of $95 million in allegedly ill-gotten gains that big banks wrangled from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The money came from the partial settlement of two cases — one in North Carolina, the other in South Carolina. Lynn lives in Southern Florida and was featured in a story on the television news magazine 60 Minutes in 2011.

The most important thing Lynn did for me was to provide me with books about things of which I had no inkling including composer John Cage’s A Year from Monday; Sexual Politics by Kate Millett which introduced me to the women’s liberation movement; and Zen Telegrams, which I still own.

Illinois

While in Chicago, Lynn and I went to see the musical Hair at the Shubert Theatre. Perhaps because of my short hair I was dragged up on stage for one of the songs. Lynn returned to Bryn Mawr College.

About this time, I was issued orders for Germany. The orders were for a supply clerk. I didn’t want to go to Germany because the tour would be for 14 months and I was planning to request an early out to start college in the fall of 1971. I successfully argued that my MOS (military occupational specialty) had been officially changed to chaplain assistant, so I couldn’t be sent as a supply clerk. When the personnel clerk stepped out of the room for a minute, I snuck a look at my personnel file and saw FBI reports linking me to anti-war activities in the past.

Not long before this time, I received a phone call at the chapel from someone wanting to speak to a chaplain about Edward Schack. No chaplain was available so the caller asked if I could answer some questions. I hadn’t identified myself. I said sure, so the caller asked how well Schack had adjusted to the Army and I answered that he had adjusted quite well and was doing good work. It may have been this that precipitated the orders for Germany after being denied Vietnam.

I tried to start an underground newspaper at Fort Leonard Wood with a local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, but it never got off the ground. I took canoe trips on the Big Piney River and spelunked in caves we found along the way.

Ypsilanti, Michigan

I was given an early out from the Army so that I could start college at Eastern Michigan University in the fall semester of 1971. I was released from active duty on August 20 and began classes on August 30. At 21 years old, I was older than