Editor’s Note: The Swamp is literally boiling these days. The passionate partisanship is oddly familiar if you can take yourself back to the late Sixties and the weirdest year of them all- 1968. I had hoped to never see stuff like that again. The circus in progress now certainly has potential to match it or exceed it. I mean, I am a political junkie and this is exciting. I fascinated to see history unfold with a ringside seat. I am just not sure how we are going to come out on the other end of this.

– Vic
05 October 2019

A Luni Tale

This is a tale of disrespect. How a returning soldier was and was not treated. From what I recall, these events occurred a year or so after the big war protests of 1968. It did not involve being spit on, being called a baby killer, or other epic Vietnam era, public, soldier humiliations.

He told it in a sallow faced, direct style that was not his usual animated fashion. It was matter of fact and somewhat resigned, as if he had finally met the absurdity of the world face on and now wincingly laughed at it.

Luni came home from Vietnam with his bank account full of the money he’d saved during his year plus in country. He went down to a local car lot to buy himself a used Mustang. A red one with a large displacement, high horsepower engine.

Only he didn’t buy it. He couldn’t. He went back home, gave the money to his momma, and she bought it for him because he was not legally old enough to buy a car. The title and registration remained in his momma’s name for a year or so until he became legal.

The day after his dream car’s purchase, he went to a local insurance agency in the county seat to get insurance for the car. Sadly, he returned home to fetch momma. He couldn’t get a policy in his name. He was forced to be carried on “my momma’s policy as a DEE-pendent child.”

(By this point in his previous stories, he would have usually been spittle-flecked from cursing, but for this one he was not.)

“Unnerstan’ what I’m saying. Thirteen months in Nam. Fightin’ n killin’. A combat-wounded Army grunt. But my country treated me as my momma’s child ‘unner her care.

Do I gotta say that again?”

“No, Luni. Not now. Not ever again.” someone softy answered.

He finished by slightly grinning when saying, “But the county still locked my ass up for getting outta my car in front of my momma’s place after I’d been underage drinking one night at the Legion. Even though I couldn’t legally buy a beer at least the Legion allowed me to drink. Spent a week in jail, not working, not bringing money in.”

“F*cking A . . . same sh*t happened to me.” someone replied.

He told no lies. True was Luni’s tale as he continued working hard daily, trying to recapture his dream, his peace and not become a volcano.

Postscript: They all had returned home only to face utter effing madness of a serious, personal kind. They’d been warped by jungle rain; shot at by the enemy; been drunk, dirty and a bit disorderly; but don’t you know, they were still willin’ to do what they did.

They’d been beaten by monsoon winds, suffered from jungle fever heat by day and chills at night, mis- and un- treated by the VA, had their souls stove in, but they were still on their feet and still willin’ do it again.

A 1967 Mustang similar to Luni’s

The following spring would find me pulling out, having done a little work and christening many gas station back lots with inappropriate stories and processed alcohol. We had tasted job loss not like defeat but likcd it as we moved on to the next state and gig. Steady work likely would have killed some.

None of us ignored tomorrow. though finally it didn’t matter as much as it should have. We had today. Our lives narrowed around living in the small center of where we were.

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