MESSAGE TO MICHAEL

 

               From 1966, Dionne Warwick's version of a Bacharach/David song.

 

I heard this the other day for the first time probably since it came out. It brought back memories of when my brother Mike was in Vietnam from Fall 1966-Summer 1967. My mother took to it immediately: nice melody, (she was a fan of Bacharach) and the subject, in part, reflected her thoughts at the time-her first-born son was away at war. 

 

We had a small transistor radio that was often on when Mom was in the kitchen working. I remember sitting at the dinette table, seeing her standing at the sink, looking out down the driveway.  Lines such as "It's a year since he was here", Tell him I miss him more each day,  "Michael promised he'd soon be coming back" certainly would have resonated. She told me she was dreaming of taxicabs coming up the drive. In those days, it was the cabbies who delivered telegrams out to the countryside where we lived.

 

In '66, the war was really heating up with more and more troops being shipped to Southeast Asia. It was required by the Air Force, that one year out of the four year hitch was to be served overseas. Mike volunteered to go to 'Nam and trained with Air Force Special Forces.  

 

Although I was only 12 at the time, I got it. Our dad served with the Marines (First Division-The Old Breed) in WWII and had managed to survive Guadacanal thanks to mosquito-borne diseases. His service was a source of quiet pride within our family. It was nothing bragged about, one knew the difference between those who saw combat and who didn't: those who did rarely talked about it. It was the code. Mike's standard line of reasoning was that he's rather fight over there than in our Mom's favorite city, San Francisco. The Domino Theory.

 

We would get the occasional letter and pix from Mike. All correspondence was subject to censor but he managed to slip in clues of his whereabouts. One in particular was when he made mention of us going "up north" for vacation. Now, in Michigan parlance this meant Upper Northern Mi or the UP which wasn't a normal activity for our family. Mike's unit worked out of the Bien Hoa air base by Saigon so this meant he was perhaps up in Pleiku, Hue or even Laos where the Ho Chi Minh trail was although we officially were not conducting operations in that country. Luckily, Mike got out 2 months early. Here is the odd thing about the departure of many from the war zone: once they got "the wake up call", they often arrived home in 36 hours!

 

Being the budding artist in the family, I made the welcome home banner. Mike always adored Peanuts and Snoopy so I used his avatar, the WWI ace atop his trusty doghouse aka Sopwith Camel.

 

Family lore: one thing he enjoyed when he first got home was flushing the toilet several times. At a reunion celebrating his return, he chowed down an entire pie made the family's best pie maker Aunt Wegie (Mom's sister Louise). Lemon meringue with a lard crust. Oh man, they were the best!