What did you do in the war, grandfather?

How I spent my twenty-first birthday

by Ray St. Ray

As a younger man, I experimented with sex and drugs of all kinds. I even took LSD once.
For five years.

Then I moved out of my parents house.

At a time when it was the most unpopular to do so in American history, I enlisted in the United States Army to go to Vietnam. As it turned out, luckily I was not sent to Vietnam, but instead found myself at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for a few years, ironically in the war on drugs.
Well, I wasn’t really in the war.

But I WAS on drugs, as was the fashion in those times. It was like Boy Scouts with monster trucks, cool cap guns, lots of dope and hardly any adults.
Anyway, that’s where my head was at back then. One night I decided that I would spend my twenty-first birthday alone on a mountaintop.

Yes, I was convinced, my future would be revealed to me. I laid off the drugs for a few weeks to air my head out for this special event, got my VW Bug tuned and packed it up with food, books, art materials, even camping gear in case I decided to stay a day or two extra.
The evening before, my best friends, Ted and Alice, took me to dinner at a nice restaurant. After dinner we went to their house in the officer’s quarters and they got high. I declined but did enjoy the hospitality of sex with Alice while Ted watched. He was my Commanding Officer, she was his wife, and at the time we were a menage a trois, no easy feat with their four children, ages four to eight, in the house.

Hey, those were swinging times!

Eventually we passed out on the living room floor. I awoke around four and quietly slipped out the door to start my hero’s journey.
Speeding through the darkness of an early Sunday morning, mine was the only car on the road. No music, just the sound of my Bug carrying me up to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It started to get light out and would soon be dawn. In the middle of some national forest, not even in the real mountains yet, I pulled over into a trail on a ridge, got out and climbed a tree to watch the sun rise.
It was brilliant but not necessarily life-changing. I climbed down, got back in the VW to continue to the mountains. But here was this trail begging exploration. I decided to see where it would take me.
A portent of my life to come, certainly a road less travelled. Just an old logging trail, disused and overgrown. My little car barely made it through the trees in some spots and at times I had to get out and move small boulders out of the way. Through soggy bogs and thick bushes, finally into forest. Then a fallen tree blocked the trail. I’d come too far to just give up and go back, so I got out to inspect and estimate the obstacle.
About seventy-five feet up the road, a black dog appeared and began to howl. I’m not making this up. A black dog, howling as if warning me to go back. It was so bizarre I laughed, howled back, and the dog ran off.
I went back to the problem at hand. The tree was too big to move or cut but the part blocking the road was thin enough that I was able to break off almost enough for me to get by. Almost. There was one branch that was too strong for me to snap. It was, however in a good position for me to hook in the front bumper and use the car. I set it in place, put the Bug in low gear and inched forward.
The plan was good, in theory. The automobile did sever the tree limb, but with such violent force that it then dented the hood, snapped off the radio antenna and cracked the windshield right in front of my face. At least the bumper was undamaged.
It’s my birthday, I told myself. There’s nothing to do about it here, so I might as well enjoy my day and continue my quest for meaning.
Further up the road I reached the crest of a hill overlooking a small valley. From here the trail went down at 45 degree angle for maybe fifty yards, across thityy feet of what looked like a little swamp, then back up a similar grade to the next hill.

I walked down the slope and checked the terrain. It was dry clay at the top, but ten feet down a spring trickled into and down the trail to feed the sandy bottom, which drained off the side into the swamp. The opposite climb was bone dry and not as steep. Thinking it over, I figured that if I got a good running start I could probably make it across the twenty foot wet patch at the bottom. Coming back might be a problem, but I might find another way back to the highway on the other side. I could do this.
I got in the VW, started it up, released the handbrake and drove straight for my destiny. As soon as I hit the wet part the car began to slide more than roll down the slope, but I steered it straight and true. I stepped on the gas to pick up momentum as I reached the part that crossed the swamp. The vehicle bottomed out and stuck right in the middle.
It’s my birthday, I told myself. And it’s only eight in the morning. Sure, I’m in the middle of nowhere, by myself, stuck, but hey, if this is a quest for meaning, then maybe the lesson here is I HAVE TO DIG MYSELF OUT.
So I got my entrenching tool, a small folding army shovel, and happily started to dig.
It was an engineering problem. To my right and left, the little swamp between the hills was inches lower than the trail. Only fifteen feet forward was dry land of the opposing slope, but that fifteen feet was even softer than where I was. If I was able to somehow get across that distance, I might still have to come back the same way. There was really no choice. It was back up the hill. In reverse.
I cut a channel to divert the trickle of water away from the trail and removed as much mud as I could from beneath and behind the car. Then I started the engine and began rocking back and forth. A few inches at a time, I gradually backed up that slippery hill. For a while, I left the car in gear, wheels slowly spinning, got out and pushed. At one point the trail was wide and slick enough that I was actually able to rotate the vehicle so that at least it was facing up hill.
Two hours later, sweaty, covered in mud and all but exhausted, I’d gotten that VW to the point where the front wheels were on dry dirt. There was just another few feet to go. Revving the engine, then applying the brake, I rocked the car in low gear, inching it forward. The tires in the back were spinning on the slick clay that separated dirt from mud. Less then a foot to go. “Come on, baby,” I yelled over the roar of the motor. “We’re almost there!”
There was a loud pop, followed by silence. I sat there stunned. I turned the ignition and the starter made a strained noise as it tried to turn something which would not move because there were no more moving parts. The VW Bug had an air-cooled engine which depended on movement to keep it at operating temperature. Revving it up hill in low gear for two hours had overheated it to fuse into one solid piece of metal.

Looking at the motor, there was nothing to see but smoking belts. I remember the sounds of birds  and the tick of cooling metal.
It’s my birthday, I told myself. I’m in the middle of nowhere, many miles from  help, filthy and sweaty and I’ve just destroyed my car.
But it’s my birthday and it’s only ten in the morning.
That’s when I lost it. Went completely hysterical, screaming, crying, ripping my clothes off as I ran off into the woods. I probably addressed God in an unfriendly manner. It was not a Hallmark moment. This day was supposed to be symbolic, a portent of the rest of my life.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT ALL?
Then came that sudden sobering thought I hope you rarely experience. The realization that you are naked, covered in mud and lost in the forest.

It was only a few but very interesting minutes of wandering around. Eventually I found an article of clothing and traced my way back to the car. Calmer now, I thought, hey, it’s my birthday. I’m in the middle of the woods on a sunny morning, with a car full of food and things to do.

“Let’s have a picnic!” I probably said aloud.
I sat around naked all day, sunbathing, reading, even did some drawing. Made a fire and cooked two meals. I’d brought a tent and a sleeping bag and considered spending the night. As the afternoon waned the sky clouded over, mosquitoes came out and the fun was over.
I locked my stuff in the car, put my clothes back on and started the long walk back to the highway.
In those days I was no stranger to hitchhiking. I had thumbed my way to Chicago a few times, Kentucky and even Florida.

Sometimes it could be hard getting rides even in the best of locations. It might be easier if I wasn’t in the middle of a national forest on a two-lane blacktop, bedraggled, covered in mud and looking like an escaped mental patient. I was resigned to walk ten miles to a phone and call friends to come and get me.
I walked fifty feet down the highway and a car came. I stuck my thumb out and they drove by, giving me wide birth in case I tried to jump on them. A minute later another car drove right past me. Then a guy comes by in a brand new pickup truck with a cap on the back and stops.

Do I need a lift? HELL, YEAH!
It turns out he’s going to Spring Lake, the town near Fort Bragg where my buddies and I shared a three bedroom house! As we sped along, he asked what I was doing out in the middle of nowhere. I told him about my deceased VW in the middle of the woods, leaving out the more dramatic parts of the story. Suddenly he pulled a U turn.
“Let’s get your stuff!”
“I don’t know if you want to do that,” I said. “It’s pretty far into the woods.”
“This truck is made for it!” he replied, no idea what he was getting himself into. We found the trail and turned off the highway.
Now, my little VW barely made it through and here was this big brand new truck being scraped by rocks and trees. I walked ahead with a machete he gave me, clearing the sides as best I could.
“It can’t be too much farther,” he kept saying.
Oh, yes it can, I’d reply under my breath. Later he told me that according to his odometer my car was 1.2 miles from the highway! Was that all? It seemed like five.
We got all my belongings and put them in the back of his truck. We inched our way back to the highway, then drove to Spring Lake. It was after ten by the time I got home. Just like on many a drug-induced insane odyssey of a night, I was so glad to just climb into the safety and comfort of my bed and fall instantly asleep.

But I wasn’t even on drugs that day!
Do you know anyone who ever parachuted out of an airplane on LSD?

I do. But that is a story for another ride.

That’s what Grandfather did in the war.

Now go to sleep, kids.