Out Among Humans

Except for being the youngest swinging dick in his platoon, he was just another joker in basic training. The cadre addressed everybody as “Joker.”

The white kid, along with many others, had been intercepted at the Greyhound station and became the property of the United States Department of Defense. They were given haircuts and numbers.

Some of them had been drafted to serve two years. Others were Regular Army volunteers with three-year hitches. Weekend warriors faced six months of training before reporting to local units. The U.S. maintained an enormous peacetime army because the USSR had a million of its own swinging dicks threatening Eastern Europe at the time.

He and the others were placed forty to a room the size of a tennis court. They were kept flank-to-flank, snout to rump. Some of the younger bulls became skittish. But in this particular barracks during this particular rotation, the older guys managed to keep a lid on things. There was only one fight and everyone agreed that it was a disappointment.

The kid made friends. His bunkmate from “Bloody Harlan” Kentucky had gums showing dental neglect. The next bunk over held a droll draftee named Harvey who was all but blind in one eye. Uncle Sam needs you, Harvey.

A guy from Chicago named Hibbard took the kid under his wing. One day the kid remarked that Negroes loved Cadillac cars with big fins. The kid was clueless as to why Hibbard became angry. A Cadillac was a prestige car, he thought, and nobody he knew could afford that kind of chrome. Hibbard took a few days to collect himself and then came back to explain things.

Next came Flores. He and the kid became friends during artillery training. They had the same sense of humor and wanted the same things out of life.

One day the term “wetback” floated out of the kid’s mouth. It was a cute-sounding word he heard on TV. He thought the comedy character, Jose Jimenez (Bill Dana), was hilarious. Flores explained why he wasn’t amused. Like Hibbard, Flores knew the boy had just turned 18 and that he was more ignorant than anything else.

Either of the men could have taken the kid apart in a matter of minutes. But there was something there, and they had high hopes.

About a generation ago we passed laws to conserve the wild places that endangered fish, wildlife and plants need to survive.

Some promising things have come of those efforts:

…Wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone

…Chinook Salmon protected by redesign of Columbia River dams

…Eagles and Peregrine Falcons repopulating West after DDT banned

…Northern Spotted Owl wins protection

…Grizzly removed from endangered list

…Red Wolf and Florida Grasshopper Sparrow being breed in captivity (fingers crossed)

The human population was one billion in 1800, today we are nearly eight billion. The more we consume and discard, the less there is for our fellow species. In Darwin’s words, survival of the fittest.

Scientists calculate we’ve now altered more than half of the earth’s land surface. They’re starting to refer to this present in geological history as the “Anthropocene” epoch (from the Greek meaning humans).

They want us to understand that if we continue doing the things that drive animals into extinction, we’ll eventually cross an invisible line and we’ll become one more in a long line of endangered species.

If you sit at the table where You Thai shared meals with his family you’ll feel the presence…of the man whose name is on a marker near where Lake Washington feeds into Puget Sound.

He was You Thai to some; Dad, Gun-gun, Yeh-yeh, Bah-bah and Dr. Tchao to others.

People remember important events as happening before or after the loss of loved ones. You Thai and his family shared more of such memories than most. His grandchildren knew and loved him well.

Birth sets us on a path we can roughly predict. The rites of passage are defined in the greeting-card section of every supermarket.

But the afterlife is trickier.

Religions tell us that ‘to dust we shall return.’ There are particular faiths that treat souls who have crossed over with a reverence bordering on worship.

We shouldn’t assume that being granted a follow-up life is a gift. Hindus and Buddhists see reincarnation as a sentence to doing more hard time here on earth.

Pharaohs built monuments believing they would be immortal as long as they were remembered. Now our ancestors are recorded on our phones, showing the faces and mannerisms they passed on to us.

It is not unusual to talk to the dear departed as if they were still with us. It‘s also not unusual, in quiet moments when we least expect it, to hear them answer us.