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.