21 in Phoenix

From: Free Fire Zone

21 in Phoenix

I was 21 in Phoenix in November of 66. Stayed in a one-room apartment near downtown, saw the sound of music at the theatre down the road. That night I was alone, walked across the street to the liquor store, bought a small bottle of rum and some Coca Cola, some chips and dips, took it all back to the apartment. My first legal drink in CONUS, having just turned 21, you see. In the liquor store, I'd showed him my driver's license, and he said happy birthday. I was adult now, able to drink. I was a child until that day; because we used children as soldiers in our country, I was enfranchised to kill, but not to drink or vote. I counted this as a sort of irony, but I had no problem with it. American children overseas, you see, can drink liquor. If the children happen also to be soldiers, then in fact it's an activity assumed of them. Most of my soldiering had been done overseas--a year on Okinawa, where I played with the toys according to the customs of the 173d Airborne Brigade, and then 17 months in Vietnam, a different, yet not different theme. Anyhow, it doesn't work quite the same way back home, and in those days in Arizona, you had to be 21 to legally get drunk.

I was only a couple weeks out of the bush, in the middle of my soldiering years, in limbo, before I went to be an ASA troopie back east. I was still thinking I might be a sort of civilian at the time, but it really wasn't working out very well.

Sat down at my kitchen table in the little apartment. I might have invited someone over, that could have happened, but I didn't really want to talk about it. Drank the pint of rum and the soda, listened to the reel to reels I'd made, good, good guitiars. Got pretty drunk, thought about people I didn't wan't to think about, things I didn't want to know about what they were doing at just that minute, my team, you know...what an asshole I was for training Oconner to do my job, because it was my job, not his, and he didn't need to have the team behind him because he just ...might get killed. I had already heard some news, about how Lieb and Jones got fucked up on the extraction the week I left...they...turned out okay, Jones went back to the team and Lieb went home with two broken arms. I wouldn't have put them there. It wasn't Oconner's fault. It was mine.  And that was okay. It passed.

Next day, or maybe the day after that, I'd hopped on the back of the TR6 and blasted to work out at Litchfield, the bike singing and humming, asking for more. I was entranced, and didn't notice anything amiss until actually I pulled into the company parking lot, when I noticed the two AHP interceptor Chryslers zooming up on either side of me, and another one veering in from the other end of the parking lot--cops stood, each shielded behind his vehicle, hand on the weapon at his belt, the tactical pause, until they all were in place and ready to proceed--very calm, very good at what they were doing. It took a full ten seconds before I realized I was being captured. I had no idea they even were chasing me. I took great pains to obey them, to show them by body language that they were successful, letting them be as calm as they were willing to be. In the short version, the interviewing officer told me that he thought 135 mph was a bit excessive. I couldn't believe the trumpet was going that fast, and told him so. I know he believe me, and he laughed and shook his head.  Cost me most of what I made that month at Litchfield, and I was lucky I didn't have to do more than ten days while we got it ironed out.

Not long after that I was on a plane to Devens, and got there at night, in civilian clothes, put my head down on the bottom bunk in a transient barracks, safe again.