1968

Versailles Missouri
Dad got orders to Viet Nam, so he moved the family back to Versailles, MO where my mother had grown up, and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins lived, while he spent his time in Viet Nam. I was again the new kid in town. I was used to that. What I wasn’t used to was the fact that everybody knew everybody in town, and I didn’t know anybody. Except my cousins. And maybe one or two kids that I had met over the years during visits. In fact, it was one of those kids that helped me break the ice on the first day of school. Jeannie Washburn, a friend of my cousin Cindy, dragged me all over school introducing me to everyone. It didn’t really help much, but I have always appreciated her efforts. I had moved from a town of 325,000 people (Tucson) to a town of 2047 people. There was quite a difference. The educational standard was a little more lax in Versailles. As a consequence, I was not really challenged academically, and got lazy. I didn’t do much, if any, homework and still managed to pull in passing grades. ‘Which does not always help one make friends. Additionally, I was small and shy. Which made me an easy mark for a group of, well, bullies in my class. As the town was so small, the 7th and 8th graders had to ride a bus over to the high school for band class. So, after a hurried lunch, the band students would wait for the bus to the high school. This translated into just enough time for these guys to pick on me. I suffered the standard “frogs” to the upper arm, being shoved between them like a hot potato, etc. One of the final straws was when they all grabbed an arm or leg and carried me out the door and dropped me on the sidewalk. I had always refrained from telling on them for fear of additional retribution, but I finally went to the office and reported them. After all, my back was skinned up and sore, and by then I was afraid. Really afraid that I might really get hurt. So, I reported the four or five of them and managed to get back out to catch the band bus. After we returned to our school, the principal requested that these boys report to the office. Well, all but one were called to the office. I think they forgot to write his name down or something. Anyway, it got them off my back for a little while. Then one day, while boarding the band bus, the “leader”, who happened to be the only one not called to the office, blocked my access down the aisle of the bus. I told him to leave me alone, and he punched me on the arm. I saw red. I immediately punched him back, fully aware that I could have just signed my “death warrant”. I didn’t care anymore. You could have heard a pin drop on the bus at that moment. Then, he moved and allowed me to proceed down the aisle. I was nervous for days, wondering what fate would befall me for my insolence. I needn’t have worried, because school was out shortly after that, and all of us spent our time dreading “freshman initiation”. At the county fair, toward the end of summer, that was when it started. Upper classmen would catch an incoming freshman, take his pants, and throw his pants on top of one of the buildings. I wasn’t hard to retrieve your pants, but you had to climb up on the building in your underwear, and you could be seen by anyone and everyone. They didn’t catch me, but some of the other guys did get caught. Dad had always told me that if you stood up for yourself, people would respect you for it. I guess he was right, again. Of course, I still had to start school again. Only this time, I wouldn’t be one of the “upper classmen” like I had been the year before. Now I was back at the bottom of the food chain, and there were guys that were three years older than me. Knowing full well that I was going to get picked on, I decided that I might as well ask for it. I became a smart-aleck. In that town, high school football was followed by some of the people, but BASKETBALL was “where it was at” in that town. So, the “jocks” were the Basketball players. Tall guys. I would see some of them in the hall, with their girlfriends. I would brazenly walk up to the girlfriends and put my arm around them, and say something dumb like “when you gonna dump this clown and be with me?”. Not once did I get creamed. Here I am begging for a whuppin’ and I get voted the friendliest person in the school!! I thought I had it made. In the meantime, Dad was doing his job in Viet Nam. I remember a small article in the paper detailing an airstrike he had been on. His flight had been directed toward against an ammo supply convoy and had caused many secondary explosions. I guess the secondary explosions were reaching 300 feet high. I was proud, but Mom told me not to discuss it too much, because there were probably some people in town that were not as supportive of what Dad was doing. I didn’t understand, but I kept quiet about it.