CHAPTER 3 - THE TRANSITION

While we were there on August 2, 1964 North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked an American destroyer in what came to be known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. On August 4, another attack supposedly happened but this proved to be false. This would give president Lyndon Johnson an excuse to begin an escalation of our involvement in Vietnam. Congress basically gave him a free hand to act with passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. He ordered several air strikes on North Vietnam. By the time I reached draft age we had 500,000 men in Vietnam. In August of 1964, however; I could not know the impact of the Gulf of Tonkin incident on my future and the future of hundreds of thousands of young Americans. While in St. Petersburg we visited Busch Gardens before it was turned into a theme park. The only thing to see there was a bird sanctuary and a brewery tour. We also toured the HMS Bounty, which was the ship used in the making of the 1935 movie Mutiny on the Bounty. There was also Madame Tussaud's London Wax Museum.

This was my first visit to a wax museum and there was a chamber of horrors. As my brother Mark and I walked into a hallway I saw a woman lying motionless on the floor. Not knowing if she was real or a wax figure I bent over her to get a better look. Just then she opened her eyes and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked up to see her husband walking toward us with smelling salts. Apparently she had passed out. This was what Readers Digest might call one of my most embarrassing moments. The beach at Treasure Island was very wide. I rented a mattress float and lazily floated out from the beach until I looked up and noticed that the beach was looking smaller and smaller. In a panic I began paddling back to shore but it seemed like I was making very little progress. When I finally made it back to shore I had been out there a long time. After a shower, I dressed and pulled on a brand new pair of Levi's which turned out to be a big mistake. Mark, Alton and myself walked to a nearby miniature golf course. Halfway through the game my legs began to feel like they were on fire and the Levi's felt like sand paper. I had a severe sunburn on the back of my legs from my time on the mattress and it was all I could do to walk back to the motel. I finished the week lying on my stomach in shorts with Didi rubbing my legs in vinegar.

That Fall I played football for Bailey Jr. High. My coach was Larry Smittou who had been my Little League coach at Martha Vaught. I came out late so the coach lined up thirteen of the biggest players and made me tackle them one after another. I did okay until I got to Larry Loring who was short and stocky. He had a low center of gravity and Larry was the last player in line. It probably took four or five attempts to get him down. I was beat down after it was over but I was able to make the team. They made me a defensive tackle and I did well in practice. One day the coach was acting as quarterback and I got to him almost every time. As I was walking to the showers I overheard Coach Smittou tell Coach Kee that I was looking real good and ready to play. He was planning on putting me in the game on the following day.

We were playing one of the best teams, Waverly-Belmont, at home. Coach Smittou didn't start me until after the half. We were getting beat but were still in the game, or at least until I came in. I was left tackle and scared to death. The opposing guard knocked me flat and the ball carrier ran right over me and scored. On the next series after we went back on defense the coach gave me another chance but they ran the exact same play because they had my number. I was knocked on my butt and the ball carrier scored again. In practice I did great but my nerves would get the best of me in a real game. This had always been the case even when I played Little League baseball. After this game I never got a chance to redeem myself on varsity. For the rest of the year I played second string. Even at that I still loved playing football. My biggest regret was that I never played football in high school. I believe that if I had gained more experience I could have conquered the nerves and became a decent player.

In October 1964 President Johnson came through Nashville on a campaign swing. I rode the bus downtown and stood on the corner of 7th and Charlotte. He spoke at a platform in front of the War Memorial building. Secret Service were everywhere and snipers were visible on surrounding rooftops. Johnson liked to get close and personal with crowds and he was a big man at 6 foot 4 inches tall and was wearing a fedora, a white trench coat, and I was so close when he passed that I could almost reach out and touch him when he rode by in his limousine. He would leave Nashville and give the greatest speech of his presidency in my opinion at New Orleans later that night. Johnson would go on to win one of the largest landslides in American history the following month. There is no doubt in my mind that the better man was Barry Goldwater. I didn't realize this until years later but if Goldwater had won I am convinced that there would have been no expansion of the war in Viertnam and thousands of young lives would have been saved. There would have been no expansion of the welfare state, no rise of the the counterculture or Hippie movement, no drug culture or a rapid expansion of the sexual revolution. No social unrest associated with the war. Johnson's policies provided the Communists with a perfect opportunity to exploit an unpopular war and other social issues such as poverty and race. In my view Goldwater would have governed similar to Ronald Reagan. Johnson was able to successfully define Goldwater as an extreme right wing radical. In much the same way as they tried to define Reagan but he outsmarted them in 1980.

Probably around the summer of 1965 I bought several boxes of M-80's and cherry bombs. A cherry bomb was very powerful and I remember boys at East High sliding the wax covered fuse through the middle of a cigarette. They would light the cigarette and place it in the restroom and by the time it burned down to the fuse they would be long gone when it blew up. We would jump out of our seats as the noise of the explosion reverberated through the school hallways. Sometimes they would flush them down the toilet. An M-80 on the other hand was even more powerful than a cherry bomb and was the equivalent of one tenth of a stick of dynamite. I came up with the bright idea of building a bomb. At the time Johnson & Johnson sold shoe polish that came in a metal can that was tube shaped. It had the polish and a rag inside. This was a perfect casing for a bomb.

One day I broke open several M-80's and poured the powder into the empty can. Then I stuffed several M-80's and cotton into the can to make it extra tight. I ran a long fuse from the side of the can and told all my friends what I was getting ready to do. They were all gathered in granddaddys bedroom looking out the window while I placed the bomb in the gravel parking lot of Eastland Baptist church across the street. I lit the fuse and took off running as fast as my legs would carry me. Just as the bomb blew up I I reached the window and could feel the ground shake and hear the windows rattle just a split second before I heard the explosion. The bomb left a large hole in the church parking lot. My guardian angel was looking out for me that day because I could have easily killed myself.

On another occasion I was throwing M-80's out of our back door and into our back yard. My aunt Didi was sitting in the hallway behind me talking on the phone. It was the old rotary style phone of that period and she told me several times to stop but I would just say okay and throw another one out the back door. We had an old fashioned wooden screen door with a spring attached at the top. Each time I would fling open the door and throw an M-80 into the yard but one time I threw the door open but it only opened about halfway. The M-80 hit the screen and bounced backwards into the hallway, landing only a few feet from Didi's feet. I froze for a second helplessly looking at the burning fuse on the M-80 while trying to decide what to do. Didi was looking the other way and unaware of what was happening. I panicked and ran out the back door and by the time I was in the alley the M-80 exploded. I stood there for a long time trying to work up the courage to walk back up to the house. There had been no scream or sound after the explosion, only silence. After a while I mustered the courage and walked slowly through the yard, easing up to the back door. I could see Didi sitting there in the hallway bent over holding her hands over her ears with her eyes tightly closed as if she was in pain. There was a big black spot on the floor and the telephone was lying upside down next to it.