| General Fiction posted November 28, 2015 | Chapters: |
-1- 2... 
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A Viet Nam vet meets a homeless WWII vet
A chapter in the book The Parking Lot
The Parking Lot Part I
by Delahay
I posted this once before but it is so long I've broken it down to chapters.
God it was hot! It had been a mild spring but now the suffocating summer heat was bearing down with a vengeance. The gummy black asphalt sucked up the rays of a scorching August sun, magnifying its intensity ten-fold and building an oppressive blanket of hot, humid air.
A half-eaten candy bar dripped off the edge of the bus stop bench while a stream of ants carried away crumbs from a potato chip bag discarded in the gutter. Bees hummed around crumpled soft drink cans tossed in the over-flowing trash can, creating a steady drone of sound against the background cacophony of city traffic noise.
It was 1969, a time in America when the folly that was Viet Nam was still a major topic in the news with updates on the hour. The country was divided over a war that few understood and many did not believe in. Unlike the World Wars this was not a "good" war.
As I sat on the bench at the edge of the parking lot waiting for the bus to come, I regularly dodged insults of "Baby Killer" and the occasional beer or soft drink bottle hurled from the windows of passing cars. The uniform I still wore made me an easy target for those who were opposed to the war to vent their anger on.
I had just been discharged early from the Air Force so I could take a civilian job "for the good of the country". I had agreed to this as a quick way back to civilization. It was one of those too good to be true deals that sometimes come along. I learned from this that the old saying about things that are too good to be true is right. So is the one I heard about in boot camp about never volunteering for anything. The civilian job I had been discharged to take was with the C.I.A.'s Charter Air Line that shipped a steady, fresh supply of o.d. green teen-agers to Viet Nam, replacing the ones coming home in bags.
Sitting on that bench I felt as if I was occupying a hostile city in a foreign country. The "police action" our country was involved in looked like it would soon tear the heart and soul out of our nation. Kids were going off to college or to war and breaking away from their parents and the last generations' ideals and beliefs.
The U.S. government was sending the shattered bodies of young men home to their grieving families while Bell Helicopter, Lockheed, Monsanto, Northrup, and many other big companies, and their stock holders, were getting rich off of government military contracts. There were some who felt as if we weren't so much fighting against communism as to protect capitalism, the pinnacle of moral bankruptcy in America.
Congressmen speak in terms of dollars when they talk about the cost of war. Not much is mentioned about the human cost of war, the "collateral damage." Who talks about the shattered lives and broken dreams crushed beneath the twin evils of greed and the lust for power? Nothing is said of the heartache and pain caused by the battles waged for cheap oil or global influence, or the wars fought between "good and evil" to decide whose God is the best.
As I sat sweltering on the bench I notice two old nuns shambling along the other side of the street in their black and white uniforms. I couldn't help but think of the irony in how much they resembled a pair of penguins in the tropics. I bent my head and covered my eyes with my hand as I wondered how I could explain my situation to my family and friends when I heard a noise behind me. I looked up without removing my hand and the bright sunlight acted like an x-ray, for a second I could see the bones of my hand outlined in red. I looked back down and saw beneath my feet an extremely frustrated pigeon trying to consume a Styrofoam packaging peanut that lay among the trash lining the street. Yet another exercise in futility.
In the gutter were also needles, crack vials and another pigeon, only this one had died. I shouted at the rat dining on it and he made a hasty retreat back into the sewer grate. I remember thinking there is just life and death. That's when he caught my eye and introduced me to the middle ground.
He appeared suddenly out of the summer haze like some strange aberration. Through the shimmering heat he made his way toward me with awkward, erratic steps, pushing a shopping cart containing all his worldly possessions. The accumulated wealth of a lifetime of struggle was haphazardly thrown into a rusted cart that, like the man pushing it, had seen much better days.
He shuffled across the sea of man-made brimstone, a virtual Hades on Earth. A place of the damned formed from asphalt, concrete, and the dying brown weeds struggling to break free of the suffocating mire. The petro-chemical quicksand pulled at his worn out, Salvation Army shoes like the tar in the Le Brea pit, as if it was trying to suck him into the blackness. He passed broken bottles that lay sparkling in the sunlight like so many diamonds cast aside by a careless hand.
As he slowly traversed the vast empty wasteland of the vacant parking lot, he looked as if his mind was in a foggy delirium from the heat, mixed with the hangover effects of last night's liquid dinner. The once dark brown skin on his face was now more of a pasty gray and had the appearance of worn, cracked leather. There was a sunken depression where his left eye had once been. His head was covered with a stocking cap with a mass of matted, greasy white hair protruding from beneath in an Einstein type of manner. He had a beard not unlike Santa with the exception of the brown tobacco stains marring the otherwise white strands. His trembling hands were spotted and wrinkled with age and the tips of his gnarled fingers were stained with the yellowish brown of nicotine from decades of holding unfiltered cigarettes.
My immediate impression of this old black man was that it was obvious the music was playing but nobody had their fingers on the keyboard. As he passed by me one of his bags of treasure dislodged from his shopping cart to fall at my feet. I reached down and picked it up, placing it back on his cart. He drew back from me in disbelief and horror, as if I was a trespasser in his private world. He seemed to be a stranger to even the simplest gesture of human kindness. Then an old memory of a smile crept across his deeply lined face. As I looked into his weary eye, a small spark of life appeared in the depth like a tiny flame awakening in the smoldering ashes of a burned out building.
Then, as if with the opening of a spigot, his life story came spilling out of him. Within the space of a few moments I learned of the high points and the bitter disappointments of his life. When he spoke it was as if the trials of his life were unfolding like the dressing on a festering wound, rolling back to reveal the cancer rotting away underneath. I listened to him speak and wondered how he had come to be here, become one of those "invisible" people. The ones everyone walks by pretending they don't see while trying not to make eye contact.
How long? I asked myself. How long has he been existing here, trapped somewhere between the living and the dead?
Here was some mother's child who had fallen by the wayside, now fully embraced as one of society's outcasts. He had once gone to school, had friends, and worked within the norms of everyday life. Did his life one day become too much for him to continue shouldering the burdens of? Is that what had caused his mind to snap like the plastic band on a two-dollar wristwatch?
How long? I wondered. How long had it been?
I posted this once before but it is so long I've broken it down to chapters.
God it was hot! It had been a mild spring but now the suffocating summer heat was bearing down with a vengeance. The gummy black asphalt sucked up the rays of a scorching August sun, magnifying its intensity ten-fold and building an oppressive blanket of hot, humid air.
A half-eaten candy bar dripped off the edge of the bus stop bench while a stream of ants carried away crumbs from a potato chip bag discarded in the gutter. Bees hummed around crumpled soft drink cans tossed in the over-flowing trash can, creating a steady drone of sound against the background cacophony of city traffic noise.
It was 1969, a time in America when the folly that was Viet Nam was still a major topic in the news with updates on the hour. The country was divided over a war that few understood and many did not believe in. Unlike the World Wars this was not a "good" war.
As I sat on the bench at the edge of the parking lot waiting for the bus to come, I regularly dodged insults of "Baby Killer" and the occasional beer or soft drink bottle hurled from the windows of passing cars. The uniform I still wore made me an easy target for those who were opposed to the war to vent their anger on.
I had just been discharged early from the Air Force so I could take a civilian job "for the good of the country". I had agreed to this as a quick way back to civilization. It was one of those too good to be true deals that sometimes come along. I learned from this that the old saying about things that are too good to be true is right. So is the one I heard about in boot camp about never volunteering for anything. The civilian job I had been discharged to take was with the C.I.A.'s Charter Air Line that shipped a steady, fresh supply of o.d. green teen-agers to Viet Nam, replacing the ones coming home in bags.
Sitting on that bench I felt as if I was occupying a hostile city in a foreign country. The "police action" our country was involved in looked like it would soon tear the heart and soul out of our nation. Kids were going off to college or to war and breaking away from their parents and the last generations' ideals and beliefs.
The U.S. government was sending the shattered bodies of young men home to their grieving families while Bell Helicopter, Lockheed, Monsanto, Northrup, and many other big companies, and their stock holders, were getting rich off of government military contracts. There were some who felt as if we weren't so much fighting against communism as to protect capitalism, the pinnacle of moral bankruptcy in America.
Congressmen speak in terms of dollars when they talk about the cost of war. Not much is mentioned about the human cost of war, the "collateral damage." Who talks about the shattered lives and broken dreams crushed beneath the twin evils of greed and the lust for power? Nothing is said of the heartache and pain caused by the battles waged for cheap oil or global influence, or the wars fought between "good and evil" to decide whose God is the best.
As I sat sweltering on the bench I notice two old nuns shambling along the other side of the street in their black and white uniforms. I couldn't help but think of the irony in how much they resembled a pair of penguins in the tropics. I bent my head and covered my eyes with my hand as I wondered how I could explain my situation to my family and friends when I heard a noise behind me. I looked up without removing my hand and the bright sunlight acted like an x-ray, for a second I could see the bones of my hand outlined in red. I looked back down and saw beneath my feet an extremely frustrated pigeon trying to consume a Styrofoam packaging peanut that lay among the trash lining the street. Yet another exercise in futility.
In the gutter were also needles, crack vials and another pigeon, only this one had died. I shouted at the rat dining on it and he made a hasty retreat back into the sewer grate. I remember thinking there is just life and death. That's when he caught my eye and introduced me to the middle ground.
He appeared suddenly out of the summer haze like some strange aberration. Through the shimmering heat he made his way toward me with awkward, erratic steps, pushing a shopping cart containing all his worldly possessions. The accumulated wealth of a lifetime of struggle was haphazardly thrown into a rusted cart that, like the man pushing it, had seen much better days.
He shuffled across the sea of man-made brimstone, a virtual Hades on Earth. A place of the damned formed from asphalt, concrete, and the dying brown weeds struggling to break free of the suffocating mire. The petro-chemical quicksand pulled at his worn out, Salvation Army shoes like the tar in the Le Brea pit, as if it was trying to suck him into the blackness. He passed broken bottles that lay sparkling in the sunlight like so many diamonds cast aside by a careless hand.
As he slowly traversed the vast empty wasteland of the vacant parking lot, he looked as if his mind was in a foggy delirium from the heat, mixed with the hangover effects of last night's liquid dinner. The once dark brown skin on his face was now more of a pasty gray and had the appearance of worn, cracked leather. There was a sunken depression where his left eye had once been. His head was covered with a stocking cap with a mass of matted, greasy white hair protruding from beneath in an Einstein type of manner. He had a beard not unlike Santa with the exception of the brown tobacco stains marring the otherwise white strands. His trembling hands were spotted and wrinkled with age and the tips of his gnarled fingers were stained with the yellowish brown of nicotine from decades of holding unfiltered cigarettes.
My immediate impression of this old black man was that it was obvious the music was playing but nobody had their fingers on the keyboard. As he passed by me one of his bags of treasure dislodged from his shopping cart to fall at my feet. I reached down and picked it up, placing it back on his cart. He drew back from me in disbelief and horror, as if I was a trespasser in his private world. He seemed to be a stranger to even the simplest gesture of human kindness. Then an old memory of a smile crept across his deeply lined face. As I looked into his weary eye, a small spark of life appeared in the depth like a tiny flame awakening in the smoldering ashes of a burned out building.
Then, as if with the opening of a spigot, his life story came spilling out of him. Within the space of a few moments I learned of the high points and the bitter disappointments of his life. When he spoke it was as if the trials of his life were unfolding like the dressing on a festering wound, rolling back to reveal the cancer rotting away underneath. I listened to him speak and wondered how he had come to be here, become one of those "invisible" people. The ones everyone walks by pretending they don't see while trying not to make eye contact.
How long? I asked myself. How long has he been existing here, trapped somewhere between the living and the dead?
Here was some mother's child who had fallen by the wayside, now fully embraced as one of society's outcasts. He had once gone to school, had friends, and worked within the norms of everyday life. Did his life one day become too much for him to continue shouldering the burdens of? Is that what had caused his mind to snap like the plastic band on a two-dollar wristwatch?
How long? I wondered. How long had it been?
God it was hot! It had been a mild spring but now the suffocating summer heat was bearing down with a vengeance. The gummy black asphalt sucked up the rays of a scorching August sun, magnifying its intensity ten-fold and building an oppressive blanket of hot, humid air.
A half-eaten candy bar dripped off the edge of the bus stop bench while a stream of ants carried away crumbs from a potato chip bag discarded in the gutter. Bees hummed around crumpled soft drink cans tossed in the over-flowing trash can, creating a steady drone of sound against the background cacophony of city traffic noise.
It was 1969, a time in America when the folly that was Viet Nam was still a major topic in the news with updates on the hour. The country was divided over a war that few understood and many did not believe in. Unlike the World Wars this was not a "good" war.
As I sat on the bench at the edge of the parking lot waiting for the bus to come, I regularly dodged insults of "Baby Killer" and the occasional beer or soft drink bottle hurled from the windows of passing cars. The uniform I still wore made me an easy target for those who were opposed to the war to vent their anger on.
I had just been discharged early from the Air Force so I could take a civilian job "for the good of the country". I had agreed to this as a quick way back to civilization. It was one of those too good to be true deals that sometimes come along. I learned from this that the old saying about things that are too good to be true is right. So is the one I heard about in boot camp about never volunteering for anything. The civilian job I had been discharged to take was with the C.I.A.'s Charter Air Line that shipped a steady, fresh supply of o.d. green teen-agers to Viet Nam, replacing the ones coming home in bags.
Sitting on that bench I felt as if I was occupying a hostile city in a foreign country. The "police action" our country was involved in looked like it would soon tear the heart and soul out of our nation. Kids were going off to college or to war and breaking away from their parents and the last generations' ideals and beliefs.
The U.S. government was sending the shattered bodies of young men home to their grieving families while Bell Helicopter, Lockheed, Monsanto, Northrup, and many other big companies, and their stock holders, were getting rich off of government military contracts. There were some who felt as if we weren't so much fighting against communism as to protect capitalism, the pinnacle of moral bankruptcy in America.
Congressmen speak in terms of dollars when they talk about the cost of war. Not much is mentioned about the human cost of war, the "collateral damage." Who talks about the shattered lives and broken dreams crushed beneath the twin evils of greed and the lust for power? Nothing is said of the heartache and pain caused by the battles waged for cheap oil or global influence, or the wars fought between "good and evil" to decide whose God is the best.
As I sat sweltering on the bench I notice two old nuns shambling along the other side of the street in their black and white uniforms. I couldn't help but think of the irony in how much they resembled a pair of penguins in the tropics. I bent my head and covered my eyes with my hand as I wondered how I could explain my situation to my family and friends when I heard a noise behind me. I looked up without removing my hand and the bright sunlight acted like an x-ray, for a second I could see the bones of my hand outlined in red. I looked back down and saw beneath my feet an extremely frustrated pigeon trying to consume a Styrofoam packaging peanut that lay among the trash lining the street. Yet another exercise in futility.
In the gutter were also needles, crack vials and another pigeon, only this one had died. I shouted at the rat dining on it and he made a hasty retreat back into the sewer grate. I remember thinking there is just life and death. That's when he caught my eye and introduced me to the middle ground.
He appeared suddenly out of the summer haze like some strange aberration. Through the shimmering heat he made his way toward me with awkward, erratic steps, pushing a shopping cart containing all his worldly possessions. The accumulated wealth of a lifetime of struggle was haphazardly thrown into a rusted cart that, like the man pushing it, had seen much better days.
He shuffled across the sea of man-made brimstone, a virtual Hades on Earth. A place of the damned formed from asphalt, concrete, and the dying brown weeds struggling to break free of the suffocating mire. The petro-chemical quicksand pulled at his worn out, Salvation Army shoes like the tar in the Le Brea pit, as if it was trying to suck him into the blackness. He passed broken bottles that lay sparkling in the sunlight like so many diamonds cast aside by a careless hand.
As he slowly traversed the vast empty wasteland of the vacant parking lot, he looked as if his mind was in a foggy delirium from the heat, mixed with the hangover effects of last night's liquid dinner. The once dark brown skin on his face was now more of a pasty gray and had the appearance of worn, cracked leather. There was a sunken depression where his left eye had once been. His head was covered with a stocking cap with a mass of matted, greasy white hair protruding from beneath in an Einstein type of manner. He had a beard not unlike Santa with the exception of the brown tobacco stains marring the otherwise white strands. His trembling hands were spotted and wrinkled with age and the tips of his gnarled fingers were stained with the yellowish brown of nicotine from decades of holding unfiltered cigarettes.
My immediate impression of this old black man was that it was obvious the music was playing but nobody had their fingers on the keyboard. As he passed by me one of his bags of treasure dislodged from his shopping cart to fall at my feet. I reached down and picked it up, placing it back on his cart. He drew back from me in disbelief and horror, as if I was a trespasser in his private world. He seemed to be a stranger to even the simplest gesture of human kindness. Then an old memory of a smile crept across his deeply lined face. As I looked into his weary eye, a small spark of life appeared in the depth like a tiny flame awakening in the smoldering ashes of a burned out building.
Then, as if with the opening of a spigot, his life story came spilling out of him. Within the space of a few moments I learned of the high points and the bitter disappointments of his life. When he spoke it was as if the trials of his life were unfolding like the dressing on a festering wound, rolling back to reveal the cancer rotting away underneath. I listened to him speak and wondered how he had come to be here, become one of those "invisible" people. The ones everyone walks by pretending they don't see while trying not to make eye contact.
How long? I asked myself. How long has he been existing here, trapped somewhere between the living and the dead?
Here was some mother's child who had fallen by the wayside, now fully embraced as one of society's outcasts. He had once gone to school, had friends, and worked within the norms of everyday life. Did his life one day become too much for him to continue shouldering the burdens of? Is that what had caused his mind to snap like the plastic band on a two-dollar wristwatch?
How long? I wondered. How long had it been?
Bell Helicopter: They made the most used helicopter in Viet Nam. The Uh-1 widely known as the Huey.
Northrup and Lockheed made airplanes or electronics for airplanes.
Mansanto brought us Agent Orange. Agent Orange was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped, and was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides". The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic dioxin compound. In some areas, TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Many who served there developed health problems that were caused by Agent Orange.
Le Brea Tar Pits: The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed in urban Los Angeles. Natural asphalt . Natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch or tar, brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of animals that were trapped in the tar were preserved.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Northrup and Lockheed made airplanes or electronics for airplanes.
Mansanto brought us Agent Orange. Agent Orange was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped, and was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides". The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic dioxin compound. In some areas, TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Many who served there developed health problems that were caused by Agent Orange.
Le Brea Tar Pits: The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed in urban Los Angeles. Natural asphalt . Natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch or tar, brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of animals that were trapped in the tar were preserved.
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