by Jack McLean
In Barstow, Sid and I lived in a small air-conditioned Quonset hut with forty other guys and worked with civilians in eight-hour shifts in the office of a warehouse. Because of the increasing activity overseas, all of the supply warehouses were operating twenty-four hours a day. There was a minimum of petty harassment. We did have a brief formation every morning, sounded off, and maybe did a few squat thrusts and side straddle hops. Rifles were issued and cleaned every day—a constant reminder that we were still, in fact, in the United States Marine Corps. Off time during the day, though, was spent baking at the base pool. Evenings were spent reading, writing letters, or playing endless games of casino and hearts. Once or twice a week we would venture out to drink beer. Once a month we’d take the long bus ride to Las Vegas or L.A., spend our monthly pay of $96.50, and return to base happily broke until the next payday.
It was deathly boring.
All around us, there was evidence of the military buildup that was taking place in Vietnam. The volume of the material that we processed in and out of Barstow every day mounted. In boot camp it had been a rarity to see a marine who had actually been in a war. Now, barely five months later, a constant stream of hardened veterans had begun to trickle back from Vietnam.
The stream became a torrent by summer.
As the days grew longer, the desert heat grew more oppressive. The news from back East was of record snow and cold, and the Boston Strangler, who held the region in a horrifying grip of terror. The news from the opposite direction was all Vietnam—escalating troop deployments and skyrocketing casualties. It was beginning to become, as author David Halberstam described in his dispatches from the front, a “quagmire.”
In early March, I accepted the invitation of a barracks mate to spend a weekend with his family in Bakersfleld. It was an incredible thirty-six hours that was like no weekend home from Andover ever was. This was the first time I had visited the home of a fellow marine and gotten a glimpse into his other life. No question, we came from different places. Several times over the following days, the words from Hank Aplington’s letter after my enlistment rang in my ears.
The Corps has its fair share of no-goods who may be easy to gravitate to. Unfortunately, they and their friends usually end up in trouble. Take care to avoid them.
There was no question that I should have avoided Steve.
Bakersfleld wasn’t exactly the trendy Sunset Strip of Los Angeles, but it wasn’t Barstow either. Steve had a big, old, only-in-California heap of a Chrysler that he drove with pure abandon. He was fuming mad when we left the base that Friday afternoon, since he’d had his locker pried open and seventy dollars was missing. He was determined to get it back. Steve felt that the world owed him seventy dollars.
The trip was marked by a harrowing introduction to the Tehachapi Pass in pea soup fog. Steve was doing sixty miles per hour through the switchbacks, blasting the radio, and drinking a beer. I would have felt more secure walking into a barrage of incoming without a helmet or flak jacket. Coming down the west side of the pass, we caught the first sight of the sprawl that was Bakersfield—as unappealing in appearance as any place I’d seen. It did not improve as we got closer.
We spent the weekend hanging out with Steve’s friends. “Hanging out” was a new concept for me. We had had little free time during the previous seven months, but even before then it had been a luxury I’d rarely been permitted. Time at Andover was tightly structured, and to my mother, idle hands really were the devil’s workshop.
But that Saturday, hanging out, Steve and his friends talked about cars and girls—each with a level of familiarity that left me dumbstruck. It all seemed so free and open, so California. One of his friends talked about how he had gotten some new mag wheels for his GTO early the previous Sunday morning. He had simply backed his truck through the plate glass window of the display floor, thrown the wheels into the truck, and driven off.
“Why would anyone ever pay for mag wheels?” he asked no one in particular. Then, turning a glance in my direction, he said, “Jack, you need some mag wheels? I’ll get you some. No shit. I’ll get you some—come back with Steve next weekend and I’ll have ’em here waiting for you. Right here.”
“Ah, gee. Well, thanks. Yeah, thanks, but I mean, I don’t have a car,” I replied, or perhaps stammered.
“Bummer. Hey, I’ll get ’em anyway and then you can sell them to someone back on base—get a couple hundred bucks—more than you can make in a month.”
“No, thanks. I don’t think they’d fit in my locker.”
My feeble attempt at humor was lost on this group.
That night Steve and I drove into L.A. It was my first visit. We hung out looking for a party and then cruised the Sunset Strip in his big old car. It was sort of cool to be there, but I really didn’t get it. I had a lot to learn about hanging out and cruising. Late in the evening, Steve stopped across from a liquor store and ran in to get some cigarettes while I waited in the car. Two minutes later, he came running out, jumped into the car, and stepped on the gas. I’m not sure that he touched the brake in the two hours that it took to get back to Bakersfield. Along the way, he reached under his white T-shirt and pulled a .45 caliber pistol from the waistband of his blue jeans.
A .45, for chrissakes.
“Where in the fuck did you get that, man?” I asked in total disbelief.
“’Sokay, man. It’s mine. You know, mine from base.”
“I can’t believe you took that off base, Steve! Steve—they could court-martial you for that!”
“Yeah, shit, I know,” he said. “Hey, sorry if I put you in a tough position. Really, Jack, I’m really sorry.”
“What did you just do? Wait, what did you do in there? Oh, shit. I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Here. Hold this.” Without waiting for my response, he took his hands off the wheel as I grabbed it. The Chrysler lurched hard right before I brought it back into line.
With one eye on the road ahead, I stole a glance downward in the direction of his pockets, where his hands were disgorging wads of bills. He’d pull out a few, go back for more, pull out a few more, go back for a few more, until there were bills all over the front seat of the car. His foot was still heavy on the gas, and my hand was still gripping the wheel as we flew across the table-top flatness of the lower San Joaquin Valley at better than one hundred miles per hour.
“Looks like I’m about even. Should be at least seventy bucks there, don’t you think?”
Seventy? There were tens and twenties and fives and ones everywhere.
“Shit, Steve. I’d say you’re ahead.”
“Yeah, could be. Here. Take some. I only wanted seventy. You can have the rest. I just wanted to get even.”
By the time we had pulled into his driveway back in Bakers-field, Steve had counted out $237. I politely thanked him for the offer to share but took none of the money. Instead, I became totally focused on getting back to the base as soon as possible. I was, however, acutely aware that I was sitting next to someone who was cradling a fully loaded, recoil operated, magazine fed, self-loading hand weapon on his lap. Fully loaded for this weapon is seven rounds.
I prayed that he still had a full magazine.
The following afternoon, Steve and I silently made the long drive back to Barstow. It seemed as though the whole weekend had been spent in the car. We each knew that our relationship had changed. He continued to express remorse. I spoke up once, telling him only that he was lucky to be alive.
“What if he’d had a gun under the counter, Steve? What if he’d had a gun?”
Steve laughed a short laugh. “Hey, he didn’t have a gun, Jack. It’s okay. I’m right here, man.”
I didn’t see Steve much after that. We usually worked different shifts at the warehouse, and he went home to hang out every weekend. He later told me that he’d come up with a new venture—stealing surfboards. He and a friend would take a truck, drive down the coast highway, and steal the surfboards that people would leave outside
the back doors of their homes.
“Jack, you wouldn’t believe this shit. People just leave ’em out—it’s not like it’s even stealing. And it’s like Malibu, you know. They’re all so rich, they probably don’t even notice that they’re gone. Come on. I got some other ideas too. I’ll cut you in.”
“No, thanks, Steve. I mean, you know, thanks, but no thanks, man.”
I spoke with Steve one more time a month later. He looked hardened and tough and tired, a far cry from the sweet guy who had been my friend back at supply school.
“Jack. Stereos, man. Stereos. You know, after a few weeks, there weren’t any surfboards left. We took ’em all, or people were wising up to us. Anyway, there weren’t any left. So, well, you know, I tried the handle on the back door of one of these richie houses, and it was unlocked, so I stepped in a little, and there’s nobody there. So I walk in some more, and there’s this stereo sitting there, so I took it.
“Jack, it’s a gold mine. It’s not even like stealing. I mean, they leave their back doors open. It’s like an engraved invitation. People are so stupid. Do you believe it?”
Months later, shortly before I left for Vietnam, I heard that Steve had gotten caught stealing stereo equipment farther up the coast and had been given the choice of going to the brig or to Vietnam. He’d chosen the latter.
11
IN LATE MARCH 1967, MY ATTENTION TURNED TO THE Boston Red Sox. The games would be my daily companion until October, with box scores in the paper every morning and a static-filled game on my little transistor radio most nights. It was a wonderful diversion from the boredom.
Originally from northern New Jersey, I had been raised a New York Yankees fan. During my Andover years, though, my fan loyalties had turned to the local Boston Red Sox. The transition became complete when my parents moved to Brookline, two trolley stops from Fenway. I found that I could go to a game on the spur of the moment, pay a dollar to sit in the bleachers, and then be home again fifteen minutes after the final out. It was heaven.
The Red Sox, however, unlike the Yankees, were awful. The spring of 1967 brought little new hope. The Sox had lost one hundred games in 1965, had finished ninth in 1966, and were again one-hundred-to-one shots to win the American League Pennant in 1967. On opening day, they beat the Chicago White Sox 5–4. That afternoon, there were 8,234 fans scattered about Fenway Park. Usually, an opening day victory such as that would have kept downtrodden New England baseball fans in good spirits until early June.
Several days later, however, a twenty-one-year-old southpaw named Bill Rohr, making his major league debut, came within one out of pitching a no-hitter against the hated Yankees in New York. Softly, talk began that this year the Red Sox might actually have the stuff to contend for the American League pennant. Perhaps this year would be different. The new manager, Dick Williams, promised a .500 season—traditionally an unachievable feat for the “Olde Towne Team.” There were, however, several diamonds in the Red Sox coal mine. Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Lonborg were legitimate stars. So were local legend Tony Conigliaro and hard-hitting shortstop Rico Petrocelli. Rookies Reggie Smith and Mike Andrews added to the promise of the dawning spring.
As it turned out, this year was different. In the words of Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, “Across most of America this was remembered as the Summer of Love, the Summer of Sgt. Pepper’s, and the summer of the Vietnam War escalation, but for young Red Sox fans it was the summer of the Impossible Dream.” By the time I shipped out in October, my Red Sox would make it all the way to the seventh game of the 1967 World Series before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals.
On July 5, 1967, I arrived home in Brookline for several weeks of annual leave. It was great to be out of Barstow and wonderful to be home during the height of a beautiful New England summer. Despite the daily escalation of the war, I was nearing the halfway point of my enlistment and was increasingly certain that I would not go. A marine’s tour in Vietnam was thirteen months, with another month of training prior to departure. I was running out of time.
On my first day home, I drove the twenty miles from Brookline to Andover to meet with Bob Hulburd, the school’s college admissions adviser. It felt good to be back on the sprawling campus. Much had changed in the past year. I felt taller. The school seemed smaller.
I was certainly the only recent graduate to return as a United States Marine. There was no bottom to the well of pride that I felt. I was also becoming aware that my service in the Marine Corps might actually be a positive force in the college admissions process.
I was excited about attending college and aspired to find a suitable one near home. Boston University was an obvious choice. Hulburd agreed. After further discussion, he suggested a number of other possibilities and included Harvard University on the list. He felt that they would be interested in my unique experience.
In the early 1960s, with large thanks to Dean Bill Bender, Harvard had broadened its admissions criteria. The university then, as now, had little trouble attracting the top high school students. The challenge became one of creating a balanced learning environment. Bender initiated changes that gave weight to prospective students who excelled in other areas—the best oboe player, for example, or the best hockey player. Would they give the same weight to a private first class in the United States Marine Corps?
There was only one way to find out.
Hulburd thought it would be good practice for me to have a warm-up interview before visiting Harvard the following week. Although I was not particularly interested in attending college in New York, Columbia and Harvard were similar enough that Hulburd felt an interview at Columbia would be beneficial for me. The day of my practice interview at Columbia, I pulled out the gray suit—still new, still pressed—that I had last worn that miserably rainy graduation day at Andover a year before. I found a crisp starched white shirt and black socks in my father’s dresser, and a presentable tie in his closet. I removed my spit-shined Marine Corps dress shoes from their flannel sleeves and put them on to complete the outfit. The shoes felt awkward and out of place without my uniform, but they were all that I had. The suit and shirt didn’t quite fit, but I did feel well put together, considering the circumstances.
I walked out the front door, down High Street, and across Route 9 to the Brookline Village trolley stop and took the Green and the Blue lines to Logan airport. I made the nine o’clock shuttle to New York with time to spare and was sitting in the waiting room of the Columbia University admissions office in Hamilton Hall at ten-twenty. I was forty minutes early for my eleven o’clock appointment. As I looked around the room at the other candidates gathered for their interviews that morning, there was no question that I had the shiniest pair of shoes.
At the stroke of eleven, I was introduced to the interviewer. He was a short weaselly-looking young man in a black suit who, after leading me into his tiny office, directed me to sit on a cracked plastic guest chair. He positioned himself safely behind a large desk. My suit pants were strangling my thighs, which had bulked up during the past year. The early-morning excitement and my anticipation from the plane trip down from Boston evaporated in an instant.
He did not appear to be happy to see me.
“Good morning, Mr.… ah, McLean,” he began as he fumbled to find my name on his appointment sheet.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Let’s see.… You’re the person we got a call about from Andover the other day?” He was still searching.
“Yes.”
“They wanted us to see you right away. I don’t have any information on you. Is that your transcript that you are holding?”
“Yes,” I replied, and silently turned over the envelope Hulburd had given me.
No small talk. No “So tell me what you’ve been up to for the past year.” No “So how was your flight down?” He just wanted what was in the envelope. It contained my five-year Andover transcript and College Board scores. I should have spared myself the humiliation and just left.
> “This is it? These are your grades?” He was mystified and made no attempt to hide it.
“Yes, sir.”
I knew that he wanted to ask me if there was some critical piece of paper that was missing, if there was some obvious fact that he had overlooked that was key to my coming all the way down from Boston for this moment.
“Why are you here?”
I scrambled. “Well, I think that they thought you might be interested in my experience—you know, what I’ve been doing for the past year.”
“The army?” He said the two words with the same drawn-out inflection that he might have used had I told him that there was an elephant in the room, which, I might add, there was.
“Well, yes. That is, the Marine Corps, actually, but yes.” I decided to kill Hulburd as soon as I got back to Boston.
“Tell me, how old will you be at the start of your freshman year?”
“Twenty-one.”
“That’s going to be a problem. We prefer that our incoming freshmen be eighteen or nineteen years old. We think it adds to the camaraderie—you know, to the learning experience. It’s the Columbia way.”
The Columbia way?
Fuck the Columbia way.
Two days later, I made my way across the Charles River to Cambridge and historic Harvard Yard.
Again, I felt uncomfortable. My hair was short. I wore the same ill-fitting civilian suit over another of my father’s starched white shirts and business ties. My spit-shined shoes reflected a scene that was light-years removed from the Parris Island parade deck. I could not have felt more out of place if I’d been wearing my uniform.
Yet the interview lasted an hour and I actually enjoyed it.
They had received my transcript, but that subject never came up. The young man who interviewed me, like so many others of that era, was attending graduate school for the purpose of avoiding the draft. He was, however, most interested in my experience and in me. He said that he admired my decision to enlist. He asked that I apply for admission. My feet never touched the ground as I left the office.