My first run-in with war was when I was 5. I was playing in the living room and my handsome young father was in the overstuffed chair, reading the newspaper. I knew he had been a soldier and asked the obvious question: “Did you ever fight dinosaurs in World War II, dad?”
“Just the Nazis, son.” Pops was both honest and a minimalist.
This was 70 years ago and I don’t have a single day-planner left from 1955. But, same dad, same living room, same day, the evening news was on TV. Looking back, I’m guessing we were wealthy, owning a 10-inch-wide fuzzy black-and-white screen. The newscaster solemnly announced that guerillas sporting machine guns opened fire on patrons in a crowded Mexico City restaurant, killing 36.
Then and now? Most things in the adult world strike me as unfair. And insane. I asked my father:
“Gorillas have machine guns?”
Dad delineated between “gorilla” and “guerilla.” Almost a mature man today, I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the difference.
Later, around second grade, began the abject humiliation of participating in those Cold War “Duck & Cover” drills. Russia and China hated us. Well. At least their political brass did. Us little kids were shown grainy 16mm films at school of an atomic bomb being dropped and pretty much vaporizing everything from skyscrapers to Rotarians.
The films ended with the narrator’s soothing voice solemnly warning about goose-stepping Russians eager to nuke us and, while we’re at it, don’t order Chinese take-out as it could contain salt peter. (I still love Chinese food.)
At Placerita Junior High, there was a giant air raid siren right across the street in Newhall Park. It would scream in frantic urgency. I’d try not to be obvious in stealing a casual glance at the curiously rounded rear ends of the co-eds as we all scrambled to “Duck & Cover” under our desks.
I remember thinking: How. Undignified. My last moment on Earth and I’m spending it while my PF Flyers and blue jeans are blasted from my body as my seventh-grade heinie points toward the North Star.
I’ve always loved history and the news. They are, if anything, interesting. I frequently read the four daily Los Angeles newspapers — quite the bargain at 40 cents total back then. From that introduction of machine-gunning great apes making war on Mexican diners? Well. I’ve found it sadly fascinating the appetite we have for hurting and killing.
Far East. Middle East. Near East. Africa. Downtown L.A. Central or South America. Bay of Pigs. Vietnam. Almost touching Antarctica, there was England’s war over the Falklands. Is it just me or is the Arctic the only peaceful spot on the globe?
I missed getting drafted by a blink. Many friends were either picked or they enlisted to have options, like, avoiding jungle rot and getting blown up. I wasn’t anti-war for any 1960s hippie passion. Vietnam struck me as profoundly stupid. It fits in still with an inner narrative that those in charge, i.e., grown-ups, as a class, were, and are, mostly stupid, posing and harrumphing through life. Math’s not my strong suit, but I roughly calculated that with what we spent fighting Vietnam, we could have just cemented the entire nation and washed away the Viet Cong and Communist Chinese with a garden hose.
Kosovo. Iraq. Iran. Detroit. India-Pakistan. Borneo cannibals vs. Borneo cannibals. Hatfields and the McCoys. Throw in the uncountable blood feuds around the globe, some started on the flimsy suspicion that a neighbor stared at someone’s wife or goat funny. There are TikTok mini-documentaries swearing wife and goat were one in the same.
I could fill stacks of legal pads, listing all the wars and conflicts that have occurred in my life. They don’t need to include armies.
Last week, up in Northern Idaho, a 20-year-old madman shot and murdered two veteran fire chiefs while wounding another. He committed suicide. To illustrate my own thirst for blood and righteous vengeance, I wondered why he couldn’t have reversed the order and saved so many so much heartache. A Washington state survivalist murdered his three young daughters and disappeared into the woods. That was a month ago. As of press time, they’re still looking for him. A woman author in Utah who wrote a popular book on how to deal with grief of a loved one recently was charged with fatally poisoning her husband with mushrooms. In her press photos posed with her life’s partner, she looks really sweet.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear there throbs deep within most of us a subterranean gene, a need to hate. Someone. Something. For about 20 years, I taught Santa Clarita history. For three classes each year, I’d march into the first gathering and boldly write on the board this same observation: “A man can live three days without water, three weeks without food and 20 minutes without a justification.” That’s history. That’s us. Most of us can go a lifetime fuming upstairs in their monkey brains. Some will blow a fuse, maybe curse or strike. Some will kill. Sometimes war requires uniforms. Sometimes, it doesn’t.
I’ve written this more than a few times over the years. No one seems to believe me. It’s a wisdom from an old friend:
The devil doesn’t care what you’re upset about — just that you’re upset …
Somewhere, at this moment, a baby’s being born. Bad luck or karma, they might have the misfortune to become a newspaper columnist. They’ll stumble through a life, and, with a little luck, still be pontificating at the age of 75.
I wonder. In the year 2100, will he or she be penning a think piece, pondering why humans store so much rage and vengeance in their hearts, why — gorillas or guerillas — we are destined to participate in something called war?
With more than 11,000 columns and 100-plus awards, Santa Clarita’s John Boston is the most prolific humorist/satirist in world history. Visit his bookstore online at johnlovesamerica.com/bookstore and support American literature by buying stuff.
