Meanwhile, I continued to grow my hair long. I hoped that it was communicating to my relatives that I wasn't exactly following the old socially acceptable mold anymore and that I was into respecting people, regardless of the length of their hair. I hoped my aunts and uncles, parents and friends that I'd written home to for the duration I'd been in the Army, would realize the minimal significance of a man having long hair. Most of them accepted it quite well with me, possibly because I'd fulfilled my military obligation in Vietnam, but I'll never really know for sure. Outside of the family, however, with people who didn't know anything about me, it was a totally different ball game.
Having long hair has given me an abundance of educational "far out" experiences with all kinds of people. I've been called Goldilocks by red necks, the blond bombshell by gays, and just plain hippie by others. I've had beer cans thrown at me while hitch hiking when it was pouring down rain. One interesting experience in particular that I'll always remember, was with a semi-truck driver along a freeway. He had honked, and was waiting for me at the end of an entrance way along the expressway headed towards Michigan. My car had broken down in Nebraska and needed a front wheel bearing. It was a 1957 Volvo. No parts near by, especially for that year of a car. I gave it to a Stucky's restaurant manager somewhere along the expressway for 30 dollars. The deal was that he would give me the rest of the money, whatever that was, when I mailed him the title. I did mail him the title, but never saw the money in return... I think I bought it for $600 in Aspen, Colorado just weeks earlier...
Anyway, this truck driver apparently got a kick out of watching me hurry down the entrance ramp with my heavy duffel bag full of canned food, and all of my things in the car that I could possibly carry. He waited until I'd almost reached his truck, and took off while flipping me the bird. He knew it was illegal to hike along the open expressway which, of course, made it necessary for me to walk all the way back up the entrance way, unless I wanted to get a ticket. A real nice guy... To me, long hair was never really an issue. In the late 60's and early 7o's our whole country seemed to be at odds with one another. Either you were a hippie or an all American conformist, red neck or something or another. Back then, finding someone with realistic values, who cared about people, rather than what they looked like wasn't an easy thing to do. Trying to remain friends with my relatives who were on both sides of the fence was sometimes difficult...
Combat veterans are in a class of people all by themselves. They're with a brother when they meet another who's felt the pain, walked the miles and heard the bullets whiz by. The mutual experience of seeing men die after trying to save them, time after time, month after month, in the same small country of Vietnam, gives combat veterans a closeness with one another that they'll never be able to have with someone else. They share the same pain and scars from the mental trauma of it all, even though they've probably never seen one another before...
It would have been nice, after coming home, to have a couple of friends around the corner who'd been there and done it. One of my old friends had been there serving as a clerk at a base camp, but for some reason we weren't on the same wave link. I had a couple of high school friends who either hadn't been there, or as a result of being there, was on hard drugs. Even though I was living with my fiance and tried telling her what it was like, I knew it was a lot more than she would ever be able to identify with. I loved her, but our relationship and the things we did together didn't have anything to do with the things that were going on in the world around us. It would've been great if she'd wanted to go to Washington D.C. with me and protest against the war. I was alone in my desire to do something meaningful and be where the action was. I've never been one to be a spectator, especially after fighting in Vietnam. I needed to get involved in something that would enable me to apply the things I'd learned through all of my experiences. When I thought about it, it seemed like a waste to spend all of my time doing a simple job to make a pay check that only took up my time, and kept me from doing something more meaningful.
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