Transcript of Oral History Interview with Steve Glasper

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project

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Version 3 August 20, 2018 Steve Glasper Narrator

Douglas Bekke Interviewer

April 9, 2018 Fridley, Minnesota

Steven Glasper -SG Douglas Bekke -DG

DB: Minnesota Historical Society Vietnam Oral History Project interview with Steve Glasper in his home in Fridley, Minnesota on 9 April 2018. Mr. Glasper can you please say and spell your name? SG: Yes my name is Steve Glasper. S-T-E-V-E G-L-A-S-P as in people-E-R DB: And your birth date? SG: 10-31-49 DB: And your place of birth? SG: St. Joseph, Missouri. DB: What do you know about your ancestry? SG: Well, being African-American, sometimes it’s a little difficult, gets a little hazy when you start thinking about how far back you go. I can go back—fortunately for me we’ve had a pretty good, family make up and we’ve always kept in touch with. I can go back as far as my great- great-grandparents at least having some knowledge, and my great-great-grandmother I actually knew Mildred Webster because she was still alive. She died, she was 106 when she passed. DB: That’s pretty amazing. SG: Yeah. We had the opportunity to actually learn some things from her even though I was a small child, but my father is from St. Joseph, Missouri, my mother is from St. Joseph, Missouri. Their families are from there too, the Missouri area. My mother and father divorced when I was seven. My father remained in St. Joseph, Missouri. My mother remarried a serviceman. He was in the air force. From the age of about fourteen, is when I moved away from Missouri, but— DB: Let’s go back to your, great-great-grandmother who lived to be 106. What kind of stories did she tell you? SG: Well, an interesting thing about her was, she married a Caucasian man at a time when it was illegal in Missouri. So the interesting thing was they had traditionally a little bit better house

34 than a lot of us had, you know, back then things were segregated. We’re talking about the fifties era. And, I just remember— DB: She married in, in—she must’ve been close to 100 years old in the 50s. SG: No, well, when did she pass? She passed in the 70s at about 106. DB: Oh, really? SG: Yeah, yeah. So, but she got married long before that. But I’m relating it to the fifties because that’s what I remember. DB: Sure, okay, okay. SG: But my grandfather, my great-grandfather, if you saw a picture of him he looked like Lynden Johnson. We used to make kind of cracks about that because he looked exactly like Lynden Johnson. But at the time it was illegal for them to get married and the way they got married was very interesting because they met, they fell in love, he went to the courthouse to get the papers for them to get married and of course they looked at him kind of oddly because, hey, the— DB: Not being done in those days. SG: But when you fill out the paperwork, under race he put ‘colored’ down. And even though he looked the way he looked, and at that time no one’s going to doubt—why you would say that unless you must really be, so they stamped it and let them get married. And that just kind of showed our family, we always used to talk about how much he cared about her because he was willing to make that sacrifice, and that was a big sacrifice back then, because he really wanted to marry this woman, so—but, one thing about him, the stories I used to hear about him was— DB: Did you know him? SG: I didn’t, no. He passed before DB: Saw pictures of him— SG: Yes. He didn’t live as long as my grandmother did, and I’m not sure about whether they were that close in age or not, but the stories I used to hear were, grandpa Webster used to be able to go and purchase things for our family that everybody would just give him the money and he could go get better choices of things and shop at places where we’d have issues shopping and things we couldn’t get. He would always go and do that for us because his appearance let him open up any doors he needed to open to get in, and you know he got to go shopping for us and buy things for us that we couldn’t normally get our hands on. And he also had a little bit better house than most of the black people that lived in the St. Joe area at that time. DB: And was this on your mother’s side or your father’s side? SG: This was on my father’s side. DB: Okay, okay.

SG: And my mother’s side, there is some Native American in there and I can’t really—my mother knows a lot more about it and unfortunately I’ve not been one to kind of put a lot of emphasis on— DB: Is your mother still alive? SG: Yes. DB: Oh, this’ll be an incentive to go and talk to your mother! SG: (laughs) I can get a little information from her, yeah! DB: Is she in Missouri? SG: My great-grandmother on her side, I know, was half Native American, I don’t know which tribe, but they were all from the Missouri area. My mother’s from the Missouri area, but my mother lives here now. And an interesting aspect of my whole family is that none of us are from here in Minnesota, but all of my brothers and sisters are here now. DB: Everybody migrated to Minnesota. SG: Everybody migrated here, yeah. DB: Came here for the weather, didn’t you? SG: Yeah, yeah exactly! (Both laugh) For the hockey! (Both laugh) DB: Okay, okay. You said that your parents divorced when I think you said you were seven? SG: I think I was about seven, yes. DB: And, but you were able to maintain contact with your birth father’s family? SG: Oh yes, yes. He married another woman, had three other boys, they were my half- brothers, but St. Joseph is a small town, and especially the black community, so we all knew each other very well, we played together, we stayed at each other’s houses, we knew each other very well. DB: Okay. SG: And I always had contact with my father. DB: Okay. Sometimes with divorce there’s a sharp line there. SG: No, no, that never was a problem, my father—and he just passed away about two years ago, —and he actually moved up here too, and my mother and my stepfather moved here too— we can get into that later. DB: Okay, and so, you went with your mother after the divorce and your mother married a military person. SG: Yes. She met my stepfather, who, my birth name is actually Webster. My stepfather adopted us because at the time he being in the military and for us to get all of the benefits it was better for him to adopt us. They met through a cousin of mine who was in the military and brought this guy from Chicago—he had been in the military a while, he was a sergeant—to meet

36 my mother, and they hit it off pretty well. Now, me, I had myself and one brother at the house, and he’s younger than me, and me being the oldest and thinking at that time, we’re talking the early sixties, I’m the man of the house, basically, so meeting this guy was a little bit of a—it was kind of an interesting time for me. DB: Stepping into your territory. SG: Right. He was able to get my younger brother’s attention pretty easily. He was younger, give him some candy he’s good to go. Me, I’ve got my eye on you. You’re not— I don’t know, I’m not ready to buy into you. And I remember the day he bought a new car, ‘62 Impala, and he came to—he was, oh where was he based? I really don’t remember where he was based, but he’d only come to see my mother maybe once every month and a half. They wrote letters, and you know they knew everything about each other by the time they met, but anyway. He came this one time—their situation was getting pretty serious, and I think it was either right after or just before he asked her to marry him—he drove up in a brand new ‘62 Impala. I’m 14 years old. I’m looking out the window, I see this Impala pull up, and I’m impressed as hell. I’m like, “oh wow, look at this!” DB: Maybe this guy’s not so bad. SG: Yeah—well I still wasn’t going to give it to him that easily. He walks in the house and you know I’m—I take the smile off my face after looking at the car—“Hey, hey, how’s it going,” you know that kind of thing, and he looks at me and he goes, “Do you know how to drive a car?” And I went, “Yeah,” not knowing how to drive a car at all. He tosses me the keys! And I go, “Really?” He goes, “Well, let’s take you out on the dirt roads somewhere.” So we went out to a rural, more rural area, and he turned the keys over to me and let me drive, and from that day on him and I were okay. (Both laugh) He knew how to get to me. So I had confidence in him and I really liked him and him, he was a good man, very good man. Like I said, he was in the Air Force, they got married, I was the best man at my mom and my stepfather’s wedding. And about three or four months after they got married, we found out that we were going to go live in Japan. DB: Let, let’s stay in St. Joe for a little while. SG: Okay. DB: Okay, so let’s go back to school, early memories. Grade school. What was your grade school experience? SG: Grade school. Horace Mann in St. Joseph, Missouri was a predominantly, well, no, let’s see not predominantly, I’d say all, black school, as were schools most, in most towns that size at that time. DB: Segregated. SG: Yeah. The high schools however weren’t, so, my— DB: Were the schools segregated by design or by neighborhood? You know a lot of the times—

SG: Pretty much by neighborhood. DB: Okay. SG: Because if you could go wherever you were capable of going, most of us weren’t capable of going to certain schools, because you didn’t live in the right zone. DB: So you’re living in a predominantly black neighborhood, your school is predominantly black. SG: Mm-hm. And, I think we weren’t necessarily amongst—the blacks in the area, we weren’t poor, we were I would say middle class blacks. Compared to white America, we were poor though. But as kids we didn’t know that. We didn’t realize that. We were just kids and this is where we lived. And we didn’t think about that. DB: What did your birth father do for a living? SG: He was, at first he worked in a factory. St. Joseph, Missouri had a big business of meat packing, and he was a foreman in a meat packing plant for a long time. He eventually became, the president of the AFL-CIO union for the same, cattle industry. But that’s where he worked, and that actually, we’ll get into it a little later, was the place where I worked for a while too, after I came back. DB: And did your mother work outside the home? SG: My mother was a nurse. And when, her and my father divorced—and it was a little hard for my mother for a while because she became a single mother—she refused to get on welfare, because at that time welfare was definitely a negative thing, and you know, no one wanted to have to accept that. She was eligible for it, but she refused to do it. I remember one time I think she worked two or three jobs. She worked at a state mental hospital, she was a nurse, she worked in the Missouri State mental hospital for quite a while and then she had a couple of side jobs she did too, so she worked very hard up until the point where she met my stepfather. DB: Mm-hm. Did she talk about discrimination as a nurse? Was that something she had to deal with? SG: Well, this is an interesting thing. She worked at this hospital called, I think it was Mercy Hospital, and at that time—it was definitely up until I was born, you—blacks couldn’t go to that hospital. My mother worked at that hospital. So she became pregnant with me, and this was in 1949, and I remember her insisting on having her child at that hospital, and for whatever reasons they allowed it to happen. I was born in that hospital. I was the first black baby born in Mercy Hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. And not long after that—it was a fairly old hospital by then even—not long after that it was closed and torn down. So as far as I know, and according to our family folklore or whatever, I was the only one ever born in that hospital that was African American, and no one else even came after me. She was allowed to do it because she worked there, and she knew the people there well enough. I don’t know how she got it passed, but, I don’t think it was necessarily a law, it comes from a law. At one time I’m sure it was a law. But, I think in ’49 it might not have necessarily have been against the law but, black people just never, never utilized that particular facility. DB: Yeah. But even in your first moments of life you were a trailblazer. 38

SG: (laughs) I guess so! (Laughs) Maybe that was my biggest trail. (Both laugh) DB: Okay. Talk about your neighborhood a little bit, the people around you, what were your neighbors like? SG: Well, it was, an all-black neighborhood. The principal of the school that I went to live about a block down the street from my house. DB: The school staff was all black too? SG: Yes, yes, all the teachers were black and everyone we grew up with in our general area was, black. We, like I said, compared to white America, we were I guess considered poor, not totally impoverished, but relatively so. But we didn’t realize it as kids. We had plenty of food. We had plenty of family. We had plenty of friends, and we had plenty of fun. And we did normal things that kids do. We had a lot of freedom in our neighborhood. We would ride our bikes, and we knew everyone because it’s a small enough town, and we knew there were certain areas where you didn’t cross over. And, this was just, not knowing why, this was just the rules. I do remember a lesson that I got early in life from my dad about racism. DB: Mm-hm. This, from your birth dad? SG: Yes. Because he was always an influence in my life. We always spent time together and everything. There was a movie theater downtown—this was before the age of 14, because, we hadn’t left yet, so— and I only lived in St. Joseph, Missouri until the age of 14. So sometime between around age 7 and 14 my dad took me to a movie theater. At that time, there were movies that would come to town that would have a few black, actors in it. And this one had Lena Horne in it. And everybody wanted to see Lena Horne. Everyone in the black community wanted to go see this movie. Now, I’d been to movies in this theater before. We weren’t, we weren’t not allowed to go to this movie, but I always noticed that every time we go we always sit up in the right side of the balcony. And I never questioned it or never wondered why or anything, I just thought that was a cool place to sit anyway. And then one time we went to go see this Lena Horne movie, and a lot of black people wanted to see this movie. We were one of the last few people to be able to get a ticket before the guy said, “I’m sorry, there’s no more tickets, it’s all sold out.” So, I thought, Oh good, we’re lucky we got in. So we go upstairs to the right side of the balcony, like we always do, and we get up there and we notice the left side of the balcony is empty, and the lower half of the theater is empty. This was a predominantly—well, not predominantly black movie, but it wasn’t a movie that a lot of white America was interested in. So I didn’t see anybody else in the movie theater and it was just us filling up the right side of the balcony. So I asked my dad, I go, “What’s going on with all those seats over there? This place is not-” and he said, “Well this is the crow’s nest.” They used to call that particular spot up in the theater the crow’s nest. And I said, “Crow’s nest?” And he goes “Yep, we’re not allowed to sit over on the other side, or down there.” And I remember even as a kid, my thought wasn’t necessarily a negative one about racism as much as it was about, that was really a dumb-ass business decision for that guy to turn down business— DB: To maintain segregation. SG: To maintain segregation, just because he didn’t want us to sit. That didn’t make sense to me. Why would you, why would you not take everyone else’s money? Fill the place up. So, and

39 then I, then—that just kind of shows you though how, when you grow up in a particular bubble or you’re in a particular part of society and this is what’s taught to you and no one really had been pushed hard enough that we were being stepped on or we were—and as a kid I just thought that was weird. Later, I analyzed a little bit more and realized what the real reasons were and why and then of course there becomes a, there comes a different feeling about it then. DB: See it as part of a bigger problem. SG: Yeah. Yeah. DB: Let’s go back to school, and talk about your teachers and the administration. How did school go? Were you a diligent student? SG: Eh, I was— DB: Still in grade school, now. SG: Yeah, uh, me, I was usually in the middle there. I thrived in some areas. Not necessarily sports, but I did do better in the arts, and singing, and their choir and everything. I don’t think we had as much expectations as some of the other schools did for us. So— DB: You personally didn’t, or the administrators didn’t? Or— SG: I just personally felt like we probably could be learning more. But I wasn’t a straight-A student anyway, so, riding the boat the way it was going was fine with me. And I think for the most part the teachers just got us through the system. And, the teachers were pretty close to us. Like I said, a lot of them lived in our neighborhoods anyway, we knew them, and we knew their kids. We went to a school that of course that administered corporal punishment back in those days, so going to the principal’s office was not necessarily a good thing. He did have a paddle, the one with the little holes in it. I only got the paddle once that I can remember, and I can’t even remember what the infraction was. But— DB: If you got into trouble at the principal’s office was that just the start of your troubles? You had to go home and deal with your family then? SG: Yes, yes, exactly. And that was always worse. (Laughs) But, yeah, my elementary, my grade school days, I, they kind of went by a little fast, and like I said now we’re talking sixty years ago. DB: Did your parents put a strong emphasis on education? SG: They put an emphasis on it. You had to do it, but it wasn’t—I think we could’ve used a little more push. But I don’t know if they had the wherewithal and the ability to push or, knowing how far, at that time in the black community your thought process was different. If you grew up and got a good government job, or good job at the factory, you were doing okay. And I don’t think college was as big of a big entity that you were expected to do in my family. If you want to go to college we’ll see how to work it out, but it wasn’t expected. And you know you turn—most of the people in my neighborhood at the time—when you turned 18, you were working. You found something to do with yourself. DB: We’ll come back to that when we get you through high school.

SG: Okay. DB: Okay. Were you involved with scouting, or any of those kinds of activities? SG: Oh, yeah, I was a Boy Scout. I was a Boy Scout. I wasn’t the most gung-ho Boy Scout— DB: Didn’t get Eagle Scout or anything. SG: No, no, I wasn’t even thinking about that. But it was pretty cool. I liked it. I liked having an opportunity to be around other kids, although that’s also an area where I did kind of notice where I was different because when it came to Boy Scout troops at least in St. Joe they weren’t segregated they were integrated. And we had all kinds of kids—although our troop was mostly black. We did camping trips and a few other things and I had a uniform, but I didn’t really delve into it that much. I think I got into it when I was about 10. And yeah, 10 or 11 or so for so, for about 2 or 3 years. I got a few badges, and I can’t remember what they were, but it’s a part of my life that I don’t, I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it. I think my mother kind of indicated that it would be a good thing for me to do, and I did get some good out of it, and you know, you know I still remember the motto and everything but, I think back then too it was, at least in the black community it wasn’t a thing that I noticed a lot of my friends did. DB: Okay. You mentioned that you had an ancestor who was a Tuskegee Airman. SG: Yes. DB: And where did that connection come in your family? SG: His name was Van Watson, he’s on my dad’s side of the family, he I think he passed away about 2 or 3 years ago. He was at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Anyway, he was my dad’s uncle, so that made him I think my great-uncle? DB: Great-uncle. SG: I met him twice at family reunions. He lived on the East coast, New Jersey area. He was a very—I was impressed with him, because he was a very intelligent, thinking man. I think though he noticed. He didn’t, he wasn’t born and raised in St. Joseph, Missouri, which is a semi-rural area. This is such a small town. He was raised in the bigger city, and on the East coast. And he had a different outlook of things and he was interviewed and I remember at the family reunions when I did—had, the last chance I had to meet him, I think CBS had done an interview with him and was on national TV, and I noticed how, though, he was a lot more, militant, than the people of his generation in general. Not militant, but, a little more proud of who he was and had that little chip on his shoulder about how white society treated black people. DB: Discrimination. SG: Yeah. He was a front-runner, and he probably always been there, been that way all his life. I didn’t know him a lot personally, but in the few conversations I had I kind of got that too that he felt that the Tuskegee Airmen, weren’t treated right, and etc. Which they weren’t, but he gave me a little insight about it, and he wasn’t the type of Negro that would just, take it without saying something about it. And I was impressed with him that way. DB: Yeah. I’ve heard that from other Tuskegee Airmen, too.

SG: Yeah. DB: The same thing. Yeah. SG: Yeah, and they may not have been allowed to be that way until later in life. But they had gotten kicked around so much and to do everything in so much a hard way, that by the time they were able to figure out that it wasn’t fair, it’s a pretty big chip to carry on your shoulders. DB: Of course, then, later in life, they become heroes. SG: Yeah. DB: Did your dad serve in the military? SG: Yes he did. He was in World War Two. DB: And do you know anything about his experience? SG: Don’t know a lot about it. I don’t think he was in a lot of combat. And I only, I don’t know where they are right now, I have a couple pictures of him in uniform. I think his time in the service—I think he was drafted. And I think his time in the service was spent being in more of a support role as most black Americans were back then, so I don’t know if he saw a lot of action and I don’t think he did, I think he referred to things that I went through and compared to his military service. The way he explained it to me, he considered me more of a “hero,” or, you know that’s your dad anyway, but, he never really talked about that much that he did. I think he was more support, service, in his military life, there. DB: Okay, okay. So, but, that wasn’t a great influence on you in your early years. SG: Not, no, not with my dad. I still didn’t know much about the military, then. Yeah DB: Yeah, yeah. You talked about, having a lot of freedom when you were a kid, to run around with your buddies and hang out and do things. SG: Oh, yeah. DB: What kind of mischief did you get in? I can tell you some stories about some of the other guys that I’ve interviewed. (Both laugh) SG: Well I remember one of the things that happened was, one Christmas we had all got BB guns, and you know, there was about four or five of us that had BB guns for Christmas that year. And there was this one girl, I think her name was Ernestine, and, but she had a nickname “Butchie,” and she wanted to hang with the guys all the time and we of course didn’t want her hanging with us that much, but she was pretty tough. She was a tom-boy type. So anyway we all had guns, and we all, we’d shoot tin cans off of the fence and we’d put little paper plate targets and we’d hit those for a while, but then we got bored, because those were just targets we’d set up and it wasn’t as much fun. So we’d started getting Butchie, the girl that wanted to hang with us, “You want to hang with us, okay, hold these paper plates up.” And she’d hold them and we’d shoot them while she held them and I remember she held one a little too close to her legs or something and three of us shot at the same time and she got hit a couple times. And we knew that was going to be a problem, so we had our guns taken away from us then. DB: By your parents?

SG: By our parents, yeah. (Both laugh) Yeah that was a bad thing. And I remember another thing I did I was pretty industrious. I had sent away for some information on how to put a circus together in your own backyard. We had a pretty good sized backyard, so with blankets we’d made tents and we made all—I got all these kids in the neighborhood to chip in and they’d get their own little tent going and you’d have little games at each one of them, and we sent off for a few games. Knock over the bottles and all this kind of stuff. And I remember one of the craziest ones was the, we had a tent set up with blankets, and inside this tent was a, a creature. We had the three legged creature inside that tent that kids paid I think 2 cents or something like that to go in and see, and the three legged creature was a dog in the neighborhood that was missing a leg. (Both laugh) Of course everybody felt like they got gypped! (Laughs) DB: They all knew the dog, anyway. SG: Yeah, everyone knew the damn dog! (Both laugh) But I remember we did pretty good that year, we made a little extra change and stuff. But those are the kind of things we’d do in our neighborhood. We played a lot of cowboys and Indians, and police and bad guy, stuff in the neighborhood, you know. A lot of “bang-bang” games, that’s what kids did back then. And, but we had pretty much free reign. We broke out a few windows playing baseball near somebody’s house. We’d have football games in the middle of the street sometimes because the traffic wasn’t that bad. But this was the kind of neighborhood that we had, and we were allowed to. My first job ever was, and this was before my mother remarried, yeah, I was about 8 or 9, I worked in the— about four blocks from my house was the local barbershop. Mr. Henry’s barbershop. And I’d go down there, and I’d sweep the floors and run errands for some of the guys that would hang out there at the barbershop, and I remember the time I could go down to the little, it wasn’t a convenience store but it was a little store on the corner, and I could buy cigarettes for the guys at the barbershop. They’d send me with money to go get cigarettes and the lady would tease me, she goes, “These aren’t for you, are they?” Of course you can’t do that kind of stuff nowadays! (Laughs) But that was my first job, I’d make 2, 3 dollars a day and I’d get free haircuts and stuff, too, and I could walk to work and that wasn’t a problem and then, you know, of course, labor laws wouldn’t allow an 8 or 9 year old to work anywhere pretty much, but— DB: More just a tip situation. SG: Yeah. And I remember learning a lot from the barbershop, too, because there’d be a lot of old guys down there, and you’re there during the course of the day, a lot of these guys are talking about stuff that a kid probably didn’t need to hear, and every once in a while, somebody would say, “Hey, hey, the kid’s over there,” “Oh he’s going to hear about this sooner or later anyway.” (Laughs) And I’d kind of act like a fly on the wall because I’d get more information if I didn’t ask too many questions. (Laughs) DB: Not to digress too much, but you eventually became a barber. Was this experience something that planted a seed in your mind for later on? SG: I don’t think so, because, we’ll get to that later, but that was pretty much an afterthought about changing careers and I can get to that later. DB: Okay. When you made some money, was that your money? You didn’t have to contribute back to the family?

SG: No, no. DB: You could do what you wanted with it? SG: My mother always made sure we were dressed well, that we, ate well, and even if she had to work three jobs—she did do a lot of sacrificing at that part of her life, for about 4 or 5 years, she worked relatively hard to make sure we had everything. DB: Did she maintain a garden? SG: No. DB: Did your family maintain a garden? SG: No, we didn’t have gardens per se. There were some people that did have gardens. There was an empty lot about three blocks away that I think was a community garden, but you could go buy from the people that did grow stuff there. DB: What about canning? Did your mother do much canning? Was that something with your aunts or did anybody do canning? SG: No, well, I had aunts who did canning and preserves and stuff like that, but I—weren’t really—but I think my grandmother was a, was a big, bigger cook. My mother wasn’t necessarily the, really big on cooking. She worked a lot, you know. Her nursing was important for her. DB: She was busy. SG: Yeah. She was pretty busy. She was a basic cook. Because she cooked well, but we always ate the same type of food, you know, what was available in our community. A lot of fried chicken, a lot of greens and things like that, but uh, nothing that was emphasized as far as culinary experiences, or artistically or anything like that. DB: You talked about sports. Sports were generally just organized by the kids themselves? SG: Pretty much. We didn’t have organized sports in my elementary school. I ended up playing baseball overseas, we’ll talk about that later. But, sports wasn’t—sports wasn’t really that big of a deal. Basketball kind of was. DB: But, again, just organized on the neighborhood level? Or organized— SG: There was a school basketball team. We didn’t have a football team, we had a basketball team. I didn’t— DB: In junior high or grade school? SG: In grade school. DB: Oh, that early on? SG: Well, yeah and they played mostly other grade schools, but mostly played our own selves. I never was that good at it. I was relatively short for my age group I think at the time and I just never got into basketball that much. I was, you know, I acted, we’d always do a play every year, and I remember we did Huck Finn one year and I was Tom Sawyer, and that was a pretty

44 big deal for me. (Laughs) So I kind of did that, and I was in the choir, so those were my biggest attributes. However, if we’re ready to go to high school… DB: Well, you have a big life changing event, your mother remarried and you’re about, what 14? SG: Yeah. DB: And then you get the word that you’re leaving town. SG: Exactly. This was my first year of high school. I had already—now I’m in a different atmosphere. I’m in Central High School in St. Joseph, Missouri, which, now m—now the number of black faces I see are a lot less. This is an integrated school, and it’s predominantly white. And it’s one of the better, one of the— one of the better schools in St. Joe at the time. And of course they had football, had all the major sports and everything, and I had a couple of, uncles that were older than me that went to school there that were on football teams, so I couldn’t wait to sign up for the football team. And it was my freshman year, and that was the same year too, because I remember sitting in freshman class when Kennedy died, and so that, that, I didn’t complete my freshman year because I got sent overseas, but— DB: You were still there in November of ‘63 anyway. SG: Yeah, yeah. And so I remember signing up for football. Didn’t get to play a game, because we left before the season actually started. But I was in training, and you know. And so when my mother announced that she was getting married, actually she was already married at that time. But the announcement came that we were going overseas, I was totally devastated. This was something that I thought, This is the end of my life right here. How in the world, I’m, I’ve only lived in St. Joseph, Missouri, everyone I know is here, I’m finally getting ready to go to high school and this is a big step for me, and now you’re tearing me away from all this and sending me overseas. It was—you know, you know, a lot of, you know nowadays they look at, you look at your kids and you go, “Oh, you need a little therapy for this one,” (laughs) because I felt, you know—but at that time you didn’t say anything about it, you didn’t have a lot, you didn’t have a voice, you didn’t dare say, “I’m not going!” You’re going, and you knew you were going, so that’s it, this is the way it is. But then, when we start getting into that part of my life, for as bad as I felt initially, it only lasted for a couple of months. Because something happened to me that just was, it was one of the best experiences of my life. Being put in a different environment like this. And the biggest part of it was, I think I started seeing more I’m equal, more so. This gave me an opportunity to see this a little more. DB: On a military base, in a military environment. SG: On a military base, exactly. Because, now we’re in Japan. Misawa, Japan. It’s northern Japan. My stepfather worked—we never knew what he did. His job had to do with radio listening to Russia and China. He’d always come home and we’d always go, “Well what did you do? What do you do?” And he’d always go, “Well, I’ll tell you, but then I’ll have to kill you.” DB: Top secret. SG: Well, it was, and they picked the right kind of guy for it, because we never got a thing out of him, even after he retired and he was, declassified and everything. He’d always say, even

45 though what he knew then had nothing to do with now, he’d always say, “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” DB: Was he an officer, an NCO? SG: No, senior master sergeant, when he got out. DB: Okay SG: So. But being over there, one thing I realized was the military didn’t tolerate—even though it was the sixties, about 64 now, 63/64—the military doesn’t tolerate open racism like you do every place else. It still exists. Back then, it existed everywhere. But people let their guard down a little more because the military didn’t allow you to do it so much. You were allowed to be, as far as your rank would let you be. My dad was a sergeant, and that was pretty good. He wasn’t an officer, but he was a sergeant, and he was a top sergeant so that was a good thing. Our housing was, fair with everyone else’s. I think the officer’s quarters, they had a bit bigger, but it was still better than where I lived in St. Joe. But the interesting part of it was, as a community of people we are black, we’re African American, we’re Mexican, we’re white, we’re everybody that’s in the military is on a military base. And you kind of have to get along, because we are one unit in a strange land. So everyone kind of drops their guard as far as, “Well you’re this, or you’re that,” no, we’re Americans first, and then so everybody just kind of laid their guns on the, put their arms down with that issue, and I got to know—it was still a predominantly white environment—and I got to know people that I didn’t grow up with a lot better. And it became interesting because there always seemed to be a more, girls than boys than there are on an air force base. So that was lucky for us guys, but when it came to the dances and the parties and things like that you needed a date for things and, you’d look around and there wasn’t a large majority of African American girls to choose from, so you’d look around, if you didn’t move fast enough you’re just kind of out of luck. But then you’d look around, and the white girls would be raising their hands, like, “Hey, what about me?” And I’d go, “Oh, this is something new!” And so it gave me an opportunity to be— and I had guy friends, too—to go in their houses, to see that people pretty much are the same, there might be different food on the table, but they have the same problems we have in our house. And that gave me a better understanding. And this was a good formative time for me to learn those things because I’m a teenager now, and I’m getting along with these kids. You know, I started enjoying Beatles music and, things that from my neighborhood, we wouldn’t have gotten. The other aspect of being overseas like that is that when you wanted something even completely different from that outlet, you go outside the military base, you’re, now it’s Japan. Now you’re dealing with Japanese people. This is a whole different culture thing for me. I liked it very much, you know we were able to do things like, we could go downtown at the tailor shops because the cities outside the military shops made plenty of money off of the— DB: Catered to the, to the military. SG: They knew how to speak English well, and all the businesses could take care of you well. We could go off-base and get tailor-made clothes as cheap as we could get them on-base. And, you know, in the black community—I still hear this now too, about appearance. And in my family and in my generation, we were taught to take care of your stuff. Just, well, my first car I remember buying I remember my uncles telling me, “You got to keep it clean.” Might be a

46 raggedy beater, but you got to keep it clean, you got to take care of it and you got to be proud of it. Same with your appearance, and this now, this comes from, I’ve seen my uncles working in factories, working very hard to attain a good living for their family, and to be able to afford a nice house. But when it came time to pick a house, they couldn’t buy the house they wanted. They could buy, they couldn’t because it was in the wrong neighborhood. You have to buy a house over here. So, the only way you have to show that you’ve made it, or that you’ve come somewhere or that you’re successful is your appearance, because you can buy the same Brooks Brothers suit or whatever you needed to wear that any white guy had. And you could buy that Cadillac, and your car. And you know I used to see that in my neighborhood, and to this day I still hear a lot of times I hear people question, “Why do black guys always have to have a nice car, or the emphasis is always placed on how they look better in their clothes or they wear brighter clothes,” it’s still trickle-down of information that we’ve gotten from our ancestors, from our uncles, from our dads, from our fathers, that have been passed along to us in this generational thing. And I take a little pride in that. DB: Shine wear you can. SG: That’s right, that’s right. And in Japan, we could get clothes tailor-made, and that was a big thing for us. My mom would say, “Oh you guys need some —” it’d be five dollars for a shirt or two, you know. The other thing about it was as a teenager, this is a little later, as an older teenager in Japan we could go downtown and we could look like some of the young airmen on the base. You know, we’re 17, 18 years old. We’d go downtown and go into the bars, and we could buy beer and stuff, and at that time, I don’t know whether their laws were different from ours, or whether it didn’t matter to them that these Americans were coming and spending the money, it didn’t matter. Their kids just seemed a lot more naïve at the same age level that we were. We’d see young guys walking down the street holding hands and of course to us that would seem a little weird. But that’s a Japanese customary way of, they’re just friends or whatever. But their kids were always a lot more naïve at the same age level that we were. We were ready to go drink some beer, smoke some cigarettes, and it seemed like their kids wouldn’t cross those lines so much. But, it was fun stuff. We didn’t get into big trouble or anything. DB: You didn’t caught! SG: We didn’t get caught, that’s right! (Both laugh) DB: But nobody was carding you, either. SG: Yeah, I remember one time we did take a chance. The airman’s club on-base had a strip show, and there were three of us guys. And somehow we got in there. Everybody has military ID. You have dependent ID military cards if you’re a dependent of military personnel. But somehow we got in the club, which we were allowed to do it, from time to time, because I also played in a band so anyway that’s another story, but, we got into this strip club. We were sitting right up front. And at first we ordered some Cokes, I think, or Sprites or something, and we were drinking pop, and no one really said anything to us. And then the waiter came up to us, and we’re right in the middle of the show and stuff, and he asked if we wanted anything, and we got a little bold and we ordered a couple of beers. So he stopped and he goes, “Uh, let me see you guys’ IDs.” So we whipped out our little dependent ID and were immediately ejected from the

47 airman’s club. But they called—they took us to a police impound place, we were sitting on a bench, we didn’t get locked up or anything—but they had to call your parents. DB: You were detained. SG: We were detained. And everybody there, of course all the guys, were probably thinking it was funny as hell. So they had to call your parents and (laughs) I remember my mom and my dad having to come pick me up. My mom was totally furious about this. And she told me how this could work against my stepdad’s, you know, promotions and everything, and she read me the Riot Act. “I can’t believe it, you’re in jail at your age!” It wasn’t jail, we were sitting on the bench. My stepdad, who was always pretty reserved about stuff didn’t say much, and we got home. He kind of, she’s telling him, oh he “Needs to go talk to me too,” and he goes, “Okay, okay honey. I’ll go say something to him.” So he walks in the room. He opens up my door and he kind of, “Now we’re going to have to have this talk.” He sets the door, no one can hear us, and he goes, “How was the show?” (Both laugh) DB: It was guy time. SG: Yeah, it was guy time! (Laughs) He and I were pretty cool that way, and we always were that way, so. I really admired him. And I will occasionally—I say step dad now, just so we know who I’m talking about, but I’ve always referred to him as my dad also. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have two dads, and both of them are gone now, and I miss them terribly, but they were both influences in my life, and both positive influences in my life. DB: That’s a very good thing to be able to say. SG: Yeah, yeah. And they knew each other. And respected each other. They went fishing together a couple times. And when they had the opportunity, when they were in the same place, because once my stepfather got out of the military, and I’ll get to this later, they were in Houston, Texas, they moved up here too. I had my father, my stepfather, my mother, everyone here. DB: The whole extended family. SG: The whole extended family, yeah. And we’re not from here, so that was interesting. DB: You talked about learning to drive. SG: Yeah. DB: And, and did you get your driver’s license in Japan, were you able to drive there? SG: No, I wasn’t to really get—I guess because of our international situation, and over there, everywhere we needed to go there was a bus transportation. They had a bus, a whole bus line on the military base. And all us kids could get around anywhere we needed to go either by bicycle or by bus. It’s like a small city. So I didn’t really get my driver’s license until I got back in the United States. DB: Was church an important influence in your life growing up? SG: It was early. I was baptized Baptist, in a traditional black church. I think though, my family, we didn’t really put an emphasis on religion.

DB: Okay. Holidays: how were they celebrated? Christmas, Easter, birthdays, Fourth of July, do you remember any specific events? SG: The biggest one was Christmas. My mother always made Christmas big for us. Now even if she couldn’t afford to, she’d have a whole bunch of cheap gifts wrapped up. We’d always have tons of gifts to open up every Christmas day. It may not be what we wanted, it may not be the best line of things, but she always put a lot of emphasis on—she decorated the house, to a fault, because we’d always have to put the lights up outside and everything. And to me after a while, and this is, my mom and my stepdad really got into this, especially when they got back to the States, they decorate the whole house and it became an embarrassment to me. (Both laugh) DB: Overdone? SG: It was way overdone. Everyone that came by loved it. The kids loved it and everything, but for me it was just too much. DB: You kind of rolled your eyes. SG: Yeah. (Laughs) DB: How about birthdays, how were birthdays celebrated? SG: Well in the black community in general they’re big days. There, you know, we have parties, and mine happens to be on Halloween, so, I’ve had some pretty good interesting parties. As an adult, I’ve had some pretty wild parties, but we used to always have, yeah, costume parties even if it didn’t fall on my birthday we’d have it close to my birthday. My mother would always have cake and everything for my brother and me. DB: And, you said you got fun presents, it wasn’t just practical gifts, that you’d get a pair of socks or something. SG: No, well, we got the practical, too, but our mother always knew to— DB: But you got things you could have some fun with too. SG: Yeah. DB: Okay, you’re in Japan. You’re living in a military base, it’s the mid-60s, there’s a lot of turmoil back in the United States. A lot of things are starting up. SG: Yep. DB: There’s the antiwar movement starting up. A huge amount of social change, a lot of it revolving around racial issues, and then there’s the assassinations. What—are you tuned into this stuff? I assume your family had a TV? SG: Yes. DB: Got the Armed Forces Network, probably, over in Japan. SG: Yes. DB: But, were you as a young man tuned in to these broader pictures? Did that affect you while you’re in Japan? Was this discussed in your family?

SG: Now that you bring that up, it’s interesting. I don’t think I was as involved as probably I should’ve been for my age. And I think in thinking about that, the reason why is because I, once we got to Japan I got to pretty much live, a freer life for a kid. The kind of life that most white America had all along. And I saw this as something different for me. And I was in tune to it. I, I delved into it, all the way. I was pretty much being a kid at the time. Just being my age. I didn’t get real political. Being on a military base you have a lot of pride in being— being all the military personnel that were there, we’re there for a different reason. And we’re not going to protest a lot of stuff over there. And my dad was pretty much just a straight military guy. He went by the rules on everything. And he would emphasize that to us that he was proud to be where he was and who he was and proud of his country and everything. I think my parents at the time wanted me to see more positive things than negative things. And because we were insulated from a lot of what was going on in the United States—we did get the news and information—but I don’t remember watching much TV in Japan. I don’t remember watching, you know they had Stars and Stripes information newspaper, but they didn’t give you all the hard-hitting stuff anyway. So, I was kind of, uh, probably away from a lot of that. Until I got back. And that’s another story. Because I go back, I come back and I’m in the same environment that I left, and I see the big change. DB: So, when you came back, you came back from Japan or is this back from Vietnam? SG: I came back from Japan, first. DB: Okay. So— SG: And now I just graduated high school. DB: Let’s stay in Japan a little while. How was high school on the air force base? SG: Oh, interesting. Small class, I think my graduating class was about 20 students. We all went to the same area. And my last three years of high school was spent there. And I did graduate right as we were coming back. I didn’t get to walk, because we left two weeks before the actual graduation ceremony. DB: You got messed up on high school in the beginning and the end! (Both laugh) SG: That’s right! (Laughs) But everything was real hectic then because we were packing to get ready to come back and everything, so. But my years over there, it was, it was perfect. At age 14 my mother got me something that I had always wanted: an electric guitar. I didn’t know what I was doing with it, and there were some guys on the base, other teenage kids that knew a little bit about music, and I remember this kid named Dave Clark, this white kid named Dave Clark, his dad was a captain I think. His dad was an officer. Him and I became friends, he came over to my house and he showed me how to tune the guitar, showed me some chords. We pretty much had a little garage band thing going there for a while. We hooked up with some other guys. It was always transient, though, because people were coming and going so we always had trouble maintaining our little band. But they had a teen club on the base where all the teenagers could go and that, we played there quite a bit. We actually became pretty damn good. And we played at the airman’s club, and we even played at the officer’s club a couple of times.

DB: Did you get paid for that? SG: Oh yeah. We got paid every time we played. Wasn’t much, but it wasn’t about the money anyway. DB: It was something. SG: Yeah. My last two years of senior prom—I went to three proms, I got invited to one as a sophomore, and my junior and senior year we played. We were the band so my date would pretty much sit alone, but we made sure our dates got noticed and got attention, because we’d tell guys, “Hey, somebody go and dance with my girl and, you know, we’d dedicate songs to them.” We did pretty well back then. (Both laugh) DB: Okay. Your time in Japan is coming to an end. SG: Yep. DB: And how were you feeling about that? SG: Well, I was anxious to get back home, you know. DB: And home was going to be…? SG: Home w—initially, well, oh! My stepfather’s getting orders to go to Vietnam. So we’re going back to St. Joe, while he’s in Vietnam. And then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do after that—well, no, no, no. I digress—we first came back to San Antonio. We were in San Antonio for about a year. DB: You had a home in St. Joe. Was that being maintained, or rented or something? SG: Oh no we didn’t own a home. Blacks didn’t own very much in St. Joe at the time. It was pretty much rented. I had a lot of family there still. So when we came back we were then stationed to San Antonio for, uh— this kind of skips me out. DB: An air force base. SG: Yeah, there’s two air force bases there. DB: Okay. SG: In San Antonio. DB: You can fill it in later, if you think of it. SG: Yeah, so, I remember being there. And it was during the Hemisfair, the World’s Fair. Because I remember that being built in San Antonio. It’s right behind the Alamo, and yeah. I wonder what that’s like now. But anyway. The San Antonio stay was only about a year and I remember just going by so fast. I was already out of high school. I think I maintained a job at a hamburger place for a while. My brother, my younger brother was still in high school, but we were only there a year. My mother wasn’t particularly happy about the accommodations there. We lived in a Billy Mitchell village. It was military but it was— DB: Post housing?

SG: Yeah, post housing. This wasn’t as good as Japan. In Japan we had, we had, they were more like town homes, and this was more like apartments. And so I remember my mother not liking it so much. She wasn’t all that crazy about the weather either; it would get fairly steamy there and stuff. DB: Did you have air conditioning in those days? SG: Good question. I don’t really remember. DB: A lot of people didn’t. SG: I don’t think we did. DB: Yeah, yeah. SG: I think it was fans. But, I just remember that was my first summer out of school and, and we stayed there for a year. But then my dad gets orders for Vietnam. DB: He gets those orders, but you’ve been out of school for a while. What plans or ambitions did you have, what were you looking towards? SG: Not thinking about it yet. I didn’t want to go to college. I was a little—I was just finding myself a little bit, and I was a little bit of a party guy. I think I remember that’s when I smoked some weed for the first time. I don’t think it was that good and I didn’t know what I was doing so it didn’t do much for me. But, uh. I liked hanging out, I liked the girls and stuff right about then. I was a musician, and so I remember getting in a band there in San Antonio, and you know when you’re a musician you get girls and that seemed like the only important thing going on right there. I worked at a place called Griff’s Hamburgers. And I was on the grill, I’d worked my way to the grill, and I remember it was a conflict because the band would have little jobs—we’d play weddings or whatever on the weekends and it would conflict with my work schedule a lot. And my mother would say “Got to have a job” and she’d push that a lot— DB: Where did you make more money, with the band or with the hamburger place? SG: Oh, with the hamburger place! I mean, I made more money. But the band was—that was where the real action was! So I just remember having a little problem with my job a couple of times, with conflicts of scheduling but I still had my job. I remember this one big gig—we called them gigs back in the day—this one big gig came up, we’d signed up to do it. So I asked my manager, “Hey I need to take off,” “Well this is a big week and you can’t take off.” “Yeah but the band’s playing.” “I don’t care about the band, you can’t take the time off.” So now I’m really conflicted, because I know how my parents are going to— “You don’t need to be in that damn band”—that was them, kind of, at the time. “You need to have a job.” Okay. I think I’m about 19 at the time, but, I just remember clearly this day: I’m back on the grill, the place is really packed, I’ve got like—I could put like 48 meat patties on the grill at one time. By the time you drop that last one, you’ve got to start flipping that first one. So anyway they’d be frozen and we’d put ‘em on there. So anyway, I remember I had 48 hamburgers on the grill, and my buddies came to pick me up because I told them I’d try to get off early. So they came, one guy had his parents’ station wagon—he was the drummer so he had to have the station wagon to put all the drums in. We had another guy that had the truck that had our amplifiers and our guitars in it. And they showed up

52 and they were out in the lobby, and they were kind of hollering back at me, “Hey are you going to go? Hey, what are you going to do?” So I remember my boss looking at me, because I walked up to the front lobby, and I said, “Hey can I get off? Here are my guys here, they’re ready to go.” And he looked at with his hands on his hip that one time, he knew I was going to say I’d stay on the job, or at least that’s what he thought. And he said “You get a choice, either you go with them, or you stay on your job. You go with them you don’t have a job anymore.” And I just remember that they had a little paper hat on a little apron on and stuff and I remember taking that hat off, taking the apron off, handing them to him and saying “I’m going with the band.” And everybody in the lobby—the customers, my band members, my coworkers—just started cheering and clapping as I walked out of there. But I knew I was going to catch hell about leaving my job to go play a damn gig! And I did. (Laughs) DB: And despite the customer, attitude, did you still lost your job? SG: Oh yeah I lost the job. (Laughs) But I remember also we, one of the things we played for was a McDonald’s opening. And we played in the parking lot for a big McDonald’s opening. It was a big fanfare thing, it was a good day. So anyway. And of course my parents were a little disappointed in me, uh, you know, “You had an obligation, and…” Yeah, but I had an obligation to the band, too, you know! DB: Yeah, yeah. SG: So anyway, that’s San Antonio. But when my dad got his orders to go to Vietnam, we went back to St. Joe, and rented a small place in St. Joe (clears throat) because he was going to be gone at least a year, I think, and I remember my mom set up house. Now my mom has not been working either, since she been married. And they had a traditional marriage, and he liked it that way, she liked it that way. He could afford it, and it wasn’t a problem. So we went back to St. Joe, my mom wasn’t working. I did get a job, with, course with my dad, my birth dad is there in St. Joe. I got a job as a in the meat packing plant. And it—the reason why I took the job: because it paid so well. And it was hard work. DB: Paid well, in 1967, ‘68? SG: Where are we now? I graduated ‘67—‘68. ‘68, yeah. DB: What is “paid well” in 1968? SG: Oh, I think I made a couple hundred dollars a week. I could remember paychecks being a couple hundred dollars a week. For a kid that didn’t have a mortgage payment, and— DB: That was a lot of money in those days. SG: Oh yeah, I bought a car. But we worked hard. That meat packing plant, it was—we put out two thousand head of cattle a day. And more hogs a day, so it was pretty hard work. And as a young person they’d have you in all the different facets of the, of the job. It was messy, it was bloody, and it was it was, the first couple of weeks I didn’t think I’d make it. DB: Find out where the food comes from. SG: Yeah, right. And it was nauseating at times, and, and, I remember—But my first paycheck, that kind of turned me around on it. Because, as a black person in a small town like that, you’re not going to make this kind of money unless you work this way. So, that’s what I 53 did. That’s where I was working when—I was still staying at home. My stepfather was in Vietnam. I went home one day, and my mother had tears in her eyes. And I said, “What’s wrong, mom?” Oh, first off: two of my—my two closest buddies had been drafted. And we had going away parties for them, you know, and told them not to worry about your girl, “We’ll take care of them while you’re gone.” DB: You were able to reconnect with your old friends when you moved back to St. Joe. SG: Yes, yes, yeah. And I—well, nah, coming back to St. Joe, I want to come back to that a little bit, too. Coming back to St. Joe, the times were a little different for me. I had been living in an environment with a bunch of different kinds of people. People that I didn’t grow up with. But I learned a lot about these people. Now I come back with this information in my head that, “You know what, all white people aren’t bad.” And I already, I knew this, I realized this, but I came back to an environment that was going, “Black Power, down with whitey,” and, you know, I, I kind of— DB: In St. Joe? SG: Yeah. And I was, I’d lean towards the, “Yeah, we need our power, that’s right, Black Power.” I was proud of that part of it. But I also knew that, these white guys aren’t that bad, we got to give them a shot. And I found it interesting that when I would bring it up sometimes to people they’d look at me and say, “Well, you’re not with us?” So I’d kind of buried that a little bit, but I in my mind I knew differently. I accepted both sides. I could see, I could see how you could be right over here, I see what their complaints are. I see what the complaints are over here, too. And it gave me a better world view. Just, just by being gone for those three years. DB: Broader picture. SG: Broader picture of who humans were. And so, that was kind of my mindset. I could get along with pretty much anybody. I could strike up a conversation with pretty much anybody. Uh, uh, where was I? I went back to that… DB: Oh, you, you came home one day and your mother was crying. SG: Oh, yeah, I came home one day and my mother was crying and my two buddies had already been drafted. There was a brown manila envelope on the dining room table, and then in Missouri at the time—because I saw my buddies envelope—that’s what it was. It was a draft notice. And she couldn’t say anything, she just pointed at the table. And I went over and looked, and I looked and my name was on the envelope and everything. And I remember just sitting down and my mother came to the other end of the table and she sat down. And I can still see her with an apron on and, and wiping her tears with her apron and everything. And I sit there for about five minutes, because I didn’t want to open it, because I felt like, well if I don’t open it maybe I won’t have to do, do— DB: Maybe it’s something else. SG: That’s right! Yeah, yeah. Maybe it’ll go away or something. Because other thoughts had gone through my mind before that after watching my buddies get drafted, “Aw they don’t want me, they’re not going to get me.” And then here I am looking at this.

DB: Had your —had, had your buddies talked to you about the fact that they had gotten drafted? Did they resent it? Was it negative, or was it just something you accepted? SG: It was just something we accepted. As a black kid in America—and sometimes, it was uh, you know, this’ll give you a chance now. Give you a chance to get out of this town, go and do something and see the world, even though it was wartime. Before that, enlisting in the military was a way out for a lot of people in St. Joe. But during the draft, now, well people stopped enlisting so much because we knew what we were going to end up doing. DB: Meaning, meaning you were going to go to Vietnam. SG: Yeah. They were still in training—both my buddies were still in training when I got my draft notice. And, we were all in about the same time. And I talk about these two guys because as we get further into the story after we get out we were together, we’d do some things too together. But they—well, one didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Larry didn’t go to Vietnam. But Albert did. And so I finally get my notice, and you know there’s a big going away thing for me, and all this. DB: So a family get together, you mean, a family party? SG: Yeah, yeah, with the family. And then, we had to go to Kansas City which is fifty miles south, because I’m flying out of Kansas City to go to Fort Leonard Wood. DB: Do you—when you get drafted, you have to go in for a lot of tests and everything, too— and do you remember anything about that process? SG: Uh, not a lot about the process. Because I don’t think there was any, big emphasis put on any, they just wanted to make sure you had some mental capability. But they needed bodies. DB: Yeah. Ten fingers, ten toes. SG: Yeah. The worst aspect of the whole thing was, “Oh okay bend over and cough” stuff, you know. (Laughs) This was kind of humiliating because we were all lined up, and you went down the line and you cough. Oh god, okay. But there was, you know, nothing to keep me out, so. And then I had this, I had this thought about—because before I got my draft notice, you’re thinking, because you know you’re at that age, “Man, what if it happens to me, what am I going to do, what am I going to do if it happens to me?” DB: And what options did you think about? SG: That was very limited. The option, the only option I thought about was Canada. As a possibility of going to Canada. But as a young black kid from St. Joseph, Missouri to think about going to Canada—I know no one there, and I’ll never be able to come back because at that time there was no indication there was going to be any amnesty, you’re going to prison. So I gave it some thought, and I didn’t like, I didn’t necessarily like the idea of having to go to war and possibly being killed. This was my option: I could go to Canada. That didn’t stay in my head very long. You know what? Most people go and come back. And I’m probably just going to be one of the regular guys who just go and come back, anyway. If my buddies can do it, I can do it. And this is the primary reason why you draft 18, 19 year olds. Because you can get their minds going that way. You can get them thinking gung ho, and “This is America, we got to do it.” If they had sent me a draft notice at age 32, “I’m going to Canada! Later, I’m out of here.” (Laughs)

DB: Did you have any communication with your stepdad about any of this? SG: Uh, not a lot. He’d write— DB: It wasn’t so easy in those days. Letters— SG: Letters are very scarce. And I remember with him and my mom when they were courting each other before he was sent overseas he wrote every day. She had letters coming and going every day. And, but now they were few and far between. But no we didn’t discuss it but then I think my mom indicated to him that I was being drafted. He knew that I was going and everything. I think I had a little more—at that time I’m now, I’m in St. Joe, my father is there, my real father, my biological father’s there, and it was him, his then wife, and my mom that took me to the airport in Kansas City. And I remember my little brother being there too. DB: You, you, having had the experience of going to Japan, are probably a little worldly than a lot of the other young guys that are getting drafted. You had been overseas, had you, had you taken an airplane to Japan? SG: Oh, yeah. DB: Or a ship? Okay. But a lot of people, their first flight was going to basic training. Mine was. SG: That’s true, that’s true. DB: Yeah. So, you’d been around a little bit. And, you go to Fort Leonard Wood, was it? SG: I was assigned to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. And they call it “Fort Lost-in-the- Woods,” for good reason. But you know, at that time, the war still seemed like a faraway thing, and there’s no indication that you’re really going to have to go, because a lot of guys were support. And I always felt pretty lucky. You know I was the last of my buddies to go, so I felt lucky up until then. So I felt, “Yeah, I’ll probably get lucky, I’ll be a clerk or something,” because I can type, and oh you know, I figured, “Yeah I’ll probably…” DB: So you get to Leonard Wood… SG: I get to Fort Leonard Wood. DB: You’ve been around more than the other guys… SG: They’re picking squad leaders, and… for your groups, and uh, they ask if anybody has any military experience. Well, nobody’s ever been in the military. Well, is anybody related to military experience? And I just said, “Well, you know I was raised air force.” “Okay good you’re a squad leader.” “Huh? Okay.” What’s that mean? You get a fake sergeant badge to put on your arm. You get a bunch of guys that you’re in charge of. But I didn’t have to do KP duty. DB: This was in basic training. SG: This was in basic. DB: So you get to Fort Leonard Wood, initially you go to the reception station. What was that experience? All of a sudden you’re surrounded by these guys from everywhere.

SG: Yeah, yeah. We’re from all parts of the country; you’ve got people from the South, people from the North, people of all ethnic backgrounds and everything. It’s all confusing, it’s all a big blur, half of it is anyway. And it’s all going by so fast, and you know— DB: And you have another barbering experience— SG: Well, yeah. And I, I kind of thought I’d beat them with that one, because at that time, you know, we were all wearing big afros. And, I knew what they had done to my buddies, because they came home for leave before they got shipped off and stuff, so, I went, “They’re not going to do this to me.” So I cut mine off really really, really close. And I get there. And they go, “Oh no there’s plenty of hair to come off there, we’re still going to get some more off.” (Laughs) And I could see these guys, especially back then, especially a lot of the white guys with shoulder length hair, you know. These guys would get a kick out of giving them a Mohawk first and then cutting it all off, making fun of them as they do it, you know. It’s kind of humiliating, but then it’s kind of a tough guy comradery stuff, because we all look the same when we’re done, been butchered. DB: So, before the haircut you’d just started to get to know people. SG: Yeah. DB: And then they cut all your hair off. SG: Yeah. Yeah. And everybody looks different. You got to, you got to learn— DB: “Who are you?” SG: (laughs) Yeah. “We rode on the bus together, remember?” “Oh, you’re him?” (Laughs) DB: Yeah, and then they take your clothes away. SG: Yep. Yep. You have no identity now, you’re just part of a unit. DB: You have to look at the nametag to figure out who somebody is. And you’re an acting sergeant. And so— SG: Yeah. And now I’ve got to lead guys. It’s kind of my nature anyway, because I’m the oldest of my family, so I’ve always had management type jobs and everything, we can get into that later. But, yeah. So this kind of fit me really good, and I knew that in being a squad leader— they had certain responsibilities, you had to kind of know where all your knuckleheads are and stuff, but—you don’t have to do KP duty, you’re not subjected to some of the other stuff. Now they may come to you and say, “We need four guys for KP duty from your unit.” And you’ve got to pick them out and they’re going to get pissed at you— DB: And you can’t be anonymous and hiding from the drill sergeants, either. They’re watching you. SG: I got to answer to them, right. Right. So—and then training was, you know, I find myself in the upper end of the physical part of it, because I liked it, I liked doing it, and I had a pretty good squad of guys that kept up pretty good. I did a lot of cadence calls for marches. That was kind of fun. That probably related to my musical background or whatever. DB: Did you make up songs, did you—

SG: Oh yeah. DB: Did you sing pop songs, sometimes, to get the guys going on those? SG: No, I kind of made up my own stuff, you know. “Ain’t no sense in going on home, Jodie’s got your girl and gone.” That’s not one I made up, but I made— DB: There are certain standard ones that you learn when you’re there. Some of them are not repeatable and some are. SG: When you’re out away from where any women could hear you from the base then you could go with all the other stuff that you wanted. Now that would keep the guys going, they were a little happier and stuff. DB: Adolescent humor. SG: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. (Laughs) Yeah. DB: And how did you find basic training as far as the marching, the rifle shooting? It’s not a BB gun anymore, and you’re not shooting at Ernestine anymore. And pugil sticks. The drill ceremonies, all this? SG: Yeah. And well, being raised on a military base, you get to glimpse some of that anyway. Even though it was air force and this is army, there’s still a lot of similarities. And, we —I fell into it pretty easily. I knew about barracks and what they were like, being in the barracks and seeing some of what they were like in Japan. And, you know, then when we got to San Antonio the same stuff. So, military life wasn’t a stranger to me. DB: Did you, were you living in the World War 2 two-story wooden barracks? SG: Yep. Yeah, we had the old stuff, yeah. DB: Could you just describe the barracks a little bit? SG: Hot, because we were there in the summer time it was hot as hell. DB: This was the summer of ’68? SG: Summer of sixty-nine. Summer of ’69. Yeah. I remember it being pretty hot. And, but then you know when you’re that age and there’s certain things that you attribute in your life, there’s certain songs that I hear now that take me back to basic training. And then it’s certain songs will take me back to Vietnam. Certain songs I hear—you know, because I remember hearing it and then at that age music meant so much to me because I was a musician anyway. But it meant so much to young people anyway because it was our message. So, I can remember, I can hear certain songs by Sly and the Family Stone. “Hot Fun in the Summertime” was one song that I remember in the barracks hearing a lot, and — and it just, every time I heard that song I just go back to the barracks. DB: It’s amazing how music will bring you back to a period, trigger all kinds of memories. SG: It’s very subliminal, but yeah. DB: But you’re right there.

SG: Take me right there. DB: We’ll go to our death bed humming these songs. (Both laugh) And our grandchildren won’t understand. They’ll have their own music. SG: I remember having a little empathy though for some of my fellow trainees. Some of the heavier ones, or ones that weren’t physically as capable or anything. It just used to kind of bother me. I know what it is, you got to be able to take orders, you got to be able to learn how to work as a unit, and you got to be able to keep up. I got all that. But then I’d see some guys, you’d look at them and you’d go “I don’t know how you’re going to make this, dude.” And you know I’d have compassion for them but there wasn’t much I could do about it. And you know the drill sergeants of course are in their face. And there’s certain ones that just got picked on. Every time. And I understand now why, now whether it’s the right way to train troops I don’t know, but at that time the mindset was you got to be tough enough to hang with these guys because they’re counting on you, too. So that was the mindset of whipping these guys into shape, especially the ones that were dragging a little bit. Either you’re going to make it or we’re going to break you and you can’t—you know, there were guys that didn’t cut it. And didn’t make it out of basic. And I don’t know what happened to them. But for some reason as much as I didn’t want to go to Vietnam I couldn’t allow myself to be one of those guys. DB: You weren’t going to fail. SG: No, I just couldn’t do that. (Laughs) DB: Self pride. SG: Yeah. To my own detriment, but yeah. DB: And how did everybody get along in basic training? SG: Everybody got along pretty good, yeah. DB: And the guys who were drafted, there was no specific complaining about that? People accepted it? SG: Well— DB: This is getting to be the later part of Vietnam— SG: Yeah, we—the one difference I saw in this whole experience was the difference between people who enlisted and people who were drafted. I knew about people who enlisted because I lived with them. I grew up on a military base, I could see how they, how they were proud of what they were and their rank and proud of their country and proud of serving, and they did their job accordingly. As you start getting into the draft situation, now you’re getting people that are getting— they’re being pulled into this kicking and screaming. They didn’t want to be here in the first place. So you get a lot of negative attitudes. You get a lot of—whereas you get in a voluntary army, volunteer army they know what they’re getting into, they know what they want to do. And so we’ve got a lot of young guys here, and now I was raised military and knew how it was supposed to work, but I get a lot of young guys here that, it’s just like, I don’t understand your mindset.

You just want to get drunk or you just want to get high, and you’re not paying attention, and we’ve got to get these things accomplished. And this is what happens when you have a draft situation like this. These guys didn’t want to be there. They’d rather be somewhere else, rather be home. So I always thought that was kind of interesting, and then later we can talk about how that was kind of a detriment to a lot of the troops in Vietnam that I saw. Because they didn’t want to be there. DB: As the end of basic training is coming, what were your options? What were they, were you presented with any options or were you just told where you were going to go for advanced and individual training. SG: We didn’t know where we were going to go. And, we were just told where we were going to go for AIT training. We got our orders, and I remember everybody getting excited about some places and some guys getting disappointed about other places. I didn’t know what to gauge it from. Because all I had known was the air force. And it didn’t matter to me, I didn’t know California to this place or that place which one was different, which one meant, “If you’re going to Fort Ord, California” I did hear this: I got my orders to go to Fort Ord, California for my advanced infantry training, and the word was, you’re going out there, you’re going to Vietnam. So I kind of got that quickly. We were supposed to be able to go home for two weeks after basic, but I remember orders being changed and now we’re being sent out there a lot quicker. DB: To Fort Ord. SG: Yeah to Fort Ord. And I remember my parents having to come down to my graduation. DB: Did your dad—your stepdad’s back from Vietnam, then? SG: No, he’s still in Vietnam. This is my birth father, my mom, and my brother. And, they come down, and my dad’s current wife which is my stepmother though she didn’t have anything to do with raising me. She I guess would have the moniker of stepmother. But, they came down and visited me, and you know from there I was going to advanced infantry training. And we had a little party that weekend I kind of remember. But then, everything—basic was more of a blur than AIT was, because it was still—Vietnam was still far away, and you know they’re not going to send you right out of basic to Vietnam, you’ve got to go through other training. I still hadn’t put it all together or worried about it so much and I was going through all the process and going through the motions of being a soldier and really didn’t put it in my head that I’m going to end up in Vietnam. It crossed your mind but it seemed like it’s further down the road. DB: But in any case you’re heading for the infantry, infantry training at Fort Ord. How would you compare basic training to advanced individual training? SG: It was a lot tougher. The one thing that happened though— DB: Basic training was tougher, or the individual training? SG: I think individual training was tougher, because you got into different weaponry that you weren’t—you know it was pretty basic in basic training. We still had the M1 that we were firing instead of the M16. So AIT meant M16. And we all knew what that was, and we all knew that was Vietnam’s weapon of choice. DB: The M1 or the M14?

SG: Oh, the M14, that’s right. M14, we had the M14 in basic training, and we were talking about the M16 a lot. And I think we saw one and they took them apart and showed us the M16. “This is the weapon that you’re going to be trained in in your advanced training.” So, but we shot the other one, the M14. So, the weaponry was different. The training was a little more intense. And the interesting aspect though for me was, I got there and they said, “Okay was anybody here squad leader in basic training?” I raised my hand. “Well you’re going to be one again.” So I— DB: Did you get rank out of basic training? Did they give you E2, or PFC? SG: Oh— DB: Nothing that stands out? SG: Nothing that stands out. DB: But you got your acting stripes. SG: Yeah, I got my acting stripes, again. (Laughs) And I knew what that meant. Okay, I got to be a little more responsible for some guys and stuff and I got to answer to the bigger guys, but I’m going to get out of some things too. So that part didn’t bother me, and I could do it, I’d already done it. So that was similar. I think, the training was more intense, war training. Rather than—basic is pretty basic. We’re getting you physically ready, we’re getting you—never shot a gun before, here you go. That kind of stuff. DB: Marching. SG: March. Learn to obey, learn to walk with everybody else, and you know, cover your buddies. But now, you know, it’s a little more serious. We don’t leave anybody behind kind of thing. And if you get into this situation, this is what’s going to be expected of you. DB: A lot of the training was specifically geared towards Vietnam? Do you have a, do you have any stories— SG: Yeah, I could feel it coming. I could feel it coming a lot more then. Because we’re trained—yeah. It was just different. It was different from basic. Basic was like kindergarten. Now you’re in a high school. (Laughs) So it’s going to be a little different, and a little more is expected of you. Yeah. DB: And everybody is getting along? SG: Yeah, everyone is getting along. They did a lot more what I would consider, what normal society would consider mean things to us in AIT training. You know, they tell you, “Well you guys are going to get furloughs.” Okay good, we’re going to get furloughs. “The whole weekend.” Salinas was where all the guys went, that’s where the girls are and all the stuff you could get into. “Go have fun, don’t worry about it.” We get back, I think we had to report—we were off Friday to Saturday and we get back Sunday, and we were told at first we’re not going to do anything till Monday, so you guys go have fun. I think they did this on purpose because we drank too much and we did too much and we came back with hangovers and we were pretty much dead when we got back Sunday but we had a whole day to recuperate. We had the next day to recuperate. And I remember about, right as we get settled in Sunday night or something we were supposed to be off the next day, they came through banging trash cans waking everybody

61 up, five mile forced march. And this, this was—we were all hung over. (Laughs) We were in pretty bad shape. But this was all part of the military training. DB: And you did it. SG: We did it. We got through it. Some barely got through it, but we somehow did it. And I could start seeing the intensity with escape and evasion for instance. It was actually fun, because nobody is going to get killed. You don’t want to end up in this prison camp they had in the middle of this large area. And you had to get from A to Z, and you had to not get caught in between time. You didn’t have weapons. And I remember as you go out, you go out in groups of two. But you’re going out in this wooded area. You don’t know everybody, you’re running into people that are on your side, and you’ve got to be careful not to run into the bad guys, so. We ended up with a group of about five of us and we got together. And then we got to—we did get cornered. We didn’t play fair though. We got cornered, and everybody, you know they’ve got weapons. And they captured us. And we had this one guy, this one black guy that must’ve been about 6’9”. He was huge. But we didn’t have weapons, they had weapons. And we were supposed to comply. And then they were going to take you to this prison camp, and in the prison camp they told you something that you’re not supposed to let out this secret. And in the prison camp they torture you, though. They’re doing all kinds of things, putting you in little boxes, putting snakes on you—they’re not poisonous or anything, but if you have a fear of something, a couple of guys, they’d talk. But I remember at one point these guys came upon us and they said “Okay we got you guys, you got to go with us” and then the one big guy he was kind of taking a leak so they didn’t see him at first and he comes back and he sees what’s going on. And we’re prisoners now, we’re getting in the backs of the jeep because they’re going to take us to this encampment, and uh, he just grabs a big stick and walks over to one of the guys and goes, “We’re not going with you.” So we all look at him, and we go “We’re not going with you.” And they go “Aw come on, we got the guns, we could kill you right now.” “You don’t have bullets in those, we’re not going with you.” So we didn’t go with them, we ran them off. (Laughs) And these, there were three of them I remember, they just went, “You guys aren’t playing fair.” We go, “No, we’re just going today, we’re not going to that.” We see what it was, we saw what it was and we’re not going there. In fact we got so close to it at night, it was at night, it was an overnight thing. And it was dark, and the encampment was well lit. And, but they had chain link fence all around it. And we got closer to it than we needed to be to get where we were going. We got close enough to it to see that part of the fencing we could rip up, and three guys escaped. We helped three guys escape. And they got pretty hairy for us, but we were kind of laughing about it. But, we made it to the other side. And when we got to the other side, they did make mention of the fact that “Some of you guys got caught but you didn’t comply with the rules of the game.” They didn’t point us out so we were okay. DB: Yeah. So, AIT is coming to an end? SG: AIT is coming to an end. You’re getting your orders. DB: Getting your orders. Any choice in any of that, or do you take what you get? SG: Well, in hindsight—no you don’t you take what you get—but in hindsight, I probably could’ve avoided going to Vietnam. But by now I’m, I’m, I’m kind of in this, I’m gung-ho. I’m

62 feeling good about myself. I’m feeling good about what I can do for my country and everything. The way I could’ve gotten out of it—someone had mentioned it to me, I didn’t know how serious it was, but I didn’t want to bring it up—the fact that my dad was over there, and he was already in Vietnam, could, with some cases, if you have other family members that are over there, could keep you from going over there. Because you know, they don’t want to have that Private Ryan kind of thing go down. You could make mention of it, and say “Hey there’s only three men in my family and, you know” but I didn’t, I really didn’t take that seriously enough. And I didn’t— you know, he was air force, and I didn’t want to make it seem like I’m using that. So I didn’t rock that boat. I ended up getting orders to go to Vietnam. DB: And were they unit specific, or you’d just go to Vietnam and get an assignment when you get there? SG: That’s a good question, I don’t remember. It was kind of fuzzy for me. I’m a young guy, I don’t know half the things that’s going on half the time anyway. DB: Could’ve gone either way, but most of the time the guys just went to the replacement depot anyway. You got a home leave? SG: Yeah I was at the replacement depot, that’s right. DB: You got a home leave before you went to Vietnam? SG: I had a couple of weeks before I went to Vietnam. DB: And did you, you traveled commercially to get home? SG: Yep, I flew home. DB: To St. Joe. SG: Yep. DB: And were you in uniform? SG: Yes. And at that time, if you flew in uniform you flew for free. You were connected to the military and you were still involved, but you had to wear a uniform in order to get the free flight. You could pay for a flight if you wanted to wear civvies, but I didn’t have a lot of money to waste, so…. DB: How did 1969, late ’69, how did people treat you? SG: I didn’t really notice a problem, I was just glad to be going home. Sad about Vietnam, but I didn’t really notice a problem with people. I really probably can’t remember even being conscious of people so much then. Coming back was a different story. DB: Okay. Okay. So, you come home from leave, on leave from AIT, and in anticipation of going to Vietnam. And how were things at home? Your mother wasn’t very pleased when you got your draft notice, and now you’re going to Vietnam, um, do you have any communication with who had been drafted, or other people in the neighborhood? SG: Not really, because I was one of the last ones to go and everyone else, within the last few months, in my peer group had gone before me. So there wasn’t a lot of my buddies there,

63 necessarily. And I remember spending quite a bit of time with family. One thing I did have going for me was I had a girlfriend. And, you know, knowing that I was going to basic training and everything we were pretty hot and heavy. She did come down and visit, too. Uh. But I remember the feeling of, okay I’m getting ready to go to Vietnam, I need to make sure that someone’s going to be thinking about me or be here when I get back or something. So I spent a lot of time with her while I was home for those couple of weeks. Of course my family treated me like a king, I got everything I wanted to eat, and I didn’t have to do anything, and you know— DB: You had a younger brother. SG: Yeah. DB: How was that relationship? SG: He is four years younger than me, and we’re a lot closer now that we’re adults. Four years can be a little bit of a difference there, but I remember he and I becoming very close before I went to basic training, and that’s when he started. He was about 14 around that time, then too, and they actually went back to Japan after I went to Vietnam. DB: Okay, but your stepdad is still in Vietnam? SG: After he went back home. Because he got back home while I was still there. But anyway. DB: And attitudes in the community, any sense for that? SG: Nothing had changed much. I had gone for a total of, with basic training and AIT, I’d only been gone for what was that, 16 weeks or so? And prior to that we were in Japan for most of that time anyway. So I didn’t have a lot of connection anyway—I did have my girlfriend, and one of the things I wanted to do was, you know what, I think I’m going to get married before I go. So I bought her a ring and I was going to give it to her and I told my mother about it. And my mother had concerns. And the girl was a nice enough girl and everything. But she was young, just like I was young. My fear was, well, who’s going to be, who’s going to write to me and who’s going to—I’m going to make sure I have this locked down so I think I should get married before I go. Luckily, my mother talked me out of that. She said, “Son, she’s going to be here, she’ll be here when you get back. You might as well wait, and I think it’d be better for you.” So I listened to her and I took that advice, and as we get further into it that was a much better decision. DB: So, the time is up, leave is up, leave is over. Time to take off. SG: Time to go. DB: And where did your—how was that for your mother? Did she have a hard time with it? SG: Yeah, that was hard. When I had to finally leave there. And I’m trying to remember, you know I have a little fogginess there, because everything starts happening a little quickly and you start thinking about what you’re going to have to do. You spend a little more time thinking about that, I think. I know I didn’t get married, which is good. And I don’t—it was a fast two weeks. I don’t really remember a lot of details about it except for pretty much being treated like a king and not having to do anything and that. But then the last couple of days it was kind of sad and even my little brother cried, and you know I had a little talk with him about a few things. I remember giving him my guitar, because he kind of idolized me for being a musician and stuff 64 and he wanted to play with it and stuff and before I left I said, “Here this is yours.” And this is a different story but when I got back that guy, he still plays now. DB: He was good? He learned? SG: And he’s still good. He’s played with some of the best, yeah. So. (Laughs). So he remembers it—it’s funny how people remember little things that you did for them—and I think he does this a big brother thing, but he always says, “Hey if it wasn’t for you” and not necessarily so, you did the work, you have the talent, you’re the one that did it— DB: You gave him the spark and he set the fire. SG: Yeah, I guess. DB: Okay. Did you fly out of Travis and then California? SG: Sure did, yep. And from St. Joe to Travis was a little bit of a blur, but what I do remember is, is the flight to Vietnam. DB: Charter flight? SG: Charter flight. DB: Remember the airline? SG: Young, we called them stewardesses at the time, there were plenty of young stewardesses on the plane, and nothing but GIs. And we were all in fatigues, and— DB: You’re flying fatigues, huh? SG: Yeah, we flew in fatigues. DB: Had you been issued your jungle fatigues already? SG: Yes. DB: Oh, you have? SG: Yes, in Travis. DB: In California? Okay. SG: So we get there. Well, well in-flight, well of course you got a lot of young guys talking about, bragging about all the stuff they’re leaving behind, and what they’re going to do. Of course this is the group, this whole planeload was the group that was going to go over there and end war. We were going to be the group that kicked ass over there. And we kind of talked ourselves into it a little bit. And I remember the pilot saying—I remember how much fun it was going there, and then, then the pilot said, “Gentlemen we’re now over the coast of South Vietnam.” You could hear a pin drop. And you’ve probably heard this talking to other GIs before. It’s a quiet moment. You don’t know what the hell is going to happen. You don’t know. But I get off the plane, they going to give me a gun? Am I going to have to start shooting as soon as I get off? What’s going to? What’s? You’re totally confused. DB: Off into the unknown.

SG: Totally unknown. But, I’m not alone. You know, I’ve got all these guys with me. Now, none of these guys are going to be together, but, we’re still, we’re a group, this is my core group right now. So we get off the plane. And what struck me was the heat, the humidity was very high. And then we get off and then we see—we’ve got new fatigues on. We see guys at the airport there leaving, and these are seasoned veterans, they’ve been through it already. We’re looking at them in the eyes and they’re looking at us. But we’re not allowed to talk to these guys. We’re going one place, they’re going another place. But we see them, and—it just got so much—I got so much but I got so little from them, just looking at them. And, you look at these guys and you go, wow. They’ve been through it already. And they’re on their way home. And they’re giving you the look that says, “Well, I’m out of here now, it’s your turn buddy, good luck.” And you don’t get a chance to go, hey what’s it like? What can you expect? The worst thing that happened was I think it was four, five, or six—I can’t remember the number—flag- draped caskets getting loaded into a plane on the tarmac that we were getting off of. That was— um, I guess the big slap in the face, the wake up. You’re in Vietnam now, dude. DB: Sobering. SG: Yeah. Very, very sobering. Yeah. That, that—that’s when you get scared. DB: You came into Long Binh? Probably? SG: Yeah, yep. DB: And did you know where you were going then? You didn’t have a unit assignment yet. SG: Didn’t have an assignment, didn’t have anything in fact for two weeks we’re down in the replacement depot, we’re there. We get up, we go to the cafeteria, we eat, and we don’t know what we’re going to do yet. And then they put us on guard duty around the perimeter of the base—where you put all the FNGs in these positions. I remember just being in a tower—we were in a tower and there’s barbed wire and stuff in front of us and everything and we’re two rookies—and the funniest thing that happened was they had tin cans and it was a pitch black night, one of the nights we were on guard. And something—they have tin cans in the concertina wire and stuff. We heard something—we couldn’t see shit. DB: You heard the cans rattling?

SG: Yeah. So we panic. And we’ve got M16s, we’ve got grenade launchers, we’ve got M60 up in there, we’ve got plenty of stuff to do damage with, so we open fire. (Laughs) And we got radioed, “What the hell’s going on out there?” And we say, “We’ve got movement, we’ve got movement.” And so, they send—it was about five or six guys in a jeep, came out to our location, and we’re up there smoking cigarettes, chain-smoking cigarettes because we don’t know what the hell happened. DB: You’re running on adrenaline. SG: Yeah, and they have us come down from the perch and we came down. And they’ve got flashlights, and they’re looking at stuff over there, and then all of a sudden they start laughing. Well, first thing they said was, “We got a blood trail here.” I was like, oh shit we killed somebody! I can’t believe it, I haven’t even got to my unit yet. And then they start laughing. And, they said, “Bring those FNGs over here!” We go over there and look, and it was a pig. I

66 don’t know how it got there, but we blew it away! (Both laugh) And they kind of laughed and made jokes. Because apparently, nothing happened that much around there—that’s why they have the FNGs guard down there. But we expended a lot of ammo just taking care of this pig. DB: Just killing a pig. (Both laugh) Well, you didn’t know! SG: And actually one officer kind of said, “Better you did that than nothing at all. Could’ve been something else, so.” Yeah. DB: Better safe than sorry. Not for the pig though. SG: The other guys were laughing at us, though. (Laughs) DB: Did they have bunkers along the wall, or just the towers? SG: Uh, I didn’t notice bunkers. I’m sure they did, but the area where we were had towers. DB: Okay so for the most part you’re pulling this guard duty, waiting for an assignment, and after about two weeks you got an assignment? SG: Yeah, I get an assignment. They’re sending me to 4th Division, 1st of the 10th Cav. And I don’t know what that means, I don’t—they’re just numbers, units, what—I don’t know anything about this stuff except for, I’m starting to get wind of it, somebody’s telling me a little bit about it, and saying, “Oh that’s a mechanized unit.” What do you mean mechanized? “Trucks, tanks, uh, you know, APCs, things like that.” DB: You had no training in any of that. SG: No. And I thought, Well I don’t have any training in any of that. But then I started feeling better about it, because I thought, Hey this sounds cooler from what I heard about having to trudge through the jungle and everything. This sounds cooler, I’m going to be riding. I like this. This might be good. So they see us out to our unit, and we landed and of course you know you go to the unit and it’s, it’s mostly APCs and there’s tanks with us and everything. And they’re all sitting in a circle. DB: You helicoptered out? SG: Yeah, we helicoptered outside this circle, but then—because the circle wasn’t that big. DB: But to get into the circle, to get to the unit. SG: Right. DB: So you’re going right to the field. SG: I’m right in the field now. And they gave me a whole bunch of stuff. They gave me, you know, you got your bed gear, you got your canteen, you got your—everything’s new. You got an extra pair of boots. Everything’s brand spanking new. So I get there, and right in the middle of everything they say, “Just put your stuff right down here, and we’re going to take you around and introduce you to a few people and stuff.” Okay, so I leave all my stuff there. I go around, and they introduce me to a few people. And I come back to get my stuff. I had the same amount of stuff there, but it’s not my stuff. This old beat-up bed gear, this old beat-up tin can. My boots

67 were all worn out now. And I’m looking around, and I can see bits and pieces of my stuff that guys have. DB: You got looted. SG: Yeah. But, but I was told before I got to my unit, you don’t make a big fuss. This is probably going to happen to you, but you don’t make a big fuss about this, because these are the guys you’re going to learn from, they’re going to save your ass. You’ll get your turn for this later. So as I looked up and looked around, and guys kind of looked back at me, like, “Uh, you got a problem?” No, no, I like this old stuff right, I’m going to be fine. I distinctly remember that, and I remember hearing about that, and then, I’ll be damned if it didn’t just happen just the way they told me. And I go, okay. And I remember of course later on, after I’d been in there awhile, I needed a new pair of boots or a new canteen or something, and the new guys were coming in, “Hey I’m taking that one.” And we’d always give them the old ones so they’d have one, but you’d have to deal with the old stuff until you got your chance at some more new stuff. DB: Yeah. How were you briefed in by your platoon sergeant, or platoon leader? SG: Not a lot of specific information. But you have a lot of questions. You want to know all the gory stuff. You want to know what happens—do people get killed? Do you have to kill people? Do you blah-blah? And they purposefully really don’t tell you much about that. That shouldn’t be your main emphasis, but as a young kid that’s all you’re thinking about. I got to kill somebody? Or am I going to die? DB: In every unit they have standard operating procedures, just the way they do things. And how were you integrated into those different procedures? SG: Well, first thing, first thing I had a little problem with was that I had people realizing that I’m infantry. I’m not trained on any of what they’re doing out here. DB: You’re not mech. infantry. And you’re not armored. SG: Right. So there, well, “This is an FNG but he’s even worse than that, he doesn’t even know what the hell it is we’re supposed to be doing out here.” So I knew it was important for me to kind of pay attention a little bit and try to figure stuff out. Probably—oh, I was RTO for a while. That was one of my first assignments, thinking, you know, some guy told me that—I think he was trying to get rid of being RTO, and he was trying to convince me that this was what I needed to do, “It’s a cool thing to do because you don’t have to go out on listening posts, you don’t have to go—you stay with the captain, you know.” I thought, this sounds safe! DB: You’re going to be a target, too. SG: Yeah, I didn’t know, I didn’t think of that. I just thought, I don’t have to— DB: Were you comfortable with the radio from the training you got, or did they fill you in when you got there? SG: They had to fill me in with most of it, because we had, you know, in just those few weeks you don’t get everything. You don’t get your hands on everything. DB: You had to learn all of the specifics.

SG: Yeah. And so, I was RTO for a while. And then I realized, I don’t want to be RTO. Because you’re not with the rank and file, you’re with the captain most of the time. You know you’re with him, and I’m more like these guys, not like him. And being, being, you know it was okay. But as soon as I had a chance to pass the radio off I passed it off. And that was pretty easy to do because the captain saw that I really wasn’t, I wasn’t into it that much. However, I think about three weeks—I still haven’t seen any action—into it, they needed another driver, and I thought— DB: A driver of? SG: Of an APC. DB: This is a new experience. SG: Yeah, yeah, because I’d never touched one before. And the way we used them over there, you know there’s the compartment inside where everyone could ride inside, but it was way too hot. No one ever rode on the inside of an APC. DB: Except the driver. SG: Except the driver, right. And you know if a rocket hits, you know it’s probably worse for the guys on the inside. And you know it’s not that complicated to drive. You just don’t have a steering wheel, you have two sticks. You have a gas pedal, you have drive, and you, and you know you have gears. But, it’s pretty easy to drive. It’s like, what do you call those? Those little tractors that dig up dirt and stuff. DB: Yeah, yeah I know what you’re saying though I can’t think of the word. SG: Yeah, so anyway, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to drive. You’re sitting, it kind of had a spring loaded seat. So you adjust it so that your shoulders and your head are kind of leaning out of the hole. Because we never drove with the hatch closed. And they were made for that but we never did because it was way too hot. And you had a helmet on and then you had a turret with usually a sergeant or somebody in there with a .50 cal. And he’s able to communicate with you. DB: You have headsets. SG: We have headsets, right. DB: In your special driver’s helmet. SG: Right. And it—well, the thing you don’t think of you don’t know what you’re doing because you’re sitting a little lower than the rest of the guys is that we never went down dirt roads that much because they mined them. We made our own paths. We crested the jungle with these things and just knocked trees over, which was kind of fun. But you had to learn as a driver how to look up enough to keep your guys from getting knocked off of the top of the box that they’re sitting on. Because I would be driving along and a lot of a sudden they’re slapping me on the head and hollering at me, and saying, “Hey, son of a—, look what you did!” You know, and they’re going under. DB: Big branches.

SG: Yeah. And I got one stuck. You go up to the pretty large trees and you knock them over. But you have to do it just right, you have to do it with a track on one side. And roll up on it instead of having the tree right in the middle, because then you’re like a turtle, you’re, you’re, I was stuck on this one tree and of course you can’t tell for that kind of stuff, but I learned how to be a pretty good driver after a while. DB: Can you describe the terrain, and the foliage in the area? You mentioned there was jungle, but a lot of Vietnam is open country. SG: Yeah, yeah, and that was pretty much was most of it—there were times, and it’s not necessarily large trees, but just overgrown brush and stuff that you’re just tearing through. Elephant grass and stuff like that. You had to be careful with tanks filled with water and low lying areas or areas that are wet because you can easily get bogged down. And we had times when we weren’t with the tracks, and we had to be CA’d to different areas because it was either monsoon season, or because they even needed troops, ground-hounders for a while. So there were weeks where we wouldn’t have the tracks with us. But I kind of liked being in a mechanized unit. Because I didn’t like traipsing through the jungle that much. And carrying a sixty-five, seventy pounds of ammunition and food and everything. When you’ve got the tracks you don’t have to worry about all that. Everything goes in the APCs you know. You’ve got all the stuff. You get mail better, you get to keep stuff better. And I even had a guitar! (Laughs) DB: Where did you get that? Just buy them in the economy, or inherited from somebody? SG: I think I inherited that one, from someone. From one leaving and then they just gave it to me. Now we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to play it when you’re supposed to be quiet. But there were times when you’re in base camp. But we were able to have all our stuff with us a little bit better. DB: A lot better than just having a backpack. SG: And I used to think the plus side of being with a mechanized unit is when we’re… we may have twenty different tracks with us or more, and we’re going from one place to another, the enemy can hear you coming from miles away. But you got so much damn firepower, if they’re snipers or stuff, they’re probably not going to mess with you. Because you end up—and we’d done it a few times, just blowing up the whole wood line. So. What I noticed was we didn’t get a lot of day to day type contact as we did when we were on foot. When on foot I noticed we’d get snipers. We’d get sniped at once in a while. And of course they’d retreat and hide, and they may have done some damage, they may not. But the problem with a mechanized unit is, they wouldn’t mess with you, unless they know they can handle you. So when we had issues, and firefights, they were all pretty good, all day things. DB: You were dealing mostly with regular North Vietnamese Army? SG: Yeah. DB: Not so much Viet-Cong? SG: Uh, Viet-Cong too, but mostly Vietnamese Army. DB: Do you remember your first encounter with an RPG?

SG: Well, I remember my first encounter with, with—my first contact period. I’d been there maybe three or four weeks, and started to get pretty comfortable. And you’ve got your hard helmet, and because it’s so hot some guys switch over to the baseball cap. I’d switched over to the baseball cap. You know, I’m getting, because you can tell a new guy and you can tell a new guy getting ready to leave: you get that flak jacket back on, you get that hard helmet back on when it’s time to go because, “I’ve made it this far! I don’t want something to go wrong now.” DB: Taking no chances. SG: And the new guys show up, they keep their stuff on for a long time too. And I remember we’d be, we’d sit around at night, and these guys would very cavalierly, casually talk about death, and stuff. And part of this was to get me ready, you know. They’d start talking about it as if, it were, they’d say, “Oh what happened to John?” “Oh, he man, lucky son of a bitch he got his hand blown off and he got sent back home!” And I’d sit there and think, “Wait, what? Whoa, back that up. Hand blown off? That’s lucky?” You know, and they’d talk about it like it was pretty casual, you know, and then they’d talk about somebody dying. “Yeah, he bought the farm.” DB: The shop talk of that situation. SG: Yeah. And that was pretty—that was pretty intense for me before the first firefight. And then the first firefight was, I think we caught some sniper. And probably, maybe a few of them, maybe three or four of them, maybe. But everything just got loud. And I didn’t know what the hell was going on for sure. And didn’t know what to do for sure. And you always think about, well, “This is what you do when this happens.” DB: And that .50 caliber firing right over your head. SG: Yeah, I know, I know. DB: That’s a lot of noise. SG: You got to maneuver the tracks, and there’s so much confusion. How do you—you can’t even get people to stop very easily. Because everyone is panicking, and we got all the firepower, we had plenty of weaponry, plenty of ammunition. We could just, keep shooting. But- DB: A lot of the times, you don’t know where to shoot though. SG: Don’t even know where to shoot. And you don’t know now where it’s coming from. You might’ve gotten, twenty rounds shot at you. Now, they’re gone, or they’re in the tunnels or something. And you’re just blowing up the woods hoping you hit something. So that was my first experience. We’d do a sweep afterwards—there weren’t any bodies or anything. But I just remember how intense it felt, because it was the first time it was loud as hell and I, I didn’t know whether I was acting right or not. But, you do a few of those, everything starts coming into play, you just start doing what you know you have to do, what you been trained to do, and what you’ve heard these guys tell you they expect you to do. And, it’s different from training because this is real, this is life and death. And you know, a young person should not have to be talking to someone, and then ten minutes later they’re gone—it’s just, that stuff. And then you got to pick up and keep going! That was real hard for me. People say, “Don’t make good friends.” But we live with each other, we cover each other’s asses, you got to be friends. And you can’t help it— we’re young men, you can’t help but be friends with people.

DB: And sharing experiences brings you together closely. SG: Yeah, and then when something bad does happen to somebody, it’s almost unbelievable. And then it’s treated like, “Oh well, that’s it. Helicopter’s going to pick up these bodies, let’s go. Got to keep going.” And that was very hard for me to adjust to. Yeah. I had a hard time with that, because it’s real. It’s not playing anymore. Okay. DB: So, you come out of the field, and you go to a base camp. And what’s life in the base camp like? SG: Life in base camp was cool, it was fun. It was— DB: This was later in the war, did they have barracks in the 4th—you’re going to the 4th Division area? SG: You know I couldn’t even tell you where we were half the time, because we were all over the place. We were in Plei Jrai, Pleiku, and they’d have base camps in different places, and then we’d usually be out three or four weeks, then we’d get to come in base camp for about a week. And going to base camp was—we didn’t have the same base camp. DB: You’d keep moving around. SG: Just keep moving around. They’d say, “Hey you guys, we’re shifting you over here.” Where out there, ground troops would stay in their local area more, we were able to go out further. So our base camp trips weren’t always the same. Sometimes it would be but they weren’t always the same. But those were, would be, believe it or not we had a lot of laughs. We had a lot of fun. We’d get in base camp, you’d feel safe. We’re in an enclosed environment. Now you don’t have to worry about things so much. And it was pretty casual then. I’d like those moments. I have pictures of those moments more so than the field. They had the USO shows where they’d have entertainers come and entertain us and stuff, and that was always good. I remember having an issue though when I first got there, with, first time in base camp. And I knew about drugs, I knew about, guys did drugs and everything. Some of them did it just to manage themselves. You know, just to, I understand it. But one of the drugs of choice that some of the guys were deep into was called smack. And at that time, I think I’m right that that’s heroin. It has the same effect from what I understand. And I remember coming through the barracks once, and some of the guys were doing the drug. Now the way they did it, they had a little vial, and they’d take the top off the vial, and it was a white powder, and they’d put it in, they’d sprinkle some into the top, and then they’d snort it. I’d seen it done, but I hadn’t done any myself. And I really don’t think I was interested in it. And I came through the barracks once, and guys were hiding their stuff because of course you still weren’t supposed to be doing this. And they were looking at me, and you know I’m new, and they’re wondering if I’m cool. If I’m okay, if I’m going to narc on them or whatever. So, you know, I remember wanting to prove to them that no, I’m not going to say anything, this is your thing. But I felt like in order to do it, because I, I remember I’d smoked some marijuana before, and you know, so they said “Are you cool?” And I said, “Yeah I’m cool!” “Really? You want some?” And I go, “Yeah, yeah. Give me some.” So they gave me the vial, and I took the top off the vial, and I didn’t know this till later, and I sprinkled the powder in there, I filled up the top—no one fills up the top. Everyone does a little bit. So when I pretty much put a lot in there, and I snorted it, they all sit back and went “God damn, you’re big time man! You’re…

72 yeah! You’re hardcore!” And I got scared when they said that, because I’d thought, Aw shit, I just did something that I probably shouldn’t have done. So I, I located a couple of my real close buddies, and I had just started to feel some of the effects, and I said “Hey man, you guys got to watch out for me.” Because you can still get in trouble for this. So I thought, You guys got to watch out, I think I’ve done something I shouldn’t have done. And they saw me through it. Took a few hours for me to get somewhat normal again. And I’m glad I had them by my side, because I probably would’ve freaked out. But, the good thing about it was, I did too much. And I didn’t want any more. I didn’t want to go through that again. If I had done a smaller amount and liked it, I might have had a bigger problem. So, in hindsight, my adventure into doing that was enough. I said, “Nah I can’t, I’m not doing any more, I don’t have to prove I’m cool, I’m cool enough.” DB: Uh huh. And did you ever see any drug use in the field? SG: Not really. You didn’t really see, no, not in the field. Only in base camp. At least with my unit. And there may have been a couple of guys who would do a little something. I remember, yeah, the one time, when we were in base camp, but we still had guard duty, and we were, we had bridge security, which was about a few miles from the main base, and a guy had given me a joint about two or three weeks, and I had been carrying this thing around with me. I didn’t know what it was, I was going to do anything with it or not. You know they said, “The stuff over here is a lot more powerful than the stuff back in the States.” Because I had smoked weed back in the States a few times, and I said okay. So I carried this around with me, and I noticed that it was with white paper but it was coated with some brown, painted with some brown liquid or something. And so I carried this around with me. I was on guard duty, I was on bridge duty one night, and we’d take turns. You’d get a couple hours, and then you’d wake the next guy up. And I, I woke up and decided, “This is boring, there’s nothing happening here, I think I’m going to smoke this.” So, I smoked a little bit of it, not realizing that it was opium soaked. And I didn’t do too much, because from my other experience I thought, I better be careful with this stuff. I want to know what’s going on over here. So I just did a little bit, but I did start kind of hallucinating— not necessarily hallucinating, but thinking I was seeing things, and it was dark out… and I was able to wake up one of my buddies and I told him what I did and he said “Aw man, don’t do that anymore.” And I knew it wasn’t—but we were in a pretty safe area. As far as out in the field is concerned, I never, nah, we didn’t have access to it, is number one. And then we knew we had to do our job, so everyone—but you get into base camp, and everyone, you’re getting drunk, whatever. Whenever we felt safe enough to do it. DB: Lots of drinking? SG: Oh, yeah. They supplied us with plenty of alcohol and cigarettes, and things that, that, the so-called comforts of home I guess. And of course we overdid it because we didn’t have an opportunity to do it that much on a daily basis. So, and you have this mindset of, “Hey I might not be alive tomorrow, so I’m going to go ahead and do this. I’m going to try this, or I’m going to…” but most of my experience with illegal drugs weren’t good, so it kept me from— oh I think about two or three times and I went, “Nah it’s not for me.” Uh, but uh, yeah we drank, we drank. And we smoked a lot of cigarettes, too. And you didn’t have the, this worry about what am I doing to—because, “Hey, I could die tomorrow.” DB: Living in the moment.

SG: Living in the moment, that’s right. And this is easing my pain a little bit, I’ll do it. DB: How was morale in general? You guys were fairly tight, getting along? SG: Well, you’re still going to have issues. You’re going to have race issues. You’re going to have, everyone’s in a clique somewhat. When you’re in the field, we—it’s just automatic, we’re all together, and we’re all in this same pot. When you’re in base camp, you can see everybody go off in their separate groups, or their like groups. People that you have more in common with a lot of the times. The black guys pretty much hung out together. There’s always some mixing and stuff because we know each other so well. But, well, you know, as far as sitting around and talking about personal stuff and everything, usually you’re with your group or this person’s with their group, and, I— I just remember feeling, feel kind of like family member to your group. And your group is so transient because it changes all the time. So you have to be ready to let people go, and you have to be ready to accept other people coming in and stuff too, so there was a lot of that. And I never really noticed, I never noticed it with groups that were in base camp all the time. You have people that were support people, but they’re not out in the field. The people that were support people, sometimes I noticed that it’d be just like being in the states. There’d be fights, there’d be arguments. Somehow we realized, at least with my unit, that we might disagree with something but if we go too far with it, you know we’re leaving next week and we’re going to be out in the field again so you know we had to cover each other’s asses. So we never let it go that far. We’d stop each other if it did. I never was one to start much stuff anyway, but— DB: More trouble with the rear area troops, anyway. SG: Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they would have issues with us, and I don’t know why that was. But, oh, sometimes they would, and if you got on somebody’s bad side in the cafeteria then you might not get a good helping of food, or something, you know. The one person to be close to: if you know a supply sergeant that was better than having a general in your pocket. (Laughs) Supply sergeants can get you anything. And we can talk about some of that later too, but— DB: With the tracks, you have a whole lot of maintenance. SG: Yeah. I had to learn quickly, you know—every driver is responsible for making sure your fluid levels are right, and I went through two APCs while I was there. DB: What happened to the one you lost? SG: Well, interesting enough— DB: Worn out, or shot up, or? SG: Shot up. One, one was— we set up a perimeter and all the tanks and APCs face out. And we have this fencing that they would put in front of the tanks. This, barbwire-like fencing that you would—it’s like a lean-to. And every tank would have it, you’d roll it up and you’d keep it on the tank and then you’d unroll it and put it in front of the tank. What this was supposed to do was, it was supposed to, if a rocket hit the screen first, it would blow up instead of hitting the tank. DB: In a standoff. SG: Right. But I think I remember not having one in front of mine at the time, I don’t know if I lost mine or it got damaged or whatever. But the oil—you had to check your oil and your fluid 74 levels and everything. I remember it’s in the front, just like in a regular car, where you have to check the oil. And I was bent over. You have to lean over to get the oil stick out. And I realized I was low on oil but I didn’t have any. So I walked over a couple of tanks and I’m talking to a guy about getting some oil from him to put in my engine, and a B40 rocket hit right in the engine compartment. And it just blew—it was close enough to just kind of lift us off the ground a little bit, and our hearing was jacked up for a few days. But, that was my track. DB: You had a close call. SG: About ten minutes before that, my ass was hanging right out of the front end of that, where that thing went in. So that was the one—I felt I was pretty lucky there. DB: What happened after the rocket hit? Did the perimeter light up, or what happened? SG: Oh, we laid—yeah, we just fired all off into the wood line. You could see tracer rounds for hours. And all night long we, we’d, we got contact all night in that particular location, I remember that. But it would be light stuff. They didn’t have mortars or anything, but they would fire into the camp. No one got—I don’t think anybody got hurt that time. DB: They were probing and harassing. SG: Yeah. We got a lot of that. And we expended a lot of ammo, just every time that would happen. They’d fire ten rounds and we’d fire five thousand. And nobody got hit! DB: And nobody gets any sleep though, either. SG: That’s true, that’s true. One of the scariest nights I ever had was—we all had to take turns at listening post, LP, from our main encampment. They’d send out groups of five—you go out here, you go out here, you go out here. And you’ve got a radio. And you’ve got to keep it on low squelch. And we were parked right by a dirt road, maybe twenty yards in the bushes from this road, and the moon was very bright that night. DB: Are you out in your track now? SG: No, no, these are LPs. DB: Yeah, these are just five guys. SG: It’s five guys that go out so late in the evening. DB: When you said you were parked I thought that didn’t sound right. SG: Oh, yeah. Well, we were just right off the road. And one at a time we’d take turns being awake, somebody’s awake. And I remember being, of course well anybody that snores you have to shake them all night long. And we were by this road, and I don’t know how many it was, but it was way more than we could handle. All of a sudden a bunch of, Vietnamese troops, Vietcong troops are walking down this road. And we’re so close that if they know we’re there, we’re gone, because they outnumber us big time. We can’t get on the radio right away, because we’re going to make too much noise, we’re that close. We could hear their tin cans clanking, and you know, hear them talk, and they were talking low, but they were talking and we could hear, we were that close. And we just watched them walk by for what seemed like twenty minutes. And it might not have been that long, but it seemed like

75 that to us. I don’t know how many that was, and we had to wait until they were past us to be able to radio that in. And the next day, I remember them doing the airstrikes in the area where they were headed. So I think they took the information that we gave them for that… that’s what that was all about. But I just remember how really helpless I felt at that time. That moment we were all just like little kids not knowing what the hell to do. Do we John Wayne it? Or do we—no, because if we do, we’re gone. That was a pretty scary moment. That whole night we all stayed up the whole rest of the night. DB: Nobody’s snoring anymore. SG: Nobody’s snoring on that night. Another time that I noticed that I was really, I felt vulnerable, was—we hadn’t seen water in a while. We’d have drinking water, and we’d have to use our little pills and stuff. DB: Iodine tablets. SG: Yeah. But, we hadn’t seen, like, bathing water. And it hadn’t rained in a while either. So we came across this pond, and I was like, “Oh, this is cool.” We hadn’t seen any action in a couple of weeks, so we were getting pretty comfortable. Probably should’ve been twenty-five percent of us getting in the water at a time, but I think pretty much most of us said, “To hell, we’re getting in the water.” We’re in the water, it’s a little beach area. And then all of a sudden, I’m in the water, I’m not the best swimmer in the world, and I’m in water that I can’t touch the bottom, and we’re getting fire from the other side of this pond, from the wooded area over there. You could hear the bullets hitting the water, you could just—I can’t make the sound, but I can still hear it in my head. And you could see it hitting water, bullets hitting the water. Zinging around people. At that time, all of us could have probably auditioned for the Olympic swimming team and made it even though I couldn’t swim worth a damn, hardly. We were getting out of that water! But I just remember how, there you are in nothing but your drawers and bullets are flying around and you don’t even have a gun in your hand. (Laughs) That was a pretty scary moment. It’s funny when you think about these things—you know I haven’t thought about this stuff in years, these old detail incidents and things that happened that way. We had what’s called ‘mad minute.’ When you have a mechanized unit, you’re able to keep fresh ammo all the time, and for some reason we had plenty of money and plenty of ammo. And they’d bring it out in helicopters, they’d bring out tons of ammunition for us, and they’d want us to expend, we did this twice in the whole time we were over there —I remember, expend all your older ammo. DB: Just burn it up, to get rid of it. SG: Yeah. So we’d get in an area where we’re going to have—they call it a mad minute, but it lasted a lot longer than a minute—but where we, once we got our new stuff in, then we get rid of the old stuff. And we’d do things, like, there’d be a tree, three feet around. You take that .50 cal… DB: Cut it down. SG: Just start hitting that one spot and every rounds a tracer anyway, and you could just see bark start flying and everything. It got so loud and it would be—that part would be fun, because it’s just guys blowing shit up. And that’s what guys like to do at that age anyway. That was always fun. And we’d do some fishing with concussion grenades. Every once in a while we’d— you throw a concussion grenade in a pond that’s got enough fish in it, they’re going to come up.

DB: Have a barbecue. SG: Yep. Every time we’d get a care package from home, we’d share them. You know my mom would send canned meat and spam. Aw, spam never tasted so good. I haven’t had spam since then I can’t stand that stuff. (Both laugh) DB: But in that circumstance… SG: The barbecues out there, yeah, yeah. And I remember when I was over there, we mostly had C-rations. And, pound cake and peaches, that was the prize possession. The other one was beef and franks, that was a good one too, everybody wanted the beef and frank ones. There was the, breakfast one that was just—I don’t know whether it was real eggs or not, but it was— DB: Oh yeah. SG: You remember that? Nobody wanted the egg one. I had gotten some tabasco sauce and some other stuff to go with food, and I would make good deals, and I would take all the egg ones because I learned how to fix them up and they tasted pretty good. (Laughs) DB: Did you make a little C-ration stove? Or did you, were you able to heat it up inside the track? SG: Well, sometimes. It depends on what it was. If it was beans and franks, you’d open up the can just enough to where you could hold onto the lid part, and you’d put it on the fire then you could always take it off when it got warm enough. You’d stir it a couple of times, you know. There’d be dirt in it, and helicopters in it. That was just like seasoning, I guess. DB: Lead paint from the can… SG: (laughs) Yeah. But the prize possession were LRPs. DB: Oh yeah, the dried rations. SG: Yeah! That, that chili con carne, I loved that one. You’d get the LRPs, they’re dried rations, dehydrated, you put hot water in them—it was just a lot better than the other. But we didn’t get them enough. It was just, so much better. DB: Change of pace though. Something different. SG: Yeah. Something different. (Laughs) DB: Fruit cake, was always the one that nobody really liked. There were a few like that nobody wanted. SG: No! That’s right! DB: Ham and lima beans was another one that wasn’t too popular. Didn’t bother me too much though. SG: (laughs) Yeah, the trick was that if you could learn to like one of the ones nobody else liked, you will have plenty. DB: Yeah. And you got cigarettes in your rations. Little packs of four cigarettes.

SG: Yeah, and I remember in base camp we used to buy packs of cigarettes for like twenty five cents. You know, that was something. And then, well, let’s see—you know. Oh, I had a girlfriend! Oh, I told you about that. DB: The one back in St. Joe? SG: Yeah, can I digress a little bit and go back to training? I just want to talk about what happened with her. DB: Sure. SG: I’m four months into training, and I hadn’t heard from her in a while. Because she comes into play a little while later when I get back, too. So I haven’t heard from her in a while, and I finally get a letter from my friend who says she’s dating some other guy now. And I thought, Damn. Because prior to that— DB: This is the one you said you bought the ring for? SG: Yeah. Four months into Vietnam right now, and I just remember prior to that, when guys would go to base camp and they’d go downtown and there’s prostitutes and stuff, I’d say, “Oh, I don’t need to go, I’m good. I’m not going.” So I didn’t go. I don’t know if I should tell all this. (Laughs) But anyway, so I got the letter. The reason why I haven’t heard from her is she’s dating this other guy I happen to know, so I just thought, Well that’s it, to hell with her then. But it got me through the first few months, which was, I kind of, I was kind of okay with it. By then I’d been with enough guys that had the same situation and we’d help each other through it, and it wouldn’t be a problem. So I didn’t—it really wasn’t that big of a deal for me. Except for, the next time the guys go to town, I said “I’m going with you guys. I’m going this time.” So I go down there, yeah. You know, there’s the prostitute situation and everything. And then I get back. And then we’d go back in the field. And it was probably about three or four days after we had been out in the field, I had to take a piss, and I noticed something was burning a little bit, but I didn’t—I thought, oh well maybe I had something, something I drank or something, I don’t know. I didn’t worry about it the first time. The second time I had to go, it burned a little more. Now I’m thinking, “Oh shit, something’s wrong here.” By the next morning, now I’m leaning up against a tree almost uprooting the tree trying to take a leak, and I go “This is bad.” And so I go and see— DB: See the medic. SG: See the medic, in the field. And he goes, “Oh, yeah, you got the clap.” And I go, “What?! I only—one time!” “Well, you got the clap.” “Shit.” So, we didn’t have penicillin out in the field, you got to keep penicillin cold, otherwise it just doesn’t last that long or whatever. And you’re not supposed to get the clap anyway. But, they had to CA me back— DB: CA is? SG: Supply helicopter came out the next day. Now by then it’s really burning pretty bad, the next day. They come out and they take me back to base camp. And I go back to base camp, and, you had to get a one in one, which is one in each hip of penicillin. And this stuff is fresh out of a refrigerator, a big tube of it, with a huge needle and it’s so thick it’s like mayonnaise. It’s just the consistency of mayonnaise. At least that’s what I remember. And these guys really kind of, they kind of give it to you. “Oh, so you got the clap, huh?” And they kind of make fun of you, and

78 they go, “Okay…” and they don’t care if it hurts, you got to do it anyway. So they don’t make it very comfortable for you. And you get the one in one, and it takes a couple days, and it was pretty much gone after that. Did that stop me from going downtown? No. But that’s another story. (Laughs) I didn’t get it any more after that, which was good. But that was my first experience and it wasn’t that good. You might want to leave that part out… (Laughs) See I’ve gotten too comfortable talking to you now. DB: How, in general what kind of relations did you have with the Vietnamese? SG: Well, with the, you know, a lot of the kids and stuff, we’d give them C-rations and stuff, and give them cigarettes, and they’d—whether they told the truth or not we never knew—they’d always go “VC, they go this way” or “They went that way.” Sometimes we’d get good information, sometimes we’d be in villages where we knew a couple of people. We’d always have interpreters with us. And you know, that’d be assigned to us that could talk to them and everything, and find out information. Some of them were pretty good Intel guys, and some of them were just mean assholes. They’d beat the kids up and stuff, and we’d have to pull him off them, you know, “What are you doing?” But we’d always give the kids, you know—not always, but whenever we could afford to—give them C-rations and candy and stuff like that. And the people were generally pretty good, but we did have a couple of incidents where, we realized that a village lied to us about what was going on. But then, I’m looking at these people and I’m thinking, a lot of these people, especially Montagnard people, indigenous people in the area that aren’t involved in politics or anything. They don’t care about this war, they don’t care about anything. They’re stuck in the middle of everything. And you could be in their village talking to them, and there could be Viet Cong right there with them. And they know that if they tell you that they’re there, they’re dead. And then, you know, vice versa can happen to them too. DB: They can’t win. SG: They can’t win, they’re in the middle of this and we, we have hit villages before that, they’d have VC in them, but a lot of innocents died too. You know, you go back to, people talk about My Lai. That was a big incident. And I understand how that can happen, because—I saw guys not really be themselves at times. You know—we had to go to a site where there was a downed helicopter. And we wanted to go to the site before they had a chance to take the ammo and the guns off of the, the—and to see if there were any survivors and anything. So by the time we got there, they had taken the M60s off— DB: The Viet Cong? SG: The Viet Cong. They had taken all the weaponry off. They hung up one of the guys, kind of in a tree. And they’d cut his genitals off and stuck them in his mouth. Now, the guy was most likely dead when they did that. So he didn’t feel anything. But when you’re a 19, 20 year old kid, and you see some shit like this—the enemy becomes a real enemy to you now. DB: Personal. SG: It gets real personal, yeah. And you just want to kill every one of them. And you know, that kind of changed your mindset a little bit. And then I’d see, see some guys who’d go there and never come back from that place. And some of those would be really gung-ho good soldiers. DB: Some just liked killing, too.

SG: Some were sociopaths. I’ll tell you a story about one of those guys, too. But, um, it would just do something to you. But at the same time, once in a while, I would get inside myself, and wonder and think about, how would I feel if another country came to my country, and said, “We don’t like your politics, and we’re going to fix it?” “We’re going to change it for you” for whatever reason, and “we’re going to kill the other people for you.” Well, I wouldn’t—if I was the other people, I’d feel like, “Well hell, what are you doing on my land?” And once in a while I’d ask myself, who’s the better people here? Is it us or is it them? I mean, they’re just protecting what they believe in. DB: Their little plot of land, their little village. SG: This isn’t even our war. And that would hit me once in a while. And especially when I would see—we’d be in free kill zones sometimes and I would hate that. Because anything in that area supposedly is supposed to be the enemy. And, you know, Montagnard people, they don’t speak English. They don’t speak Vietnamese. They have their own language. These kind of indigenous people, they don’t have anything to do with the war. And I remember being in a field once, and we saw people and we asked them to ask and halt and in Vietnamese and everything, and they didn’t. They started running away, and we just opened fire on them, and we find out it’s a couple of old women and some kids and an old man or something—it’s just village people. DB: Just scared. SG: Yeah. And we just wonder, what the hell are we doing? Some of it is, a lot of that collateral stuff was what was real painful to watch, and you know—yeah. A kid got too close to a tank once, and got run over. And this was a, maybe an 8 year old kid running along to get some candy or something. And, tripped and fell or something, and, just a terrible moment. These are things, this is not, that part’s not war. Killing people out in the field that didn’t have anything to do with the war, that’s not war. That’s just, you know. Those are the things that kind of bother me. Uh, a lot. But it’s easy for me to see how some guys, it didn’t matter. They saw a Vietnamese face, they’re all gooks, they all need to die. And we need to kill them because of what they’ve done to us. And it’s just war, you know, it’s just kids, and we don’t know what the hell we’re doing half the time. You know, what are you going to do? One thing, one thing, I don’t want to mention names or anything like that—but we had a couple of guys that were, I don’t know what you’d call them, super war guys or something. Basically, they were— DB: They were into it. SG: They were into it, way too much. They needed the adrenaline rush. We captured a Vietnamese guy, probably the equivalent of a PFC. He didn’t know anything, and we had just gotten back out in the field. We had no chance of getting back in base camp for two or three more weeks. So they radioed it in, “Well, we interrogated him but he didn’t know anything anyway.” And they said, “Well, he’s a prisoner, so you got to bring him in. You guys have to bring him with you, bring him in when you get back.” So, okay. So a lot of guys, “God damn, we have to take care of this damn gook.” And they weren’t too happy about it. And whoever was in charge gave this guy, and I won’t mention any names, to a particular soldier that we knew that was pretty much a sociopath. He loved being in a war. And he just talked about it like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And they gave him to him, and everybody just looked at each other like, “This guy’s probably not going to make it back.” The Vietnamese guy, he’s probably not going to make it.

When you’re setting up a perimeter, you know if you go to the bathroom out in front or anything, you always let people know “Hey I’m going to be out here in the woods taking a shit,” or whatever. And he goes, “Oh hey I got to go take this gook out so he can take a dump or whatever.” Okay, so we knew that he was going to be out of sight. And then we heard three rounds. And we all go running to see what the hell happened, and there this guy is, the guy that did it, he’s lighting a cigarette, calm as he can be. And we say, “Well what happened?” “Son of a bitch tried to escape!” And everybody just went, “Oh, okay.” Now I’m looking at a body that’s got three bullet wounds in the back, and his pants are around his ankles. I know better than this. I know that’s not what happened. Everybody knew that’s not what happened. Now I talked about it to a couple of guys, you know, “We need to say something about this.” And at the time, this is your team, this is your group. And they gave me the indication, that well, “First off they’re going to ask you if you saw it. Did you see it?” “No” “Then you don’t know.” “Yeah, but it’s kind of obvious.” “You didn’t see it, you don’t know, and no one else is going to back you, so you’ve got to go along. You’ve got to deal with this.” But this guy was one hell of a soldier. When we needed his ass, I’d get behind him anytime, he’s that kind of guy. DB: Makes you wonder— SG: Now to cut to the chase! This is, there’s more to this story. Now I’m going to go years ahead just for this one brief thing. I lived in Houston, Texas at the time. And, was working for a sporting goods company, and I was on my way from one suburb area to another. And in Houston they have a lot of motorcycle cops. There was a motorcycle cop next to me, and he had the sunglasses and the helmet on and everything. So I realize there is a motorcycle cop right beside me. I’m making sure I’m not speeding, I’m making sure I’m doing everything right. And all of a sudden he gets behind me and he pulls me over. “Well what the hell, I didn’t do anything wrong.” As soon as he walks up to the window, I go, “What did I do officer?” And he goes, “Shut up, let me see your driver’s license.” So I gave him my driver’s license, he looked at my name, and then he goes, he’s incidentally a white guy, and he goes, “Get out of the car, nigger.” And I thought, What the hell—what the hell? He’s using this type of language all over the place, he gets me up against the car, he’s frisking me, he’s running his hands all up in my junk and everything. And I’m going, “What the hell is going on?” Then all of a sudden this guy starts laughing. And I turn around. He takes his glasses off. My heart’s racing so fast that I still don’t recognize anything here. And then I look at his name tag. It’s that same son of a bitch from Vietnam. He drove up and said, “I looked over and I thought that was you! I didn’t know for sure until I checked your ID and I thought I’d give you a hard time!” “You son of a bitch!” and then I thought, this guy is a sociopath. In fact, I’m not a hundred percent, but pretty sure he’s a murderer. But he’s a police officer now. Go figure. But I know him, he’s the type that wouldn’t have made it in civilian life without having an adrenaline type job. DB: And a certain amount of discipline and structure that the job provided. SG: Yep, yep, yeah. And I never saw him after that—I didn’t want to. He never was a close friend of mine or anything. He just got a kick out of that for himself. And I just thought, God, this guy hasn’t changed much. (Laughs) So, anyway. That’s, that’s a story about that anyway. DB: So you wonder about a lot of the guys that get to like that stuff too much, what happens to them when they come back. SG: Well I had the same incident happen to me.

DB: There’s lots of those stories that I’ve heard from World War Two. SG: Oh yeah. DB: And Korea. SG: Yeah. DB: Lots of them. SG: I can imagine. Because when I got back from Vietnam—before I went, I had gone maybe five or six times hunting with relatives and my uncles, we’d gone deer hunting, I forgot whatever else we hunted—but what I remember is as a younger person going hunting, and feeling that adrenaline rush, and realizing that this is, this is, we got to get the game and all this good stuff. And I remember how, how it made me feel, and how fun it was, it seemed like fun. And then, after I got back from Vietnam, I remember some friends asking me to go hunting, so I went, “Sure let’s do this.” Most boring thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I thought, Guys, what’s so much fun about this? You sit in a deer stand waiting for a deer that may or may not come along, and then you take him out. There’s no fun in that, there’s no adrenaline rush here, they can’t shoot back at you. You want to make it a fairer fight, take a knife out there and go deer hunting. But it never did have that rush for me after that, you know. And I haven’t been since. Now I don’t get it. DB: Did you see changes in the army between the time you got to Vietnam and the time you left? SG: Nah, not that I noticed. DB: Everything pretty consistent with the troop morale, all of the groups getting along? SG: Yeah, because I got back in ’71. DB: What month? SG: Early ’71. Like—February I think? DB: Okay. Let’s not go home yet. We’ve got to go on R&R. SG: Oh, that’s right. (laugh) Okay. Uh, yeah, let’s see. I’d been in Vietnam now, been in country, for about, probably eight months before I went on R&R. Somewhere around eight or nine months, somewhere around there. And, for a lot of us, you know, we all knew our places where we could go. I found it interesting that the only place you could go in the United States was Hawaii. And the guys that were married would pay to have their wives meet them there, and they could go to Hawaii. But you couldn’t come to the mainland. You come to the mainland, you might not come back. I knew what the reason was. But there was a few places that we that were fun for the grunts to go to. And one of them was Thailand. And I’d heard about Thailand, oh, “You’ve got to go to Thailand, everything is legal, you can do whatever you want, they’ve got girls,” And, you know, it’s a vacation, that’s what it is, is R&R. I think I had about twelve days. And I— DB: Did you save up much money while you were in Vietnam?

SG: Well, yeah. Because you didn’t have to spend much anyway. And, I had a little gambling thing that I’d do once in a while and I was pretty good at it, so I had a little more money than most. DB: Had a little cushion. SG: (laughs) Yeah. Most of it I sent home, but then I had my playing money, and I’d built it up, I did pretty good. I had some money when I went. And we had a good time. It was a, it was an interesting time. And it was another chance to see another part of the world. And it was a chance to see Asian people that you weren’t— DB: Didn’t have to fight. SG: That wasn’t the enemy, right. DB: Didn’t have to wonder about. SG: Right, right. And I remember the clubs, and I remember the guys would tell us about the clubs that we, we should go to now. As a black guy, there’s certain clubs that have certain kinds of music, but there was one club called the Soul Sisters Club in Thailand. And it was S-O Sister’s Club, the So Sister’s Club. And this was where all the brothers would go, you know. We’d go there, and, they played the Temptations, they played all our music. DB: Motown music. SG: Motown music, yeah. They even had a restaurant attached to it that served fried chicken and chitlins. Now, chitlins weren’t something that I was into anyway. But I just found that kind of interesting. And when I got to that club, people that already said, “well, prostitution isn’t ‘legal’ legal, but no one is going to say anything about prostitution. And no one stops it and it’s a part of their economy, especially with us coming there, so no one is going to do anything about it.” So they say that in most of these clubs, ninety percent of the women that are in these clubs are available that way. And if you went up to one that wasn’t available, they’d let you know in a nice way. “Oh no no, not me.” And you’d go, “Oh, okay.” But most of the time, “Yeah, sure, no problem. How much?” And you’d make a deal and you’d go back into your hotel room, and they would have the manager of the hotel—I’m kind of naïve about this stuff—but the manager of the hotel would call the girls over before we could go over to the room. “Well what’s this about?” And he checks their health cards, and he makes sure they’re up to date. And he’d say a few words to them and stuff. And that was that, and that’s what you could do for fun. We’d have a driver, for twenty five dollars a day. And there’s me and one other guy, and we’d pretty much stayed together to cover each other’s butt and stuff. But this guy—and we’d wonder, how do we get this guy at our beck and call for like twenty or twenty five dollars a day? Even back then that seemed cheap for everything that he did. It was because everywhere that he took us, we’d notice he’d be with the maître d, or with the head person there, and he’d get a few bucks of kick back for bringing us. We want to get some clothes made? He’d take us to a tailor he knows. Or he’d take us to a club that he knows, or a restaurant that he knows. And he’d get a little kick back from that, too. So it was a pretty good racket for them back then I guess. And the guy that we drove with had a’56 Chevy. With curtains in the back windows, so that, like— I guess he was trying to make it seem like a limousine or something. I just didn’t know how he got a ’56 Chevy in Thailand, but he had one there. And that was pretty cool.

DB: Probably in perfect condition, too. SG: It was in great condition, yeah. DB: So R&R was good? SG: R&R was pretty good. It wasn’t long enough. DB: Five days, probably, in country? SG: Ah, no I was probably there at least a week I think. Yeah I think I was there for at least a week. But we got a lot into it at that time, and then we’d have to go back. And all the stuff that you’d purchased you could mail home. And I’d got a lot of clothes made, because I was kind of a clothes horse anyway. DB: Tailor’s shops in Thailand. SG: Oh yeah. And you’d go in in the morning, and they’d usually have some girls in some really short dresses, or short pants or something. They’d come out and they’d give you something to drink and then they’d go through swatches of different materials and you’d pick out materials and pick out designs, and say, “Yeah I want this, I want this, but make this collar like this,” or whatever you’d tell them that you want. They’d measure you up in the morning, and if you got back there about four or five o’clock in the afternoon, they’d say they had it piecemealed together, you’d see all the stitching and everything. And then you’d try the jacket on and everything, or whatever. DB: Do a fitting. SG: Do a fitting. You come back tomorrow morning, it’s ready to go. (laughs) DB: And dirt cheap. SG: And dirt cheap, yep. Yeah. I even know a client of mine now that, he has an organization where they take measurements of people and they get them from Thailand and he has a clothing business like that. So, yeah. DB: Was it hard to go back to Vietnam? SG: Yeah. DB: Back to the unit? SG: Yeah, because—and then I understand, definitely understood why they didn’t let you go home, because I wouldn’t have gone back. And in fact, we saw, probably four or five—and you’d notice them right away—Americans, because they’d be, back in that time, for an American young GI who could grow his hair out long, he’d grow it out long. And we’d see these white guys with long hair. DB: In Thailand. SG: In Thailand. So we’d go up, and we’d go, “Man, what unit are you guys with?” And they’d say, “Oh, nah…” DB: They quit. They went AWOL.

SG: They quit, yeah. And you know these are generally people that usually, probably don’t have much of a family life back home or whatever but they’d decided that, “You know what, this is better than any of that. I’m not going back.” And, you know, a couple of them were, pimps I noticed. Because they have the girls come over and they’d just talk to them in their language and everything. DB: Living the street life. SG: Yeah, and I’d go, “Wow…” DB: You wonder whatever happened to them in the long run. SG: Yeah. DB: If they ever came home. SG: If they ever made it. DB: If they survived. They’re living a rough life. SG: True, true, yeah that was an odd thing. But anyway, you’d get back, and yeah, you’ve got to go back to your unit. DB: There’s a certain familiarity to getting back, too, where you know people, you know the situation. You had mixed feelings, maybe, about it? SG: A little bit. A little bit. But you know, we kind of knew what to expect going because other people would come back and they’d tell you everything that they did and what you should do when you go there and everything. But then they’d also say, “Ah, it’s like shit coming back. Man, you don’t want to come back.” So you knew what to expect, you’re just going to have that feeling anyway. But, you’re starting to be a short timer. You had a chance to pick when it was available when you wanted to go. I don’t know if it was eight or nine months into my thing, but I wanted my vacation to be towards the end, because I knew I didn’t want to go back, so. I remember, well, as I got towards the end—well, there’s a couple other things that happened, too. You know, we had our own currency. DB: MPC. SG: Yeah, yeah, and I remember one time we were on base camp, and they were going to do the money exchange, and how panicked the people outside the base camp were. DB: The Vietnamese. SG: The Vietnamese, because they had all our money, and it was going to be worthless tomorrow. DB: They couldn’t exchange it. SG. A lot of them wanted to hand it to you through the fences and stuff. And some guys would take it, but the problem got to be, you’d take three or four thousand dollars of the money and go to try to exchange it tomorrow, they’re going to go, “What are you doing with three or four thousand dollars on you any damn way? Where’d you get this much money?” So we didn’t

85 bother doing that kind of exchange. But the black market, that’s why if you ever had the chance to have American money— DB: Greenbacks. SG: Greenbacks. Which we didn’t have, you know. Well, I think a few times I had people from home send me some cash. DB: But you never had much. SG: No, no. twenty, thirty dollars or something. But that was always good money. But yeah, I thought that was interesting too. And then next day you’ve got to turn all your money in. You get new money, different money, differently printed money. DB: And that was just to screw up the black market economy. SG: Yeah. DB: The underground Vietnamese economy. SG: Yeah. DB: Yeah. How did your attitude start changing as you got closer to coming home? A bit more cautious? SG: Yeah, I’m getting a little more weary. DB: Still going to the field all the time, or did they move you back to a base camp job? SG: Our general rule was, you didn’t have to spend more than a year in the field. DB: But a year is your full tour. SG: Yes, it’s your full tour. However, they had a deal that said if you came back, I think it was five months or less to do, you could ETS early. You could get out early. The one thing I didn’t want to do—because I’d lived on military bases before—I didn’t want to come back from Vietnam and have to start saluting and spit shine, and go through all that again when all I want to do is go home. For the last, seven or eight or nine months I didn’t want to do that. So I did something that was kind of dramatic, for me and for my family too to think about. When my year of time came up, I had the opportunity to extend my time over there so that when I came back I would have five months or less to do, I could go straight home. DB: So how many month did you have to extend for? SG: Three. To get me under that. I had to stay over there. DB: Fifteen month tour then. SG: Yeah. And now, you know, of course when my folks found out they were livid. “Now what if something happens to you now?” DB: And you’re stepdad’s back from Vietnam, now. SG: Yeah. Yeah. They were—I remember thinking that this might’ve been a bad move. But, one thing I had the opportunity to do was, they said, “Okay well you’ve spent your year out in

86 the field. We can assign you to someplace in base camp for your last three months.” And I thought, Oh that’s sweet, yeah. That’s good, that’s going to work out fine. I don’t care what they’re having me do in base camp, this’ll work out really good. So my last three months, I was in, oh where was I? Was it Da Nang? I don’t even remember, but I was in a base camp. And some of the details are a little fuzzy, but I didn’t know what they were going to assign me to. And I knew how to type, I knew how to do some other things, too. I was told, “If you play it smart just tell them you don’t know how to do anything and then you won’t have to do anything.” So I’m base camp, and I’m going, “Hey what do you know how to do?” “I don’t know anything, you only trained me to kill people, that’s all I learned how to do.” “Okay, we’ll find something for you to do, Glasper, you just sit.” So for about two weeks I just hung out in the barracks. I got to do what I needed to do, I got in good with the supply sergeant, I got everything I needed, ate well. It was kind of like— DB: In-country R&R. SG: Yeah, it was. It was really pretty cool. Then one day they called me up, “Alright Glasper we got a job for you.” “Agh, okay.” Was it going to be something to do in the cafeteria or some labor stuff? He goes, “Well, no, you’re going to be in charge of the hooch maids.” Now, there was a town outside the base camp where a lot of Vietnamese people would do domestic work on base. They’d do the officer’s quarters. They’d do the cooking, and do the dishes and all that stuff. DB: Laundry. SG: Laundry, yeah. So you had to have a contingency of people to do this and they had to be brought on and taken off every, every day. Because they didn’t spend the night. But, so my job was to go with the driver as security to allocated, allotted areas where we were to pick up these women. They’d come on base—mostly women, there were always a couple of guys sometimes—they all had some kind of ID that they all had to have and then when we came through the gates, there was a head count. They’d do the head count. And then when you leave you had to have that many going out, too. So that’s our job, and pretty much, being in charge of them wasn’t really being in charge of them. I’m supposed to walk around make sure they’re doing their work and everything. But I didn’t care what they did. Whether they did it or not, I didn’t care, I’m a short timer. I’m ready to go home. So, you know, I’d walk around, little due diligence and everything. And after about two weeks of doing that, the driver kind of asked me if, if I’d wanted to make some extra money. I said, “Well what do you mean?” he said, “Well you know these barracks on the south side which were kind of abandoned barracks that everyone knew that occasionally there would be, there was some beds in there, and there’d be a couple of prostitutes in there for the guys who would be too afraid to go downtown because if you’re a short-timer you don’t want to go downtown and then get killed by a Viet Cong who happens to know you’re down there frequenting a bordello or something. So, a lot of these guys will stay on base camp. And these were lieutenants, and all kinds of guys. I’d heard about this barracks, but I didn’t frequent it, I didn’t need to. I’m getting ready to go home. So, the driver goes, “Well, what we do is, sometimes we pick up a couple of extras. And we’ll bring them on the base camp.” And they do the head count at the gate with a wink, we know to tell them, don’t count those two right there, and you guys can come over and get a

87 freebie. So that worked out for them. And we were in good with the supply sergeant, kept us with sheets and pillows and things like that, and they had this area where they had two or three rooms for these girls to be in. And, the guys would come and pay them money, and then the girls would give us tips. They would tip us after a day or so, they might stay a day or so, and we’d make sure they got food and everything. And we’d take them back down, drop them off, and maybe next week we’ll pick up a couple more for a couple of days. And I started thinking about what I had done, after I got into it. Because over there, everything that you do doesn’t seem wrong. You’re making up new rules. You got new laws. DB: You know Bill Mauldin? The cartoonist from World War Two? SG: Yeah. DB: He made a comment in his book Up Front that, “Everything that’s illegal in the peacetime world is legal in war.” SG: (laughs) That’s right, yep. Because you know when I analyze it and I think about it, I go, well I’m a procurer, a pimp of some kind. You can put that on my resume. (laughs) But you know it didn’t seem like we were doing anything wrong. And it was just part of what the wheel—part of the clock that worked. And everything—no one complained, no one was going to do anything about it, nobody was going to slap you on the hand even. It was just the way it is. And that was my last couple of months in Vietnam. It was just a cakewalk. But, I had seen a lot of things I wish I hadn’t seen while I was out in the field. Just, my—I’ve been married four times. This is my fourth marriage. I think my first one, definitely—we were young. And I had one son, I have one biological son to this day, and he’s here, he’s moved here, too. He’s forty six? And he’s also a barber. He, I gave him one of my other shops. Anyway. Um, where was I? DB: You were coming home from Vietnam, and thinking about stuff you saw in the field. But let’s get you on the airplane and get you home. SG: Okay. DB: And then we’ll talk more about remembrance. SG: Okay. DB: Did you go to the placement depot? Probably Cam Ranh? SG: Yeah, Cam Ranh Bay. Now I’m in the position that’s just the opposite of what it was when I came in-country. And they were still sending guys over, even though they were getting towards the end, they were still sending guys over, and we saw new guys at the terminal. DB: Now you’re the guy with the worn out fatigues. SG: Yeah, I’m the guy. And they’re looking at me, like, “What’s going to happen?” And all you can do is shake your head and just go, “Well, good luck man, it’s your turn now.” And it was real dramatic. We got on the plane. It was deathly silent. No one had much anything to say. We’re sitting on this plane on the tarmac. It seemed like hours. It wasn’t that long. But it’s like you said. The, the stewardess—at the time they were called stewardess—this group of stewardess was a little more mature than the group of stewardess that we had going over there. And I distinctly remember, you bringing that up, it’s very interesting. I don’t know if that’s by design but it probably is. But— 88

DB: Had to keep the boys in line. SG: Yeah, that’s true. (Laughs) DB: They’d had a wild year. I’m serious. They don’t want any problems on the plane. SG: Yeah. And the plane was so quiet, no one had anything to say, because—I don’t know how true it was—but there’s always this story that we all knew about, about this plane that was taking off, with some GIs. I don’t know, I never looked it up to see if it was true or not. They were taking off and the plane was hit on the runway or something by RPGs or whatever. And so, you’re just sitting there thinking— DB: Not my plane. SG: I’ve gotten this far, we’re almost out of here, damn it, but it ain’t over yet. And we’re not off the ground yet. So all the way until that plane is taxiing down the runway, no one is talking, no one is saying anything. And this plane gets up in the air, we’re all seasoned vets now, we’ve been through it already, still no one said much. Starts breaking the clouds, and it just erupted. It was just like, everybody can let go now, everybody can leave it all behind—and, you know. It’s hard to say when I really felt that excited or happy about something. Other than the birth of my son. That—just, finally getting up in the air, and knowing that you’re going home. And of course we landed in Washington, the state of Washington. DB: Yeah, you flew into McCord, Seattle. Fort Lewis. SG: And all you saw was GIs getting off the plane, kissing the cement. (Laughs) First thing I did, I dropped down, I kissed the cement. I’m home, and I’m glad to be home. Yeah, that was a pretty touching moment. It meant a lot to me. To finally be home. But I’m not home yet. DB: No, you’re not. SG: You got to get out-processed. And you’re as anxious as you can be now. It’s like, you want to say, “Hey, I’ve done mine, to hell with you! I’m walking out of here right now.” But you can’t do that. You got to get your papers, you got to get signed out. You know they got to get you a new clean uniform so you can fly home for free. And I did notice, that I didn’t notice before, now I’m real conscious of other people, and how they perceive me. When you ask before, when I was leaving, I think I had other things on my mind. And I’m still, I’m still one of the regular people. So I’m not, I haven’t gone yet, and come back, so. And I know how some people feel about military, the guys in uniform and some of it is very negative. But I wasn’t looking for that, going. It may have been there, but I didn’t see it. But when I got back, I saw it, it was sad. It was bad. DB: In the airport in Seattle? SG: Ah, not there. I think I had a stopover somewhere, I don’t even remember, but I remember— DB: Was this in the winter? You’re in green? SG: Yeah, because they gave me the big coat, too. We had a stopover somewhere, and then I noticed it at that airport, and I noticed it when I got home in the airport. Because I had my uniform on, and I was proud to wear my uniform. But all of a sudden I didn’t feel so happy about

89 it. Because whether I was actually seeing it and I know some of it was there, or if I was exaggerating it or not, I just saw a lot of hated looks. And I could feel a lot of bad vibes coming from some people. Not all. But no one gave us the, “Thanks for serving, glad to see you coming back.” We didn’t get any of that. You were just a person in the airport with a uniform on. But some people were giving you bad looks. And, and, I just remember thinking, “Wow. They don’t know what happened to me or what I’ve gone through, what I’ve seen. Yet, I don’t feel comfortable coming home.” I wasn’t worried coming home because I had a great family. And I know they’re not going to treat me this way. But society, why are they doing this? I couldn’t understand that. DB: This is 1971 then. SG: Yeah. DB: Early? SG: Early, yeah. DB: Okay. SG: And I’m not understanding why, you know, and I, I don’t know whether because it’s been fifty years, if I’m, if I’ve exaggerated this thought or not, but I kind of remember a parent telling a little girl not to look at him, “Don’t look at him.” There’s something bad about me, and I felt like, you know, I kind of felt like shit. So, you get home— DB: Back to St. Joe? SG: Get back to St. Joe. DB: And is your stepfather there now? SG: He actually was reassigned, temporarily, TDY, for about three or four months. So he wasn’t home. DB: How about your buddies that had been drafted before you, were they home? SG: They were back, they were already back. I hadn’t, you know, I—we weren’t pen pals, but we knew we’d take up where we left off, so that wasn’t going to be a problem, but I hadn’t, I remembered not telling my parents when I was coming home. So when I landed in Washington, they didn’t know where I was. I wanted the surprise for my mom. And I’d known already that Rudy, my stepfather wasn’t there, so I flew into Kansas City and I still had a lot of the same vibes about wearing my uniform, although actually Kansas City was probably the first place I really felt ashamed for some reason—for I guess being in the military, I don’t know. And no one actually really said anything to me, you know, I just, I just sensed it. It just wasn’t right. And I’m so glad that nowadays it’s not done that way for the troops when they come back. Keeps them from having to bury everything. But anyway, I get home. And I take a taxi. I landed in Kansas City, and I took the bus, the Greyhound bus to St. Joe. I took a taxi cab from the bus station and I remember when I got to the house—it was the same house that my mother was renting when I left—my little brother was sitting on the porch, and he saw me get out of the cab. (laughs) I had my duffle bag, I had my uniform, and you know it’s really that picture… DB: Norman Rockwell.

SG: Yeah, yeah. I felt like that, you know. I knew my uniform was fitting just right, I had all my—they made sure you had all your— DB: Ribbons. SG: Yeah, ribbons and stuff to put on. And he started to run in the house, and I think I waved to him not to go in there, and he came up and gave me a big hug. And I went in the house, and, you know my mom says, mother’s intuition or whatever, that it happened this way. And you know, things that happened so long ago and were so impressionable to you, sometimes the story gets a little exaggerated, but, basically what happened was I walked into the kitchen where she was in the kitchen, and she had a big salad bowl in her hand. She wasn’t facing me, she was facing the sink. And I was standing in the doorway, and, she just dropped the bowl. She didn’t see me, she just dropped the bowl. And she turned around, and it was, it was—And I knew I was home. And it was just so heartwarming and so emotional for me at that moment because all the way home I’m a little confused about how people, how people were looking at me. And I got—at that moment, I knew I was still okay. Somebody loved me, and I’m okay. And that part was good. And we had a great homecoming. DB: Lot of relatives in town? SG: Oh yeah, yeah. My dad and everybody, and my youngest sibling, my dad’s, my sister. She’s about two months old I think, and there I am just getting back from Vietnam, and I stayed with my dad for a while and his wife. And I remember rocking my little sister asleep and stuff. And we’re still real close, she’s up here too, she’s about 21, 22 years younger than me. And I hooked up with my buddies. And, I got a job. My dad got us on at the same we had before—all three of us worked at the meat packing plant. And as it was then, they had to hire me back. DB: Because you’d been there before? SG: Right. And you kept your tenure, although they were cutting down, they were laying people off. The production was lower than it had been. They let us come back to work. All three of us were still working at the plant. But then a big shut down came a little while after that—I think I’d been maybe six months, maybe a year even—and, oh, sorry, I’d been back maybe about a year. So we’re working at the meat packing plant. I’ve been talking for a while so I’m getting a little confused about what I’m thinking here. Oh and they’re laying people off, now there’s a big layoff coming, and we’re in that group. So now I’ve back, I had a little money saved up—oh, before I go there I need to tell you a story about Jimbo. Jimbo was this white guy, that— DB: This is in St. Joe? SG: No. DB: This is in Vietnam? SG: This is from Vietnam. Well, this is, this has to do with while I’m in St. Joe, because I’d saved up a little money and I ended up buying a nice car, and everything. And I had a little time before I went to work. So I didn’t go to work right away, I wanted to take a little rest time. And I had a little money saved up. And, this one guy, his name was Jimbo, I can’t remember—we called him Jimbo, can’t remember his real name, his last name or anything. He had been over there when I got there. He was from Mississippi. A small rural town in Mississippi, I can’t even remember the name of the town, now. But, he had never been around black people before. And

91 in Vietnam for some reason he gravitated towards black guys, and we even gave him a hard time a little bit, because he had the accent and everything. But he just seemed to be real comfortable, and after a while he was accepted. And him and I became pretty close. And he was honest with me about how he grew up and how he was told about how people are and how things were and everything. And he sees that it’s a lot different than that. He grew a lot just being there. That was a big thing for him. So we remained friends, and after he got back, we wrote a few times, and you know, everybody, “When we get back to the world, we’re going to party like crazy.” So I had his address, I hadn’t written to him, but I had his address, and I thought, You know, before I get situated here, I need to take a trip. So I drove from Missouri to Mississippi, and I don’t remember the trip itself, but I do remember as I got closer to this little podunk town where he was from I had to ask for directions—because we didn’t have GPS and stuff—I remember how people kind of looked at me and made me feel, “Boy, what are you doing around here? You’re looking for who?” So finally I got the address down, and I drove up to his residence, and it was definitely rural, the house was on stilts. Chickens running around in the yard, you could hear banjos playing in the background, in your mind, at least. I go up to the door, and at first I’m feeling really apprehensive. But I thought, Well shit, I’ve driven this far, I got to go see Jimbo. So I go up to the door, I knock on the door, and there’s a little glass window, and um, it has a curtain on it, and this little short woman pulled the curtain back, looked at me. Her eyes kind of popped out of her head a little bit, she closed the curtains right away, and she didn’t open the door. And I can hear on the inside of the house, I can hear her talking to somebody. “Well what’s he doing out there? He’s standing right outside on the porch!” And I hear somebody try to defend the situation, and pretty soon here comes Jimbo out of the house. And he doesn’t, really, give me eye contact, he was looking down. And this hadn’t been him. We were blood brothers. DB: In a different world. SG: Yeah, and it’s starting to slap me in the face big time. And I felt, I remember feeling really sorry for him, that I know his heart’s in a different place, but I know his mind right now— DB: Circumstances. SG: His circumstances had put him in this situation, he wasn’t working, and you know he’s dependent on his family and they have a different mindset. And I just looked at him and I said, “Well, it’s good to see you again, man. I just wanted to say hi.” And I think for me it was a brave thing that I did, not to call him out, and I didn’t want to. Because I knew him as a friend, and I knew he was stuck. And there was nothing he could do about it, and it’s not at all his fault. So, I got back in my car and drove all the way back, and all the way back I remember thinking, “Well, you’re back now, dude. This is America, this is it. This is what you fought for.” And some of it was good, some of it was bad. But it was kind of a, a cold slap in the face. “Welcome back. This is reality now.” And I never heard from him since, and I wish, you know, I’d like to know if he’s still around. Because I know he didn’t want to be the way he was with me. DB: If he got beyond it, or stuck in it. SG: And I’m sure he did, I hope he didn’t get stuck in it. But he knows both sides, he knows there’s different than his family knew. And hopefully he got out. That was, that was—anyway. DB: As you were getting ready to leave Vietnam, and when you came home, did you have aspirations for different things? Did you think about going to school? Did you think about the

92 work you wanted to do? You had the job at the meat plant that you’d had before, but were you looking for anything else, did you have any kind of plan? Some people just want more adventure. Some people just want to lay on the sofa for a year. SG: No, I had another adventure. I wanted to, I wanted life to be easy for some reason— DB: You didn’t want to go to Houston and be a motorcycle cop. SG: Uh, no. (laughs) But, I ended up in Houston because Armour meat packing plant was starting to shut down, they were laying people off left and right. And the three of us, my two buddies who also had been to Vietnam, we were still close friends. And St. Joe, we kind of outgrew St. Joe a little bit, anyway. You know we’d seen a little bit of the world now, and St. Joe was just— DB: Small town life didn’t hold any fascination anymore. SG: No. So, Armour meat packing company gave us the opportunity with our seniority to transfer to another plant around the US wherever they got them. And so, we thought, Okay, this looks pretty good. None of us had ever been to Houston, Texas—because they had a plant in Houston that had openings for us to be able to go into and take our seniority with us. So, at that time they both had pretty beat up cars. I had a fairly new car. So we put everything we had— three guys—into one car, and drove down to Houston, Texas. In, in search of a—well we already had a job lined up. But that experience wasn’t as good as we thought it was going to be at first. We come from St. Joe. Houston Texas at that time had about four million people. Huge city. We were just lost in the sauce; we didn’t know half the time where we were going and what we were going to do. But we stuck together, we stayed together. We got a three bedroom apartment, and we started feeling our way around a little bit. The job wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. Because, first off, we’re Northerners, not Texans. So that’s a problem. And, I remember, for us to get onto the plant, some other guys had to get knocked off, because we had more seniority. DB: So you weren’t just filling an opening, you were bumping somebody off. Probably didn’t go over very big at all. SG: No, it didn’t, and I probably weighed about a buck thirty at the time. And you know, the meat packing industry can be pretty hard work. So, when I got there, they said, “Well, we only got one spot for you.” Because the other jobs I had at the other plant I could handle, they were cutting jobs and stuff like that. “We only got one place for you,” and it’s lugging and loading beef. So you’re taking large pieces of beef, running them down a freezer trailer truck, and you throw them up on a hook. These are quarter—they said, “You don’t have to lift anything,” the union supposedly said, “You don’t have to lift anything more than two hundred pounds.” And you know, you take them off of the hook, you walk down this truck, you throw it on the hook. This was hard ass work. Because sometimes, it would be more than two hundred pounds. But if you said anything, and those guys, especially me being who I was, and not one of them, “What are you, a big pussy? You can’t handle this?” And I wanted to show I could hang. But I never worked that hard in my life. It was pretty rough. But once you realize, we’re in Houston Texas. I think I had that job about six months. We’re in Houston Texas, there’s a lot of opportunity here. It’s not like St. Joe where one of the best things you could do is work at the factory if you want to make decent money. I could do something else. So, I got into sales, appliance sales. And I thought that was

93 pretty good because I got to wear clean clothes and you know, didn’t get all bloody and messy and stuff to go home. The money wasn’t quite as good, but we were together. All three of us guys were still together; money wasn’t quite as good individually but we still made things work out pretty good. DB: Did they get a sales job, too, or did they keep working at the meat plant? SG: Well, let’s see. Actually, Larry, he ended up on the railroad. But they did other things too. Albert stayed out there for quite a while, I remember him working there for quite a while. DB: Anyway, you’re all exploring other opportunities. SG: I get into sales, and I’m working for W.T. Grant for a while. It was easier to find work, too. Any time you wanted to change up, there were plenty of openings, because there’s so many people and so many things to do there. It was a lot different from what we were used to. And uh, ended up meeting my first wife there in Houston Texas. And we dated for a few months. I think we ended up—well, she got pregnant. And so, I’m still not sure that I wanted to get married, but here she is, getting bigger all the time, and—when we got married, it was at the courthouse, she was probably a good eight months pregnant. We’re standing in front of the judge, and I distinctly remember when we walked out of the courthouse, the biggest rainstorm I had ever seen in my life. And we didn’t say a word all the way back to the apartment. And I just felt like, “Oh, this is not good.” But it actually ended up being pretty good, we were married for five years, it resulted in my son, and but the problem with us, and the problem with me, was, adjustments. And I don’t think—I look at it now, maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I wasn’t adjusted good enough yet. DB: Adjusted from Vietnam or from— SG: Yeah, from that part of it. DB: You weren’t settled at home yet. SG: Right. And we were married for five years, but then we were both young when we did it. And I didn’t know how to motivate or how to maneuver everything in my life at that time. I always had a job, but we’d have personal problems and communication problems. And we ended up getting a divorce. And right after we got divorced I realized, you know, I need to go back to school. Actually, we were separated when I decided to do that because I had my own apartment, and my son was three. So I decided, to go back to school. So I said, “I think I need to go to college because Uncle Sam’s gonna pay for this,” number one, we had the GI Bill. So I signed up to go to school, Texas Southern. And it was a struggle, because I still had a kid, we weren’t together, I still had to have a place to live, so I had a couple little side jobs, I had a roommate, a guy roommate. It was pretty rough during those first couple years. And then I came upon a way to make some money real quick. And this is not an area, I’d rather not go into. But, it gave me an opportunity to not have to work all day; I had night time jobs and stuff and then go to class in the day time, my grades were suffering. This made things better for me. But I made some really quick money, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t quite proper, I’ll put it that way. But I was industrious enough to say, you know what, I did this, and I made this money—I didn’t harm anybody to make the money I made—so anyway—and I didn’t take advantage of anybody so I feel good about that. This was a different time in my life. I realized real quickly that I could get in trouble doing this, so I got to stop doing this, and I managed my money very

94 well. And I got a clothing store. There was a guy going out of business, his clothes weren’t that good. But I just learned the business, as I went. My major in college was a Business major. I remember one of my projects was, you had to have a play business and run it. And I had a real business. So everything I was learning about how to keep your books and how to handle this and how to handle that, making money, make more money in a retail business, I just used in my businesses. And the professors knew it. And I was older than most of the kids in this school at that time. And I, you know, I didn’t pledge to any fraternity or anything—I went to Texas Southern, and that’s a predominantly black school, and you pledge, everyone does. But for me at that time, I saw what the pledges had to do: they went through hazing, and you know, a bunch of crazy stuff. DB: You didn’t want to put up with that stuff. SG: Right, and they wanted me to join the group, and later in life I realized how that could’ve been beneficial to me, to say, “Hey, I’m a Kappa,” or Delta. DB: You’re already living in the real world. SG: Yeah, and I’m looking at them like, you guys just want me because I can go to the liquor stores to buy booze. No, I’m not doing this crap. So I didn’t pledge. But I had a clothing store while I was in college. It was successful. I used a lot of that time to advertise my clothes on campus. We did fashion shows, and things like that. This is a whole other life, but uh, I created a modeling agency. There were a lot of ins and outs to that, but I only did that out of necessity because I needed to advertise my clothes, and I didn’t have money to do that. But I’d go to night clubs, and I’d make deals with them, that on a Sunday afternoon—nobody’s in your night club on a Sunday afternoon—but we’ll sell tickets, we’ll have a fashion show. We will, you have all your drink money, and it’ll give me a chance to advertise my clothes. This went so well, I had other clothing stores—small mom and pop type clothing stores that were a lot more successful then than they are now—they’d call me up to do shows. So now I have a modeling agency that does fashion shows for advertising for businesses and stuff, and I had my own clothing store. So, that was my first venture into being on my own, and running my own business. And I thrived on it. DB: Feeling pretty good about it. Loved it? SG: That’s, that’s where I needed to be, yeah. And, the economy got the best of me. I did have a break-in that took half of my clothes and everything—my location wasn’t the best location. And so, I had a bad year, and I had to get out of it. And I moved to Atlanta, because I had relatives in Atlanta. But I didn’t like the South. I wasn’t raised in the South, and even though Atlanta is a very progressive city—we’re talking about thirty years ago now, thirty five years ago maybe. DB: This is the late eighties. SG: Eighties. Yep. And I’m down there, and I’m realizing that I really don’t, I’m not fitting in real good here. And I have a brother, one—you know I have three half-brothers and a half-sister, and I have one brother that’s under me and I’m the oldest of all of them. And the one, the musician, he came up here first. DB: From Atlanta you came to Minnesota?

SG: Yeah, I was in Atlanta. He was already here with another brother of mine. And he was being introduced to people in the music world that were, like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. He’s playing with these guys. DB: Playing big time. SG: Yeah. He’s good, now. So, you know, I’m down in Atlanta, and I get a call from him one day, “Hey how are you doing?” “Oh you know I don’t know if I like it down here or not.” And he starts telling me, “Well you should come up here.” Both my brothers are saying, “You need to come up here.” I said, “Well where are you guys calling from?” Because I hear all this noise in the background, “What are you guys doing?” “We’re in the car, calling from the car phone.” Which was fairly new stuff at that age. And I go, “What, really? No kidding?” So they talked me into it, “Just come up here, you’ll be fine, come on up.” I had been a store manager for Oshman’s Sporting Goods in Houston, Texas. They had started closing things down, I left that job, and that’s when I went to Atlanta. And I had a job as a pet store manager—I hated it. So that’s why when he said, “Why don’t you come on up here, man, we’ll figure something out, come on up.” I said, you know what I’m going to Minnesota. And I came up here, and we worked everything out. I ended up working for Herman’s Sporting Goods store because I had management experience, so they gave me a store here. That worked out pretty good for a while. My brother in the meantime was a musician and he was travelling around with Alexander O’Neil—he’s a local, but pretty big. DB: Sure. SG: Uh, um. Then, I had another brother that moved from California here. And we had always been in communication with each other, you know, “We’ll help you if you want to come here.” Next thing you know everyone’s here. My—I was in Houston, Texas for a while, and then when my stepfather did retire he and my mother moved to Houston, Texas because they wanted to be close to where we were. And my brother was there for a while until he came to Minnesota. But anyway, I was in Houston, Texas, and I moved up here from there, they didn’t have any family there—my step dad and my mom didn’t have any family there, they didn’t have anybody else there, so they just moved up here because that’s where we were. And then my dad from Missouri, he got divorced, he moved up here. To our surprise, this doesn’t happen usually with families—they start in one place and then they go all over the place, and then they end up in a completely different place. So I feel really blessed to have that opportunity to have my family members this close to me, and we’re still really close. We’ve gotten a lot older. We don’t have—back in the day when I first moved here thirty years ago or so, ’87 was when I moved here, we were, everything we did we did together. But you know, now we got family, kids, we got grandkids. But we’re still in good contact with each other. DB: Good supportive family situation. You’ve had a lot of different job experiences. Did you ever get involved with any veterans things? Anything from Vietnam? SG: No. DB: Any conversations with anybody about it?

SG: Very very little. The only guys I have ever—this is the most. This definitely is the most I’ve ever talked about my Vietnam experience. DB: And that’s very typical, too. SG: Really? Okay. DB: I hear that a lot. SG: Okay. You know, we just shut it down. We— you, you just buried it. And, you know, I’ve been through—this is my fourth marriage—I’ve been married to this woman twenty four years now. The others, well, one was very—the first one, we were both young, and communication became a problem. The second one, I don’t know what happened. It was kind of a bad mix—I’m not saying her fault, my fault, we just weren’t meant for each other. DB: Chemistry wasn’t right. SG: The chemistry wasn’t right at all. We lived together for a while, and then we separated. And then when we got back together we said, “Ah we’ll get married this time.” The wrong thing to do. We lasted four months, so. And then I got married one other time, and that didn’t last very long either. So I pretty much had given up on that. And not knowing that—you know I never talked at all about Vietnam with any of my other wives, or hardly any friends. Just my close buddies, and one of those two guys that are my best friends, one of them lives in Houston still. DB: These are the two guys from St. Joe you used to live with? SG: One of them is still in Houston, I call him every once in a while, and Albert, he’s passed away. He died about ten years ago, heart attack. But, coming up here and having family up here made it easier to get invested in this society and in this state, even. Which is a lot different from Houston, but I like it, you know? The season’s a little too long here, for the winter. But, you know. DB: How’d you get into barbering? SG: Well, let’s see. I worked for Herman’s Sporting Goods, and then I, well—I worked for Herman for a while, and then they started going out of business. I ended up with a business of my own at first, a ladies’ accessory shop. I sold purses and, you know, scarves and things like that. And it was a small business. And it didn’t really net me a lot of money, I was still struggling a little bit there. DB: Where was it, where was the business? SG: Oh here. Okay, it was—you know where Eat Street is? DB: Eat? SG: Eat Street? You know where Lake Street and the K-Mart is on Lake Street? DB: Yeah. SG: Behind that, behind K-Mart on Nicollet. DB: On Nicollet? Okay.

SG: A little shop there. Now that’s called Eat Street and now there’s a lot of restaurants. DB: I see. Oh, Eat! E-A-T. I gotcha. SG: Yeah. And I actually had a shop inside a barbershop. So the barbershop was pretty good sized, but I had my business there. And that, didn’t work out that well for me. But, when I was in college, I cut hair a little bit. And for some of the guys who lived in the dorm, back when I was really struggling, I’d make five dollars here, five dollars there. I had a knack for it, although I didn’t have a license for it. But it helped them, it helped me, so that was part of my hustle while I was in college, too. So I knew I had the ability to do that. Because, I had found myself working for Target, and I was a Target store manager, and, it’s a dog eat dog. It’s high big time big box retail. And, now, I’m forty something, and I’m thinking, “Man, this takes a lot out.” You know, they keep raising the bar. You get to one level, they go, “Okay good, now make sure, we want you to jump this high.” And it’s always more. It’s never, it’s just the nature of retail. DB: Peter Principle to Peter Principle. Always uncomfortable. SG: Very much. So I got to where I thought, You know I can’t, I don’t want to work at this level for someone else so much. And I always had this draw to take care of myself and be my own boss. So, I’m sitting in a barbershop over in North Minneapolis. A friend of mine has been cutting my hair for years since I’ve been here. And, I start talking to him about being unhappy with my job and everything, and I said that I used to cut hair when I was in college and stuff, you know. And I was asking him some financial information about the business, “If you own your own shop you can do this,” and he gave me a lot of information. And I thought, Huh. It’s not too bad of a living, I can do this. I think I can manage that pretty well.” So I looked into what it all took. There was nine months of schooling involved, eight hours a day, forty hours a week. And it’s hard to, you know, because at that time you know I have a wife, we have a house, we have three teenagers. My son had moved up here, he had been up here, he’s still here. She had two daughters. So I’ve got three teenagers in the house. Things were a little tight when we first moved here, but we were okay. We’re going to be alright. But then this came up, and I thought, Man this is a good chance for me to make a left turn. And luckily I’m married to the woman that I’m married to now, because I go to her, I say, “Hey I’ve been thinking about this.” And I do know the personalities of my other wives, they would’ve went, “What the hell, no, you can’t just quit your job!” DB: She’d support you. SG: Yeah. Joan said, “Is this something you really want to do?” And I said, “Yeah I think I can do this.” And she said, “Well I’m behind you one hundred percent, whatever it takes to do.” So I said okay, and we struggled for about nine months while I was in school. But I kept contact with the barber that I initially got information from, because I wanted to have a place as soon as I hit the ground, running I need to be working. So he said, “Look, I’m holding a chair for you. As soon as you get out of school, this is your spot.” I’d go by there every once in a while, and go, “Hey you still got my spot, right?” So, I got out of barber school, got my license, I worked for him for a year. He knew, though, that all along my main intention was to get my own shop. So, I worked for him for a year. At that time you kind of had to, because the first license out of barber school is a— oh what do you call that? I can’t even— DB: Apprentice?

SG: You’re an apprentice barber. You can cut hair, but you have to work in a shop where there’s at least one master barber—which he was, he owned his own shop—and you have to work for a year before you are allowed to take the master test. After that, once you get a master’s license, you don’t have to be retested for anything and you can open up a shop and do whatever you want. You can own a shop without being a barber at all, but you have to have a master barber working there. So I waited until I got my master’s license, and I told my friend that I was moving. And, you know, I had finally found a shop, it was already a barbershop, in St. Louis Park, on Excelsior Boulevard. And it was, it was a real scary move for me because I had saved up some money and I had to borrow some money too to do this, and I finally— DB: You got to make the business work. SG: You got to make it work. DB: You got to build a client base. SG: That’s right. Well, the one good thing about it was, I went into it, it had been a barbershop for twenty years. And the guy, it was the turn of the century, it was getting ready to be 2000, and the guy that ran this shop, he was a Republican, gun-toting, hunting kind of guy. He just knew that the world was going to come to an end when Y2K hit. DB: And Elvis is going to reappear and all that stuff, yeah. SG: That’s right. And he had two houses, and he had that business, and he was selling out and he was going to Montana. He lives now in Kalispell, Montana, he’s got about thirty acres with horses and whatever, that’s his thing—I have a little contact with him. But anyway, I met him, and he sold me his shop, we made a deal, and consequently since then I had one shop going, and it was going pretty good, I got a little—I said, I’m going to open up another shop, so I open up one in—what did I open up second? Oh, yeah, in South Minneapolis, near Roosevelt High School. There still is one there, my son owns that one now. I’ve given that to him. And then I opened up one in St. Paul down in the skyways. So I had three going at one time, and I felt pretty good. I have done decent, you know. Barbers can make a decent living, it’s a respectable enough position. I like it because I can make great contacts; I’m a people person anyway. DB: Barbers have to be. SG: Yeah, yeah. Psychiatrists and everything, but one of the things I haven’t been able to do is what I’ve been doing here for the last few hours, is talk about me. This hasn’t been that easy. And I really feel a lot—you’re good. If it wasn’t for the fact that you were sitting here—and you’ve been through this too—because I know you’ve got your story too, that makes me feel a little easier. The only other person I’ve talked to, ever, and I still haven’t talked to her this much, is my wife upstairs. And she has been the only person that gets me on some of this stuff. I’ve had to ease it over the years, I give her a little bit more, and I give her a little bit more. She’s the reason too why I’m talking to you, because for years occasionally I’ve had bad dreams. I still have them. They used to be way worse. I’d wake up—it was kind of bad for a while. But, uh, she helped me with this. She definitely suggested I need to see somebody professional. I’ve always been a little opposed to that. DB: The VA? Did you go to the VA?

SG: No, no, no. You know, we had to bury it. And I’ve gotten so good at it. I’ve gotten exceptionally good—except for the bad dreams and the occasional—nothing else, you can’t tell. DB: You’ve had a busy life with a varied career, too, to keep you busy. SG: Yeah, yeah. DB: And relationships. SG: And when I think about this, it’s like another life. When I think about Vietnam, sometimes I have to remember—I know, I was actually there. But it seems like another life, because the way I lived then and the way I am now— DB: It was a different world, a completely different world. SG: That’s true. So, my current wife has always been—in fact, with you, I came home and I told her what Don said, and wanted me to get with this guy. Don has been trying to get me to do a couple of other things, to talk to veterans and stuff. And I don’t know if I’m really good enough to do that, I don’t know about that. I don’t know if I’m capable enough. But this time I said, I’m with my wife and she says, “This might be good for you.” Because I only give her bits and pieces, and she knows how emotional that can get. We saw the Burns documentary. It took me two weeks to get through it. You know, we’d look at it a little bit, and then have to—that’s enough. DB: Hard to watch. SG: Yeah, and at first, I knew I was going to watch it. I videoed the whole thing, I taped the whole thing. But I didn’t want her to watch it with me. And— DB: A lot of emotions coming back, memories? SG: Yeah. And because I have such a wonderful life now, such wonderful kids, grandkids, and my wife. I don’t want them to know that. I don’t want them to know who I used to be. Because I’m not—I haven’t gotten okay with that guy, you know, with having to go through that, and then having to bury it. And keep it as a secret, and I don’t have a lot of secrets anyway. But, all that is just a different time, I was a different person. And I didn’t want my current family to know about it, or look at me in a different light, you know. And I was worried, well, “What are you going to think of me?” And you always get people who want to know something, like a cousin or two who want to ask, “You were in Vietnam? Did you kill anybody?” DB: Always the first question. SG: Yeah, it’s always that, and then you immediately cut to, “Nah, I’m done with it, I’m not talking to you about it.” And it took years for my wife to get me to say anything to her about it. But, she’s—that’s my best friend, that’s my strength. She has helped me through a lot of this, even though I always cut her off; I get to a point where she wants, “Let’s look at this some more.” “No, I’m done.” And she knows to leave me alone then. But she slowly has gotten as much as anybody else has gotten. And, you know, I’m lucky to have her in my life. DB: Well, good. Well I hope this is going to be a positive experience for you. SG: Yeah. You know, right now, I feel tired now.

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DB: Yeah, we’ve been talking for three and a half hours. Said a lot of emotional things. SG: I feel a little worn—has it been that long? DB: Yeah. SG: Oh damn, almost four o’clock. Ah, but I know it’s good. It’s hard, it’s not easy. And there’s still things that I’m not going to talk about, I can’t. I just know I can’t. But I, I have this thing about—a lot of guys didn’t make it back. I haven’t been to the wall yet. I don’t know if I can handle it. A lot of guys didn’t make it back— DB: Are these friends? Close friends? SG: Yeah. Yeah. But, I feel like, you know, all the demons are kind of still sitting on my shoulders about it, that this is my cross to bear. You just have to deal with it. For years I said, this is a closed box. But I have to carry it around with me everywhere I go. And I’ve been able to open it up a little bit, and I’ve opened it up a lot here. But there’s still a lot of stuff in that box that I just—I just can’t do it. How I was feeling at the time, and, you know. I kind of gave you the PG version, so far. (laughs) DB: War is tough business. And, people do the things they have to do when they’re in war. SG: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what my wife has always said, whenever you know, she knows that I feel bad about something. She’ll say, “You were a kid,” first off. And we were all just kids. “You were all of a sudden subjected to stuff you had never seen before in your life.” And I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in impoverished countries where war has been a constant ever since a child was born and this is how they live. While I only had fifteen months of it, and it was—it’s, an indelible thing on my mind, in my heart now still. DB: Think of the Vietnamese, they had it from World War Two, from ’41 to early ’75. So, generations. Yeah, Syria now, 8 years. Iraq, 15 years. Yeah, tough business, but human beings are strong, I think, to get through things. Any closing thoughts? SG: Well, I didn’t mention my malaria. I was lucky enough to get malaria while I was over there. Sickest I’ve ever been in my life. I didn’t know what it was at first, but they knew right away. The interesting thing about that is, malaria lies dormant in a person after you’re not feeling any symptoms. And the first couple of months after coming back, and the weather was cold and everything, and I thought I was catching a bad flu. And I was sick as hell. And my dad came by to visit me, my biological dad came by to visit me in my apartment, and the heat was so high, and I was under blankets. And he goes, “What is going on?” And he rushed me to the hospital. And, I think I had 103, 104 temperature. It was pretty bad, not as bad as it was when I was in Vietnam. But I had one extra, one bout, and they didn’t know what it was, and I was in St. Joe at the time. They didn’t know. And one doctor happens to mention something, I happen to say malaria. And he goes, “Wait a minute!” DB: Light bulb went on. SG: Yeah, he goes, “We’re not checking you for that.” And I go, “Well I got over it.” And he goes, “No, it lies dormant in you, it could come back. So we’re going to test you for that.” And he says, “It’s a good thing we found out,” because I could’ve been history. And they had to send

101 to Kansas City because they don’t have that stuff in St. Joe. But I did get over that. And that was kind of an interesting thing that I had to go through. DB: Is that when you had the back, after you had malaria? SG: Yeah, yeah—No, no no no no! That was from an injury, and that was from a piece of shrapnel, and you know— DB: You got a purple heart? SG: Well— DB: You didn’t apply for it? SG: I didn’t apply for it, but, I’m going to show you something. Turn that off for a second, I’m going to get this— [pause in recording] DB: Ready? SG: Sure. I have— DB: Part of the homecoming story, here. SG: Yeah, since I’ve been here in Minneapolis, I’ve made quite a few friends, and I have a core group of friends. There’s actually four of us, and all of them don’t live here actually. Two live here other than me—there’s three of us that are here, and one is in Florida and one is in South Carolina. The two that are not here are related to one of the guys that’s here. So anyway, we were all in about the same income bracket, and actually, no, not—one of them is pretty well off, he’s doing pretty good. But, we have this love for cigars, and we have this, you know, a lot of things in common. I play with golf with one of them, we play golf all the time. But we also have made a pact, and we kind of—we’re old guys of about the same age, and we, we make trips. DB: Are these guys veterans? SG: No. One of them is a veteran, but none of them are Vietnam veterans. And we hooked up and have been together now for, fifteen, twenty years or so. You know, we always stay in touch with each other. But we decided a few years ago that we’re going to take trips to different places. And most likely we’d probably take trips that our wives wouldn’t want to go to, necessarily. Because if we say we’re going to the Bahamas, but we might catch hell about that. But we’ve been to Uruguay, Buenos Aires. We’ve been to a few places. We went to Barcelona last year, which was good. But the one trip was to Vietnam, went back to Vietnam. DB: I’m glad you brought that up because we would have missed that. SG: Yeah. DB: This is five years ago now. SG: Yeah, about five years ago, and my friends were the main ones that mentioned Vietnam. I probably never would have mentioned Vietnam. And we get together, during the winter, and usually we go out to Tucson because my friend has an eight thousand square foot house out there with an indoor pool and everything. But anyway, we go out there, we call ourselves the IMF

102 crew. Now it could stand for “International Male Fraternity,” but it stands for something else for us. You know, “International Mother…” DB: Yeah, okay. SG: (laughs) So anyway that’s just a funny little thing. We go, we’ll go to places as a group, and when they brought up Vietnam, the first thing they did was they looked at me. And they said, “Here’s a place, how about Vietnam?” And one guy said, “Well, maybe not.” And I said, “Why maybe not?” And he said, “Well, what about you? Think you can handle that?” They were, they were very concerned about my well-being, as we are about each other, but they knew. DB: They knew this was a point. SG: And they’d only gotten little snippets of it. I don’t talk about it even to them that much. Because it’s another part of my life, it’s so long ago, let’s talk about now. We’re old guys, let’s talk about old guy stuff and our kids and everything. So, I let them convince me that it was something that we needed to do. Now, they said, “We’ll be there with you, so you don’t have to worry about anything.” We went to Vietnam, and it was a great trip. And it helped me get rid of fifty percent of my problems, right there. DB: Were you back down around the area where the 4th Division was headquartered? Nothing around there? SG: No, nothing around there. DB: Went into Hanoi? SG: Just Hanoi, and what’s the, the— DB: Da Nang? Nha Trang? SG: Halong Bay. DB: Also in the far North. SG: Right, only in the far North. Which is interesting because when we got there, I don’t know what it’s called but it’s their equivalent of the 4th of July they were celebrating. Because when we got there, we noticed the communist flags all over, and people were celebrating. At first we just thought, well, this is how it is all the time here I guess. We didn’t realize until we got there that this was their big, I still don’t know what they call it. DB: What month was it? SG: Ah… what month was it? DB: Springtime? April? SG: I think so. DB: Might’ve been the Liberation of Saigon. SG: I think that’s what it was. DB: Probably, yeah, their victory.

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SG: Yeah, so, part of the celebration— DB: Or conquest of Saigon, depending on— SG: Yeah, I know, and I have a Vietnamese woman that works for me and my son, and she’s from South Vietnam of course, and she still refers to it as Saigon, not Ho-Chi Minh City. So I thought that kind of interesting. DB: You also don’t buy Ho-Chi Minh City beer over there. You buy Saigon beer and you buy Hanoi beer. SG: That’s right. (Laughs) So, one of the things we did while we were there, we went to Ho- Chi Minh’s, where he was lying in state. DB: The mausoleum. SG: Because it was a big celebration, there was a long line of people waiting to do this. And all it is, is he’s in a sarcophagus in the middle, and you’re walking around. You can’t get to it, there’s a pit, you know, and there’s guards all around it and everything. And they tell you when you get there, you can’t wear shorts, you have to wear shoes, no tennis shoes, no shorts. You have to be very respectful. No talking when you’re in there. So this was the one thing that my buddies thought would be hard for me, because they thought, this was the guy, this is Ho-Chi Minh. This is the guy we all knew was the top guy here. At least until you knew more about the politics. But I said, “No, I think I’m going to be okay.” So you go inside and you look. And I remember looking at him lying in his glass sarcophagus, and I was thinking at the time, “Huh, he’s a little guy.” And you know, I’m looking at him and I’m going, “Huh. There you are. And here I am. On your turf, now. Who’s your daddy now, bitch?” (laughs) DB: Of course he had a few years on you! (laughs) SG: That’s true, but the experience was actually very good, and the people were very nice, and you know, I’d come to understand that he was a leader for his country. DB: He was their George Washington. SG: Yep, that’s right, just like the leaders we had for our country. DB: The problem was the whole war got overlaid on the Cold War and the big East-West differences, you know, and the Vietnamese Civil War just got mixed up in all that, bigger issues. SG: Yeah. So we get back. And a couple of years ago, one of the guys, the guy that lives in South Carolina, his wife is, her and a lot of other women I think too, have a group that makes these quilts for Vietnam veterans, specifically Vietnam. And it’s called, Quilt of Honor. And they inscribe it here, and everyone is different, they don’t make these the same. And they’re done by hand. And so this was presented to me by my four buddies. It was a very emotional, uh, day. They just called me in one day into the living room when we were out there in Tucson. And you know we had a couple of drinks and stuff and they said “Hey, okay we’re getting ready to do something for you.” And all of us were bawling about it, and this is something that is very very meaningful to me. This is—oh, let me see here, what’s on here anyway— DB: “Thank you for your service.”

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SG: Yeah. It’s a Quilt of Valor, it says “Thank you for your service.” Got who it’s sewn by, Dee “Segarra” Segarra is the wife of my friend. So she made this one specifically for me. And “Myrtle Beach” that’s where she is. And, oh, it’s quilted by, it’s presented by, sewn by, and quilted by this person, “Joan” I don’t know who this is. DB: “Woman’s, Wolbans, Wolmbanson?” SG: “Wombolton?” Or, “Wolbotin?” From South Carolina, and presented to me. What’s included on this is something that we’re not going to go with, it’s bad too, but—this is really nice. Because they knew about my injury and so they thought I already had one, and I said no. DB: Great. SG: Mhm, pretty nice. And I don’t really use it for anything, I just have it. There have been a couple occasions where I’ve had to grab it, just to wrap up in it. When I need to feel some way. So. I was very honored to get this. DB: Well, good. It’s been a good interview. SG: Yeah, so now what happens? DB: Thank you very much. Let me turn the recorder off.

End of Interview

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