The House That Zelmo Built

"Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman come to the door,
Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no millionaire's son.
It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no fortunate one, no." ~ 'Fortunate Son' - Creedence Clearwater Revival


What would have happened had there not been a Vietnam War? Ever stop to think about what might have occurred had the U.S. not stood up to Communist aggression in Southeast Asia, and if we had just allowed Communism to engulf the region without so much as a fight? Part of the American legacy lies in our military might as well as the fear and respect that precedes the American military the world over, and inaction against Communist aggression in Southeast Asia during the Cold War would have eventually resulted in the balance of power shifting toward Communism. We already had Communism on our doorstep in Cuba. This wasn't some game of Cowboys & Indians that the world was playing back then. It was the survival of Western Civilization that was at stake. And the same U.S. military that stood up to Communist aggression in Southeast Asia (though it eventually lost the war) was the same U.S. military that kept the Reds at bay in Europe. Communist containment was the name of the game. That was the Cold War.

To you and me, there is only the 6 inches in front of our faces most of the time. It's easy to forget just how big the world is until you're thrust right into the middle of it. And quite honestly, what really put me into this frame of mind was The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, a book that I read in my sophomore year in high school. That book taught me the importance of duty when the time comes, and how one should not shirk that duty when faced with the possible consequences. Because sometimes the consequences could be more dire on a larger scale than the personal consequences that a person must deal with.

And what exactly was the Vietnam War? The official reason for that war was to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, though I'm more than certain that there were quite a few more deciding factors that led to it aside from the one that we as Americans were given by our government. The Vietnam War was a symptom of the lesser wars that preceded it - the Korean War and World War II - and the larger war that it was merely a part of, which was the Cold War. The climate of today isn't the same as it was back then. Back then, the enemy was more clearly defined than the enemy that stands before us today in the War On Terror. If anything, I would have been better resolved to go off and fight an enemy that I was more familiar with back then as opposed to going off to fight an enemy that is less obvious today.

Have you ever asked yourselves, my friends and enemies, what you would have done had you been faced with the draft after you got out of high school? This question was presented to me recently, and I had a few answers for it.

If I had received the draft order before enrolling in college, I would have obeyed the law of the land and gone. Or I would have done what my dad did and volunteered myself into service. FYI, my dad volunteered for the Air Force because they would finance his way through college after he got out of the military; he lucked out and got sent to Alaska since back then it was considered as 'overseas duty' to be stationed there. Hence, how Zelmo came to be.

I would have struggled to pass my college classes and not waste my tuition and keep my GPA up to par for the sole reason of succeeding in college, not for lack of desire in serving in the military in a time of war. Being sent off to war wouldn't have been a deciding factor for me, though the spectre of war would have still loomed ominously over my every action. Perhaps that was the motivation for others back then, but everyone has different priorities, I guess.

I probably would have majored in either architecture or electronics, because those are the two trades/industries that interest me the most aside from computers (computer sciences as we know it today probably wasn't around back then, and I probably would have had no desire to read some stupid punch cards out of a computer the size of my bathroom), as opposed to majoring in education since apparently choosing that major bought you a deferment from service after graduation. Whether or not that would have kept me out of the military is a moot point. I imagine that those two trades that interest me would have made me an ideal candidate for either military engineering or radio tech work. Or maybe not. Who knows?

Marriage apparently had its perks too back then, in that you were given a certain classification upon marriage, and a higher classification in the event of you having a baby, that would have apparently put others who were not in the same situation as you were as far as having dependents were concerned ahead of you in line for active duty overseas. As a result, many draftees rushed to get married and have children before those classifications were eliminated.

As for me, I guess that all would have depended on how much I loved the woman that I would have married. If I didn't love her enough, I probably wouldn't have done it, because why rush headlong into the Ball & Chain that is marriage, when one should instead be dragged kicking and screaming? That scenario right there must be the reason why there were so many "Dear John" letters back then. In that kind of situation, it's better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost. Just bear in mind that not every draftee got sent to Vietnam. A large proportion of them did, but there were other theaters overseas where American soldiers were needed, such as Europe, the South Pacific, and Alaska, in my dad's case. So nobody really knew where they were going to be sent until they got their orders.

I suppose that in a lot of ways, I am the "Fortunate Son" that Creedence Clearwater Revival was referring to in the song lyrics that I posted at the top of this blog, in that I never experienced those things because I never had to, not because I never would have complied with them had I been faced with those decisions. I know that at age 30, it's highly unlikely that I will ever be called into service unless a major catastrophic attack occurred against our military or on U.S. soil, or unless a major war broke out and every last available healthy man and woman were required to serve. But at age 18, I knew very little about what the Selective Service meant to me. I had no idea whether a major war would break out after filling out that Selective Service card or not. The potential was always there though; I filled out the Selective Service card in 1992, war with North Korea was a distinct possibility in 1994, who would have known prior to that moment?

But I've always accepted the fact that there are times where you have absolutely no control over what happens in your own life, and that there comes a time when you have to do what is best for the greater good, and that life isn't always about you. Sometimes it's about the person standing next to you, or the people that you share the room with, or the Democratic Republic that you live in.


My thanks to the Fair & Balanced, who are a part of my greater inspiration.