TRAVELER
“I’m going to San Francisco.”
He made the announcement at the dinner table that evening. His father, who, until he retired the previous year, was a lifer in the Army, immediately stood up, approached his son’s chair, and proceeded to give him a suffocating bear hug.
“I knew you could do it boy. When did you enlist, this morning?”
His father was like that. He gave the Army the benefit of the doubt in every sentence.
“Dad, I didn’t enlist. The paper is sending me there to do some reporting on the hippie movement there.”
“Hippies! Hippies!” The bear hug now forgotten, his father could not get far enough away from him. “Why are you getting involved with hippies? No good dope smoking lazy communist bastards! They’re the ones that need to enlist, every single one of those long haired bums.”
Alex knew from experience that this rant would go on for a while. His mother, as she always did, ignored him unless he looked her way for agreement. Then usually a “yes dear” would suffice. He was a kind and decent man and a good father and husband. Nevertheless, his ways were set. He needed discipline and order.
Near the end of the Second World War, on theislandofIwo Jima, Corporal Tom Conley distinguished himself by fearlessly sacrificing his body to protect his fellow squad members. This reckless courage resulted in a field commission to captain.
When the war ended, Captain Conley, unlike many of his comrades, stayed on. He retired a colonel in 1965, with a silver star and a purple heart on his chest. Less than a year later, he tried to muster back in. Vietnam was cranking up and the old soldier wanted a piece of it. His wife Pamela, who he married in 1945 and had loved every minute since, discouraged him with a threat that, even whispered, had the power to put him back in his rocking chair.
Still, Alex’s father was a military man, and would be until his dying day. That is why the senior Conley, who was sometimes referred to as colonel by his wife, during moments of heated arguments or extreme passion, was reluctant to allow his son to travel to San Francisco. His hatred of hippies was a given, but he really disliked the free spirit philosophy as a whole. He was prone to make anti-hippie announcements, such as the following, at any time. “During the big war, those long haired peace loving freaks would have all been rounded up and put in interment camps.” News reports concerning theSan Franciscoscene would really get his goat.
“Now there they go, trying to ruin a perfectly good war.” Then he would turn his wrath on the television set. “Either enlist or go toCanada, but get out of myUnited States.” Following this outburst would be a litany of choice expletives before he uttered the word “cowards” and changed the channel to one of a more conservative nature.
There was much give and take in the next couple of days concerning Alex’s assignment but, in the end, the old man gave in and, with a reluctant shrug, handed him his traveling papers.
Alex was smart enough to know that he did not wear his father down. On the second day of negotiations, his mother became involved and things began to happen quickly. Mrs. Conley, who rarely raised her voice above normal pitch, tossed sentences at her husband that were as effective as the grenades lobbed at him on Iwo Jima.
Alex was always surprised that a few well-placed softly spoken threats, cleverly disguised as harmless rhetoric, could have such immediate impact. He vowed to one day ask his mother the source for her verbal magic, but for now, he was simply grateful that it worked. Nonetheless, as his father drove him to Friendship International Airport outside of Baltimore, many stern warnings on the evils of strange cultures were bestowed on the young passenger who, at eighteen years of age, was about to embark on the first great adventure of his lifetime.
