This story was published this week by
the The Whistling Fire web magazine. It describes two events that happened within
the space of a few weeks back in September 1973. Hell on Earth, a love story
is all about seemingly unrelated events proving eventually to be significant.
The novels Postal Service and Hell
on Earth, a love story and my 30-year career in the Postal Service were the
result of events set into motion in September 1973—a real up and down month,
but a very significant one.
September 1973: An Up and Down Month
September 5, 1973—Began classes at Cal State Long Beach
I hadn’t really expected to be going back to school. God knows my time at Lowell Tech had been
long enough and the five years I spent there hadn’t kept me out of Vietnam or
gotten me a job.
For sure it was a good
experience but I think everyone, including myself, was hoping for more. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Hell, hoping
for more is the driving force that pushes us all. And when the more isn’t what
you expect it to be then you hope for something else.
This Teaching Credential Program at Cal State Long Beach was
that something else. Things were
finally coming together. This time I
was majoring in something I actually believed in. And I was sure it would lead to a job and an opportunity to
continue writing. At last, I would be
able to look my father in the eye and we would both know that everything was
going to be all right.
What he had said the morning I left for boot camp at Fort Dix
was still fresh in my mind.
“I hope the army makes
a man out of you,” he said, frustrated by my lack of direction. I have to
admit, he had a point.
“I hope so, too,” was
my understated response.
So I went to Vietnam, did some writing for a military magazine
and did the soldier thing in the form of guard duty on the third security ring
around the Bien Hoa Airfield. The
general feeling was that if anyone got through the first two rings they’d have
to be really good and we weren’t going to stop them no way, no how. Still they gave us M-16’s and the code word
of the day.
By the time I got out of the army I was more than ready to get
back on the road to my future—a journey I has first started in 1964 and
detoured from so many times I was losing count. That’s why I was returning to
school. Only this time the plan wasn’t to go to college. This time I was going
to college with a plan.
