There Is A Wall In Washington …..With The Brothers Under The Bridge In Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris shed a tear that day, that hot sweaty humid even for Washington July day, an average Vietnam sweat day back in the day which he still wondered how he had survived, since he a Northern climes boy would perspire even lifting a few bags of groceries as a kid and learned the magic of deodorants early on, shed a tear down at the black granite (he could not say even now, out loud, out loud in public anyway Vietnam War Memorial so “black granite”). Shed more than one tear for his lost comrades, his fallen fellow soldiers, from those now receding but not forgotten years. Every time he went to Washington which over the previous few years had been mainly to protest something, the endless wars, the degradation of the environment, or the struggle for marriage equality he made sure that he paid his respects whatever the psychic drama he would feel for some time after. That last reason, the marriage equality one, the reason he was here this time, by the way, ironic proving some things can change in this wicked old world since he would often think with a flush of red about the days when he and his corner boys who hung around Miller’s Diner in the Tappan section of Troy, New York would mercilessly fag/dyke bait anybody who seemed the least bit homosexual (“light on their feet” a common expression for guys in those days). Did a couple of nasty things too to such people. Jesus. Every time though whatever the reason that he was in the nation’s capital for Ralph would force himself to go to the far end of the National Mall to shed his tears, and remember.   

Remember Jimmy Jasper from across the street, Van Dorn Street, in Troy, a good guy whom he had hung around in those Miller Diner’s days who, aside for his leadership of the fag/dyke baiting antics was a straight-shooter, would have your back in any situation and could back it up with plenty of two hundred and twenty pounds of pure heft and power, nothing fatty about him. Nothing fatty about his stance in the world either, a seriously patriotic kid, at least in those days when red-baiting anybody who said anything left of Ghenis Khan was suspected by him of being a “commie dupe” and subject to abuse only slightly less than fags and dykes, who when the word went out in 1965 for volunteers to stop the “red menace” in Vietnam was gung-ho, enlisted specifically as an infantryman figuring to get his share of kills and glory.

Ralph wasn’t sure, since he had lost contact with Jimmy after he went into the service and Ralph had drifted into his father’s high skill electrical business, whether he had changed his mind “in country,” probably not he was that kind of guy. Jimmy was one of the first guys from around Albany who took the hit, took it early in the war when such casualties were seen as part of the price of righteous battle, took some awful death from the reports that came back home down in the Mekong Delta where “Charlie” ruled both day and night. Charlie the name given to the Viet Cong enemy first with derision by the American soldiers when the build-up in that country looked like a cakewalk and later with some begrudging respect when it turned out he was willing to fight like hell for his land. In other parts of the country he, Charlie, ruled only at night, mostly. Something the Americans could never break for any length of time and all the wasted Jimmys could not change that. Yeah a tear for old Jimmy, and a trembling hand too.

Remember Tyrone Young and Sammy Preston, a couple of black kids from Harlem in his own unit up in the bloody Central Highlands. A couple of kids, kids who did not know each other back on the block around 125^th Street but who had been tight right through Basic and Advanced Infantry Training and wound up in the same unit as Ralph had. A couple of kids who saved his “white ass” (their term) a couple of time before they got waylaid on a patrol when they were all out on patrol in the “boonies,” where Tyrone and Sammy were on the point and the unit, at company strength for this action, was overrun by a battalion-sized DNV unit which had run in their unit by accident (at least that was the story from HQ when the Captain tried to explain why they were surprised and why guys like Tyrone and Sammy, just kids, “bought it” that day). Ralph always thought it was funny that Tyrone and Sammy pulled point whoever the Captain was. His unit had had three in the eighteen months he was “in country,” that last six months an extension to get out a few months early if he was still alive and that was the sole reason since by then he had become, quietly, very quietly, anti-war. He, like every guy, including Tyrone and Sammy, did not want to pull point duty since there was a greater danger of booby-traps and sniper action. It took a long while to figure out that blacks were pulling that duty a lot more than white guys and there was a racial component to that situation.

Funny, maybe ironic, since lately Ralph had become through his association with Veterans For Peace a supporter of the booming Black Lives Matter movement a thing that in his youth in the early 1960s when all hell was breaking loose in the Civil Rights movement, North and South, would have been impossible, totally impossible since he had spent those years standing side by side with his father, Ralph Morris, Senior to keep blacks from moving into the Tappan section of Troy. It took ten thousand nightly conversations with Tyrone and Sammy who had some sympathies with the Black Panthers although they were really just a couple of street kids to shake his white racist attitudes a little (and their black separatist attitudes and fear and distrust of whitey, him). It took that couple of “saving his white ass” situations though to get him straight that they were his brothers and not just some woe begotten street brothers back home in the “real” world. So a couple of tears and a trembling hand touching their names on that black granite.  

Remember Jed Caldwell, a white guy from Maine, another guy who “saved his ass” once (Jeff’s term but not with “white” in front of ass this time though). Jed loved motorcycles (as did it seemed every guy he or I ran into from up there), had a real passion for them not so much in the Hell’s Angel gang bang kickass sense but for the sheer joy of riding out in the misty Route One nights along the secluded (then) areas around Mechanicsville above Bar Harbor with this exotic Norton, a British bike Ralph understood. Just a poor tough kid, probably the toughest guy in the unit, from rural Maine. Here’s the kick though Jed’s passion wound up costing him his life when you think about it. Or maybe Jeff was just a “doomed” guy like Sammy always used to say, would say “doomed n----r” except white. See that bike cost plenty, plenty of money which he did not have since he was a son of a lobsterman, a father whom he hadn’t then seen in years. So Jed took to robbing stores, variety stores, gas stations, a couple of small banks which you could do then up in rural Maine Ralph guessed. Did it boldly from what he said like some small-time John Dellinger until he finally got caught. Got caught at a First National Bank heist solo, his only method of work, and at seventeen in 1966 got the “choice.” The judge choice-three to five for armed robbery in county or “go into the service.” Since Jeff said he wasn’t built for prisons and places like that he took the latter offer. Yeah shed a tear and another trembling hand on black granite for Jeff.              

Remember also a few years back hearing a song by his “Arky Angel,” Iris Dement whose Wall In Washington always evoked strong emotions in him when he heard the lyrics. The gist of those lyrics, lyrics written in the 1990s long after the conflict was over about those who had been left behind to take their hands and “trace” the name of their fallen loved one on that damn black granite, a bereft father himself a veteran of the big one, World War II and filled with that same gnawing red scare Cold War pride who had sent his son off without a doubt in what was supposed to be a fight to the finish against the bad guys in the world; a waiting girlfriend no longer to be wed married now with kids and happy but down for the museum tour and feeling a little of what might have been; a fretful mother who got that long lonesome knock at the door the military vehicle waiting on the curb and forever after a gold star in the window; and, a son conceived in a hot night of passion before his father shipped out who had never, and would never, know his father. Strong stuff.         

That “tracing” business something that he had constantly witnessed at the “black granite” with all kinds of grieving left behinds putting shaky hands to the wall and etching like the effort to trace the sacred name would bring the fallen back. Ralph said he could never bring himself to do that “tracing” for it was hard enough for his to press a kiss to the fallen he went to remember. Just brought up too many sad memories of guys who were as alive as he was then and now sat in some lonely graveyard in the towns and cities across America. So shed a tear for the fallen, and for his inability to trace those names too.    

Remember, always, always remember Kenny Morris, his younger brother Kenny, who had actually joined before him (theirs a patriotic family just like all the others back then, maybe questioning the government’s actions but not challenging them), had served with distinction in Vietnam (unlike him who was just lucky and had guys who saved his ass, white or otherwise) and got out alive like him. Got back to the “real” world in one piece for a while. Did okay for a couple of years, then the other shoe fell. Something snapped, some horror Kenny had witnessed or had taken part in the war got to him. It started when Kenny began setting fire alarms off at first overlooked by the family (and the justice system which had a skewed sense of how to honor service). Then the midnight walks naked going down Tappan Street. Eventually VA help, with drugs and therapy which kept his demons away, for a while. Then when that in the end failed institutionalization for a while. Kenny was eventually released when the trend was to get guys out of mental institutions. By then he was a shell of his old self, and Ralph having his own difficulties adjusting, a little family weary in any case, could not save a brother that had gone away from him. Then one night, a damn cold night out in the foothills of the Adirondacks he jumped off the Mohawk River Bridge. Gone. So yeah shed a tear for Kenny too. Yeah, there is no wall in Washington for Kenny, for Ralph to place his trembling hand upon ….but maybe there should be.