 ©1999-1999 ICFTP What're you, kidding? |
If you head down Hwy 193 (or Rangeline Road, whichever you prefer) until it dead-ends and then take a left, you'll be headed towards Dauphin Island. But just before you turn right onto old Dauphin Island Parkway, look to your left. It used to be just a bus, but in the past few years it seems to have grown a house and a tent. There's an old man there that sells, among other things, video tapes and army surplus items. We used to come here when my friends in Pensacola wanted porno tapes; because, believe it or not, it's illegal to buy XXX tapes in Florida.
Well, I was headed down to Rob and Sid's parent's house tonight. But as I drove past the bus, it occurred to me that I had the digital camera in tow, and this definitely fit the bill as hard-to-find-but-cool kind of Mobile thing, so I turned around and went back. (note to SUV haters: it doesn't bother me in the LEAST to turn around on a beat-up backroad shoulder. So there.)
I walked around, took some shots of the outside, and climbed the steps into the bus.
"Heya," I called out, "anybody home?"
The old man came out of the back, dressed in black fatigues with big cargo pockets on the legs of the pants, held up by suspenders. A grey beard covered his face and neck and his head was topped with a ragged grey crewcut.
"How ya doing?" he asked. "You old enough to be in here?"
I told him I was 28 and he said "You don't look it," and let it go at that. I looked around for a few, talked to him about what he had, and how much the tapes were. ($16, $9, $4, if you're curious.) I told him a bit about why I had stopped, and asked him if he minded if I shot some pictures.
"Can't hurt," he said, and even posed for me.
He left me to look around a bit more. I flipped through some boxes, looking for something that looked even vaguely realistic. No such luck. I wandered back outside. There were a few circular racks of army coats, some unidentifiable sort of luggage, and an orderly stack of cartridge boxes. He told me that this stuff was going fast, as people were preparing for Y2k.
That got us started.
We stood there in the warm and slightly humid Southern night, under the streetlight outside his tent, and talked. We talked about his time in Vietnam, where he spent 32 months as a marine, and we talked about his distrust of the people who were stockpiling for Y2k. I said that the idea of people stockpiling weaponry disturbed me, because even if nothing happened, they might feel compelled to use all the stuff they'd spent so much effort acquiring, just because it was THERE. He said that wasn't something he was really worried about, and said that he himself would feel no such compulsion. He said it was just that being a marine in Vietnam taught him to be prepared. I said ""Prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best?"" and he said ""Exactly.""
He told me of sitting next to a Vietnamese girl when he was an E5 sergeant, and protecting her from some drunk and obnoxious marines. In return, she told him of her brother and her uncle, one a village chieftain, the other VC. They were sworn to opposite sides, sworn to kill each other if necessary. Reminded me of the Civil War. The old man said that while one was VC, he was not a communist. The Vietnamese man respected Ho Chi Min, in much the same way we respect George Washington, even while he disagreed with his politics. Ho Chi Min had worked to free his country from the oppression of the French. The Vietnamese man did not want to see the Americans do to his homeland what the French had before them, and so fought - for what he felt was the right thing for his country.
The sign around his neck says "Caution: cigarette smoking will be hazardous to your health."
We talked about what it meant to a Vietnamese girl to have sex for $10. In a culture where some make the equivalent of $10 a year... well, what would you do if someone offered you $35,000 for a blow job?
We talked of understanding the point of view of others, and how hard it was for people to do so.... but how necessary it is to be able to see things from more than one perspective, and to understand that your perspective is neither the only view nor necessarily the correct one. We spoke of how, when you have the ability to see from many different points of view, how you must have the moral and ethic strength to pick the right point of view, and stand by it.
He told me of how, when he came back to the States, he was still addicted to action. How it excited him to have bullets kicking up the dirt at his feet, to have phosphorous rounds go off next to him, but spray past him becaues he was so close, under the umbrealla of dispersal.
He told me of working undercover for the FBI, infiltrating the KKK, and of his friend who did the same, infiltrating a militant muslim group. He said that he and his friend, a black man, would get together and talk of how the speeches that were given to each group could have been written by the same man. Each group was ruled by ignorance and fear.
We talked of how it is good to be different, and how people should not fear the different, but learn from it.
We stood outside under the streetlight, in that soft Southern night, for quite some time. Eventually some folks showed up to buy some tapes, and it was time for me to go on to dinner at Bob and Barbara's house. I shook hands with the man and told him how much I'd liked talking to him.
I smiled to myself as I drove away and pondered the twenty minutes I had spent with the gentleman. It was twenty minues that I had expected to spend somewhere else. But it's good to end up where you don't expect to be, and that twenty minutes was time well spent.