Progress, thy name is destruction
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- October 28, 2023
- 495
The man, about my age, was wearing a Vietnam veterans cap and reading from a pocket-sized Bible turned to the Gospel of Mark.
Aloud.
He must not have noticed me in the waiting room of the optometrist’s office, but the woman sitting with him certainly did.
She gave me an apologetic look before whispering what I took to be a loving admonition to the man, one that included a sad shake of the head, as if to say, “I can’t believe we’re still fighting that war.”
Vietnam, in the popular parlance of hindsight, was the first time America got beat, ending a winning streak that dated to the Revolution, an ignominious tombstone marking the end of a nation’s imperialism, hubris and an unwillingness to admit defeat.
Peace with honor … you’ll remember that as Nixon’s glib campaign slogan, one aimed at what he called the Silent Majority, that vast swath of law-abiding middle Americans who would carry him to a hair’s-width victory in 1968, a year that signaled the wretched apotheosis of a nation coming apart at every nail.
Three-lettered disasters — Tet, MLK, RFK — marked the wreckage.
Two-word tragedies — My Lai, Kent State — soon followed apace.
That cruel cauldron of calamity boiled down to a single word.
Regret.
The French have a mellifluous saying, “Je ne regrette rein” — I regret nothing — made immortal by Edith Piaf in 1960, that casts in vivid relief the difference between how a former occupying power viewed Vietnam as opposed to the one that fled chaotically in 1975.
“Last chopper out of Saigon” were the words I printed on the final box of my belongings I carried out of the house in my hometown before my fiancée and I left everything we knew behind.
Strangely, I suppose, it remains as it was — undisturbed, still sealed, contents safe — when I shelved it in the garage that long-ago fall of 2000, a time when our world was blossoming into something new, something exotic, something just begging to be explored, enjoyed.
But now, inevitably, that joyride has reached its last-gasp descent and the roller coaster is no longer reliably able to come to an easy stop, meaning decisions have to be made … and rather quickly.
I’m pretty good at sensing when the narrative of my life is due for a course correction owing, probably, to my “Wonder Years” experience in the parochial school system, first through eighth grade, a crucial interlude whose lessons remain hard-wired in my brain, imprinted as permanently as words left in hardening cement.
The first rule of Catholic schooling is — and will forever be — nothing good is guaranteed, so you’d best prepare to feel guilty.
There’s a codicil to that commandment, one that goes, “If you expect sadness, you’ll never be disappointed, so wear a smile.”
I don’t think I’ll be unhappy, though, when we leave Carolina.
Sure, it’s not been all Skittles and beer, a day at the beach, the life of Riley, choose whatever euphemism gets you through the night. Jobs come and go, as do acquaintances that never quite reach friend status, and God only knows the pace of life is slooooow.
Although I did finally find something Southerners do quickly; I refer, unfortunately, to raping and murdering an innocent forest.
Fans of “Animal House,” that subversive and most entertaining progeny from the minds of “National Lampoon,” will doubtless recall Bluto’s aggrieved reaction when campus authorities raid the Delta House after a dean’s ruling ordering the frat’s expulsion.
“They took the bar!” he wails, inconsolably. “The whole bar!”
Well, there’s an expletive I’ve deleted in the tradition of the Watergate transcripts, but a lot of you can fill in the missing word.
Anyway, our rental house has always been bordered by a stand of loblolly pines, a buffer against neighbors to the south. It had been a given, a security blanket, a way of protecting us from, well, others.
Those woods were a home to birds, deer, squirrels, rabbits and, for all I know, unicorns. It was a verdant refuge that refused to budge.
But then, a week ago, they bulldozed it, just razed it to the ground, in a hideously efficient display of careless indifference, an iron fist in a gruesome glove, a cacophonous execution of a natural treasure.
When it was over, four long mornings later, it looked like the dark side of the moon, pockmarked and plundered, a sight for sick eyes.
Now, surely, someone will be building a house there, and I’ve decided to beat the Christmas rush by hating that person already.
I look at the gaping, awful, empty expanse through my stereo room window with a thousand-yard stare, and what comes to mind is that Vietnam veteran, the one whose only consolation was contained in the Good Book, the guy who made it out alive, but badly broken.
I have a feeling that when I’ve escaped from this place, the Bible won’t be doing me any favors, but I’ll have a thin smile on my face.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where progress isn’t marked by destruction and there’s always a safe place for quiet reflection … until it’s gone.