Click To Vietnam

Like a lot of American families, in the 1960s, the t.v. remote control was alive, well and sulky in our house. At 5 p.m., Dad walked in the door. Bro, Sis or I would pry ourselves off the sofa, walk to the t.v. and click the dial. Gone would be the Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy or whatever other comedy we'd been watching. In its place, Walter Conkrite and the Vietnam War. What made my family different from some others, was that when Dad walked in the door, he was wearing his crisply starched--though now wrinkled--kakhi Army officer's uniform. He watched the news and we knew we had to be quiet. Actually, usually we'd disappear. I saw the news as boring and repetitive with its endless scenes of soldiers in military gear and its talk of foreign places like Cambodia and Saigon. It took some growing up to realize Dad's friends, and soldiers he'd trained, were "over there." And, as he watched the war unfold on t.v., he could make some educated guesses about who might not be coming back. I don't know how often Mom and Dad talked in hushed tones, behind closed doors, about the wounded, the dead and the families broken forever. And I wonder how often those conversations were about friends. That sorrow, that worry was kept private. All I knew was that Dad didn't talk much some nights. Forty years later, changing the channel no longer requires sulky kids. War isn't seen on grainy film in black and white. But good soliders--men and women--still sit in front of t.v.s worried about friends who are "over there." Some nights, they probably don't talk much.