cock-eyed,blind,and the end of the road !

old_truck

Originally uploaded by jayfherron.
I spent most of my life since the Navy working at finding jobs no one else would do…or no one else was at. I worked as a mortician until I became old enough to be licensed as a long distance truck driver and from 1975 on my jobs centered around big trucks. I ‘sailed the concrete seas’ as the old time truckers used to say. I confess that as a boy I loved the trucks and the sounds of trucks and if I came across a truck like this in the photo I’d spend every day there-thats where you’d find me.
It took forever to find some one who would teach you how to drive back in the 70’s-its not like that any more…but then and further back the truck drivers job was as prominant as the captain of a small ship. We never wore tennis shoes to drive a truck where I came from.
But the job did offer the solitude and independence I needed and so I spent most all of my working life doing it coast to coast and border to border. Driving a truck just like the one in the photo…except in better condition-and so my boyhood wants came to be after all.
Our life was as alone as this truck in the picture is ( and if this pic does’nt show up…) not the glamour once thought – the romance of the open blue highway. Oh it is romantic if you look at it in a certain way-like being in the northern parts of Utah and seeing the high and wide open sky at night and the trillions of stars that you can’t see like that any where else….or when I hauled cattle the mornings at the ranches and the cowboys in thier chaps and mounted on horses to round up each trucks load.
I had a stroke in 1998 on my way to Wisconsin to load a bulldozer for Oregan and boom…last day of that. It was Feburary 2 1998. Never saw my truck again.
I reacted to the stroke and its effects and fought back and regained a lot of things but my left side-my left eye and hand are sort of goofy. My left eye is blind and it appears now a days that I’m winking at everyone but its only that my eye has this wierd light in it so I favor that eye to block the light. Never the less…they took the trucks away-good thing.
An interesting thing happened the very day I had my stroke-all the way home in Florida new neighbors were moving into a house up on the hill near me. Nothing unusual about new neighbors-but these folks came with a history and once I write the details of this part of my life you’ll wonder what line I got in during sperm cell assignment to end up with the life I’ve had.
I have an interesting story to tell…the Navy thing and the rest of my life all trail along with the way my life is today. This computer machine is really the new thing-I am noviced so bad that it’d be safer to teach me how to skateboard…trying to learn what this and that is about and what not to do is as you must know not quite simple-but I’m getting there and can actually move fairly fast with only a right hand and I was’nt a typist to begin with-my left is to shakey. When I was a kid in DC I spent a lot of my high school days hanging around the Library of Congress. If you want to skip school and not have any one get curious…go to the Library of Congress. But it was there that I was able to continue to learn and used the place to my advantage many times. Funny-it is like a huge computer there-you hand the clerk a list of the materials you require and they assign you a seat and a dude with a cart comes around and delivers your requests right to you. So seeing my way around this computer is kind of like looking at a more refined Library of Congress.
So I am trying to make this thing work-to try to tell my lifes story to who ever sees fit to read it and to learn this computer bizz along with it.

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ussvulcancirca1950

Originally uploaded by jayfherron.
I don’t know if theres always a way to title my lamentations. For these past two years I’ve been going through treatment for post traumatic stress disorder all because in frustration one time about medications-which I do not like to take …seemed to be the veterans hospitals way of treating people like me. So I got pissed and wrote a letter saying that all the years I tried to drink everything available to drink and shoved so much powdered dope up my nose …all to escape myself and the memories of those days and nights at barracks D and all that experience has done. And the VA’s answer was to give me medication.
I got someones attention-but it was’nt what I was trying to do-I was just saying…how does this make sense? you people tell me to quit my way of self medicating and what do you want to do? medicate me !!
It is hard for me to trust anything…seriously,it is an extreme that I go to to just trust…and that is not an easy thing for me to do.
The ship in the photograph was all they needed to do for me-to say I could live there as long as I wanted. I trusted that system with all that I could give them…I was probrebly the only guy in boot camp that could’nt wait to see what came the next day. In my head I can still see the huge galleys and the numbers and numbers of men there in lines waiting to be fed or at the seats and tables eating. All of them-every one…in blue. All of us the same.
I trusted the order of the service and thought it was going to change my life-it did,but not in the dreams I had had about my new life…my new chance to be something that mattered.
My life was changed that is for certain .

the DD214

My discharge came as a very sudden wake up at around four in the morning February 20,1970. They marched me and a couple of other guys around to certain buildings surrounding the detention barracks-one where a huge pile of clothes lay in one large room and we were ordered to pick out something to wear-we were turning in our uniforms since we were deemed unfit to wear them any longer. We were also marched around to certain buildings to sign ourselves into civilian life-oe place I recieved my final pay…somewhere around thirteen dollars and some loose change-I think it was supposed to be travel money to get you to the closest address on your files. We were marched to the main gate at the Norfolk Naval Station and each of us was handed a packet with all of our records in them-including the DD214 which is the main discharge form with every detail in code of your military history , a very coveted piece of paper as one learns.

As I said before-I ended up in Florida that June-on fathers day. I spent my first day in a jewish cemetery literally homeless , yet by some strange coincedidence when I called a friend back in DC to find out what I can do-looking for help-I learned my friend had a brother that lived in a town about ten miles from where I was. The friend I called was an older man who was the youth leader at a church I attended in DC…the same youth group I was with when we marched at the Nations Capital for civil rights. And by that night I was resting in an old hotel building ( being renovated into a residence) on the main street-the only main street…in a small town inFlorida called Micanopy. (pron., mick-can-no-pee).

In most all things gentle in my life I attribute it to my time spent in Micanopy and the influences I was accepted into. It is the second oldest town in Florida-very small and during the high life of the hippie days it had been taken over by artists from diverse backgrounds and goals…musicians , wood workers , painters and sculptors ,leather crafters , photgraphers and teachers. I continue relationships made in that town to this day and I continue with feelings learned from that time also.

But I had this problem. It was the strong arm thing and I could be easily manipulated to do things beyond my own desires-so some things went askew and my life in Micanopy was brief. I did have a shot gun wedding there…a story that deserves its own space but never the less I was married to a sixteen year old local girl-pregnant-by a preacher and feeling the girls father breathing down my neck.

And then began the troubles of finding a job.

The DD214 has a code on it. In section 11 where it talks about the discharge in space C it says ‘reason and authority’ and there in that space is typed a number…mine-3420220 -384-, it is the 384 that I learned would be tagging along with me every where I went to look for a job. It was the code to say I was discharged for drug use…if it was’nt hard enough to explain to a potential employer why you only served seven months in the Navy during war time yet one had to hand over a sheet of paper that told that employer you had a drug history. No one was interested in hiring me-plus , no diploma. So by summer 1971 I had been married to the mother of my new born son and faced a future of closed doors in the job market. I was barely 19 years old.

I’ve always had my DD214…as required-I’m sure by law. It has as I said followed me all through out my life-each official copy of it embossed with a seal and everytime you request replacements it is always an ordeal that ends with a letter saying ‘this is an important document…do not loose’. It is the literal truth that this sheet of paper gets shown to more people in your life than you ever realize and thus the stigma of the code number still exists…I am a 384 a person with drug history.

Now how can a person explain away what the federal government-the United States military deems official? How could a man tell another man that you did’nt have a chance to defend yourself and the real reason you only served seven months and not the full four years was because you were railroaded out of the service with out a chance…by your own brother,in the wonderful and free country we live in. Especially in the 1970’s when everything was on the border of old fashioned conservatives that were having a hard time accepting the changes coming through the Viet Nam war and the hippie movement and the civil rights of black Americans-so my life was sunk with that piece of paper because once upon a time you were required to provide it with a job application. The only jobs I could get were those for the unskilled-laborer.

My Discharge

In another section of this blog-you can find a ‘thumb picture’ of a Navy fleet showing its power as it heads for a cruise. I saw that once , in 1969-I was a part of one…I think it is called a battle group. I cannot remember.

When my brother Frank mutilated my shirts – my work shirts -I thought it was just a joke being played on little brother. The lettering above my shirt pockets was way large-larger than regulation , and the angles of the cuts where he cut my sleeves made my works shirts essentially ‘out of uniform’ and they restricted me to certain areas of the ship because I hadno uniforms…they do not give them away , and I could’nt go for new ones that easily.

The ship was large enough that I was able to bunk in a more vacent section-that had no ventilation…and ended up sending me back to the area near the galley-where at least there was some air flow…but also a larger congregation of men-and nearer to Franks section. Frank ran the ships services-that means the laundry and barbershop and he also had something to do with the ‘gedunk’….a place where we could buy cig’s and chocoletes and assorted 7/11 store type things. The barber shop was situated near the galley. I did’nt realize it then that my brother made it seem like I was his man and so I had to do what he said…and often times I could be found cleaning his locker-a three tiered chrome plated tall locker intended for three men-but this one was Franks. He’d make me polish it and a second one he had in the laundry…his words-“shine it to see the pimples on my ass”!! It was like my brother had his own special squad-me , to do what ever mundane thing he felt…it was easy for him to do-I was his kid brother but also fresh out of boots and still had the boot mentality and thought this was the way it was supposed to be.

When we sailed for Cuba my heart was thrilled-I never felt so grown up and ready to face the world and to visit foriegn ports-we were supposed to be doing just that but something happened to the ship and we had to wait for some repairs in Cuba and then were sent back to the states to be reparied and readied to meet the fleet in Viet Nam , or so I remember it being. There are several things my memory retains but is vague about yet grace allows them to be revived and given valitity…I always remembered the snow stoem…how could I forget-but I had always thought of that night as being the new years eve , but that was only association-it was new years week end…and I only put that back together this past year. I also always felt-I think I heard it from Bob that it was a drug amnesty that Nixon offered the troops that got me discharged…never have been able to find the information on that-but Bob insisted that because I was already on some list that that is why I got discharged so quickly.My records are so incorrect that it is hard for anyone to say what is so and what is not…one of my official records say I was enlisted at the age of 10…and yet the Navy insists thier records are correct. And how did I end up with an honorable discharge if I was faceing so many years in the brig?

I’ve always been ashamed of the entire event. I feel like I let my country down…when indeed my country failed me – I enlisted freely when others were running to live in another country. I wanted a relationship with my brother-and that too was failure…his failure,but for some reason I take it as mine. The guilt and shame of missing the opportunity to seek the challenges the Navy was going to offer me…the new fresh start to complete my education and go on with life and be someone who sought to achieve all the rank the Navy could give me. I wanted to live my life feeling the heartbeat of the fleet going out as one feels when the big drum comes by in a parade. Robbed…it was all robbed from me , stolen and sold out by my own brother.

I few months ago my youngest son called and asked if I could attend the funeral for a young man my sons attended school with-it turned out I remembered the young man and said I’d be pleased to do that. I stopped at a store and bought a card for condolences and wrote in it to explain I was there for my sons and how sad they – we were for the loss. I did not know the young man was in the Navy and had drowned in a diving accident during training. The funeral home was filled with sailors. During the service I could’nt handle it and I started to cry and his family kept looking back at me as if to wonder who I was….it was worse at the graveside when the color gaurd folded the flag during taps and the guns went off in salute. I was crying for both of us-proud of him..and saddened for me because I would want those things to happen at my graveside at my passing…and yet feel a failure and not deserving of the honor. And I did nothing wrong.

crazy!

It is hard to explain this. The officer said to get used to it so I did-it was better than getting my arm wrenched up behind my back …but it was more than that. I was 18 years old and weighed about 120 and susceptible to an new influence. By this time the ultimate conclusion was no one could be trusted but I had to go for someone to try to find trust-and yet never could , but you mix that in with wanting to not have your arm twisted and the person you choose is the one that you fear the most…and I chose nazel voice mister.

When Bob was there-it was’nt often like it was for most of us…he seemed to have the carisma of a guru. He was going through procedings for a discharge but must have had an attorney outside of the Navy-he was always filling guys with legal advice and giving me tips on how to act so they’d have to medical me and get me out of there , so I was told to act crazy and act like I was having a reaction to the LSD I took a year or so back…something called a flashback. Bob also taught me how to put these tattoos on my body useing india ink and needle and thread-telling me the tattoos would make me look tougher and unappealing. That did’nt work.

I never had been charged with anything. Was interviewed once by that naval intelligence officer and I recall some interviews with different uniformed men…but cannot recall of that. I stayed locked in barracks D from the first of the year to the 20th day of Feburary-although there were several trips to the Vulcan to pick up uniforms and to sign papers and a job I was given at the hospital-washing and waxing the same ambulance every day…my life became a routine in barracks D. Its where I thought I was going to stay…and I was falling in to where I was getting hurt-but not that much because I was cooperating like the other guy. The officers and the guys in uniform disregarded us as useless and we were ignored as human beings-so what else was an 18 year old kid to do?

When I got out of the Navy my family just pushed the door shut and I ended up traveling with Bob and his wife to New Jersey and we had plans to go into business but all of that was a bigger mess then was realized. I had gotten a job in a department store and that was when the first submission began. It was easy for the preditor because it was instilled in me to behave this way when told. And because I hated it at barracks D I ran from this and left New Jersey and went back to the DC area and found a job there in a department store and this time it was worse because in Jersey it was just for sexual favors but here it was sexual plus I was made to steal for the man….all that he needed to do was twist my arm. I got caught by the store detectives and was threatened with jail WITH this other person if I did’nt confess…so I confessed and gave up the other fellow. By some crazy miracle I was released by the police and told to return the next morning. That night I went to a party and it was a going away party for a guy from my high school….so I hitched a ride with him. The next morning I was standing in Florida.

If it had not been for this transition in life I believe I would’ve ended up on a huge quick path of destruction-but due to the influences I discovered in Florida I took a lessor evil and kinder route…never the less-it was destructive. Stayed that way for nearly 37 years. There is plenty to tell.

from boot camp to the USS Vulcan

The first days of boot camp were knid of like Christmas. You knew it was coming but you did’nt know what to expect. Every body was yelled into formation and we always looked so beautiful as we marched in company to each part of our traing…the feet all going in unison-the harmony of the feet and the recruit petty officer in charge (rpoc) holloring our cadence , numbers one thru four-but not like we spoke them in school. Kind of a blend-upp…ooo…ree…fup,upp…ooo…ree…fup,over and over.

Our first rpoc lasted part of a day and it was learned that his daddy or someone was in congress or something and they wisked him off to be the Camp Moffitt champion recruit,so the guy the put into his place…Potts,can always remember that name-he took over and his first day he tried to catch up and over do the upp…ooo…ree…fup…so much that the following day he was hoarse and could’nt make a peep. So his junior had to fill in until he got his voice back.

Like I said-the place was like Christmas because you saw all these areas that were fenced in or open fields…and there were obsticle coarses and then some where else would be airplane hulks-or a section of a mock ship…buildings called indoor grinders where troops and troops of men could march indoors and do anything in them. And we’d march by these places and see the recruits in them training-but be clueless as to why they were there and we had not yet been…but then later in the days or weeks we’d end up there all in the process of time,it was all perfectly orchistrated,and always a neat surprise.

I loved it. The minute my Drill Instructor-DI,came screaming in my face that first morning I knew it was over and there never any more complaining about my parents-they werent here,and who ever this guy was…he had my attention right then. I know I promised myself I’d do whatever he said before my feet ever hit the ground.

I had cheated,I had a bit of preperation the night before I went to camp Hollibird-the movie with Jack Webb as a marine Drill Instructor-The DI played-just as if it was meant to be so as if planned by a higher scource,so I saw the probability of what to expect,but this was far more magnified. I remember after I got out of boot I went-in uniform,of course-to the marine recruiter that jammed his finger in my chest -knocking wind out of me-and I thanked him for talking me into going in the Navy because if the real marine boot camp was stiffer and meaner than Jack Webb played it,than I was a most lucky guy.

Our boot experience-our company 407 and our sister company-was really a good experience that got better the fifth week into the program. The rpoc’s sort of had things a little easier and got to hang out in the DI’s office and got top smoke more often,more soda’s-they cheesed is what it was. Well,it went to thier heads a bit as you can expect. One day we went to what they called damage control. We learned what the airplane hulks and ship mock up was for and had to go into the ship section with it filled with smoke and then later we went into a tear gas chamber. The two companies always went to training together…160 or so men-I can’t recall,but if we went-they went. So wee were all lined up in formation and the DI’s that were in charge of the gas tank were walking around us yelling-every body yelled-and they were instructing us how to put on the gas masks…then,one of them goes up to the rpoc’s and he’s holding these two pellets the size of a moth ball and he’s yelling-everybody yelled- at the two rpoc’s about these pellets all the while holding them up in the air so everybody could see them,but he’s talking-yelling-at the rpoc’s….and as he says “I want you to take this pellet…” he hands them to each of the rpoc’s and our sister companies guy must of thought since he was an rpoc it was going to make him immune to the gas…so he swallowed the pellet like it was a pill. The DI’s had a fit and really freaked out on the guy trying to save his life,one of them was just loosing it…thier hearts as men came out…and thier real compassion-and we saw it,and they saw us see it…and then it just seemed boot camp took a different level because they knew we now knew that they were’nt all bad ass….they were feeling people like us. I dont know what happened to the guy,they never told us that I recall.

In the final weeks of boot camp you end up seeing the people that are giving you the duty stations you go to after training. The question was asked if I had any friends or kin folk I’d like to do buddy time with-and since my older brother Frank was on the USS Vulcan I asked if I could do that…and off to the Vulcan I was sent.

The last days of boots you get to go through this place and buy a ring like a graduation ring-I got one of those,but later lost in in Jamacia…and we also bought these ‘grips’ all black and there were these lettering artists that would monogram your ships name on them with some kind of marker -all for a fee,of course. So-mine was the sharpest…the USS VULCAN AR-5.

The Vulcan was a neat ship. She was a repair ship-carryed a foundry and a cabinet and wood working shop-metal shop,welding-gauge repair…you had it broke out at sea…the Vulcan put it back together for you. My first sight of her at the pier in Norfolk was the most awesome view my eyes had ever seen…I was 18 years old of one happy kid-I was going to live on that ship.

That turned around pretty quick. My brother was not not too pleased with my plans and instantly made my life on ship miserable. He ran the laundery-and there he took all of my work shirts and had LIL’HERRON over the shirt pocket as regulated,so every body called me Lilly,or Lil..and he cut the sleeves-ruining my shirts,and making it so I was restricted to only certain parts of the ship-because of improper uniforms. One of the first things a recruit-now seaman apprentice-does when he boards ship is to tour around and learn your areas and meet the doctors and dentists and shown where the post office and the barber and gee-dunk was located. Another thing is the tests-and I did so good that the education officer was going to get me through the G.E.D. test and told me I could qualify for a certain program that would send me to college…it was all to unbelievable,and news I wanted to share with Frank. He was so non-supportive beat down everything about it-and me. I really wish I knew that he was going to be like that-but,it was sealed in fate by then…it can never be turned around. I will always remember that mistake.

People have a hard time believing all the things in the Bible can be true-Caine and Abel? And look at Joseph, the boy with the coat of many colors who dreamed dreams-and was loved the most by his father-and hated by his brothers…they sold him into slavery , and told father he had been killed. It seems my story-with my brother proves these ancient Bible stories are’nt so out of range after all. My brother Frank became my own personal navy boss-all was reported to him by his pal’s and my punishments were full face socks with his fist and easier tasks like shining his locker ’til I can see the pimples on my ass ‘ -he’d say. All this took place in the laundry…way in the depths of the ship where no one else was. He even went as far as to work it out to where I had to work for him down there…it was miserable but the cooks complained because I was supposed to serve as a mess cook first and foremost upon joining the crew, so being sent to the galley was an improvement…but I still had to go below and do for Frank after hours.

We went to sea and that lightened things up some,but not always-but by this time I learned I could rack anywhere on the boat I wanted to-so I found these empty racks near the rear of the ship and moved there to hide from Frank.

We shipped to Cuba-hard to guess where,and for a break we went to Montego Bay Jamacia for a weekend…my only cruises ever on the Vulcan-because my life was fixing to change for ever.

…and I will have to write some more later.

joining the Navy

I enlisted in the United States Navy in April 1969. I was still 17 and was enlisted in a reserve program until I reached 18-turned 18 and about two weeks later I was standing in a huge auditorium in Camp Hollibird in Baltimore-there were thousands of guys there going into the marines and the army and the navy. I’ve often wondered how many of them did not return home except in a casket?

I was glad this was happening. It was a fresh start and I knew that in the service we would all be equal-to a degree,seeing the officers and the enlisted men would all know thier places-there would be no status as who shopped where or who has what style of clothes-every one knew thier place. And the opportunity would be wonderful-to be on a ship and to see foriegn lands. It did not matter to me there was the war-that was what it was all about-defending your country and flag and the Constitution,which one of my ancesters signed . John Witherspoon …so this was going to be a new life and I would bust my butt and show my family there was’nt any thing wrong with me…that I was good.

I saw the Viet Nam war from a different angle-from the kitchen table on the portable TV set. Every evening watching the days slain be shown on the screen to pay respects to them. They all looked like me in thier high school senior photos,young and with big ears and the various shapes and sizes of thier faces,all of them looked like me.

So, going to boot camp was a trip of deep thought about would my life be taken in the war and is this it? We almost did’nt make it to boot camp because one of the recruits in our group made a stupid joke about hijacking the plane to Great Lakes and he almost got us all ejected fromthe plane for that remark….the first Cuba hijacking had just taken place and was fresh on everyones minds , the stewardess did not see his joke as funny.

We got there at around 0200,and got our bunks-only to be in them for about an hour when the screaming DI and his crew came in screaming thier heads off-scareing the life out of us…and getting us up for our first morning of boot camp.

The rest another day.

Life before the Navy

My life as a kid was usual in most ways-but there were several incidents that made my boy hood different than what others might have experienced; but yet-I have seen with my own eyes the lives of others that make me feel guilty that my life has troubled me so.

I lived from age 5 to 13 in the hills of West Virginia just out side of the capitol city,Charleston. Our house as all the houses on our part of the street was built on a hillside that might as well have been a cliff-the front door opened to a brief terrace that led to a flight of twenty stairs that led up to the street The back windows looked out on a view that was up from the foundation about 3 stories but the cliff made it seem like 10 stories.

It was an era of freedom for kids my age then in the 1950’s. Television was rare,most homes had none-we did…but it only came on a few hours in the morning and then a few hours at night. People were’nt worried about kids at the age of 7-8 going out to play hop scotch in the street because society had not shown a threat to kids then as there is now.

I was a normal kid-thought Santa was cheat,and hated halloween costumes-but loved the rewards we got for getting dressed up that way. I wanted to play little league but that never happened,so wiffle ball was the trade off.

But then there was the night my sister JoEileen died. She was 11-I was about 7. A man came in a dark station wagon and he went to her room and carried her out wrapped in a blanket into the darkness and up those steps to his station wagon. The next time I saw her was while standing on a stool looking down into her casket.

About a year later my friend and I wer4e playing in the woods beside our neighbors-Mr.Hoke- house. We saw Mr.Hoke come around the side of the house and go into his cellar and he was carrying a gun. Well we were curious about the gun and so we followed him into the cellar to see if we could get a look at it…but as we entered the door he had put the gun into his mouth and ended his life right there in front of us. He never knew we were there…nobody ever knew we were there, we ran to our houses and kept our mouths shut.

The last time I saw Mr.Hoke was standing on that same stool looking down into his casket. Looking at him that day and seeing his head put back together made me so curious that I later became a mortician to learn how they had done that-put him back together.

It was kind of a strange phenom of that time…morticians held what I called back yard viewings (back in the fifties) and my friend and I saw more dead people by the time we were twelve by the courtesy of these viewings. Another old man on our street gassedhisself …and the morticians uncovered his blue body right there so we could see him. And old Bennie up the street died and sure enough-the morticians had him uncovered in the yard so we could get a gander at his blue body. So the picture here is bunches of deaths but no one ever thought what it might be doing to our minds-we were just little boys.

One day the Allied van showed up and we moved to Henrico County Virginia. I hated that move. I was being seperated from everything I knew-my street and school and friends. The mountains and the view from the back window. And Karen…the girl that had become my first girl friend….so the move was not what I had planned.

Theres alot of details I am skipping over in this because I am trying to lead up to my days in the Navy because my intent in these blogs is to tell the story of a mans life as a rape and sexual assault victim-to try to give an idea that this does exist but because it is so sensitive,it is hardly reported…there fore not much awareness exists.

There was some incidents at my new school that seperated me from most all of the student body-there was an issue of how I dressed for my first day of gym and the coach made such a deal about it that all the other kids saw it as an open door to tease me over and over til I quit paying attention to school and began planning a way to get out of there.I did run away once-but that was a short journey of around a week…so one day I took some eggs on the school bus and at an intersection I threw them at a car and caused a car wreck.

Later that morning in school the PA system came on and all the students on that bus were called to the cafeteria where the bus driver and the automobile driver and the police and the school officialsalll were waiting to hand out pencils and a index card to each student to write down the name of the oerson responsable . Those cards were never filled out-there was a girl named Debbie that said she did’nt need to fill one out and she pointed at me and said ‘ it was him…’ and thus my school days were over as I was expelled and sent to a judge who ordered me to work for some building contractor for the mere pay of 15 dollars a week which was turned over to pay the damages of the mans car.

The following year the Allied truck showed up and we moved to the suburbs of Washington DC. Now this was a move that I liked. Our grand parents lived in the DC city limits and all of my summers as a boy were spent there partly,and divided in half-the other half being with my grand parents inPottstown Pennsylvania. But the move also pleased me because I could start over-new school,new friends…

The first day of school at Robert E.Peary High School was going to be the best. It was a huge school with two tracks and a full size football field-it had a bag pipe band and asizeable display of the explorer Peary’s sled and other memorablia that he took to the midnight sun. The school had a theatre program-and an auto shop…it was a great place. But then when we were leaving our home room class where we learned of all the great opportunities that Peary High offered and we were walking down the hall to find our assigned lockers and our next class….I saw Debbie fromHenrico County coming down the same hallway – I could not believe my eyes.

School ended for me permanantly that day. I went sometimes-but most of the time I skipped out and went into the city. The pain of the students harrassing me in Virginia was not going to happen here…although I never thought that Debbie was in a strange place too,and knew no one-as I knew no one. I was’nt thinking that, and I was not going to stick around to find that that was the case.

My family by this time was thinking I was no good-the school bus thing,and now being caught traunt so many times and forced time after time to go back to that school where I’d go in the front door and out the back…so no one wanted to hear my reasons why-they just wanted me to hear them,and they were’nt talking with understanding. Not trying to learn…what is the problem.

The hippie movement was really big in the DC area and with so much going on with civil rights and the Viet Nam war and all of the changes that was being brought on by the movement of youth…well,it was hard not to get involved-if it was just merely becoming a hippie,and sothats what I did. I marched on the capital with the poor peoples march and attended an anti war rally at DuPont Circle that ended up going across the bridge to march on the Pentagon…I never made it that far but used to tell people I did to try to fit in.

Then one day I was given a stamp sized piece of paper and was told to set it on my tongue and let it disolve. It was LSD-altough I did’nt know it at the time…and years later learned it was legal in DC until 1967…and Sandoz chemical company was making the stuff right off of DuPont Circle. It was a buck a piece…one dollar and it changed my life. I ran away-of all the craziest places I ended up was inHenrico County ( ?? ) and my father came to get me.

One week later I was getting ready to go see a movie and was in my upstairs bedroom looking down at my two kid brothers playing on the lawn when my baby brother Carl ran right out into the street and into the path of an oncoming car-killing him. We buried him inPottstown -following the hearse all the way there…and listening to my mom say over and over that it should have been me instead of him…after all,he was a good boy-and I was not.

The real kicker came when I got caught skipping school and the truant officer returned me to the boys dean and there I was put into the class assumed that I would be in-I had been missing so much there that it was a state of confusion. It was an english class being taught by a student teacher-an intern from that same school…Miss Wagner. Now Miss Wagner took it upon herself to contact my father to tell him I was missing so much school that I was going to fail…but she was going to volunteer her free time to tutor me after school and on the week ends-I hated her.

The first week end came of her tutoring and my father proudly set up the dining room for her to use as a classroom, but she had another idea-she was going to take me to a farm up in Columbia County and teach me some things there. And…teach she did-she gave me my first lesson on nudity with a woman,and showed me another interesting thing…I called her Francis after that.

Francis got pregnant and was wisked away-I never saw her again,I don’t know anything about the child. I was kicked out of school…and so,I enlisted in the United States Navy.

I will keep my story here until I can get back to say more. Thank you.

A male rape survivors story

My name is Jay Herron. I am a fifty- five year old male who is a rape survivor. Now how can that be? only woman get raped !! That is a wrong assumption.

My story is unique,but not unusual-only society may make it seem unusual. Rape among males is a fact. Rape is a sexless and ageless crime.

What happened to me occurred in the new few days of 1970 ,to be more precise-new years eve. After the rape I was repeatedly sexually assaulted for a period nearly two months long.

My story is quite complex,my life has been as if I was a boxer that was’nt a fighter and yet he was proud enough every time he got knocked down that he’d get right back up. My life has been sort of like that- as I have seen tragedy as early as the age of eight,and things in between then and now have always been more unlike other peoples lives , sometimes I have difficulty believing it myself. But,what I will be writing about is true. It happened and there is no reason to season the details at all,because there is no reason to.

In April 1969 I enlisted in the United States Navy,I was 17 years old-and had to wait for my 18th birthday before I could enter active duty. That came in August and I was sent to Great Lakes ,Illinois for my basic training,boot camp.

I loved it. You would have to understand the whole story of my life to understand why I’d loved boots-most people hated it,but I loved every minute of it. I loved the Navy. My Dad had been in during WW II and my oldest brother was serving at the same time I had enlisted. My grandfather on my dads side was a river boat pilot-back in the days when river boats was the transportation of the time. M great grandfather was a sea captain-in charge of those great tall sailing ships. So the navy had fit a family background-but unfortunantly,I was’nt just joining the navy because of our heritage…it was because the US Marine recruiter had jammed his finger in my chest and knocked the wind out of me. And While I stood there trying to get my breathing back-gasping like crazy…the marine recruiter had started a list as to why I did’nt want to be a marine.

I weighed all of about 110 then,skinney-could’nt lift a feather…just about. But somehow his lecture sunk in and by the time my breathing returned tonormal I was pleased he suggested the Navy.

Viet Nam was going as strong as it could get at that time in 1969. We kids in those days had a lot of mixed direction to look at back then. Every week on TV was the Vic Morrow television show…’Combat’,and all of us kids wanted to go off and fight the Nazi’s. But V-Nam was different , and unlike the WW II era-we had the hippie movement,teens and young adults and priests and violence in our home land…all about the Viet Nam war…not the pulling together we saw during the world wars.

So-because I am just learning about this blog idea and that I am not too experienced at the computer…I am going to leave my story at this point and see how it goes into outer space and ends up on this blog site.

I will tell my story in its entire length-in details…as we go along. But this is my first try on this site so I do not want to say alot-and loose it.

Stay tuned,you’ll see an amazing life come together in front of your eyes. Thanks.