Happy Birthday, Marines

Today is 10Nov08. The Marine Corps birthday. Semper Fidelis. Thus the reason for the military format of the date.

On 08Oct62, I joined the Marine Corps. 46 years ago. I thought there was going to be a fight in Cuba and I wanted to get in on the action. I was young and stupid. Inside my body lives the same young man that joined the Marines so many years ago. A bit wiser now, I would hope. I look in the mirror in the morning and the face that looks back at me is far different than the one I looked at that first morning of Marine Corps boot camp, in San Diego, California. The eyes I see wear glasses, and the beard on the face I see has greyed, and the body I see is fatter - definitely fatter. I was a skinny young kid and I was scared to death. I had arrived full of bravado and had the shit scared out of me the very first day by a badass drill sergeant that didn't like ANYbody. I got over it.

On 01Jul66 I was home. Discharged from active duty and not even 21 yet. I had shot at people and had people shoot at me, but when I got home, I couldn't drink and I couldn't vote. So I joined a theater group. In the spring of 1967 I went on the road with a puppet show that went to Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, Columbus Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri and Chicago. There are people who read my blog from every one of the stops we made on that tour. I wonder how many of you know someone who saw the Pinocchio Puppet Show in the spring of 1967. I was Wilbur the Talking Tree, in the enchanted forest scene. I was also the mouth of the whale that swallowed Pinocchio and the jellyfish that floated by. That's the thing about being in a puppet show - you can be anything. Anything at all. It's all imagination, after all.

I remember Vancouver, as a small and quiet place. Pretty. I think it's changed some, over the years. And in St. Louis, we played the American Theater. I'm pretty sure that it was the largest house we played. We had a 'life sized' puppet show, and we could play larger venues because of the size of the cast. Pinocchio was 3 ft. tall. Big, for a puppet, and heavy. Made of wood - and had to be in order to stand up to the punishment of three shows a day and four on Sunday. Two matinees on Sunday.

I remember a girl I met on the tour - in St. Louis. Her name was Marsha, and she was a pretty young blonde with a little girl. A single mom. In 1967 in the midwest, it was still hard to be a single mom - back then they were called 'unwed mothers', and there was a certain stigma attached to the appellation. Her dad owned a trucking company and she wanted me to leave the show and work for her dad. We were attracted to each other. I think she saw a marriage in the offing. Somehow, I never got back to St. Louis. I wonder whatever happened to her. She has popped into my mind from time to time, over the years. Something in the back of my mind keeps kicking me and saying, "You should have gone back." But then, by that time in my life I knew one thing that I know to be true - you can't save everybody. I hope she didn't wait.

One's life becomes full of accumulated regrets. Things we wish we'd done differently. Yet, when you stop and think about it, if you're happy where you are, now, why would you want to change anything that got you to where you are? No, things happen for a reason. We don't always see the reason right away. You just have to do the best you can, make good decisions along the way and know that regrets are going to come. They're part of the whole thing. They make what you have seem that much better.

Beany is still missing. Say a prayer.

Peace.