THE BOYS OF SUMMER:
WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?
by Jim Sloman
They were the first full blossom of young warriors to bloom from the fertilization and "Miracle Grow" of World War II. They were the re-planted generation, "baby bloomers," still teenagers whose fathers had saved the world. In 1963, these sons were the fragrance, and in the words of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." They were the flowers and young men who would go to the graveyards everywhere. They were the roses of war. So precious, but so many that they were cheapened by the dozen.
They had not been the bright bouquets of Spring, not even the dormant tulip bulbs of winter's dark nights of the soul, They had been the scattered petals and swirling dust of summer, many summers, still yet to glow in the amber autumns of their boyhoods; yet to have their rosy cheeks turned to thorns of war, or cubs' paws to claws. They were not from the emerald green cities, nor the verdant vales and vineyards, or even the yellow brick roads of America. Their tender, luminous souls and innocent imaginations of youth would become the grist machinations of tracer trajectories, phosphorous flares, and bombs bursting in air. They arose from the hard scrabble and rock clefts on the outskirts of genteel and polished society, "Kansas" you might say, acorns yet to become in the midst of scorn, the seasoned oaks, the rough bark providing protective cover, for their country's trunks of tradition by their extinguished lives. Prairie fires, jungle flames and napalm flared in their past and future.
They had left their parents' homes not to the sound of trumpets and drum rolls, but perhaps to the bamboo shrill of a faraway fateful flute. They would never hear the taps of their bugle call. They were often white, some brown and black, impoverished by parents whose own lives had been altered by depression and war, economic strife and mixed values, race, divorce, alcohol, trauma, and death. The boys of summer were the uncherished flowers of a nation whose stems on the moral compass had lost its petals. They were young men, fighting the monsoons of life, unconscious of a .need for bearing and direction as they sought new and cherubim guarded gardens of fathers and brothers as family. Instead of the briar and weed patches of their ancestry they found the jungle and swamps of their futures, a dark and murky mire in the midst of tomorrow's dreams, Their lot had been the lost, the wayward and the wilted; their resumes, high school renegades who with no where to turn, who wouldn't know a communist from a pomegranate, nor a bitter bud from a beer; unemployed, those barely not criminal; perfect fodder and exploding flak for the politics of war. They were young lions which like in the "Wizard of Oz" would prowl the jungles of Viet Nam still looking for a heart. The rolling thunder and roar of their weapons could frighten the enemy, but their soul had lost the family hearth. Timid spirit, they were not the king of the jungle, they were kids, lambs .in lion's clothing, more inclined to eat the flower than to be one; more apt to suckle their mother's breast, than to caress one. They were not the "Boys from Brazil" nor "The Sopranos". Their heroes were Roy Rogers, Buck Rogers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. A draft was a cold air from the north. Matt Dillion was the last man they had seen from Dodge, yet they freely followed and were blown by the winds or war; Gunsmoke and guerillas hung on their misty horizons..
These very boys, ventured to become "The few, the proud, the chosen"; "A few- good men" of America's fighting elite, U.S. Marines. They were considered dirty by dozens. You wouldn't send them to anyone with less than a telegram "The Secretary of Defense regrets to inform..."
They had followed, the "Dress Blues" posters of exotic places displayed in their rural post offices and took dirt and country roads to asphalt parade and agent orange battle grounds, less gloriously called the "grinders" and "rice paddies"' where loader bodies and minds were turned and blown into tough and fragmented spirits - and the world changed forever. Oz did not send them back home. The Desert storm was too vast. Auntie Em and Uncle Henry would never see them again.
They had gone in green canvas to where the flowers grow - forever. In the breeze, I look at the shimmering stars, I hear the answer is the winsome lyrics of Connie Francis, "Where the Boys are, someone waits for me."
This story was written in the Life Story Writing class meeting on Thursdays 12:30-2:30 pm at the Encino-Tarzana Branch Library, sponsored by Reseda Community Adult School.