Scars

 Diane sent me these notes. She says "It took a quarantine to get me to the bottom of my to-do pile." And "Dave, I found some notes I took at the Eagan Church of Christ Retreat back in 2016.  Thought you would like to read them, because they are about you.  :)"

Here they are:

Mosaic Memoirs (about Dave May’s scars)

Dave has a scar on his left hand between his thumb and pointer finger.  I asked him about it in 2016 and this is what he told me.

“I was in the Marine Core Officer Training School.  It was in Quantico and I was about 22 years old.  We were doing war games.  I got in a hand-to-hand situation with a guy from the other team. And like an idiot, I was trying to take his rifle away from him and grabbed the wrong end.  He fired it.  It was a blank.”

As for the scar on his left inside wrist, he told me the following story.

“I was six or seven.  I had a glass in my hand and I fell.  I dropped the glass and Cecil got in trouble for that.  That’s what I remember about that.”

“You wanna hear about the scar on my butt?”

“I think I was younger than (pause) ten?  Joan Lyon was my best friend.  She had long red hair and we rode our bicycles around together.  There was a park south of Memphis with an elevated railroad track at the top of the hill.  We slid down the hill on our butts and when I got to the bottom of the hill I realized there was a tear in the jeans and my butt.”

Recorded by Diane May 

USMC

USMC

Quilt Part Six

Almost every time I write a resume, or a bio, I start off with the fact that I was a Marine Corps Captain with time in Viet Nam. That overshadows all the rest of my story. But I do know some former Marines, some Viet Nam vets, or both who let that fact become who they are. It has become their whole identify.

There is a bar on the East side that mid-afternoon, every afternoon, has a large pick up truck sitting outside with a Viet Nam vet sticker on the back. I want to meet the guy and probably will at some point. I am guessing that is who he is. Though I do have Viet Nam vet license plates on our van, there is a balance that needs to be maintained. If you get stuck in the past – who you were – it can keep you from moving on to who you want to become.

There is a ritual to two Viet Nam vets meeting. They are recognized by the ball caps, or less often the jackets. The one not self-labeled will identify himself. It may be in a grocery store or a restaurant, but he will make himself known to his brother in the ball cap. Then they will compare parts of the country where they were, what parts of the service they were in and the years they were there. There will be a brief reference to major battles and perhaps to the lingering effects of any injuries. If both were Marines the Marine Corps slogan “Semper Fi” will be exchanged, then as they part company each will say to the other “Welcome home.” That’s a recognition that during the Viet Nam war, service men were often not welcomed home. They were instead shouted at and ridiculed.

After they pulled me out of Viet Nam, they put me in a paper pushing job on an air base. It was part of the routine, established to ensure that all new officers got a balanced set of experiences, but I told them that if they had left me in the dirt and grease, I might have stayed in. I am glad I had that time in the Corps, but I am glad I got out when I did. Semper Fi.