Tag: memories

Early morning thoughts

I apologize, I don’t know where this post is really going, and it is kind of weird to come back to my blog and start with this, so you are warned now to just move on because this is a very rambling post more to get out of my head wha I am thinking then to be a cogent, informative post.

I woke up missing my dad. He wasn’t in the main part of the dream, it was about me being a kid and growing up with the bikers and vets, a lot of mishmash of my childhood, but at the end there was a knock at the door, and I remember as an adult going to the door excited that he was there (somehow I knew it was my dad). Just as I opened the door, I woke up.

Dad 1970 when met mom and running with MC first time
Dad 1998, sort of done with that life and who I picture in dreams

He passed away on 2/11/16, and I guess I have some sort of daddy issues when I say there is something that still feels torn when he left.

That being said, this morning after I woke up I felt sad, but not just about him. I found myself worried about about two dozen guys (and gals), and thinking about a group of Vietnam vets and bikers.

Only picture of dad on his way to Vietnam 1965 where he would be on PBRs in the dual 50 cal pit (aka Apocalypse Now)

Oh friendly warning, Contrary to what you see on tv/movies, they did not like a lot of photos of the group, primarily I assume FBI/police but also I think they may talk tough, they weren’t fond of who they ended up being, they didn’t see themselves like I saw them. They did take a lot of photos me me though, so you get stuck with those.

Then I realized the biggest part of the sadness is that when I pass on, in probably 20ish years, everything they shared with me will pass on from their world.

I grew up surrounded by hardened Vietnam vet bikers (1% Outlaw MC). I lived day to day as a child through all of their problems. Taking care of them when they were low, and being taken care of by them when they weren’t.

Dad, prime MC time in 1984

Nowadays I see the same groups keep their kids out and don’t seem as close. I’m sure some groups are still that close, and maybe the groups I was with were the ones that were unique.

It is why watching things like Sons of Anarchy annoy the living shit out of me.

The show feels close to what I grew up with, but if it is based on true things now, it is obviously built on current-day advisors, and it results in a weird separation I didn’t see as a kid (and my friends that were kids went through the same thing).

Growing up, the kids were part of the club. Even the meetings would have kids coming in and out, asking for things and during the most tense standoffs, several times one of the kids coming in would defuse it. It was a set point that all of members seemed to have agreed upon. The children were a centering point, maybe they shouldn’t have been, but I suspect it was closer to what old traveling bands were like then what you see in the movies.

I notice now, at least according to media, that kids are kept away, not allowed to know what the club does with a fear the kids might turn them in or somehow don’t know. Trust me, kids know what their families are doing in criminal or outlaw organizations. I absolutely hate the trope in movies that the family has no clue, they all know, and it is normalized.

Somehow watching them it feels like they (the bikers, other militant groups) have lost some of the humanity. That’s not quite the right word, but it comes close to what I’m trying to share.

Dad, mom and Clyde was on the left, Clyde was a “Tunnel Rat” in Vietnam, I think ’68. This was taken in 1989 Downtown Bellingham.

I wondered why it was so different back then (70s and 80s), and then I realized: watching Westerns about the last group of hardened gunslingers always had a kid that traveled with them, did things for them, and loved them (think Guns of the Magnificent Seven or others like it). All the cowboys expecting to die, but sharing their time with a kid. That’s how they grew up (the vets, I mean). It was part of the media, the culture, etc. It was just the last real bit of humanity they could share. That is probably one of the reasons the vets and everyone around us thought it was a normal thing.

I realize most would say they shouldn’t be including children in their lives, and maybe that is the healthier way for the kids. But I think it also contributes to the loss of that connection those groups have.

It absolutely did damage to me as a kid. I still have baggage I carry because the vets had no one else to confess things to, to be sober with, and because I was there to take care of them when their broken bits wouldn’t work right.

Now that being said, I wouldn’t recommend confessing how many you killed or how you did it, is good for the child (I still can remember counts and stories but starting to forget which story went with which vet), probably best to just share the overall regret instead. That being said, I don’t regret being there and giving them a small piece of peace at least momentarily.

Of course decades pass, and my life moved on, but sometimes I wake up worried that the vets were alone after I grew up and things changed, and no one was there to take care of them.

I also realize that for the child it probably isn’t the healthiest. I do have additional CPTSD because of being there to care for them. I have a ton of baggage that I will carry with me to the end of my days. Yes I know I have been parentified, and it isn’t good for the kids, but part of me wouldn’t change it either.

The result is, I feel sometimes like I have the same, or close enough to call it the same, baggage and PTSD that a Vietnam vet had without having fought a war. Of course all the other stuff that happened as I became an adult with the club only adds to it.

People have told me it is purely because the vets I grew up with included me in their lives, but I don’t think so. Someone who is broken by what they do brings that baggage no matter what. The family still suffers, the alcoholism is still there, the violence and police issues occur.

I could be wrong, but overall I think the families and groups that stayed fully in each other’s lives and didn’t try to carve away the bad parts ended up a little better. All the children of these families are fucked, but I think there is more possible support when a community of broken people help raise each other (there are exceptions and abuse, not saying there isn’t).

Even so, I don’t regret any of that. Even when I wake up sad with some of the memories, I also remember the love they had for me. I never felt safer than when I was with them, taking care of them. Not once did I ever feel fear about them, even when they had flashbacks and violence.

I guess mostly I am sad that people get so broken, and how unfair it is that it happened to them. And whatever the state of god or not, either way it is so unfair people have to go through that. Then all those experiences get lost, even after having gone through so much.

Last photo I have of one of my family friends who was a vet. Of course you have Mom, Dad, Derek (Brother) with his kids and Dennis who was Army Infantry (I can’t remember the unit, I met him as a teen so the relationship was a little different and wasn’t as close). Taken in August 2015, about 5 months before dad passed.
Oh and just to give you a flashback, this is Dennis, mom, dad and Dennis’s girlfriend (on and off for a decade) celebrating when all the bikers came over to my house (approximately ’88/89)

Or… maybe I woke up with anxiety due to the surgery I am getting today. Either way, this is good therapy, and I do feel better rambling.

Happy Birthday Dad, We miss you

Yesterday would have been my dad’s 75th birthday, easily within a normal lifespan. However a life of abuse, lifestyle of a biker, Agent Orange, smoking, chemical exposure and incarceration, and mental health ended that abruptly before his 68th birthday.

Here is a picture of him just turning 17 on his way to Cam Ranh Bay in 1966. Having just gotten through Great Lakes training and a few months on the USS Mars he was “volunteered” to serve in the Brown Water Navy aboard Patrol Boat River and Patrol Boat Fast craft.

I have attached a few pictures of what are called Patrol Boat River (PBRs) probably most famous because of the movie Apocalypse Now. Specifically I tried to get pictures that had the 50 caliber gun pit he served in, none of the boat pics are him sadly. He wasn’t able to keep any of his pictures when he was in country.

These are of PBRs, but my dad is not in these images, this is to just show a reference of what he did.

This originally was just a happy birthday post, but below you will find evidently I needed to talk about it, and I think this is the first time I have ever written publicly. This got long, so please don’t read more if you don’t want to hear long drawn out story that I may update and streamline or expand. I don’t know why now I need to share, but I think my therapist would tell me it is part of my processing of my own trauma, PTSD, C-PTSD, and abuse by my own past demons.

I know so many small stories of the time dad was in Vietnam, that sometimes I can dream it. Sadly though it was a horrific time for a seventeen year old who didn’t want to be there, but because he grew up abused by his uncle Rush, physically, mentally and sexually, he had a hard start. Sadly uncle Rush wasn’t the one who raised him, it as his grandfather and grandmother who had raised him and they tried hard but they were both in their 70-80s.

His grandfather died a few months after his grandmother and they both had just passed away the year when he was 16. He spun out of control, alcohol and trouble making in the small town of Oso and then in the “big” town of Everett (not really that big). His friends and him made a bad decision to break into a convenience store and steal alcohol. At some point a they got in a fight with some others and some people ended up pretty badly hurt (also something he regretted participating in his entire life).

He was brought into court, never had a problem in the past (hell until his grandparents died and he lost weight living on his own, he was known as “Fat Jack” and if he had been born thirty years later would probably be a gamer). However, the judge didn’t believe in chances, and he received no leniency from the court, the only option he got was to go to Vietnam, or serve a 5+ year prison sentence at the age of 17 at the Monroe State Prison.

I hope that judge rots in hell for that.

My dad hoped to avoid killing anyone so he joined the U.S. Navy. Maybe this would have been a good ending if he stayed in the “real navy”, but that isn’t what happened. After being on the U.S.S. Mars for a few months, they had a quota they had to fill of navy personnel to go over to the new river navy in Vietnam to assist the soldiers who had arrived there not long before.

He got “volunteered” for this duty.

He was a 17 year old white boy, the only white boy on his boat. He told me when he arrived and went on board the river craft, he was sure his crew would hate him because they were all black and angry. Turned out though that they loved him and he loved them. I cannot tell you the amount of times I would sit with him in the dark as his alcoholic run was wrapping up and he would just cry because he missed them, especially Steve, the man that died saving his life at the end and who my brother’s middle name is for.

He told me a lot of those stories as a kid (as did a lot of the other vets we grew up with), maybe I can tell their small vignettes in the future.

What I do know is that a river boat crew of black men had adopted my teenage father’s white country/farm ass and because of them my dad was able to come home.

The general gist of this post though is that he was the last survivor of his boat that spent most of its time on the northern part of the Mekong, I can’t remember the official designation, but they were called the “Skating Gators” and their symbol was Wally the Gator with dual 50 calibers machine guns in its arms while using roller-skates, or at least that is mostly what I remember as a young child when I saw the patch).

Their job was , to go rescue pilots, deliver packages (eg people) into Northern Vietnam and Cambodia, and to perform harassment and interdiction of the North Vietnamese use of the Mekong (this is before the North had really implemented the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I have only this picture and one other of when he was in country but not of him, of his friends instead (I need to find it and scan it). His personal stuff was not sent home with him as he was medically transported out.

After nine months, most of the original crew for the entire flotilla were dead or so injured they were transferred out. He was counting down his last three months to go home and get out of the military and out of trouble when he was injured gravely (even put in the pile of “dead” and was only found later when they realized he was breathing, that is another story).

When he was transported home after nine months in country he would be disharged with full honorable medical discharge after he saw the judge and the judge approved his tour in the military. He was rolled into the same judge’s courtroom with his head wrapped, both legs shot/shattered. The judge asked if he served his full year, and my dad’s public defender showed his service record and that he was about to be medically discharged due to combat injuries.

The judge did something that most people wouldn’t expect, but I have seen enough with our judicial system now that it doesn’t surprise me in retrospect. The judge believed because my dad didn’t serve a full year in Vietnam, that he hadn’t met his end of the sentence. The judge said because he didn’t finish his one year tour in Vietnam, that he was going to send him to prison anyways. My grandmother (his mother) who had gotten out of prison while he was gone had confirmed this. Everyone in the court was evidently shocked.

This situation was bad because he was still technically in the navy and because the judge changed the judgment and instead of releasing him like you would anyone who was gravely injured fighting for his country because my dad was too injured to fight, the navy discharged him as dishonorable because of the sentence he was forced to go to even though he had fought.

The injuries both mental and physical were only the start of a poor 18 year old who then had to go to prison for four years as an 18/19 year old and this would result in the life of the John J Bradley I knew, and as a result would direct my siblings and I’s lives as well.

That being said, he did everything he could for his family, and I miss him horribly and would give almost anything to just sit with him for an hour.

I guess this was an awkward way to say Happy Birthday dad, I love you and miss you.