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Show FLY R/ APRIL-MAY 2007 Viet Cong booby trap ended his tour of duty early and sent him to an army hospital and finally back home. THE CANYON COUNTRY Wa ae He’d left Louisville, a 21 year old kid, who loved acid TAKE Oi... PO BOX 327 MOAB, UTAH 84532 JIM STILES, PUBLISHER 435. 260. 1273 TT: FED JE oer rock and Falls City beer and dancing on the gutters of the old Phi Tau house. He came back home, ages older than the 18 months he’d been away. More serious, more reflective and now certainly aware of the fragility of Life, he had become, ironically and because of his service, exactly the kind of man the recruiters avoided. He’d discovered how quickly a life can be changed, damaged or snuffed out. And certainly the U.S. Army has no need for that kind of maturity. com I lost touch with Don over the years. I have no idea how his life turned out. I hope it went well for him and he was able to deal with the demons that had been thrust reel ROR net moabzephyr@yahoo.com BY CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Sleight Martin Murie Ned Mudd Barry Scholl Lisa Braddock Scott Silver Lance Christie Kathleene Parker Danny Rosen Wendell Berry Erica Walz THE ARTIST John Depuy HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS Herb Ringer (1913-1998) JleaS PILES CASUALTIES OF WAR When I was 18 years old, I was stupid in all the ways you'd expect an 18 year old to be stupid. Shallow and silly, irresponsible, and with no fear of my own mortality... in other words, a perfect candidate for America’s armed forces. In those days the war was in Vietnam and | reached draft age in the middle of my forgettable college career. But I had a student deferment and so, in the beginning at least, I gave little thought to the war raging 15,000 miles away. Bat some of my college buddies were approaching graduation and the end of their deferments. One of them was an eccentric fellow named Don McGinty. For reasons I never knew, his nickname was “The Cheeseman.” We were both, improbably, in a fraternity —he and I were known for our reclusive ways and not really “fraternity material,” but somehow we'd survived the winnowing process. He was a senior, I was a freshman—the Old Man and the Kid. ZEPHYR PILOT & AERIAL RECONAISSANCE Paul Swanstrom ZEPHYR TRANSPORTATION FLEET SPECIALISTS Gene Schafer Tom Wesson WEBMASTER Gary Henderson _ spankme2times@excite.com SUBSCRIPTIONS & TRANSCRIPTIONS Linda Vaughan & Nicole Whitney CIRCULATION JA Bryan Lance Lawrence Jose Churampi Mark Anderson Kathy Aldous THE ZEPHYR, copyright 2007 The Zephyr is published six times a year at Moab, Utah. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of its vendors, advertisers, or even at times, of its publisher. All photographs and cartoons are by the publisher, unless otherwise noted. In peace, children inter their parents. War violates the order of Nature and causes parents to inter their children. Herodotus 485 - 425 BC When I was 18 years old I was young and stupid in all the ways you'd expect an 18 year old to be... In other words, a perfect candidate for America’s armed forces We lived in the fraternity house on Third Street, a building that dated back to before the Civil War. It was a. rambling three story brick home with slate roofs and copper gutters. From the roof’s edge to the ground was. more than 45 feet. Among his many talents, Cheeseman liked to run what he called “roof patrols.” He’d swing over the creaky wooden fire escape, boost himself onto the nine inch wide gutter and make his way around the perimeter of the house. He did this on a regular basis. My fraternity brothers and I could often hear him up there, stomping upon him by a government, once again, willing to sacrifice its young. I know for sure that there are young men and women right now, almost 40 years later, being sacrificed once again, to satisfy the wrong-headed goals and even the egos of a government that never seems to look closer than the statistics, that never understands what “casualties of war” really means. For the Cheeseman, war took some of the lightness out of life. By the time he’d returned from Vietnam, “roof patrol” was a quaint memory. Now he knew what it really meant to stare Death in the eye. And he wanted no part of it. A “PEACE” POSTSCRIPT A couple years later, I found myself in imminent danger of the draft and a tour of duty in Vietnam. I didn’t want to follow in the Cheeseman’s footsteps, but I’d quit college, sacrificed my student deferment and was traveling west on a Yamaha 350, bound for the Grand Canyon and eventually, California. I figured I’d keep moving until the induction letter caught up with me. © America was, if anything, more divided and polarized than it is now. Along I-40 I’d stopped in Fort Smith, Arkansas for gas and had been given the evil eye by the filling station owner, a man who regarded anyone with hair over his ears as a Commie and a draft dodger. I paid for the gas and walked slowly to my bike, but the man’s son, a kid my _ age, I guess, ran after me. He pulled from his back pocket a stack of computer punch cards and handed me one of them. “Here,” he said, “I don’t want you to think everyone from Arkansas is a redneck.” I held the card up to the light and smiled. Thirty-five years later, I still carry it in my wallet. As for draft, I avoided it in athe worst of ways---I ran head-on into a southbound Buick, going north on my Yamaha. Sailed through the air. Smashed my ankle. Flunked my draft physical. I almost got killed, just to stay alive. about, and figured it was only a matter of time before Don made a quick trip, downward, to the front yard. We put his odds of survival at 50/50. After all, forty-five feet just isn’t enough distance to reach terminal velocity. One night, Don poked his head in my door;.I was listening to Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” for the 76th consecutive time and had assumed that he, like my neighbor Bemis, had come to throw my record or my stereo, or me out the window. But instead, he made me an offer that I could not resist. He asked if I’d like to join him for tonight's roof patrol. How could I say no? Don led the way and I sallied forth without fear. It never occurred to me I could slip and plummet to my death, even when we had to make a free parabolic sprint between two chimneys, across the slippery slate, in order to traverse the west side of the old house. Nothing to it, I thought. We spent a bit of time on the roof’s apex, enjoying the quiet spring evening, then returned to the tv room to celebrate our triumph with a couple of Falls City beers. Our brothers were impressed. We'd looked danger in the eye and laughed. We were immortal! Six weeks later, McGinty graduated and was promptly drafted into the United States Army. By September he was in Vietnam. We rarely heard from Cheeseman over the next year and a half. As before we were too young and stupid to think any harm could come his way. He was The Cheeseman. He defied Death each time he dashed across the slate roof. Finally, ahead of schedule, my pal Danny got a card from Don—he was coming home. But instead of the gala greeting we’d planned, Don slipped into town quietly, without fanfare and it was a week later that we discovered he'd rented a small apartment, not far from campus. Don was not the Cheeseman anymore. Like so many other Vietnam vets, he didn’t want to talk about his time there, wanted to simply put it behind him and move on. But it wasn’t that easy; he finally showed us his wounds, or some of them. He spoke cryptically of the dread and the fear and uncertainty that haunted him for more than a year, until shell fragments from a 2 TRAPPING in GRAND COUNTY: A Broader View I have followed the recent trapping controversy in Grand County and naturally my sympathies lie with the dogs. While there are many aspects of a rural lifestyle that Ihave, in recent years come to defend, I can find nothing in leg-hold traps that could ever be justified. To me it is still a cruel and barbaric practice that has no merit, under any circumstance. Many years ago, my own dogs stepped in leg-hold traps, and remembering those horrible cries still haunts me. I ran in the direction of the wails and found both Muckluk and Squawker in significant pain. Trying to decide which dog to free first was excruciating. But I was able to extricate them and I made sure those traps would never be used again. I’ve heard no one speak up in defense of the animals for which the traps were intended. But one aspect of the current debate has gone missing. Most of the protests have come from citizens who have exclusively objected to the pain and injury the traps have inflicted on their pets or the risk imposed on them. I’ve heard no one speak up in defense of the animals for which the traps were intended. According to Bill Bates, Sets... trappers are required from Utah DWR, “For live to check their traps every 48 hours. The most sought after species in Utah for trapping are the bobcat, coyote, muskrat and beaver.” He explained |