POP
UPs
by Ken DeHaas
2/1 H&S 70-71
Remember the pop-up
flares? Daytime in a can. By simply
slamming the canister bottom with the palm of
your hand that oppressive,
scary darkness was chased away, if only for a fleeting moment.
Huge difference between
nighttime in the
images
of security, love, and peaceful dreams.
As a kid growing up in small-town
brothers slept snugly
sound with the knowledge that our mom and dad were sleeping with one eye open
in
their bedroom down the
hall. In this alien land sunset had way
different connotations. The danger became
greatly enhanced, the
hatred more tangible. Our shut-eye was a
nightmarish wakefulness.
A lot of our twilight time
was spent homesteading along various jungle trails in vegetation gone
wild.
We were waiting and hoping
for Charles to come ditty bopping our way.
Better known to the brethren as
ambushes, here were some
of the unspoken rules. Better have your
dog tags encased in silencers, don’t
talk, don’t fidget, don’t
smoke, don’t even breathe. Don’t you
dare nod off. But if you do succumb to
the
sandman, for all our sakes
we beseech you not to snore.
Also pop-ups seem to kind
of depict the way my memories of the
I didn’t even care to
remember till a few years ago. I was so
very young back then. But now, thirty
plus years
and counting, it has
become paramount to remember those yesterdays and to reunite with my long lost
brothers. I recall many faces and lots of moments. A
lot of names escape me.
But the bottom line is “We
were there. We are one. We are brothers”.
A lot of us were fond of
saying “Don’t mean nothin”. But in
retrospect I feel most of us would now
say…
“IT MEANS BEAUCOUP”.