The Fourth of July

The Fourth of July

July 4, 1971 promised to be my favorite July 4th ever! Three friends and I decided to leave New England and visit a family friend who had settled in rural Ontario, Canada. I looked forward to the visit, as it would not only be an adventure with friends, but also would take me outside of the United States during a so-called patriotic holiday. Expressions of national chauvinism during war have never enthralled me, and the U.S. has been at war for most of my life. By the time our group crossed over the border in upstate New York, I had long since become a resister to the military. I still had the option to return to either a National Guard or Reserve unit at the time of this summer trip, but the murderous viciousness of the Vietnam War, and its expansion into Laos and Cambodia, had set me on a collision course with the government of the U.S.

Just before we left the U.S., while still in upstate New York, my friends and I had a disquieting experience when we stopped at a small restaurant for dinner in a little, out of the way place just off of the Thruway. Both my friend Joe and I had long hair, and as we sat in a booth in the back of the restaurant with the women who had accompanied us, we were the targets of snarling derogatory remarks about our appearance by a few people who sat at the counter. I was mildly surprised by the behavior of these folks, as I thought that that kind of treatment of so-called “outsiders” was something reserved solely for the Deep South.

Driving into Renfrew, Ontario was nothing short of exhilarating. Don had settled there after traveling the world trying to find a haven outside of the U.S. Trips to other parts of the world had proven disappointing to him, and as I drove up the driveway to his partially completed home site he waved along with a crew of friends who had completed only the deck of the first floor of the home. Only the kitchen area provided any protection from the weather with its temporary roof.

Sleeping arrangements on the night of the 4th proved to quickly deteriorate, as the bug population rose exponentially while the sun set over a distant low mountain range. After a short time hopelessly swatting legions of biting insects, my friends and I sought refuge in an empty van that one of Don’s friends owned. It was in the middle of the night, as I would later learn, that my friend Joe assaulted the woman with whom I had traveled with when she got up during the night to use the outhouse. That knowledge would shake my naïve belief that leftists were any more reliable as friends than anyone else, regardless of personal politics! Narcissism is as infectious to leftists as it is to those on the right and to people with no politics at all. The twin of Narcissism, conformity, results in what Herbert Marcuse called the One-Dimensional Man [sic] (1964).

On July 5th, Don introduced me to a real estate agent who took us on a tour of local available home sites. For between five and six thousand dollars I would be able to buy a piece of land in the area and build a small A-frame on it. Since I had developed a serious relationship with the woman I was with, we carefully considered the option of returning to the area later in the summer and striking out on our own and thereby also avoiding any future entanglements with the military. The real estate agent had been a soldier in the German army during World War II and questioned me in his still distinct native accent about my reasons for considering immigrating to Canada. When I countered with a question about what it was like for him to be faced with the decision to fight as part of Hitler’s war machine, he said that he had “no choice.” I never traveled back to Ontario and Don left the area to return to the U.S. in the early 1980s.

July 4th, 2009. I stand in an antiwar vigil with two friends, Mickey and Bill, on the busy corner of a small town in western Massachusetts. Mickey has been coming out every Saturday since before the war began in Iraq to stand in witness against that war. I began joining him and Bill three years ago. Sometimes others join us, and the group of protesters “swells” to around five people. Now we protest more than one war. The vast majority who pass us by on foot and in cars are sympathetic to our antiwar message. A small number shout or display their middle fingers. How much has really changed from the Vietnam era to the present day? The U.S. is still involved in multiple wars, always with horrific effects on civilians, and the government still spies on its citizens. How strange this all seems to me, only a few miles distant from the Mass Pike where I drove west so many years ago on a quest to learn just what it would be like on July 4th in a much different and faraway place.

This July 4th ended at a popular cultural venue in the Berkshires in Massachusetts where I handed out programs to patrons as they entered the gates of this bucolic setting. I’m caught off guard as a handful of people out of the thousands who pass by wish me a happy Fourth. I return their greeting not knowing what else to say.

Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. His book Notes of a Military Resister is available at his website howielisnoff.com where he can also be contacted.