Asking My Dad About Vietnam

By Emily Tallman

The first time I remember asking my dad about the Vietnam war was on one of our annual summer drives to Shaver Lake. He drove a beat up old 1985 Toyota Cressida station wagon with faded wood paneling that threatened to overheat at every turn. It was just another in a string of unreliable vehicles that my dad went through over the years, bought used and dented, with balding tires. Light filtered through the trees and onto the dusty windshield as we drove. We were heading to an art show at Shaver Lake that we went to every year, where my dad would set up a booth and sell his wheel-thrown pottery.

We had left our house while it was still dark outside, after loading the boxes of pottery into the car, along with the wooden shelves and canopy tarp. We lived in the country outside of Reedley in a house surrounded by nectarine and almond orchards. My family had only recently moved from the foothills after a long search for something that was outside the city limits so my dad could fire his huge kiln, which shot large flames into the air.

As the car pulled us slowly up the hill toward Shaver the sky got lighter and the pottery rattled together dully beneath its newspaper wrappings. I was thirteen that summer, and had spent my entire childhood going with my dad to art shows and craft fairs all over California. Some were full of artists selling paintings, woodcrafts or blown glass; some were more like flea markets, jam-packed with booths of cheap plastic trinkets and junky antiques. I had grown used to the long drives, and the long hours at the booth listening to my dad explain the durability and safety of his stoneware pottery year after year, assuring old ladies or moms pushing strollers that the dishes were “oven proof, dishwasher safe, and lead free”. Sometimes my older brother or younger sister (or both) would come along, but I looked forward to going by myself because it meant time alone with my dad.

On this trip to Shaver it was just the two of us, and I was looking forward to searching for driftwood along the shore of the lake. Dad used the driftwood to fashion natural-looking wind chimes, with ceramic pieces hanging down that would tinkle together in the breeze. He’d sometimes pay me ten cents for each piece of wood I could find, and then we’d line them up and imagine what they looked like: animals, faces, hands, old men, or other images hidden in their bending shapes.

I still don’t know exactly why I brought the subject of Vietnam up on this particular drive. We had been listening to the radio, singing along to Steely Dan or The Beatles, but the reception went out once we got high into the mountains. When we finally had to turn it off he began to quiz me on the names of trees and birds in the passing scenery that he’d trained me to memorize over the years. I was looking out the window at the trees going by when it just popped into my head. I had always known he had been drafted into the army when he was younger, but had somehow also known that he didn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t like war movies, and didn’t like us to play with toy guns. He also sometimes changed the radio station if certain songs from the late sixties/early seventies came on, because they reminded him too much of his time in Vietnam. So I don’t know why I asked. I just remember thinking about it, looking out the window at the trees and trying to picture him in a jungle somewhere in a military uniform, holding a gun.

“Dad, what did you do in the army?”

The question just came out before I really thought about it.

“What do you mean? I did a lot of things. It was a long time ago.”

He kept his eyes on the road, squinting in the brightening sunlight. I thought about saying, “never mind”, but changed my mind.

“I mean . . . what was it like, to be in Vietnam?”

He was quiet for so long that I thought he might ignore my question. I played with the end of my long braid, nervous that he might be angry. Finally he sighed, and started talking.

I got drafted in 1968. No wait—it was 1969. I was broke--your grandma and grandpa didn’t have enough money to help me with college, you know—so I’d taken a semester off from Fresno City College to try to save up some money. I was actually already enrolled for the upcoming semester when I got drafted, but it didn’t matter. I just came home one day and the notice was on the kitchen table. My mom and dad knew what it was—it said “US Army” on the envelope—so they knew even before I opened it. I didn’t want to go, and they didn’t really want me to go. I even considered going to Canada, but decided against it. I tried to find out about signing up for the Navy instead, but it was too late. I ended up having to report to the Army.

I did my training in Fort Lewis, Washington. After that, they made us fill out these forms that

asked us to list our “top three choices” of where we’d like to be stationed. But it was such a joke. We

all knew they were sending us to Vietnam. So, on

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