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RECOLLECTIONS: Spring of '72

By John Crandell

Memorial Day of '72 and I'd made a reservation to spend that weekend way south in Orange County, at Doheny State Beach. He'd said yes a few weeks before, suggested that we hit the road and get out of town after I'd come out to him, told him that I loved him. Meanwhile I grew so frustrated, all of twenty three years of age not having had a sexual experience as an adult and sensing that a holiday with him among the waves would be intolerable. I simply decided, fuck it, forget about it.

So I didn't call or stop by and see him and he didn't call me. He went on out and bought his Hog motorbike and I bought a copy of The Advocate to search amongst the personals. And when I finally did get to Doheny State Beach I'd been asked to photograph the wedding of Miss Leslie Halterman, onetime resident of Tujunga and Surf Board Bob Wilkenson, onetime resident of Canoga Park (and what an emotional wallop that turned into) all of seven years later.

So, rather than lay on the sand and remember who died in Vietnam, I got laid my first time, south end of Lankershim Boulevard, across the freeway from Universal City — a writer of science fiction, who took me into Chris and Don's favorite bar a week later, bottom of West Channel Road, upstairs to the back room and in that crowded space the basic issue with myself began to clarify. Being in a crowd, I could no more relate to gay men than I could relate to bikers on their Hogs. And there simply is no word in our language to encompass the emotional weight of that realization.

So, at approximately the point in time that I laid naked on a bed beside the 101, he slowed his Hog on that first curve along Sunland Boulevard, slowed it on down to turn into his father's driveway. A drunk then hit him from behind and he and the bike were drug beneath the vehicle likely a hundred feet, given a speed of fifty miles per hour or so.

I didn't hear of it until election day, not until stepping forward to the registration table to vote for my very first time (McGovern) in that year's June primary. And there sat Norma Linsley and in a cool tone she asked me if I'd heard about Norbert. Paranoia broke loose. My legs started to give way. I leaned forward to brace myself on the table expecting to hear that he was dead. Right there in the auditorium of the elementary school where I'd learned to dance as a child a hundred or so yards from the house where I'd been born and raised in Sunland.

I doubt that he ever ventured to ride a motorbike again. The ambulance came down from Tujunga to carry him off across the bridge over the boulders and gravel where Jack Nicholson would soon be filmed as Jake Gittes, standing in the dry riverbed, putting two and two together to the satisfaction of Roman Polanski (Chinatown). As tough as nails, he survived. Anyone else wouldn't have. I wonder now if he is still alive.

A few weeks after Bob and Leslie were married he came to see me late one summer night in that single year than I lived a few blocks away from the Friendship Bar, directly across the channel from 333 East Rustic Road. And I sat at his feet, told him what he'd meant to me all of those earlier years on the trails, along highways, across that dusty plain at Fort Hood in Texas. The look in his eyes showed that he understood and the only reason that I didn't touch him was that I didn't want to then remember whatever degree of his negative reaction for the rest of my life. Didn't want it to end bad.

Another twenty years went by and we met for lunch in Westwood Village. I was doing good with running an office in Beverly Hills, working projects for celebrity megamillionaire estates. He had gone to seed, was jobless, weighed at least an eighth of a ton and both of us had turned grey. A Vietnamese couple sat at a nearby table there in the brick cafe on Glendon Avenue. As we ate, he couldn't help himself, suddenly and for no reason began to talk about Vietnam, about killing gooks. The sound of his voice was insidious, his intent unmistakable. I got up and walked out and that was the last I ever saw of him. It ended bad anyway.

Quite likely he had been the original, true Rambo of the American war in southeast Asia. At the enlisted club at Hood he'd drink the beer, spill his war stories and the atmosphere turned aghast. Adjoining tables emptied as I'd stare at the table top. I couldn't meet his eyes, wanted to crawl out the door. He'd refused to cut his hair and it grew down between his shoulders. He refused to wear either an o.d. T-shirt or the top of his jungle fatigues and his skin turned to umber. Always the top dog, he wouldn't listen to anyone, told the NCOs and officers above him how wrong they were, refused to follow orders and kept getting busted to E-1. Something about him kept them from tossing him into jail. Occasionally and on point, he could slash through the vegetation so fast that his squad couldn't keep up with him. Given his dark brown eyes, the company commander taunted him, said that they were so damned brown because they were full of shit - there under the triple canopy in Tay Ninh Province. That only made him laugh.

More than once there had been speculation that he'd be put up for a Silver Star. No stars ever got pinned on him. When he processed out of Company C, Second Battalion, 5th Cavalry of the fabled First Air Cavalry he was handed the usual service medals. And he tossed them into a trash can as he walked out the door, December of 1970, four months before so many veterans were to toss theirs on the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C. (John Kerry included).

He also refused to write any letters home, just because he didn't want to feel home sick. I'd written his parents from Pleiku province and they responded that they were in agony not having heard from him. I checked with MACV headquarters and let them know where he'd been assigned. As well, I wrote to his company commander to relate that he and I had been best friends back in Sunland and requested, asked that if he were to be killed, whether I could accompany the body of Norbert Erwin Scheppers home to California. Intuition served to calm me, told me that it wouldn't happen.

So after I'd gotten his address I put in an order for a quarterly subscription for him - for an avant garde publication the name of which I've long since forgotten. He'd quickly become notorious for having never received a single item - never a letter, magazine or package of cookies and the arrival of that first edition in the spring of 1970 way out in the boonies ignited something of a celebration in Company C. Everyone at loose ends came running through the jungle screaming for him, yelling for all to hear that Scheppers had FINALLY gotten something in the mail. That semi-hardbound publication from Manhattan likely caused him to scratch his head, and all of his cohorts in arms to howl with laughter.

He wouldn't learn who had had it sent to him till we met again at the end of that year back at that first curve in the boulevard, just over the hill from Sunland. One winter day not too many years ago here in Sacramento, I let loose on my boss, 24th block of Broadway, in the middle of the converted warehouse where I was then working. I'd had enough with his belligerent tone of speaking and there in front of everyone, our firm as well as the other firm with which we shared the space, proceeded to rip into him for treating people so shabbily as well as sexually harassing one of his previous employees. My ferocity gave him to shake; a few hours later he let me go early. So I walked out, drove a few blocks west to the Tower Theater to see Brokeback Mountain.

I was awestruck. Heath Ledger's performance as Ennis Del Mar was way and beyond a revelation, caused me to return home to this aged wood paneled trailer on an old sheep ranch outside of Sacramento in a resonant trance unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Rather a fusion of James Dean and Marlon Brando, his final words in an aged wood paneled trailer far out on a ranch in Wyoming suffused with his memory of Jack Twist — were simply — beyond — description.

John Crandell retired from the 9th Recon Wing at Beale Air Force Base where he worked as a project manager in charge of architectural, civil, force protection and landscape improvements. He served with the Continental Army Command as well as the Fourth Infantry and First Cavalry Divisions, circa '68 to '71.