Dumb Luck

True Story

1972

Imagine the confusion: Your mother is a Right Wing Nixon Republican and your father is a Left Wing Liberal Democrat.

Of course they were divorced. Everyone got divorced in the '70's. My folks were like a cute Ricky/Lucy couple who got married in 1950 and just grew in completely different ways. By 1967, the Summer of Love, they were divorced. Mom went on to marry one of the chief engineers on the Moon Landing of 1969. Dad. Well, Dad became a hippie.

The first clue we had of this was when he started a commune in our house.

The commune, which consisted of one other couple, and assorted children, had moved out of the house and onto the Nina ("Neen-ya"), an old racing schooner my father purchased from the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. They called themselves The "Motley Crew" and they had decided to leave Northport forever, sailing off to spread a vague message of peace and love to the savages along the intracoastal waterway. My dad told a reporter from the newspaper it was a "spiritual adventure." And for him, that's exactly what it turned out to be. Roseanne Scamardello (the inspiriation for Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna) came out in our little outboard with her camera crew. She instructed my sister Sandi and me to dive into the jellyfish-infested waters of Northport harbor. We did as we were told, coming up with welts and translucent blobs all over us.

The Nina was a magnificent schooner, built for the race to Spain in 1929, which she won. Through the years, she had been owned by millionaires and served a term as the flagship of the New York Yacht Club The boat had been immaculately maintained by the Academy before ending up in the hands of the Commune, who outfitted her sleek but hollow hull with makeshift bulkheads to create rooms and bunks. The walls didn't go all the way up, so unless you were sleeping in the captain's cabin, there was little privacy. But she was a sight to behold under full sail.

(In her next incarnation, the hapless Nina would be sold to a swinging singles club in Manhattan which used it for "get-togethers.")

I was 20 in 1972. My sister was 18. I took off with her on a hitchhiking trip that I later realized kind of echoed the plot of "On the Road." My sister fell in love with a Mexican boy we met in New Mexico. He would take us for long rides in the desert in his Lipstick-Red Roadrunner. We talked about Viet Nam, the main topic of the day. Pedro, or "Pete," had been deferred due to a an accident when he enlisted in the Navy and was decompressed too quickly after a dive. He moved me and my sister into his house almost immediately. It looked like we'd be staying in Fort Sumner, New Mexico for a while. Actually, our stay lasted longer than I expected. Finally, I headed East.

I got off in Albuquerque. I was in no rush to get home to Northport, Long Island. My draft number was coming up. I had a physical to go to. They were shoveling America's teenagers into the Vietnam war machine by the truckload. I was cannon fodder, I knew it, but I tried not to think about it.

"Tell 'em you're gay!" my father yelled at me.

"Join the Air Force," my mother told me firmly. (Grumman, my new stepfather's employer, manufactured the F-16 fighter jet.)

I chose to do nothing. I couldn't make up my mind. I actually did go tothe Air Force recruiting station, took a test, and was told that I was qualified for quite a few jobs -- "corpse" being top of the list I'm sure -- but I decided not to follow up. I began a protracted waiting game.

Pretty soon the week cane when I had to report to Fort Hamilton in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I live now. My Dad, supportive of anything I had ever done, was apoplectic. I found myself, somewhat distracted as I tried hard to deny what appeared to be the inevitable.

The commune would soon be off to distant lands. And so, it appeared would I. And we would be fighting for freedom -- they from boredom and I from Godless Communism. Don't get me wrong. I was no gung ho Marine. My English teacher had run off to Canada with my art teacher. Nobody wanted to be drafted. But I was a deer in the headlights.

So I occupied myself with chores. During my last week of freedom, I helped the Commune ready the boat for their departure date, which had been fixed for the end of August.

Our departures seemed so intertwined, and yet so diametrically opposed.

Here's how that last week went:

First Day, a rash appeared over my entire body, little red dots, something I've never experienced before or since. It stayed with me that whole week.

Second day, I tied the launch up at the stern, stepped up onto the deck and jabbed my shoulder with the boom, which left a nasty bruise.

Third day, tying my father up on a boatswain's chair as he painted the 80-foot mast, I turned and walked straight into same mast, hard. A goose egg developed immediately.

Fourth day, I moved a 75-pound boat battery onto the boat. The boat,which when I left to pick up the battery was level with the dock, was now lowered with the tide. I decided to jump and came crashing to the deck. I sustained a hematoma on the ankle. The family doctor taped me up before sending me out the door with a worried look and a pair of crutches.

Next day I had to get on the bus. I lined up with 15 or 20 other dejected, nervous-looking guys and we boarded the yellow school bus that took us to Fort Hamilton for our physicals.

I wondered if they thought I was faking the crutch thing. Anyway, I got the big rubber stamp "Rejected." Another appointment in two weeks. You're allowed to cancel once between appointments, so I did. When I showed up that second time, Iwas again rejected. Not healed yet. I cancelled my one, final, allowed time and, miraculously, by the time of my third appointment, completely healed and ready to report for duty, Nixon did away with the draft!

If anyone ever asks you what the expression "dumb luck" means, tell them this story.