[The Insignia Pin is an original allegorical fable intended for our times that I’m offering to you in weekly-serial form.
The Insignia Pin is an epistolary novel - composed as though the characters themselves are writing it.
This is Part Four. Please read Part One, Two and Three to follow this weekly serial post… and thank you for sharing with others.
Please note: The Insignia Pin is rated PG-13 for coarse language, drugs, war violence, and teen sexuality.]
Caff, 1970
Anyway, there Jarv and me were sitting at Springer Park Concession Stand with a bag of burgers I bought, and I’m royally pissed about him bringing all this up about sex education and his target shooting while trying to argue with me about what Davis Golden said about taking acid messing with your sperm. Just bad memories is what that all was.
Jarv is saying if your sperm shoots out fine, then nothing is wrong cause that's all a guy has to do when making babies.
That’s what he actually thinks.
I basically stopped talking to him and just ate my burger and wouldn’t look at him.
“‘Kay, puss-whip,” he finally says. “Meow. Getchall yerbowlacream.”
“I’m no pussy, Jarv.” This is what I’m saying about peer pressure. And he knows it’s true, I’m no pussy.
God, it's almost midnight. I’m going to sleep . . .
Well, I can’t sleep cause I'm irritable from remembering all this.
The truth is Jarv can’t take no for an answer. He just told me if I’m truly not a pussy to meet up at Murph Hartkin’s house next day.
I told him, “No way. That guy’s a racist pig trying to be a hard ass.”
Murph Hartkins wore an actual Nazi soldier helmet to school that his dad got as a war souvenir, and he’s also got a genuine Hitler Youth dagger.
I mean, Murph Hartkins is only fourteen!
Dad, me, and Arnie sometimes watch "Victory at Sea” together. Everybody knows World War Two was a righteous war cause we were fighting Nazis. The SS and Gestapo guys killed tons of people and tortured them for any reason and tried to take over the world.
Dad says this Vietnam war isn’t anything like that. We were watching CBS Evening News when Walter Conkrite said Standard Oil found piles of oil under the South China Sea. And that's what this is all about Dad said. He said the real reason we’re bombing and shooting all these Asian people is cause we got to keep our cars running.
I’m totally opposed to the WAR IN VIETNAM sponsored by the military-industrial complex!!!
Real reason I don’t like Murph Hartkins is cause he comes right out and calls black people "nxxxxxx." I told him that’s ugly racist bullshit.
Mom got us an "I Have a Dream" bumper sticker for our station wagon from Northminster Prespertarian to support those Southern Christian leaders. Our entire family sat down to listen to Martin Luther King speak on Walter Conkrite. But we had to take that bumper sticker off cause somebody spit on our windshield, and Dad’s afraid our car might get all the windows busted out.
My point is my whole family is against racists which is why I don’t like Murph Hartkins.
But I also got harldly any friends, and I’m not going to let anybody in this world call me a pussy. So there I am and Jarv’s practically begging me to sleep over and says he’ll keep Murph all mellow.
And I don’t want to go at all but Murph’s parents are in Florida, so we can do whatever we want.
And that's the story of how I gave in to peer pressure.
Here’s what went down. I got loaded up with my pillowcase last Friday night, and told Mom, “Back tomorrow. Going to Murph’s for an overnight.”
“Okay then,” she says all slurry. "Have fun!" Dad’s not even home yet.
I got on my full-size black Schwinn's with high handlebars and a banana seat I put on there myself. I want to get a Sting Ray five-speed with the shifter on the center bar. I know kids who got both a Sting Ray AND a Daisy Winchester bb-gun.
Dad says, “If you want those things earn the money yourself.”
But both paper routes are taken and you gotta be fifteen to get a job as a dry-off man at Jax Car Wash. And I hate raking leaves so I’ll never get a real job is what I think.
It’s really flat all around here and I can pedal twenty miles an hour. These big elms got their buds going already even though its all still cold outside. I want to make it to Murph's before it starts raining but of course that’s not gonna happen.
So I’m standing at his front door in the pouring down rain until "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf finishes.
Do you have any idea how long that song is? My fist got sore from knocking.
Future Dude, I go inside and you shoulda seen how these guys are all decked out. Jarv got on Neil’s black leather and winklepickers way too big for his feet. Murph’s got his own leather and shoes cause he’s got one of the paper routes.
To me, they both look so stupid. Here they keep pulling out silver aluminum combs and slicking their hair back to look cool, and they both got pimples and hardly any hair on their faces.
One thing I want to make clear - I am no greaser.
I’m finally allowed to grow my hair below my ears, but I would never, ever put greasy shit on it.
Strawberry acid turns out to be this itty bitty pink pill. Jarv set that little hit in my palm and told me they’d already dropped.
For a second I truly wondered whether I should but then it was already down the hatch so too late right?
About twenty minutes go by and I get this big zoom through my whole body.
What a rush!
“Yep,” Jarv says, “Yeroff.”
I wave my hands and see bunches of trails. It was cool!
Murph puts on Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix that he got from his brother’s room. His brother Ken is already over in Vietnam and Murph says Ken doesn’t give a shit if we listen to his records.
So I ask him “How come you like Hendrix, Murph? He’s a black man.”
“No, he’s not,” says Murph.
“You’re full of shit,” I say.
“He ain’t black.”
“Is so.”
“No way. He’s an Indian.”
“Maybe a bit. Not just. He’s mostly black.’
And this goes on and on for a while.
We got down on our backs on his parents’ new super-thick white shag carpet in the downstairs den. "3rd Stone from the Sun" and then "Bold as Love” are playing.
When the albums all done Murph shows us his mom's Lowrey organ with bass pedals and a rhythm maker.
The three of us played with that thing the whole night. I have to admit it wasn’t so bad.
I wish I could get that book advertised in Whole Earth Catalog called "The Hallucinogens" written by a real doctor.
He said people taking acid aren’t ever afraid not even of death. He didn’t say anything about birth defects or stuff like that.
I wonder if my parents even know what’s written in this book they gave me.
It’d be cool to never be afraid to die.
I don’t believe Davis Golden made that roosters and hens story up. It's just hes no doctor and they’re the ones who know all about drugs and their dangers.
Somebody probably lied to him.
Okay, now I can get to sleep cause I finished this peer pressure story.
Frank, 1969
Sometime in January of 1916, Henry read aloud from the newspaper that the U.S. Army was going to double its size. Then he paused to look right at me. I was not yet sixteen years old. Mother noticed, and she took on a dark expression. I felt amused to see her irritated, which I suppose isn't too nice, but you have to remember I’d always known her as this humble, fearful woman.
All at once, she moved her hands with palms up over the table like she was going to pray. This caught everybody’s attention, of course, and she began speaking with her eyes closed and her voice ever so solemn.
She said that back in Chillicothe, Pastor Edmonds described this new “war preparation theme” in the “truest light of Divine guidance and prophecy” as Devil's work and “of sole benefit to gold hoarders like J.P. Morgan and the tycoons at Bethlehem Steel and Dupont.”
Dupont was making all the gunpowder back then, and right up to that moment, the U.S. government had been building all its own military ships and weapons. Mother said evil men and corporations were ready to profit off this new Army business they’d created, and that’s what this was all about.
Given her usual good manners, I was impressed to hear her actually raising her voice at what Henry had read aloud.
“God Himself expects any nation worthy of His support to greatly resent industrialists profiting off young people murdering their fellow human beings.”
I’ll never forget Mother speaking in such tones. It seemed as though the evangelical fire inside her had suddenly blazed upwards.
“Gold and power are the Devil’s work and incite the worst of sins!” She yelled at Henry, who seemed to even push his chair back a little. She seemed near crazed with her thoughts on this matter.
“The Good Lord doesn’t allow any exceptions to His commandments. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, to kill another human being!”
Then she patted her napkin to her trembling lips and muttered more to herself before speaking again.
“War never can bring peace,” she said, a little calmer, “any more than murder can bring justice. . . It is the greatest of human sins. I’m very sorry for raising my voice, Henry. It’s just that I will not, I won’t, have my son going off to fight in war!”
I knew Henry had abiding respect for her, and I thought of him as a religious and moral man himself. I was at an age where an argument between these close family members was fascinating to me.
For a few minutes, all Henry did was stroke his short beard. After a time, he tugged his glasses off and began cleaning them as though something was getting in the way of him seeing clearly. Then he perched them back to his nose, looked at me, then at Mother, and then to Pearl.
He said something like, “Well, meaning no disrespect, Mother McCaffrey, to the achievements of the female mind, but I don’t believe women can fully comprehend the motives of evil men. War may be immoral, but murder is much more so. You must know the sinking of Lusitania was just such an act of sinful cowardice and evil. You may not have considered this since it occurred around the time you two moved in with us when so much was going wrong in all our lives.”
Again, I’m going from memory.
“I differ very much with you there, Henry,” Mother shot back fast as lightening. “Women have since aforetime witnessed evil men in all their worst devices. What of Jephte’s murder of his only daughter or Rachel weeping for her children in Ramah or the daughter of Achab having to marry Joram who slew all his brothers?”
Henry thought about all she said for a few minutes. She seemed to have him there, I decided. Then he spoke again.
“Mother, I believe any Christian who fully understands the Bible ought to oppose the Devil’s work in this world, even through violence if necessary. Speaking of Ramah, it was the Babylonians who brought Rachel’s tears, just as the Germans bring tears to our merchant sailors’ wives and mothers right now. If President Wilson is going to stand for the killing of our own people, he’s nothing but a weak sister and not a real man. Why, we need only look at David’s plea in the thirty-fifth Psalm to see the Lord’s promise to the righteous.”
I looked that one up then and many times since then over my lifetime.
“Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help.”
Well, Henry’s debate with Mother that night completely silenced her. I think she’d always prided herself on her understanding of scripture, and he’d somehow one-upped her. I do think it was hard on her to even speak up in the way she had done. It was all quite new to her.
Henry’d also managed to draw a line between us living with them, national disaster, Christian duty, and the expansion of the United States Army. My own fate landed slap dab in the middle of it all, and I'm pretty sure this is what he had in mind. Pearl might have brought the tension down a notch with only a word or two, but I’m sure she felt torn.
The subject matter never was taken "off the table" so to say. Only a few nights after this one, Henry read aloud again from the newspaper as to how a private first-class in this “new Army” would be “guaranteed thirty dollars a month.”
I was very amazed by this amount of money, especially being as cash poor as we were at the moment. Thirty dollars a month could have fed us all. This was a dollar a day, an amazing amount to me.
“And this is what a soul is worth?” Mother answered. By then, she seemed a bit of a sourpuss. Pearl jumped up to clear the table, and her motion seemed a message in itself.
Not to be hogtied, Henry folded his newspaper into quarters and slid it over to me with his finger pointing. Mother shook her head, forbidding me to read what he was pointing at and right there before my eyes. I felt caught right there between the two of them. Now, feeling my own man, I didn’t appreciate Mother dogging me like some little kid, so I went ahead and read the recruiting advertisement.
The next day I walked from LaHarpe to the Iola Post Office to watch the Army troops muster. I came back to the store wanting to be a soldier more than anything. I told Mother I’d spoken to the sergeant, and he’d called me a “hearty young man.” He told me he’d accept her signed consent if I wanted to join while still underage.
Of course, she flat out refused. I pleaded with her at supper that I’d only pull twenty dollars a month working a threshing crew from July until October if harvest even went that late in the year. On the other hand, Army “work” was year-round. Field workers got charged back room and board, but the Army clothed, fed, and housed you.
“And for how long are we to be needful of Henry and Pearl’s charity?” I finally demanded of her. “Mother, I'm only asking to join up with a cause of Heaven against Hell.”
“Well said,” declared Henry. “That’s a strong-hearted Christian man speaking, isn’t it, Pearl?”
“You’d surely make a good soldier, Caff,” Pearl chimed in, softly.
At Pearl’s whisper, Mother glared at her with tears in her eyes. I think Pearl had been dealing with complaints from Henry for a while and decided it was time for her to let us know that I was outgrowing their financial support. She could make a good case with Henry for caring for our careworn Mother in those dire times, but I was another matter. I was young and strong and should be able to find work. Why not the Army when there was nothing else?
We’d been with them for about six months. After Pearl spoke her mind in such a quiet way, Henry began reading a news story aloud every time a ship with American merchant seaman or passengers got attacked or sunk. He and I’d speak with great agitation about our mutual desire to kill the Godless demons, the Huns. I’d glance at Mother rebelliously, and she’d then look near physically ill, excuse herself, and go to bed early. We were wearing her down. I suppose I was also pushing her away. In truth, I suspect I only wanted to get out of that tiny store and grow up.
Pretty soon, even William Jennings Bryan, her big hero, came out for the U.S. going after the Kaiser. President Wilson called on Congress for a declaration of war on Friday, April 2nd, 1917. This date is forever etched in my mind because on the following Saturday of April 7th, 1917, your Grandma Mary finally signed my enlistment papers.
Even now, I marvel at the moment - how she finally surrendered to her son's wishes. She signed those papers and then ran into her little closet of a room upstairs and closed the door. I still hear her sobs. Despite her deepest beliefs, Mother permitted me to enlist in the U.S. Army at a time when we were getting ready to enter the Great War.
I was but sixteen years old when I became a soldier.
