I think it all went south when Rubin arrived from West Virginia astride a 300 CC Kawasaki Ninja. Nobody wanted to see a Jap bike on Memorial Day. “Typical Rubin,” I figured, “always marching to the beat of a different drummer.” I mean, I liked it, but I was the only one. When the other bikers began ragging on him, his response was curt to the point of rudeness: “Caution should be used when handling unexploded ordnance,” he told them.
He and I went to high school together right here in Oxburg. We were the only two studs who weren’t jocks. Rubin Barry Barber, he was President of the Young Democrats and head of the debate society. We called him “Rube.” I wrote for the school paper, the lit mag and the yearbook. Just because we were buddies doesn’t mean we always got along. Once, in 11th grade, I proudly drove up in my jalopy with two sexy, young candy stripers in tow. These girls were hot. They wanted to double-date. Far from being amused, Rubin came to his front door seething. “How dare you drag a pair of tramps to my very house?! You go to Hell!” he fumed, slamming the door in my face.
So although I admired him, for many years after that, “La Rue” and I kept our distance.
You might remember him as the bass player on the album “Standartenführer Plays the Greatest Hits of the 19whatevers.” It featured a lot of music that was bad even in the raucous, uncouth 1960’s. Slippery record company promo guys in sport coats and slicked-back hair showed up once a week at my college radio station with the following proposition: “I’ll give you the latest Tina Turner album and Elton John if you also promise to play this wax by Septic Ulcer, this potentially rockabilly by North Country Electric Alarm Clock and this new single by the Bloops.”
“Who are the Bloops again?”
“EXACTLY! Until you start plugging them, nobody knows… who… they… are!”
That was Standartenführer in a nutshell.
*** *** *** *** ***
Rube served in the Nam, came home, finished college and lit out for Israel. He emigrated, did “aliyah,” which in Hebrew means ascending. He ascended to the Jewish homeland and made a life for himself . The Israeli Defense Forces nicknamed him “rhubarb.” Still, as an American, he eventually returned Stateside. He and I only picked up the thread about 10 years ago. He lived in a cabin on a mountainside in West Virginia with his wife and kids, doing IT for Samway, a lonely, nerdy occupation peppered with Dilbert-like resentment. “Shoulda been a lawyer,” he told me. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” I learned to make bagels in their kitchen, fashioning and boiling the dough, slathering on egg yolk and baking them to a golden brown. Rube poured the access road on his property— gravel— himself. I found that impressive. West Virginia is a little like Vietnam, verdant vegetation, “40 shades of green” and the humidity to maintain it. There is no desert in West Virginia. Denuded mountain tops and meth-addled townies, but no parched earth. (A West Virginia gentleman won $170.5 million cash in the Powerball Lottery in 2002, took home his winnings and blew it all— all— on extravagant gifts to family and friends. Resulting in fast cars and drug overdoses. Life is grim in the hills and the hollers.)
Rubin and his family owned a black and white junkyard dog named Skip who barked at strangers and chased away rats. A shelter dog, he was leery of me until I forcibly pulled him onto my lap and nuzzled him with my chin. At that point, Skip decided to adopt me. We became virtually inseparable.
Rube’s daughters also showed me their rabbits.
“Yum, yum,” I said.
“UNCLE KEVIN!” they wailed. “These are pets! We don’t intend to EAT them!” They did show me the chicken coop out back in case I got hungry.
We went into town instead and ate dinner in a diner. My treat.
I always liked Rube’s wife Trudi. A native of Scranton, Pennsylvania’s Jewish enclave, a schoolteacher, she had a facility with language. When introduced to a bona fide G-man at a cocktail party, she began the conversation, “Gee, man…” She once told George W. Bush, “Gosh, Mr. President, dyslexia is nothing to be ashamed about!” This got her permanently banned from the Bush White House.
Rubin sent the president a box of pretzels.
Some say a Jew shouldn’t live in West Virginia to begin with. “My daughter Leah’s in college at Fairmont,” Rube told me, pumping gas into the Kawasaki. “I can kvel, I have a loving daughter. A Palestinian girl has shown up this year at her sorority house. ‘Anyone who supports Israel can roast in Hell,’ she’s announced to all and sundry. Leah said, ‘Whoa, there, friend. We don’t say things like that at Fairmont. That could be considered hate speech.’ So what d’ya think happened?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “A talk with the dean?”
“The regional chapter of J Street U got in touch with Leah and suggested she keep her Zionist opinions to herself!”
Rube hung the hose back up at the gas pump, screwed the cap on the gas tank and gave me a sardonic look.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed.
“How many different ways does life have to suck?” he asked. I still wish I had discussed this issue with him further. As it was, in the heat of the day, the noise of traffic, both of us ogling the blond high school lasses in their short shorts and tees, Rubin and I never followed up on his little conundrum. “Jailbait,” he observed with a hillbilly twang, regarding the girls. Mounting the bike, we left it at that.
He had come back to participate in the annual Memorial Day parade. Every year, we have a parade. From Lenox Creek, down Natalie Woods Boulevard, through the middle of Oxburg, and ending at Town Hall. Like on Presidents’ Day and the 4th of July, this celebration is a bath in red, white and blue hysteria, baby bunting mounted like a doily on each telephone pole. I remember the 1960’s, when we had floats, marching bands, baton-twirling high school cheerleaders and clanking green “deuce and a half” Army trucks from the Korean War. Over the years, the parade has devolved into a motorcycle marathon. Let’s admit it: We have become a Maryland offshoot of Rolling Thunder. The high school band still plays, a volunteer fire department truck drives by honking its horn, there’s an occasional float, a Cub Scout pack, but everywhere you look, it’s all Harleys! Well, not everywhere: The front line of the parade still consists of our local Amazons— the Chairwoman of the Town Council, the Town Secretary, the Town Treasurer, theTown Comptroller— marching for Women’s Rights behind a banner proclaiming: “Stop Raping Our Teen Dreams!”
They are followed by Little League Soccer teams marching in uniform. All the various age groups are represented. Holding aloft their own patriotic banners: “Remember the Maine!” and “JFK Died For Our Sins!” and “Khe Sanh Keeps Rolling Along!”
An upscale populace, Oxburg has no baseball team, mind you, only soccer and lacrosse.
There are two floats in this year’s parade. The first is provided by the Chinese Embassy: A huge, inscrutable Chinaman sits surrounded by a bed of Chrysanthemums. Overhead, flutter the Chinese characters for Long Life Through Harbin Industries.
What happened to my life? I wonder. Jogging, biking the bike paths, snorkeling, scuba diving? Don’t think there’s anything groovy going on. There isn’t. I do chores and take care of my elderly mother. Not an easy job. Frustrated that she cannot physically do all the things easily accomplished in her youth, she is one unhappy individual. Nothing pleases her. Nada. This makes her a neurotic stickler, looking to find fault.
Ma mère. My mom!
I dragged her to the parade in the vain hope it might cheer her up!
Jehovah’s Witnesses hand out tracts declaring these to be The End of Days. “Do you know who rules the world?” one lady asks me, quaking with passion. In an effort to calm her, I give her the accepted answer:
“Satan! The Devil Wears Prada…”
“Yes, young man, Satan rules the Earth,” she says, ignoring my literary reference. “God only rules in the Kingdom of Heaven!”
Tell me about it! I too am a Vietnam vet, a combat veteran. These things happen when you turn 18 at the wrong time. I live in the Greater Washington D.C. area, but after a lifetime spent shooting my rifle, I avoid downtown events like Rolling Thunder because of survivor guilt, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and my share of incontinence. Waiting on line at communal toilets doesn’t work for me. Home from Vietnam, I was classified as “a crazy man, going into rants, totally out of control.” Today, U.S. Army (Retired), I’m not sure anything’s changed. The Veterans Administration has now glued labels on my various conditions, but attending ceremonies and reunions awakens very bad memories. So I don’t celebrate. In large crowds, I spend all my time looking for enemy snipers.
*** *** *** *** ***
The second float was seven kinds of fun. A movie company provided us with a replica of the White House! Guaranteed authentic, right down to its 412 doors. Unfortunately, this particular replica was from the second half of the movie Olympus Has Fallen. Naturally, the banner atop the float declared “Freedom Is Not Free!”
Along the parade route, I found the sheriff entrenched behind his stun gun / hair dryer / radar pistol.
“Is there a speed limit on parades?” I asked him.
“This one’s moving at about 3 miles per hour,” he informed me proudly. “Naw, this is a new gizmo. I’m just practicing.” He showed me all the bells and whistles: Built-in camera, night vision, memory display, video playback, link to the National Police Registry via the Internet.
*** *** *** *** ***
“My loneliness puts me to the test. How long can a man live alone while others live in pairs?!” Rube demanded.
“Pears?” I asked.
“PAIRS!!! Two… together!”
This was the first indication that his wife had left him. “Look,” I told him. “There’s a lot of pressure in the country at the mo’. It’s 2014. People are fed up with the Afghan War. Obama doesn’t lead, so the public is left floundering, every man for himself. Civilians really don’t understand us. They feel there are too many traumatized veterans. Global warming puts everyone’s teeth on edge. So kick back and grab a brewski, bro! Try not to take life too seriously.”
As I said this, I brushed off the “Don’t Tread On Me” logo on his motorcycle vest, punched him on the arm and tousled his unruly brown hair. “Stay outta trouble,” I admonished playfully.
“Yeah. Alright. Happy holiday,” Rubin agreed, shaking his head. “I’m headin’ to get a beer.”
I got busy serving “Oxburg’s Own” lemonade from behind a folding table. I have my share of war wounds: The ring finger on my right hand sticks at the joint; once bent, I need to use my left hand to straighten it out again. Watching me pour lemonade, people acted like I was a nutjob. My helper was the cutest little black-haired pixie of a high school girl. Named Diana. Man, if I had been 40 years younger, I would have been in a tongue-tied stew over her. Every male who approached our table nailed her with their stares. Being the responsible adult, I kept our work relationship purely platonic. Preoccupied, I wasn’t around when Rube got in a fistfight on the other side of the parade ground. By the time I heard about it, he had been gone a couple of hours. Nobody knew where.
An enormous flatscreen TV on the lawn showed a direct feed of President Oblama‘s speech at Arlington National Cemetery. Hey, you elect a motivational speaker as your president, you get speeches. This might have become boring, but Tom Wilcox, the techie responsible for the show, kept zooming in digitally on Obama’s nose, lips and ears. A videographer, Tom then photoshopped the face of Mickey Mouse onto the president’s shoulders. He even made the lips move in an approximation of the president’s words. Everyone chuckled. The schoolkids thought Tom’s animation was OMG LOL!
Only my 92-year-old mom complained that we were disrespecting the institution of the presidency. Well, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
My mom is anti-military, a peacenik, a pacifist, but deeply patriotic. She and I are the two sides of the Feingold coin. I’m her exact opposite: My allegiance is to the military, to the men and women who serve, to the corps. But allegiance to America the country is beyond me. I lack empathy. I cannot muster that feeling of belonging, whether it be as a fan of a baseball team or as a patriot. There are some people whom I love, but I just don’t feel that way for the entity we call “America.” Who am I going to love, respect and admire? Richard Nixon? Ronald Reagan? Barack Obama?
Pul-lease!
Maybe you can. I can’t.
This Old Bomber presidency is like a Polish lightbulb. They burn out after 10 minutes of intense illumination. Very dramatic, but not particularly practical.
Oxburg was not my first gig. I had already stood in uniform at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall two days before, on May 24th. There, I read aloud the names of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead, American boys and girls, every syllable feeling like ashes in my mouth.
I was glad when Rube showed up again. “You worry me, man,” I told him. He now toted “baggage”— an M60 machine gun and several belts of ammunition in a metal ammo box. “Going to show off our equipment to the crowd?” I asked.
“Somethin’ like that,” he replied. “Of course, unlike some people, I wasn’t raised in Kenya. I feel like Gene Autry.” A weapon that size attracted an enthusiastic coterie of spectators, mostly men and little boys. I kept getting distracted, saying “Hi!” to people I knew. So I was taken aback when Rube’s voice rose and I heard him say, “This square inch of Vietnam belongs to me. Others have theirs, but this one is mine. I am worthless without it. It is worthless without me…” A take on the Marine Corps Rifleman’s Creed.
“What does that mean, daddy?” asked a little tyke.
“Preserving the memory of all who served,” said his father reassuringly. “Vietnam was a place where Americans fought to preserve freedom. Many, many years ago.”
“Did we fight the British in Vietnam?”
“What? No, no. There were Vietnamese Communists. We stopped them from exporting Communism to places like Thailand and Hawaii.”
“What’s Com-moo— , Com-moo-nism?”
“Communism is the opposite of freedom. It’s a belief that the state knows better than the people. We need to stamp it out wherever it rears its ugly head.”
*** *** *** *** ***
I was folding tables and chairs, stacking plastic crates and policing the grounds when the firing started. People came flying by me like a murder of crows. On a premonition— as metallically real as sucking on a nickel— I dropped everything and headed toward the source of the gunshots.
Although he had positioned himself under a hedge, I could see Rubin shooting his machine gun into the crowd. I edged close enough to hear what he was singing: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”
BADA, BADA, BADA roared the M60, bullets flying everywhere, death toll mounting.
“Jesus loves me, this I know…”
BADA BADA BADA!!!
The sheriff moved as fast as smokestack lightning, a blur, subduing Rubin with a shot to the chest.
This made everybody very happy.
“Good shot,” I told him, coming out of my crouch.
“With God, all things are possible,” the sheriff replied. “Matthew 19:26.”
“Bastard!” said my mom, walking up and poking Rubin’s corpse with her cane.
“Lady, don’t do that!” pleaded the sheriff.
“Mom! He was a friend of mine!” I protested.
“You should choose better friends!” she replied crabbily.
It took awhile, but eventually, I got it! According to her, this was all my fault!!!
*** *** *** *** ***
So, yes. Boom! We’ve had a tragedy in Oxburg. Why? The military has become the other 1%. Only 1% of the population now serves. Combat can scar you. God knows what Rubin experienced in the IDF. Still, we’re not renegades: The slaughter of innocents is always tragic.
I felt like I had taken one on the chin for old Notre Dame. You can break your neck doing that.
yustyoking 
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