The month after I finished high school, I turned eighteen and was required to register for the draft. It once was a requirement for every able-bodied male. I applied for a college deferment or else I would have been listed 1-A, eligible for the draft. Those were the days of the Vietnam War, and I knew as small as I was, there was a big chance I would be drafted and end up a tunnel rat.

I had heard horror stories about small young guys being sent to crawl into tunnels to check for Vietcong hiding inside and I knew I didn’t want to do that. Tunnel rats didn’t live long.

Years later when I was at the paper mill a coworker told me about his experience as a tunnel rat. One day his CO sent him and a German Shepard down a hole to check out the situation.

There was barely enough room to squeeze down the hole for either of them. With the dog in the lead, they had crawled in about fifty feet when he realized the tunnel was ending in a cavern full of enemy soldiers. The dog stuck his head in first and sensed danger right away. He twisted around and somehow managed to crawl over him, making a beeline out of the tunnel.

He said he still doesn’t know how he survived. He tossed a grenade in and started fishtailing backwards as fast as he could. He was nearly back at the entrance of the hole when the explosion ejected him the rest of the way out and up into the air.

After that day he said he ate everything in sight. “I never wanted to be small enough to fit in a hole again.”

When I first encountered him at the mill he was as round as he was tall.

I held on to that deferment until the spinster that oversaw our local draft board took it away. Apparently, she became irritated when my brother who was going into the ministry applied for Conscientious Objector status. Both of our deferments were yanked at the same time.

Shortly thereafter the lottery was instated, and I drew a high number. I know she probably hated it.

It was also about that time the voting age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. My polling place was the old one room school building my father had attended when he was a child. My grandmother had also taught school there in 1914, the year she married my grandfather in the middle of Main Street.

We cast our ballots on little paper cards we marked with a pencil. Pieces of cardboard plugged the empty places in the windows where glass was missing, and wasps were always flying around eager to vote like everyone else. They were worse in cooler months when someone fired up the old coal stove in the center of the room.

When I was younger, two blocks of Main Street were closed from Church Street to Columbus Avenue on election night. The courthouse was almost halfway between the two streets. They also closed off a block of North and South Court Streets.

There was one huge election night party held. Folks from all over the county came into town and set up their lawn chairs near the courthouse to hear results as each precinct brought their ballot boxes into town and the election officials tallied them up.

A band would be playing on North Court Street for the younger crowd. Hotdog and cotton candy vendors pedaled their goods up and down Main, while the older crowd set their lawn chairs up in the street and caught up on the latest gossip.

There was one poor soul that ran for sheriff every election and he never won. One year my father saw him up on Main Street and he was carrying a small banty chicken under one arm. Daddy asked him what he was doing with the little chicken, to which he replied, “I’m gonna have a party and invite all my friends.”

Daddy remarked, “What’re you going to do with all the leftovers?”

(To be continued)

Me with a tie almost as large as my neck.	The day we received our senior rings. My buddy Dan Fox.
The old Calvary one-room schoolhouse.	Look Closely. You will find that I was not among the smart ones!

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Rick Algood
September 17, 2021