Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
where. It was time to decide, because a letter would soon arrive, opening with
Greetings
. . .
That's how the draft letter began.
Back in '69 at Marcia and Betty's a month or so prior to New Year's Eve was another night
of nights. We gathered round the tube without the crazy snuggle Kenny Visser would feel up
next to the fishbowl. On that night in late autumn we watched the first draft lottery broadcast
on TV. The Selective Service System attempted to make the process formal and transparent,
to infuse the process with random chance, so the draftees could feel lucky or unlucky rather
than simply oppressed. Three old men in suits and a woman with pearls and a hat hosted the
ceremony. They're still viewable on-line, and the grim aspect of the little exercise is still laugh-
able and tragic.
A nation preoccupied with war got nightly broadcasts with battle scenes, death tolls, exot-
ic names, explosions and continuing bloodlust grist for the media mill. The nation divided
further, as it had for the Civil War. Families and friends suffered rifts over Vietnam. People
fought over the rightness and wrongness of fighting that war. So the first lottery was neither
joyful nor celebratory. Yet it provided relief as intended. Those with numbers within the pro-
jected quota cutoff number would be drafted. Those with higher numbers would be spared.
The lottery freed half of the military-age males in the country to proceed with their lives, bar-
ring unforeseen developments. Freeing up half the vulnerable population served to ease pres-
sure on the Federal government, not nearly as much as the all-volunteer army would do. But
the all-volunteer army would take a while longer to figure out.
A host plucked ping-pong balls from another fishbowl. Each ball showed a number that
corresponded to a day of the year. Each day was then recorded in the order its ping-pong ball
was drawn, to determine the order of conscription to the United States military draft—the
first stop on the journey to the jungle war.
he third date called was Kenny Visser's. He smiled, stood and left, as if to pack his bags
for the trip.
I remember Kenny V as a stoned and happy guy, a smart guy in silver- and purple-striped
bell-bottoms and ruffled shirts. He wore his long blond locks in a pageboy and never said no
to a reefer, and confided once as we drove from mid-Missouri to Denver in a Volkswagen Bus
that sundown was a tough time for him. He didn't know why, but it made him anxious and de-
pressed, even though he knew he'd feel much better by nightfall. Even that strange confession
came with a smile. Kenny was the complete hippy and one of the first guys I knew to cross
over quick and clean—over the border to a new life in another country, that is, and cross over
from reefer, psychedelics and coed leg to real life with consequences.
Kenny had another two years of student deferment before his lottery number would take
effect, but he left the country soon after his birthday was drawn from the fishbowl, gave up the
U.S.A. for Montreal forever or until Jerry Ford issued amnesty. I knew he was headed out and
asked him why the rush, when he had another two years of deferment. He said the student de-
