Chapter Sixteen- SMA: Gettin' High

"Oh yeah, drugs. You gotta have drugs." -Homer Simpson


Vices

I was sent to SMA primarily because I was a total screwup in class. Once I got into the system of smaller classes and no way out of study that problem was taken care of. My folks were also worried about the evil influence of drugs in public high school, and they saw military school as a way to escape the clutches of the Pusher. (Or the Dealer) Oh my, how wrong that was. To wit:

Nicotine: The school had a policy that a cadet could only smoke cigarettes if he had written permission from his parents. This edict was universally ignored. Many, perhaps nearly half of the Corps, smoked tobacco in some way. Cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars and pipes. Filtered, non-filtered (Lucky Strikes were cool) and hand-rolled, we smoked 'em all. If one looked closely at the Yearbook photos there would be the soda can ashtray in the background or the cigarette casually dangling from a hand. We were young and strong. We didn't need to worry about no cancer.

Alcohol: Even if you didn't smoke, chances were that by the time you finished your first year at SMA, (unless it was in the Junior School), you had had a drink or two. Or several. The drinking age for beer and wine in Virginia was 18 at that time, but woe be to the cadet who tried to legally purchase it at the wrong store. Many townies would be more than willing to call the school and report a young man in uniform trying to get liquored up. When my buddies and I wanted to guzzle some brew we would hang out at a grocery store and look for a guy who looked "cool" and approach him to score the suds. Still risky, but there was no such thing as liability back then so most times we did OK. Of course, whatever you bought you had to finish that night. No coolers or fridges for the lower class guys like us to store the leftovers. Which meant we always drank too much. It's a blessing that we didn't have to pass a sobriety test to get back into the barracks after Saturday night leave.

Pot: There. I said it. I had already tried weed a few times before I got to SMA but I didn't become a real smoker until our little group of dope fiends got together. Pete, Jim, Tom, Andy, Ken, Boots and I enjoyed the occasional sojourn to Happy Land via marijuana, the assassin of youth. The photo back in Chapter Ten was taken while we were stoned. The one to the left here
was taken out near a local party spot we called the Trippin' Tree. Yes, that's Andy bogarting that joint, while Coop and Jim ponder the mysteries of the universe. I am seeking my lowest point of potential energy and examining the local bug life. Our visits to the Trippin' Tree were filled with mirth and good fellowship. We always came back from those adventures feeling renewed, like we could go back into the cauldron of Mickey Mouse military maneuvers and get through it by knowing its absurdity. We played games with each other's heads. I was known as something of a "freak out" artist, in that I could play some part or get people thinking in bizarre ways. When we got back from Christmas in '74, Pete was in his room, kind of freaking out on something he'd taken, and his only communication was "Keep Newbegin out of here!" What did I say?

I got high one day before going to Third Mess. I could usually maintain my self control pretty well, but I had the bad fortune of sitting too close to Andy, who had caught the little buzz with me. He sat across from me, his almost skeletal face twisting into weird positions as he tried to get me to crack. Then he started talking:

"OhmyGodIcan'tbelievehowhighIammangottakeepittogetherthatshitwasreallygood......"

I couldn't take it. I tried looking away and the first thing I saw was one of the guys from the basketball team, who was about 6'4", delivering a kick in the pants to a kid who couldn't have been more than 4' tall. That was it. I got up and left the Mess Hall as quickly as I could. I walked back to my room, tears of laughter running down my face. Dinner that night was a cold box of Sugar Pops.

Pot was pretty easily gotten, if you could scrape up the dough. Ounces were $20, though by today's standards it was pretty tame stuff. We would usually pool allowances and pick up an ounce from one of two sources. First was the hippie guy down at Gypsy Hill Park who loved seeing us coming. We were steady customers who never ripped him off. The other way was to buy from one of the cadet entrepreneurs who could afford to buy in quantity and who would make a small profit in splitting it down to servings as small as a single joint. Many cadets got high. My group was not a bunch of outcasts by any means. Other guys in positions of much higher authority than a squad leader and First Sergeant smoked as regularly as we did.

Hiding dope was a real problem. If it was found, you were gone. Just like that. Putting it in the mattress was one option, but risky. That was the first place somebody would look if they were searching for it. I would sometimes put mine in my drill boot, stuffing a dress sock behind it to secure it. The best hiding spot turned out to be under our floors. Another cadet showed me how. You would find a square of lino under your press, then use a knife to work on the edges of it, stripping all that old wax out. Once you got down to the wood underneath you still had to carefully pry the piece up without cracking it. That accomplished, a few swift cracks at the wood with your rifle butt would break a nice hole in the floor. Just to be safe, I used a strip of duct tape (the handyman's secret weapon) to secure the baggy to the underside. Some guys just dropped it in, which was OK, but every now and then the stuff would get stolen. No, not by other cadets. Rats. We had those little buggers all through the walls. You could hear them scuttling around at night, and when they found some stash it was party time!


Other Illicit Substances: I know that drugs like cocaine and LSD got into school, but I was never inclined to try either one. I was offered coke just once, but I was an avowed pothead and didn't really think I needed anything to "pep me up". And whether I really believed the anti-drug messages or not, I didn't want to use any psychoactive drug that would intensify the weird reality I was already living.

Sex: "Sex good", that's what Tarzan might say. Even though I dated a couple of girls while I was at school, I never got anywhere near Paradise. Not even the outskirts. The suburbs were in sight, but I was out of town. Other fellows were much "luckier" than I, including my next door neighbor, Eddie Elliott. He had a girlfriend downtown who was a waitress, and he told me that he may have knocked her up. This was toward the end of the year, and I never found out how that worked out. Girls were always getting sneaked into the barracks. It was a lot easier for them to slip into our facility than it was for any cadet to penetrate the defenses around Stuart Hall, though it wouldn't surprise me to hear that it had happened. That took cojones. For most of us, sex was dirty magazines, memories of hard "R" rated movies and a date with "Rosie". Ridin' the range alone tonight.

Rock n Roll: I've already talked about the eclectic mix in our little band, but music was omnipresent in the barracks. At any open time during the day music was streaming out of rooms all over the Quad, mixing in a cacophony of sound. One day we were treated to a rendition of Michael Murphy's song Wildfire by Warren Hutton of the Battalion Staff from the third gallery, sans clothing. Must have lost a bet.


A Christmas Carol

As the Holidays approached, the Administration decided we would have a Christmas pageant. Each company would present a skit, sing a song, whatever talent moved them. After some consideration, A Company decided to put on a little play. We talked about various directions to go in but soon decided to do a spoof on A Day in the Life of the Military Sciences Department. Each of us would play the part of one of the sergeants except for me. I would be Captain Davis, the Senior Army Instructor. His job at SMA was to ensure proper military training and protocol. He was, as I said earlier, a joke in and of himself, with a voice like John Wayne with a head cold. So spoofing him was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Our rehearsals went very well. We improvised a lot of silly stuff about not remembering a cadet's name, drinking out of a flask hidden in a desk, plotting ways to torture our charges. We all thought it was pretty funny. Jim was Sergeant Graham, Boots was Sergeant Tabor, I forget who played Sergeant Gibson. Come the night of the play we all had Regular Army uniforms so we could look the part. As our performance was going on we started to notice there wasn't much laughing going on. Just a few chuckles. In desperation, I leaned forward to Ed Sheridan, the tiny cadet we had chosen for the hapless victim, and said: "You shouldn't be here bothering us about stuff like this. You need to be in your room polishing drill boots, studying weapons squads, or.........(a leer at the audience) other things." The place burst into laughter. I stood up. "Okay, let's go kick some butts!" Applause, applause, applause. Whew.

As I looked back at the audience I could see a faint red glow. In the back, standing and seething, stood Captain Howdy himself. Since we were in the gym the sprinklers probably wouldn't go off with just that little bit of smoke coming out of his ears. Gulp. What have I done?


Chapter Seventeen: I'll be home for Christmas....