By: Daniel Acosta, Jr.

Preface

After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in pharmacy during the height of the Vietnam War, I was able to get a draft deferment to attend graduate school at the University of Kansas. My trip in early June of ’68 from Austin to Kansas in my sky-blue ’67 Mustang went relatively smooth.But within the month the war had worsened, and all graduate school deferments were abruptly canceled. I decided to appeal the loss of my deferment with the El Paso draft board.

My planned route back to El Paso was to stop over in either Dallas or Austin, depending on whether I could stay at a friend’s place. I did not have enough money for a motel room. I might as well see if could hook up with some friends along the trip. Because I had dated Hilda, a pharmacy classmate, and because she was now a rich pharmacist, why wouldn’t she let me crash in her Dallas apartment for one night?

She was a friendly white Texas girl, and I was just a quiet Mexican boy from El Paso. But she had a date that evening; I tried to convince her to cancel the date. Trying to be nice to me, she invited both of us for the evening. Perhaps a ménage à trois? No such luck. This was her solution to not disappoint either one of us.

It really felt odd that we had to use her date’s car to take the three of us for dinner and a movie. I left my Mustang at Hilda’s apartment where the three of us had met to start out on our wild date. She thought it was safer to leave my car, which was packed with all of my belongings, in the apartment building’s parking lot. It was such a pathetic evening that I do not remember much, except that the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, was pretty good. My only thought after the movie was to get back to my car; we exchanged quick goodbyes, and they offered me good luck in the army. I now had to drive another 200 miles to stay with my former roommate in Austin, who was finishing up his degree in pharmacy.

The next morning, my plan was to drive all day and stay with my parents. Driving west on US 290 I was making good time at 75 mph, but about 300 miles away from El Paso I ran into a sudden thunderstorm in the heat of the day. The rain drops hit the very hot Texas pavement spewing hot hisses of steam into the air. I made a big mistake by hitting my brakes, rather than slowing down by taking my foot off the gas pedal. I immediately went into a 360° tailspin and skidded off the road into a ditch. 

I sat in the car trying to catch my breath and thinking that my trip was becoming more and more bizarre. However, I was OK and when I checked my car it did not seem to be damaged. Just at that time, a trucker happened to drive by and saw me in the ditch and offered to pull me out with some chains that he had—what a lifesaver!

But my appeal with the draft board did not go well. The entire board was unanimous with its vote to deny my appeal. But I was able to convince the board members to give me an extra three months before I had to report to the army; they agreed I had lost some money when I thought I had a deferment and went to Kansas. The only Mexican on the board shook my hand. 

I often wondered how future white politicians who were my age were able to get out of active military service, like Clinton, Bush, Quayle, Cheney, and Trump. When asked, Dick Cheney said “he had other priorities”. It worked for him. Trump was able to get a deferment because of a foot injury while playing college baseball. Clinton got a graduate school deferment as a Rhodes Scholar to attend Oxford University in England. Bush, through family connections, was assigned a jet pilot position in the National Guard as a weekend warrior. Not sure how Quayle got out of the military. 

Not Vietnam But Georgia

In the fall I was inducted into the US Army at Fort Bliss in El Paso, and after 8 weeks of basic training I was assigned to a hospital at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. David and I were casual friends during our three years at pharmacy school, and we both had tried to avoid the draft. It so happened that David’s assignment was about 100 miles from Savannah, and we agreed to drive together in early January of 1969, with him helping out with gas and driving. The trip from El Paso to South Carolina was over 1700 miles. We took the southern route going through Houston, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, and Georgia.

A couple days later I dropped David off at his base late in the afternoon. We quickly said our goodbyes because I wanted to get to Hunter before midnight. The road that evening had quite a bit of traffic with big rigs slowing me down. It was a two-lane highway, and I was getting anxious that I’d not make it to Hunter before midnight. There were no highway lamps, and it was pitch black. I thought I saw a break in the oncoming traffic and stepped on the gas of to get around a big truck. Unfortunately for me, I misjudged the speed of the car coming straight at me and had to make a quick decision to turn off the lane into the darkness, not knowing what was off road. It turned out that it was a pasture with no trees and a few shrubs and bushes. I was unhurt and several people helped me out. One of the helpers was a small-town minister who wanted to take me to his church up the road to pray with him. I explained that I was a new army recruit and needed to get to my new assignment before midnight. Everyone was very kind and helped me get back on the road. 

As I was watching the movie, Easy Rider, at the theater on the base, it reminded me of my trip from El Paso to Savannah. I remember seeing hanging moss on trees as I drove through some of the small towns, especially in Mississippi. The people at the gas stations and the diners along my road trip were friendly and nice, unlike what happened to the principals in the movie with their encounters in the deep South.

My assignment at the Hunter hospital pharmacy turned out to be a good experience for me. There were four pharmacists at the hospital, all of us recent graduates from colleges of pharmacy across the country. The chief pharmacist was an ROTC graduate and had already been in the army for several years. Captain Hendershott did not know how to handle us; so, he just left us alone. We never observed army protocol and did not salute him when we saw him. I often forgot to wear my army cap when I went outside to eat lunch at the mess hall. One time I got caught by a senior

sergeant and he bawled me out for my lack of army discipline. If it happened again, I was to be reported to my senior officer. I sorta knew that Hendershott would not punish me.

Several times during the week one of my pharmacy buddies, Mike, yelled out in a very loud voice:

“HENDERSHOTT, come here!”

Mike was quite a character and blamed the captain for any mistakes that he found in the pharmacy orders from the nursing stations. He had a motorcycle, and I went out on rides several times with him. 

At times, I did not feel that I was in the army. For example, I got the captain to write a letter on official US Army stationery to my First Sergeant, to whom I had to report for duties outside of my pharmacy responsibilities, to allow me to live off-base and not have to stay in the barracks.  By living in an apartment off-base I did not have any night duties or mess responsibilities. More importantly, I did not have to experience any surprise inspections of my bunk and locker. To get that liberty, we gave the First Sergeant large bottles of aspirin and antacids from time to time. I found a room at a house owned by an elderly widow, who earned a little income by renting out two of her bedrooms in a fairly large and spacious house. I was given the room with a private bathroom. The other occupant had to go down the hall to use another bathroom. 

My landlady took a liking to me, I guess because I was quiet, softspoken, and polite. She asked me after I had been living in her house for a few weeks if I’d like to have dinner with her friends. As I was having dinner with three elderly Southern ladies, I thought that this was really strange that a Mexican boy from El Paso was eating and having a conversation with older white Southern women in their late sixties.

“What are your plans after you finish your Army tour of duty?”, one of the ladies asked me.

“I am merely marking time until I go from one phase of my life to another– high school to college to the army and next to graduate school”, I replied.

“Oh, graduate school! That is great”, my landlady exclaimed.

“Even after I receive my Ph.D., most newly minted graduates have to continue their scientific training as a postdoctoral fellow for two more years, like MDs have to do with residency training. I am still uncertain what my next step will be”, I explained.

I had many conversations with my landlady; when I came in the front door, she saw me before I made it to my bedroom, which was near the living room. We talked about her life and her growing up in Savannah during the depression. I received an education on what living in the South was really like. My landlady also had a small vacation house at Savannah Beach, and she invited me several times for the weekends to take in the sights at the beach. The area had a carnival-like atmosphere with bars, nightclubs, and many tourists. She had a small grill, and we often had grilled fish and steaks for our meals in her screened-in front porch. I helped pay for the food. For some of her minor ailments I gave her some medications from the hospital pharmacy. She had dry skin and often complained about that. I had just the remedy for that—a large bottle of Alpha Keri—which moisturizes and softens the skin. I became her friend for life. 

The one thing about being in the army is that you have a lot of free time after completing your daily weekday assignments. Because I did not have to return to the barracks after my shift and did not have any extra duties on the weekends, I decided to get a reciprocal pharmacy license to practice as a pharmacist in Georgia in my spare time. A couple of us drove up to the Georgia Board of Pharmacy in Atlanta and took the Georgia pharmacy law exam, which is similar in most states. We easily passed the law exam and were now ready to find part-time jobs to earn some extra spending money. Through the “grapevine” at the army hospital, there were unofficial listings of local pharmacies that needed help either in the evenings and weekends. 

Was it a coincidence that on my first drive from Savannah to a small town about 20 miles away where I found a pharmacist’s job that the song playing on the radio was Gladys Knight’s hit song-I Heard it Through the Grapevine? Of course, a few years later her song, Midnight Train to Georgia, became one of Georgia’s more famous recordings, along with Ray Charles’ Georgia. 

It was a small drug store whose owner wanted some free time off on Saturdays and offered me $40 under the table to open and close the store. He kept the store open seven days a week to provide very necessary medical assistance to the small town residents. He really needed that one day off. For comparison purposes, annual pharmacist salaries today are between $100 to 150K.  I never thought much about my pay; I was more interested in the fact that he trusted a complete stranger with his store. I learned so much about Southern life in that small town. There seemed to be no Hispanics in the town; the store clientele was about a 50-50 mix of whites and Blacks. People who came into the story were very friendly and asked me about my life in the army as a pharmacist and what Texas was really like once they knew where I came from. I am pretty certain they knew nothing about my Mexican heritage.

I also found a second pharmacist job in a nice section of Savannah. I never asked but I thought the owner of the drug store was Jewish. His wife often brought me food, usually a pastrami sandwich, to the store, and I was introduced to other members of their family. My first introduction to Southerners in Savannah and that small town was very positive. My initial impressions certainly differed from what I thought the South was like, especially after all of the demonstrations on civil rights for Blacks and the war protests that were occurring across the country in the 1960s. 

All of us four pharmacists at Hunter (excluding the captain) were to be given our new assignments in January: it was to be either Puerto Rico, Germany, South Korea, or Vietnam. We all received our letters, and I was to report to Inchon, South Korea. The crazy thing about the

Army and these assignments were that Curt, who was married and had a baby son, was sent to Vietnam. The rest of us were single and were given safe assignments. The guy who went to Puerto Rico was into rock and roll music and on one of his weekends he actually went to the Woodstock Festival in upper New York. I knew he’d have fun in Puerto Rico. Mike was given an assignment in Germany and was ecstatic. Curt had to undergo new training to become a medic and actually survived dodging bullets caring for wounded soldiers. He sent me postcards from time to time about his stay in Vietnam. He returned to California unscathed to work as a pharmacist in a civilian hospital pharmacy.

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Dan Acosta is a first-generation Mexican American, whose mother and grandparents emigrated from Mexico. He is a former professor, research scientist, and administrator, who retired in 2019 at age 74.  He writes about his experiences as a Mexican boy trying to succeed in white America.

His stories have appeared in The Acentos Review, Sky Island Journal, Somos en Escrito, The Rush, Toasted Cheese, Latin@literatures, Literary Yard, Manifest Station, Midway Journal, and Rise Up.