An old friend named Joel stopped in last week. I did not think that I would be seeing him any time soon and honestly, perhaps not at all. But, he is here and it has been nice catching up with him and his friends. Joel is not a real person, but a favorite in contemporary fiction circa the Summer of 1990.
On January 8, 1990, I started Basic Training with the Army. This was one of the most uncharacteristic choices I have ever made. The backlash of alcoholic armageddon left me choosing what I felt at the time the opposite of my recent past; instead of running, I was going to dig in and fight. I met a man who was so sure of himself. He had the military in his history, but he was no conformist. In fact, he was the most nonconforming person I had met to that point in my life. His confidence in who he was became a crown jewel that I needed to possess. The military seemed to be the way to get that. They welcomed the 24-year-old version of me with open arms.
I returned home from Basic in May and oddly, my life became directionless again as far as what I was going to do for a career. Summer quickly came and I just sort of existed day to day. There was an old show that had begun at the dawn of the 80s that I had been watching every Thursday night, but it was on summer break. On July 12, 1990, something wonderful happened. A replacement series about the fictitious town of Cicely, Alaska tested the waters our our hearts with 8 episodes. Instantly, we all needed to know more about these unique people.
In the first 8, we fell in love. Somehow it seemed that we always knew them and we had returned home. In August, outside my staticky reception of WCAX channel 3 in Burlington, Vermont, the world was getting serious. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Tensions had been mounting in the Persian Gulf all throughout the 1980s during the war between Iran and Iraq. In 1987, the US began to reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers to deter attacks, and evidently, this move did not prevent blatant all-out aggression.
When I enlisted in the Army on 18 November 1989, nothing had happened since the invasion of Grenada on October 23, 1983, and before that, Vietnam was the last big conflict. Joining the NH National Guard, I envisioned weekends and two weeks in the summer and maybe in the next 6 years aiding local flood victims. Then 33 days later the US invaded Panama.
On day three after Iraq invaded Kuwait, I could feel my future and from that day I verbally stated many times that I would be personally affected. Over the next 90 days, the path grew more treacherous. Narrowly avoiding the first call-up of 600,000 US Reservists, we were first in line for the 2nd 600,000 activation. A fellow reservist appeared on my doorstep Monday evening November 12th, just as the first snowfall began. Our turn.
When you live on the surface of Mars, or similarly the desert of Saudi Arabia, you long for something to read that provides an escape. Something that takes you away from here. It does not look like this and is harmless and kind. I was at a PX one day at KKMC (King Khalid Military City). Our convoy deviated from our normal route much to my co-driver/Assistant Platoon Sargent's desire. We were carrying medical supplies from Log Base Alpha to a CASH (Combat Army Surgical Hospital) in the middle of nowhere.
At the PX, I found a book written by Tom Bodet. You may remember him as the guy back in the '80s and '90s who advertised for Motel 6. He was probably best known for the catchphrase: "We'll leave the light on for you." The book was called End of the Road. Wouldn't you know it, it was written about a small town in Alaska called End of the Road. It was filled with quaint but lovable characters. Sound familiar? Best of all, it was as far from the Middle East as it gets.
I fell in love with these people. Mr. Bodet made them easy to love and almost primary color defined sort of like in the old days of the Westerns when good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black. It was not blatantly like that, but the flavor was there. Tom was sprinkling on some herb that made it so you just had to be a cold-hearted idiot not to accept the fine people of EOTR.
I passed this book on to over 20 friends while in the desert and it brought a lot of love and relief to a group of home sick people. All of this time, I thought of my other Alaskan newly found friends in Cicely. Would I ever see them again?
In 1991, back in the US, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I would see my friends in Cicely again. Now Monday nights at 10 PM, Northern Exposure graced our screens. While NE gave us some of those spoon-fed moments in the first season that helped us adopt these wonderful people, they put the cheese away and did not get stuck within the boundaries of reality. A drama-comedy that on a moment's notice took on Twilight Zone turns, time travel, journeys through history, and many people's private dreams. I not only came to love these friends but also respect them.
Northern Exposure never streamed. Well, until 33 years later. Very quietly, it suddenly showed up on Amazon Prime. It is a fine thing to meet a town full of people at 25 years old and then revisit them when you are 58. I am savoring this trip down memory lane and it is a joy. It is an amazing thing to discover how my experiences over the last 33 years affect and contrast with this part of our creative history.
I don't think Tom Bodet's End of the Road would have caught my eye that day at KKMC without my first having met those wonderful folks from Cicely Alaska. This wondrous and composite turn of events, they brought me sweet relief and joy in a very barren and difficult place and time in the world.
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