My Job and My illness
Posted: Sunday, February 01, 2009
by David Tanguay
I was released from active duty from the Marine Corp in Sept. of 1969. I was offered many benefits through the V.A. administration. I could have gone back to school and obtained a good education. However, I decided to go to work right off and took a job with a cleaning service.
The job required the ability to clean private homes and business offices. I knew very little about the cleaning service when I began my job. However, through time I learned as I went along most of my work was on the job training, I learned as I worked.
I worked long hours and was paid overtime (time and a half) after working 40 hours per week. I would bring home good size paychecks but I really had to work hard for my money.
After working there for approximately a year, I was made foreman I had the responsibility to see to it that the crew I brought out on a job done the work right. If we went to a private home to do the cleaning, I had to be sure to please the customers.
I enjoyed doing my job, some days we would be in an average home and on other days, we would be in a millionaire's home. I got to meet many interesting people on my job.
"It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works." (Sermon, October 15, 1826) Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of course, this era of time was during all of the unrest in the young people and the Nixon administration. My boss would talk to me quite often about the state of the union. I was all for the young people in those days I believed in what they were demonstrating against.
One might say it was because of the division between the young and old in those days that led me to side with the young people. I believed in their cause although I was a Vietnam veteran I believed in the demonstrations against the war. I was very upset when I heard about Kent State in 1970 where four college students were killed and nine wounded by the National Guard.
In September of ‘71, I left my job and began doing drugs it wasn't until Dec. of 71 while I was sitting in a dunkin donuts shop that a friend of mine asked me what I would do if I were president. It was then when I cut loose I won't go into detail about what I said that night however, from that night on I haven't been the same person.
I became what psychiatrist call paranoid I believed people were playing games with me on television and radio. I spent a great deal of time on a VA psychiatric ward. This was over 37 years ago; I've improved a great deal over the years. I still see a psychiatrist every six months; I believe a lot has changed since that night in dunkin donuts not only have I improved mentally but I also believe the whole human race has changed for the better since then.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)I found your article very interesting and I enjoyed that quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was indeed a very different era.Please log in to respond to this comment.
Yes Rodney, those days are behind us now, thank God!Please log in to respond to this comment.
Howdy David, hope you are doing well....it is always a pleasure to read your work, and this one is near and dear to my heart. I too, am a Vietnam Veteran, I went there in 1964, and got out in 1972. I know times were changing back then, we had people protesting the war, Jane Fonda, whom everybody hated in my unit, because of her "uninformed speechs she would give", and she had no idea what was going on over there at all. I, like thousands of others were questioning why we were there, just like today, with our boys over in Iraq. I have to admire them however because they are our sons and daughters that have answered the calls of the U.S . Government to go there....feeling that what they are doing there is right, and I for one am not going to take that away from them like it was taken away from the Vietnam vets when we came home....We were the enemy to some of our own for even participating. We were spit on, and we were shunned by the public when we returned.....The protesters did this....and I for one, would have appreciated a little more respect for serving my country, than that given to us, or lack thereof. I did enjoy your article, and I respect your opinion, and you did serve your country, I for one am proud of that fact, and offer you thanks for doing so! Great Article....your friend in pen.....Gary.Please log in to respond to this comment.Yes Gary, we as Vietnam veterans were not treated very well when we returned home. But the protesters were mostly those who wanted us home. The war was wrong to begin with, in fact staying there we ended up losing the war anyway. Thank you for commenting,Please log in to respond to this comment.
hi david,this was a very touching article, and i wish i could have been near you, gary, and all the others who came home. i would have had a big party for you all, we owe you our deepest gratitude.all you spoke of is much closer to home since my son went into the airforce.these kids, like in viet nam, are mostly 18-22 or so. babies, really, made into adults in 8 short weeks of training, but how do you train to kill someone, while growing up knowing that is wrong?there has to be mixed signals.thank you for answering the call,my best to you,suePlease log in to respond to this comment.Hello Susan, yes Vietnam is behind us now, let's hope Iraq and Afghanistan will end soon as well. And let's hope your son doesn't have to fight over there.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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