Not far from our tower, but then again, nothing attached to the base is far from our tower, I discovered a narrow paved road that inclines sharply to where a huge tank reservoir sits on one of the hills on base. What the tank holds I can only speculate. It is probably water, but that's not important. That vantage point is high above my little piece of America. For me these 500-plus acres carved out of Japanese soil are America. From up there I can look east over the civilian side of the base. The grade is very steep, excellent for walking off some accumulated fast food residue off a 5-foot 6-inch 55-year-old 180-pound ranch kid. I have taken to adding that climb to my daily walk and then I cap it off by challenging the stairwell up to our eighth floor apartment. I am resolved not to devolve in the disgustingly sloven human sub-species radix lecti.There is little to see in the distance on the climb up because of a mesh of jungle-like growth along the way. But there are sufficiently wide breaks in the green entanglement to form an occasional picture window of sorts. I will stop at one of those to rest. It is absolutely secluded and for a minute that one spot is all mine. The view it affords of the distant ship traffic slowly and silently plowing across Tokyo Bay gives me pause to reflect. I am alone there. There isn't a soul present to read the thoughts etched on my face or interpret my body language. It is just me.
While taking a break there this morning, for an instant I thought about the countless times in summers past when my brothers and I would be working alongside our old man, stacking hundreds of bales in hay sheds, the air so thick with dust it scratched the back of your throat like an old rag even though we tied bandanas across our nostrils and mouth, or digging post holes in unforgiving caliche that fought back with equal strength every strike of the heavy steel bar we used to bite into the bottom of the hole, or the heat and danger to life and limb we endured pushing half-wild cattle who had lived most of their lives in mesquite brush through a narrow chute and on into cattle trailers using little more that a mesquite branch to prod them on. I am certain that on days like that I must have wished to be somewhere else, somewhere far away from all that physical exertion that taxed mind and body. I am certain I wished to be as far from that sun-baked ranch land as possible. Sometimes we get our wish.
This morning, for a short while, I thought back to those under-appreciated days and wished that I could have just one more day like that with my father and brothers. Like a hungry dog I chewed on that bone for a good while and did not find any meat on it. And like the dog, unsatisfied, I abandoned the bone. Those are silly thoughts. You can't have everything. I cannot be then and now on the same day.
