Of the French Foreign Legion, Maggie O'Riley, and Mrs. Robinson.

I was living in a tipi in the Rockies and somehow managed a ride home for the holidays of 1976. My divorce had hit me damned hard and to climb out of the ensuing depression I had decided to follow some of my childhood dreams, hence the tipi. As a kid I had always wanted to live in one for a winter.

I think I had to share the driving because I hammered straight through from Colorado and forty hours seems to ring a bell. At any rate, when I arrived I was beat.

I walked in the door and my mother saw me and the first words out of her mouth were “You're not going to join the French Foreign Legion.”

I was screwed and I knew it. I was not going to hear the end of this for as long as I was home.

Several months earlier when I was just settling into the tipi I knew that a year passes fairly fast and that I had probably figure out what to do when my year was up. I wanted to continue doing something adventurous. I was looking into possibly a game warden job in Africa.

I had written several African countries and the French Foreign Legion. The Legion had a small unit detailed protecting animals in Africa. It was a long shot but an overseas stamp only cost a quarter back then so it was worth a try. I knew better than to join the Legion.

Three weeks or so earlier I had gotten word to call my father at work. I did and he asked me what the letter with the Foreign Legion return address was all about. I told him and he replied he'd take care of it. Apparently it had scared the holy hell out of my mother. She had jumped to the conclusion I was going to enlist.

There are some people out there that can look at a snake and tell if it is venomous or not and act accordingly. If the snake is non poisonous they will pay it no mind.

Others can't distinguish. You can explain that the reptile is harmless but they will answer, “But it's a SNAKE!” They don't know any difference and are afraid to take the time to learn.

The letter with a French Foreign Legion return address on it was like a snake in my mother's eyes. No good could have come out of it. The existence of the letter was evil from her point of view.

Mom had seen 'Beau Geste' with Gary Cooper and knew what the Foreign Legion was all about. They were a bunch of criminals and cutthroats that wore wool uniforms, marched in the deserts and fought Arab tribesmen against overwhelming odds. She was convinced the letter was a trap to get me to enlist.

Never mind that I opened it then and there and read it to her, it was much like the snake many people fear. In her eyes the letter was a snake. When I was through reading the letter that actually said that enlistment was not a good idea for me it was clear that it had not sunken in.

“I don't want you to join the Foreign Legion,” was my mother's reply. For the first seven days I was to hear this several times a day until my father put his foot down.

I had not been home a half-hour and was really beat. I went into the unused bedroom, went face down in the rack and went out like a light.

I woke up early and enjoyed watching the sun come up over coffee and a couple of cigarettes. The family manse had and still has a beautiful view of the ocean.

When Dad left for work he simply pointed at me to follow him. I got into the car with him and we took him to work. Dad was a mechanic and the plan we came up with is that I would take his car and check in with him in the afternoon.

I don't remember how it worked out but I do remember I had the unimpeded use of an automobile the entire ten days.

On the way to work we chatted and Dad asked me to be as patient as I could with my mother. She only wanted what was best for me. I answered that It was a shame that she did not know what was best for me. Dad said, “Yeah, really. You know, Son that is your mother and my wife. She really does care but sometimes doesn't know how to.”

Then I looked at Dad and bet him that that evening Mom would ask prying questions about my divorce and start lecturing me on finding a nice Catholic girl to settle down with, preferably Irish with a rich father.

“I'm not going to touch that bet with a ten-foot pole!” my father answered, chuckling. “Look, Kid. I'll do what I can to fly high cover for you.”

“Hopefully I won't get hit by ground fire,” I replied. “Speaking of flying high cover, I wonder how Roxy's doing?” Roxy was my non-girlfriend girlfriend of about six years earlier. I had hung out with her for a couple of summers because she was a tomboy of sorts and a waterdog. She was good company and enjoyed things like impromptu clambakes at the Point.

She was also gay and back in the late 60s and 70s people were pretty hard on the gay community. Our tacit deal was that I could give her a shout and we could do outdoor stuff together. In return being seen with me often kept people from wondering about her sexuality and the cruel gossip that would go with being gay. Gay or not, she was what I would call a cool chick. She was the only woman that ever swam across a river to meet me for a date.

Dad was the only one I had shared the details about my relationship with Roxy. At first he was confused and somewhat worried but once he met her a couple of times he liked her. My mother met her once and tried to read too much into things as she was apt to do.

One of the best things about Roxy was that she became an instant Catholic. My mother was always trying to steer me toward nice, Catholic girls, preferably Irish with a rich father. With Roxy as my non girlfriend girlfriend this stopped.

I used to 'go to mass' with her a couple of times a month. Actually we met for breakfast. The truth is she was a Methodist. I do believe my dad had figured this out and thought it was pretty funny.

Dad said he had briefly run into her in the Harbor about six months earlier. She was visiting her parents and had gotten her degree in engineering and was living in Georgia.

We arrived at the shop, parked and wandered to the diner and had breakfast together. On the way in Dad dryly said that if I came into the house stumble drunk or smelling like a whorehouse that I probably WOULD have to join the Foreign Legion because I would never hear the end of it.

After breakfast I took the car and went home and walked in the door to be greeted with another plea from Mom not to join the Foreign Legion.

I took the letter and reread it to her and also slipped out the other letter the Legion had sent me. It was a letter of introduction to the French Consulate in Boston. The Legion officer that answered my letter had taken the time to write this for me. It had nothing to do with the Legion and everything to do with game law enforcement in French possessions in Africa.

For some reason long forgotten my kid sister was not in school that day and I snagged her to come along with me. She was glad to spend some time with her big brother. We hopped in the car, headed up the street and stopped at the post office. The postmistress saw me and asked my why I was joining the Foreign Legion. I told her I wasn't.

I turned and one of my mother's friends walked in, saw me and asked me the same question as did the woman in the next door general store when I went in for a pack of Camels.

I was annoyed to say the least.

My sister and I went to the French consulate in Boston and much to my surprise when I showed the letter to the receptionist I was handed over straight to the actual consulate. He spent quite some with me. I listened to him and read between the lines. The reason the Legion had been detailed the anti-poaching job is because it was too risky of a job for French citizens.

This, of course, meant it was probably too risky for my tastes. When you realize that a single rhinoceros horn can fetch well over $50,000 in China because they think it is an aphrodisiac, you realize a poacher is not likely to give up without a fight.

God only knows how many game wardens have been murdered and left in the Serengeti to rot or be eaten by hyenas.

When we got home my sister accidentally let it be known we had spoken to the French consulate and my mother promptly started in on how I was not to join the Foreign Legion.

I was still a little rough from the drive so I turned in early that evening and woke up early for my second full day home. Again I woke up a bit early and took my coffee outside on the porch. It was chilly brisk. I cooked my breakfast in the kitchen and my middle sister took one look at what I was doing and asked me to double the recipe.

I was making one of those breakfast sandwiches out of leftovers stuck together with a couple of eggs. My sister loved it when I cooked breakfasts like that. The recipe was simple. Leftovers stuck together with a couple of eggs served between a couple of pieces of toast.

“I like it when my brudder cooks breakfast,” she said. I had not heard her say that in years. It was the same tone and inflection she had used as a little girl. She was now a teenager. How could I say no?

I remember some of the ingredients included chicken, salsa, and cheese, glued together with a couple eggs. My sister wolfed it down gleefully.

I spent the next couple of days scouting around looking for people I knew. During the next two days two other women, both of whom were friends of my mother, asked me when I was leaving to join the French Foreign Legion. Needless to say I was annoyed.

The next two days were spent cruising around looking for friends and old classmates. I met a few and while none were hostile or anything, almost all of them were pretty dubious when I mentioned that was spending a year living in a tipi in the Rockies.

Mostly I got dubious looks but a couple of them told me that I had better get with the program or be left behind the 8-ball. For some of my classmates life was supposed to be some kind of contest or something.

At first I was wondering what had happened until I thought about it. Then I realized what had happened. We were now in our mid twenties and had finished school, were starting families, careers and mortgages. It occurred what had happened to most of us.

When we were in our teens we had sworn not to become like our parents. We were now in our mid twenties with responsibilities and had become just like our parents.

(What eventually happened is that I didn't remarry until I was a couple weeks shy of forty. The following year we bought a house that got paid off in about 5 or 6 years.)

The two days of meeting my friends and classmates was depressing.

It was late on the second day of trying to chase down old classmates. I was at home and over one of my mother's great dinners Mom had started telling me which nice Catholic girls were in town. It got old fast so I explained to my mother that I was a 25 year old divorced Catholic and she might have to settle for perhaps a Methodist, an Episcopalian or even a Jew as a daughter in law.

I saw my father trying not to laugh even though my sisters were laughing. The oldest of my three sisters said, “Watch out for the Unitarians!” This broke up my father.

“That's not funny!” said my mother. She turned to me. “It's a shame that Roxy girl isn't around anymore. You two used to go to mass together.”

I looked at my father that didn't dare correct Mom. He looked like he didn't know if he should shit or go blind. He looked like he was searching for something to use as ear plugs to keep his brains from dribbling out his ears.

Then Mom looked at me and said, “Don't join the Foreign Legion.”

“He's not joining the Foreign Legion,” the entire family chorused.

It had been an early light supper and I offered to take my kid sister to a movie. I don't remember what we saw but afterwards I decided to get a pizza. I remembered Mom liked a pizza with mushrooms, onions and peppers so I ordered two. I knew Mom would appreciate it.

I loved my mother but she was a constant source of frustration. She was a chronic worrier, generally over nothing. It always seemed the harder she tried the more frustrating it got. It wasn't until she got into her 60s that she seemed to relax and stop worrying. In 1986 she spent a week with me on my sailboat in Vancouver, British Colombia. A lot of healing took place then, but that was over a decade later.

While y sis and I were picking the pizzas up I was brutally assaulted by a wonderful random act of kindness.

While none of my friends and classmates had been cruel to me, there was little warmth. Then something happened.

I ran into Maggie O'Riley, a woman that had been in my homeroom for six years, grades 7-12. We chatted briefly and when she asked me what I was doing I told her about the tipi adventure and that I was going to look into something else come the upcoming summer.

She seemed interested in what I was doing and there was warmth in her voice. She told me I had changed a lot (she was wrong there) and said my tipi adventure sounded interesting and wished me luck.

“Sounds interesting. Good luck.” Four simply kind words.

Those four simple words gave me a sense of self-worth and I carried the four words with me for years.

I had been scouting around for someone to go to see a movie with other than my sister. I wanted to get away from family for an evening. I instantly thought of asking Maggie but just as quickly thought better of it. It wasn't fear of rejection that motivated me.

That would have been a date and I was not up for dating. I was still licking my wounds from my divorce and wanted to put some time behind me before I started dating again.

I believe that the Mel Brooks flick 'Silent Movie' was playing the next town over and I was looking for someone to simply sit next to me and laugh. Going with one of the guys would probably turn into a drinking contest afterwards at the ginmill across the street from the theater.

I thought for a minute and remembered Nancy. Nancy was an older woman I had met at a course I took after high school. She was divorced and if I was right still had a kid in the house. She had stated that she wasn't going to start dating until the last one left the house. She was simply an older friend I used to drop in on every once in a while. It had been about four years since I had seen her.

I dropped in on her the next day and she was pleasantly surprised to see me. We agreed to do a movie that evening and we went. Movie was on me, snack afterwards was on her.

Her son and I remembered each other and he had just gotten his driver's license. I hooked the kid up with a friend of mine to teach him to drive a stick shift.

We both laughed our way through the movie and getting away from family pressures and headaches was a wonderful tonic. I recall getting home at midnight with a mild buzz from a pair of double scotches that accompanied the snack she made in her kitchen.

This must have been on a weekend because Dad was home the following day. Just before noon he looked at me, pointed and hooked his thumb. Our signal to meet in the basement. I went below deck on cue. Dad followed.

“You know, Kid, you can't seem to catch a break,” Dad said. “Barbie Hall spotted you two at the harbor and started a rumor you're running around with some kind of Mrs Robinson. Before you say anything I want to say it's just plain wrong.”

'That witch!” I snapped. “She asked me when I was leaving to join the Foreign Legion. What a rumor monger!”

“I'll handle your mother,” Dad said.

We went upstairs. My mother saw me. “I don't want you to join the Foreign Legion,” she said.

My sisters laughed. “Don't join the Foreign Legion.” they mimicked.

My father stepped in. “Look! If you don't lay off, BOTH of us are going to join the Foreign Legion! He turned to me. “Back in the day we had to go to Marseilles and wait until they had enough recruits to fill a boat. Then they sailed to Sidi Bel Abbes. They still do that? Maybe we can stow away on a steamer in Boston Harbor.”

“Nah,” I replied. “You just go to any police station in metropolitan France. It's a lot easier.”

He turned to my mother. “Now, for God's sake, stop it!”

“How come you know how to join the Foreign Legion?” Mom asked Dad.

“Because every kid knew how to join the Foreign Legion back when I was a kid,” he answered.

It was about twenty minutes later when I went through the living room with Mom still there. I should have seen it coming but I guess I wasn't paying attention. She was having a hard time believing the truth. She just HAD to find out for herself why I had gone to the movies with Nancy. She just knew there had to be a hidden, ulterior motive. I saw it coming.

Well, OK. If you won't believe the truth I'll tell you a lie. It's just as easy. Anything to make someone a happy camper.

“What is it you see in a woman that's almost as old as your own mother?” she asked.

“She's got great tits and has saved me a fortune in prostitutes!” I shot back. “Are you happy now? Are you?”

I heard my father in the next room snarf and the chair he was sitting in slide back fast. He entered the living room and looked at me.

“You learn to keep your damned temper,” he snapped. “That's your mother and my wife you are talking to. Now scram.”

I left the room but listened in.

“Look, I told you why he went to the movies with Nancy but it wasn't enough. You always have to pry. I'm going to tell you something. Your son's hurting inside and you are not helping one bit. He's heartsick. You may not know it but he told me he doesn't want to date for a while and he's not going to let you see him drunk. I have and it's not pretty.

“But...” Mom interrupted.

“But nothing,” he said. In a stroke of genius he said, “You want him to join the Foreign Legion? Because that's how you get a young man to join the Foreign Legion.”

My mother's attitude changed considerably after that.

Dad came into the kitchen and looked at me. “Hey, Bazoo Botts,” he said. Dad had an inexhaustible string of nicknames for me. He made them up as he went along, never repeating them. “Don't make plans for tonight at nine. We're watching a movie.” He had a huge smug smile on his face.

'What's on?” I asked.

“Never you mind,” he replied.

I walked out as I passed the TV I snapped up the newspaper TV page and looked up nine O'clock that evening and laughed like hell. The movie dad wanted to watch with me was 'Beau Geste'. The classic Foreign Legion movie. Go figure. He had a dry sense of humor.

If Dad wanted to watch a movie he had already seen before than the entire family wanted to watch it. They didn't want to watch the movie itself, they wanted to watch Dad watch it because he would make a hilarious running commentary as the movie played out. Westerns were generally the funniest.

Years later as my sisters had children the nieces and nephews loved to watch the grownups watch 'The Wizard of Oz' for the same reason. My sisters and I knew it by heart having seen it so many times. My sisters always insisted I play the Cowardly Lion and sing 'If I was the King of the Forest'.

The entire family laughed itself silly as my father entertained us through the movie. What is interesting is that he treated it like a western. As the lonely beleaguered Legionnaire outpost was on the verge of being overrun Dad said, “Quick! Call the US Cavalry! They'll get there on time!”

All in all, the entire trip home was all in all pretty surreal.

While I remember most of the events I do not recall the order of everything. Christmas fit in there somewhere and I do remember it well. It was the last time my mother got to have all her children together under one roof. My brother and his new wife dropped in to complete everything.

Everything got put aside and Christmas Eve I took a couple of my sisters to midnight mass. The parents and the oldest of my three sisters opted for the 8:30.

I was living on peanuts in the tipi and for Christmas presents I gave items I had made out of the hide of an elk I had shot in Colorado. Mom got a beaded coin purse she used proudly for years and years until it wore out. I had made it by brain tanning the hide and sewing it with sinew.

Dad got a simple pair of moccasins. He loved them and when I cleaned out his closet seven years later after he passed I found them. They were heavily worn and had been resoled several times.

I think it was the night before I went back to Colorado that Dad and I went down to the Point for a while. Supposedly we were fishing. We had a hand line in the water but there wasn't even a hook on the end of the line, just a sinker.

It was really just an excuse to enjoy each others company and talk. I was truly blessed to have Dad. Over the years he was my rock.

“What was it like when you came home after the war?” I asked Dad.

He chuckled. “Pretty much the same as it is being for you,” he said. “Only real difference is I bickered with my father and you bicker with Mom. I left home after about a week. It was hard to go home after being a flight officer in the Air Corps. I wasn't a kid anymore.”

It was a bitter night. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a bottle of cognac and offered Dad a pull. “Hey, this is good booze,” he said after a sizable snort. “This trip home has been a real bust, hasn't it?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It's been a real winner.”

He lit a cigarette and leaned on the old trestle rail and looked out toward the mouth of the river. “Anything worth mentioning happen? Any good come of the visit other than family?”

I thought before I opened my mouth. “Yeah, actually something did. It really wasn't much but it did change me. It was when I was out with Sissy and I ran into a classmate. We shared six years in homeroom and never said so much as six words to each other. She asked me what I was doing and I told her about it and instead of the usual warning of impending failure and was kind and pleasant. For all I know, she thinks I am out of my mind which is fine. Maybe I am but at least she was kind. Maggie O'Riley. That's funny because in school she was very standoffish to me.”

“Funny how that works,” said Dad. “It's always either the small or the dopey things that stay with you.”

A few years earlier a co worker said to me, “There's only two good drinks in a half-pint.” Dad and I hit the cognac bottle again and it was empty. We stood there looking out to sea enjoying the warmth and glow of a wonderful cognac buzz.

While we were walking back to the car, Dad looked at me. “I hate keeping secrets from your mother,” he blurted out. “I do wish you had gone to that movie with Roxy instead of Nancy. It would have caused your mother less grief. Still, your mother still thinks Roxy's a nice Catholic girl because I have never figured out how to tell her that the girl you hung out with all summer was really a homosexual Methodist.”(The term 'gay' hadn't become mainstream yet)

We both laughed.

The next morning I went into Quincy with my father, boarded the T and went into Logan Airport. I caught a plane to Colorado Springs and an old army buddy met me and he drove me up Ute Pass where my tipi was. Everything was untouched and I lit the fire and started to heat up camp again. The first night back the temperature dropped to -30. In spite of that it was good to be back.

Aftermath.

In June, 1977 I folded the tipi and moved into a tumbledown duplex and planned my next adventure. The following April I hitch hiked to Alaska where I lived for the next decade.

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Nancy's youngest son joined the Navy and Nancy, true to her word, left New England. One of her neighbors told me where she was but I decided to let it go. Last I heard she was living in South Carolina.

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I never returned home for another five years. That time I came home was to be the last time I ever saw my father again. He died a few months after I returned to Alaska. I miss him every day.

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Over the years most of my classmates seem to have loosened up a bit and almost all of them are now fun to run into.

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Maggie O'Riley's kind words left me with a personal sense of value and the memory has popped up in my life at three special times. The first time was when I was in the middle of a storm on a fishboat in the middle of the Bering Sea. They soothed my terror-filled soul.

The second time Maggie's word came to me was during brief period of depression. They raised my spirits immediately.

The third time was after midnight mass with my present wife in 1991. The sermon was “You are worth it!” It was an uplifting sermon and that night before bed I told my wife about Maggie's kind words. My wife told me I ought to find her and thank her.

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My mother changed a lot during the five years I was away. As soon as I got back to Colorado chased down a GI I knew that had married a French woman he had met overseas. She still had family in France. I had her family mail a letter to Mom that had a French postmark. The letter simply read, “I am in Colorado. I did NOT join the Foreign Legion. I had a friend going overseas re mail this.”

I'm the oldest child and I attribute a lot of the reason my mom was difficult is because she had no experience raising kids. When I arrived home my kid sister was in college.

Mom had changed and was a lot more comfortable to be around.