I married a Catholic. I never got a BA. I went to a junior college and then was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War in 1965. At the time I had become fluent in Spanish. I was dating a Mexican from Mexico and I became fluent in Spanish because all of her family spoke Spanish in the home.

During my military training, I translated from English to Spanish and my Spanish got a lot better. I was offered an opportunity to stay and be a teacher in Virginia because of my Spanish. But when I received my orders, it wasn’t to go to Vietnam; it was to go to France. So I chose France.

I had been a mailman right out of high school. I became a mailman in France for the military and joined the New York post office to handle mail because over in Europe everything was handled through the New York Post Office. In the Orient, everything was handled through the San Francisco Post Office.

They had me be a diplomatic carrier. I carried diplomatic mail between the American Embassy and Paris and the American consulate in Bordeaux. When I was 21 years old, they would chain a diplomatic pouch to me and I would have a French driver to take me from Paris to Bordeaux. I lived in Southwest France. Since I had been speaking Spanish everyday, it took me three months to learn to speak French. I was shaky at first. I am still fluent in French after forty-two years.

In high school I did gardening and painting. I read gas meters in Los Angeles. Now they do it all digitally, but I would walk right down the numbers. But I had pretty active jobs. Being a mailman was really hard work, so I decided to go to college.

The Summer of Love
In France, I did not have to live on a military base. I was assigned to one, but I lived with French girls and French college students. They all wanted to know about America. They all wanted to take me home and have their parents ask me questions over dinner. They were more open and loving. They were not homophobic. It was a different culture.

When I came back here, there were the hippies starting to appear. So I grew my hair long and had a full beard. I hung out with people who also had long hair. I had a full time job and went to a school, but I considered myself a hippy. Even though my family was all conservative republicans, and still are, I became very liberal.

When I first signed up to vote, I registered with El Partida de Raza Unida because I didn’t fit with the republican or democrats. I felt like my children are going to be half Mexican and I wanted to be supportive to Mexican causes. Also, one of my jobs was teaching English as a second language.

Shortly after I went to France, Charles DeGaulle said that France was pulling out of NATO and they wanted us all out of there. They gave us a year and then started phasing our all of the people in France. I was in headquarters, western France. Each month they would come with quota of people in different job categories to go to Vietnam.

When I first arrived in France, I dated a woman who was one of the people involved in that. I dated her for about five months and then broke it off. But the whole time I was there, if my name ever came up, she removed it. They wanted to promote me because I was fluent in French.