You can read below what I penned, I copied it so you didn't have to click a link.
Ironically, in juxtaposition with world events unfolding right now, YouTube emailed me saying that they've age-restricted the video I made that makes a visual slideshow presentation of the subject of this FLASHBACK post.
So I'm back to these memories but now we can see the same BS I had to deal with in my youth, now likely affecting a similarly impressionable age growing up in the suburbs of some city in far-off Russia.
Substitute the flag-covered caskets with those Russian flag wrapped. Substitute the screaming naked napalm girl for a gasping vacuum-bombed Ukrainian child. Substitute Nixon with Putin. And, of course, substitute the media propaganda then for the "Special Military Operation" lies told to the people, especially the children, of Russia today.
Again, to quote the Fallout preambles "War. War Never Changes."
FLASHBACK: Summer 1972
January 24, 2006
Aunt Ruth (my father's sister) who we referred to as simply "Ruth", or, as we pronounced it "ROOT", announced to us kids that we were going to go with her and Memere (her mother/our grandmother) on a trip to Lake George!
Lake George, New York, then as now, is a tourist attraction due to its beautiful surroundings and, most likely, proximity between Montreal and New York City.
It sports great entertainment and lodging, but also, has it's share of campy "tourist trap" venues.
We went to this "themed" attraction called "Frontiertown". It was basically a replica of an Old West frontier fort (ala "F-Troop") and the adults bringing their kids were probably thrilled by it's policy of "immersion" of the "young ones" into the "atmosphere" of the Old West.
Before I knew it, I was being sworn into the "U.S. Army" with an official pledge and "realistic" looking parchment document which I had to sign.
Then I was ordered to march out into the courtyard of the fort with about 40 other kids and made to stand at attention for review from our commanding officer.
The uniformed officer barked terse commands and sounded like a movie-version drill sergeant. He demanded that some kids stand more upright for attention and others to spit out their gum.
Everything for the adults (and I guess most of the kids) was all done "tongue-in-cheek" and in simulation of an old west indoctrination into the frontier army to, no doubt, "fight injuns", but I was either too stupid or too sensitive to see it as "play".
I remember in my minds-eye back to this event that I really didn't "get it". I didn't see this as a simulation, but I actually thought that some how, I, at the age of 8, was actually going to be called up to fight (and likely die) in Vietnam.
Nowadays we have the V-Chip in TVs to restricts what kids watch. But let me tell you from experience...the worst stuff for a kid to watch on TV won't be blocked by a V-Chip. It's the Nightly News.
In 1972, I watched Walter Cronkite diligently every evening...yes, even though I was only 8. I had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and the TV News was one of the quickest and most dependable sources of information. But, for a youngster without either the parental care and concern for what I was watching or the intellectual capacity to effectively reinterpret what I was witnessing, I was entirely left to my own assumptions.
And, though I "knew" that the Frontiertown attraction was a paid entertainment venue, I misinterpreted that acting and role-playing as "real", and that though touted as "entertainment", this attraction was in fact a drafting station to feed more young boys to the "Evil War Machine" that was Vietnam.
I broke down and cried.
The other boys were laughing at me and that made me even more embarrassed, so I cried harder.
When I was "dismissed" from the reviewing line, I went to Ruth, but she looked around frantically and scolded me sternly in a low voice, "You are such a baby....you're embarrassing me!!"