"Robert A. Heinlein - Glory Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

that. We had Khrushchev and the H-bomb and we certainly did know.
But we were not a "Lost Generation." We were worse; we were the "Safe
Generation." Not beatniks. The Beats were never more than a few hundred out of
millions. Oh, we talked beatnik jive and dug cool sounds in stereo and
disagreed with Playboy's poll of jazz musicians just as earnestly as if it
mattered. We read Salinger and Kerouac and used language that shocked our
parents and dressed (sometimes) in beatnik fashion. But we didn't think that
bongo drums and a beard compared with money in the bank. We weren't rebels. We
were as conformist as army worms. "Security" was our unspoken watchword.
Most of our watchwords were unspoken but we followed them as compulsively as
a baby duck takes to water. "Don't fight City Hall." "Get it while the getting
is good." "Don't get caught." High goals, these, great moral values, and they
all mean "Security." "Going steady" (my generation's contribution to the
American Dream) was based on security; it insured that Saturday night could
never be the loneliest night for the weak. If you went steady, competition was
eliminated.
But we had ambitions. Yes, sir! Stall off your draft board and get through
college. Get married and get her pregnant, with both families helping you to
stay on as a draft-immune student. Line up a job well thought of by draft
boards, say with some missile firm. Better yet, take postgraduate work if your
folks (or hers) could afford it and have another kid and get safely beyond the
draft -- besides, a doctor's degree was a union card, for promotion and pay
and retirement.
Short of a pregnant wife with well-to-do parents the greatest security lay in
being 4-F. Punctured eardrums were good but an allergy was best. One of my
neighbors had a terrible asthma that lasted till his twenty-sixth birthday. No
fake -- he was allergic to draft boards. Another escape was to convince an
army psychiatrist that your interests were more suited to the State Department
than to the Army. More than half of my generation were "unfit for military
service."
I don't find this surprising. There is an old picture of a people traveling
by sleigh through deep woods -- pursued by wolves. Every now and then they
grab one of their number and toss him to the wolves. That's conscription even
if you call it "selective service" and pretty it up with USOs and "veterans'
benefits" -- it's tossing a minority to the wolves while the rest go on with
that single-minded pursuit of the three-car garage, the swimming pool, and the
safe & secure retirement benefits.
I am not being holier-than-thou; I was after that same three-car garage
myself.
However, my folks could not put me through college. My stepfather was an Air
Force warrant officer with all he could handle to buy shoes for his own lads.
When he was transferred to Germany just before my high school senior year and
I was invited to move in with my father's sister and her husband, both of us
were relieved.
I was no better off financially as my uncle-in-law was supporting a first
wife -- under California law much like being an Alabama field hand before the
Civil War. But I had $35 a month as a "surviving dependent of a deceased
veteran." (Not "war orphan," which is another deal that pays more.) My mother
was certain that Dad's death had resulted from wounds but the Veterans
Administration thought differently, so I was just a "surviving dependent."