Positive Thoughts 5-19-08

Positive Thoughts 5-19-08
Peter Macdonald 465 Packersfalls rd Lee NH 03824 603-659-6217
I want this letter to be positive but first I would like to talk about the feature news article that is due in the Mystery NH newspaper this week. Many people have talked to me about the reporter interviewing them over the phone. It is a reporters job to seek all angles to make the article truth full. This reporter must be doing a good job because my daughter was angered because of the reporters continued questions on if I was a good father and did she dislike me for my military disabilities. My wife was skeptical because the reporters questions made her question the reporters descending attitude toward me. A couple of friends told me of the reporter pushed for degrading information. The reporter him self told me that one of his sources questioned if I ever served in the Marine Corps. I can not tell this reporter what to write. Freedom of the press is just that. I can tell him to contact people like Shirley Thompson of the Oyster River School board, Tina at Young’s restaurant, or even Ken Young the owner. Maybe even Roger at the sports shop in Durham or Fran’s at Fran’s main St Durham. Ask the employees at Ocean bank in the center of Durham, or Bambi Miller at the Strafford county conservation district office or even NH state senator Clegg. I give the reporter these names not because they are friends but because they are people that know of me in the community. I must stay positive because even the Mystery paper has not seen fit to publish my letters announcing their article. I am positive that an unbiased reporter will have to tell the true facts “maybe”.
I spent the weekend in Syracuse NY. At six AM each morning I walked the mile to Starbucks. Sunday morning I saw a homeless man with a fatigue military jacket on, searching the trash for food. I left my coffee and newspaper on the table and bought a cup of coffee out to him. The waitress said she would watch my stuff but thought I was crazy. I sat for awhile on the Park bench while the man enjoyed his coffee. We talked about why he was homeless. He served in Vietnam during the Tenth offensive on his second tour. He joined the Marine Corps young because he did not get along with his father. His father was dieing near the end of his second tour and asked him to come home. His job in the MC was in the Air Wing but because of his small size and wild attitude in Vietnam he was transferred to be a tunnel rat. Seek and search out VC underground. He came back to become best friends with his father and marry his high school sweet heart. He inherited two large old factor buildings in down town and living a great life. He had two children and a great wife except for the memory of searching the tunnels. For years he just brushed them off until one day he thought his wife was a VC and hit her. She left him after twenty years because as she said that she was fed up with his fake memory of things that may have happen in the MC. He sees his grown up children as he walks the streets but they don’t even acknowledge him.
I do not know why but the man slipped into a different world as we talked. I took five dollars out of my pocket and placed it in his with out him being aware that I did it. I know that this man went back to Vietnam as we talked. He came home with silent memories and was discharged as a healthy returning Veteran during a time citizens of the U.S. could not accept us. This man lives in a would that you will never understand. He is a neglected, unknown child that never really came home. The positive is at least he gets to live freely on the streets of a country that he gave it all for as a child
Peter Macdonald Sgt USMC Semper Fi