A Long Way from Home

After completing my first week in basic training, I felt like going AWOL and heading home but didn't.  In advanced infantry, I began to realize the trouble I was in as an infantry soldier and considered running, but didn't.  My second day at Oakland Army Base on my way to Vietnam, I thought about running to Canada, but didn't.  The idea of running away was never a serious consideration until I was already in Vietnam.  And then I saw this sign in Bien Hoa.

The sign drove home the point that even if I wanted to run away, I couldn't anymore.  Vietnam is a long way from the United States.  Vietnam in fact is almost half way around the world.  The only way I would get home again was to survive the next twelve months.  Just like the "Going Home" sign I told you about before, it hurt to look at this one as well.  The sign left an uneasy feeling in my gut that stayed with me for a while.      

I have seen many signs like this one since.  There is one in Maine that I am especially fond of.  You will find this sign in the town of Lynchville, on the corner where Route 5 meets Route 35.  Hundreds of years before this sign went up, the original founders of Maine had named their small towns after cities and countries found in Europe and beyond.  They did it for the fun of it.  You had to have a sense of humor to survive those Maine winters.  Lynchville's Chamber of Commerce kept the joke going by having a sign built with all of those unusual town names.  They set it in place over fifty years ago.  

Since then that sign in Maine has become famous.  Bus tours that pass through the area include a drive-by of the sign.  The sign was even kidnapped once and taken to Grand Central Station in New York.  If you look around, you may find other signs like it.  The state of Maine has more of them I know.  Yup, that sign is comical all right.

Though the builders of that sign in Bien Hoa were trying to have some fun in the same way they did with the sign in Maine, it wasn't very funny to me.